author
Manuel do Valle de Moura
1564–1650
A Portuguese theologian, jurist, and Inquisition official, he is best remembered for a dense 1620 Latin treatise on charms, healing rituals, and superstition. His work opens a vivid window onto how learned religion and popular belief collided in early modern Portugal.
1 Audiobook
Paródia ao primeiro canto dos Lusíadas de Camões por quatro estudantes de Évora em 1589
by Manuel Luiz Freire, Manuel do Valle de Moura, active 1589-1619 Bartolomeu Varela, active 1608 Luís Mendes de Vasconcelos
About the author
Born around 1564 and associated with Arraiolos, he studied law at the University of Coimbra and later earned a doctorate in theology at the University of Évora. He went on to serve as abbot of Santa Cristina de Barroso, tutor to Dom Alexandre, son of the Duke of Braganza, and deputy of the Inquisition in Évora.
His best-known surviving book is De incantationibus seu Ensalmis (1620), a substantial Latin work examining charms, spoken cures, and other practices treated as superstition. Modern scholars still use it as a rich source for understanding demonology, popular healing, and religious life in seventeenth-century Iberia.
He died in Évora on May 18, 1650. Although older references say he wrote many works, this treatise is the one most clearly documented today.