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He was backed by a critical tradition, largely fuelled by biographical research, which included both heavily erudite texts from specialised journals (such as the Arquivo Histórico Português, Revista de História, and O Instituto) and their prolific authors (including Pedro de Azevedo, Anselmo Braamcamp Freire, Sousa Viterbo, and Brito Rebelo), as well as more expansive works, found in abundance in literary and art histories or in historians such as Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcelos, António de Vasconcelos, and the aforementioned João Lúcio de Azevedo (L. de Azevedo, O Marquez de Pombal e a sua época, 1909, pp.7-8).
The possibilities inherent to this revision work, even though the historiographical community was progressively closing in on itself, were too obvious not to be used to ignite the political debate. It was not by chance that Lúcio de Azevedo's work on the Marquis of Pombal was re-edited by Seara Nova/Renascença Portuguesa in 1922, a decade after its initial appearance. In Integralismo Lusitano as well as in Renascença Portuguesa, and their subsidiary currents, the ideal of regenerating the national body largely relied on considering the exemplary value of past heroes, the "leaders" of the nation's destiny, on whom, as Jaime Cortesão rightly noted in an initial phase, "the epic and hypertrophic concept" of Carlyle easily rested. In particular in the monarchist current, the discourse of the rehabilitation of the country's "supreme governors" fuelled a substantial part of its historiographical production, although its most significant biographical works, comfortably aligned with the prevailing ideology, emerged well into the 1930s. However, contrary to the republican tradition of general enlightenment, the revision of history mounted on the monarchist position relied less on the principle of dissemination and elevation of its audience than on the historical foundation of claims for the restoration of the old regime. This, in more immediate terms, involved the legitimising portrayal of the last champions of Absolutism (above all, D. Miguel) and, structurally or methodically, the critique of the (so-called) decadent end-of-century theories and the history-art on which they were based, especially in the portrayal of great figures. Due to the political ends that this reinterpretation of national history and its rulers also encompassed, as seen in the case of João Ameal, the most prolific among these authors, its underlying methodical position did not always result in an outright rejection of literary devices especially aimed at the general public's consumption, which had been used in biography.
