Chronicler Fernão Lopes is an important early figure in the intellectual and literary history of Portugal. His output was not enormous, but the works he produced in the fifteenth century are of a magnitude that earned him the title of "father of Portuguese historiography." Lopes was not only an historian but also a creative writer who produced texts of high literary quality. His chronicles possess a hybrid character: they cannot easily be classified under a specific literary genre because they incorporate elements from several different ones, including the novel of chivalry, epic poetry, ecclesiastical oratory, classical rhetoric, and above all, the Bible.

The only materials available for reconstructing Lopes's biography include some letters, notarial documents, and information in his works and those of other authors. In the preserved documentation regarding Lopes, there is no information about his family or the date or place of his birth...