HISTORICAL DICTIONARY A–Z - Spain and Portugal: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present - page 350

S

Sá de Miranda, Francisco de
(1481-1558)
Portuguese writer
A major literary figure in the emergence of
Renaissance culture in Portugal, Sá de
Miranda belonged to a family of northern
aristocrats. After attending the University
of Lisbon he traveled in Italy, where he
acquainted himself with Italian poetic
forms, then scarcely known in his native
land. He may have taken part in some of
the imperial military and commercial enter-
prises with which most of the Portuguese
gentry were then preoccupied but by the
late 1520s was devoting himself primarily
to writing. His frank criticism of Portuguese
society reveals a dissatisfaction with its
comparative lack of sophistication and
materialism. He saw his own particular mis-
sion as the introduction of literary refine-
ments and forms already established in
other countries among a population still
largely committed to traditional literary
forms and subject matter. His Estrangeiros
(The foreigners, 1527) was evidently the
first Portuguese prose comedy in the clas-
sical style. His Cleopatra (1550), which has
survived only in a fragmentary state, was
probably the first Portuguese classical trag-
edy. He also wrote epistolary verse ( Cartas )
and a canzone in the Italian form, “Fabula
do Mondego.” Most critics regard the

eclogue, “Basto,” as his finest work,
although others favor the Cartas or several
satires, all of these based upon Italian
models. Sá de Miranda was Portugal's
“Renaissance man” in the fullest sense of
the term.

Sagasta, Práxedes Mateo
(1825-1903)
Spanish statesman
Already active in progressive politics during
the 1850s, Sagasta took a leading part, along
with General J UAN P RIM , in the overthrow
of I SABELLA II in 1868. He served as prime
minister under the Italian prince who was
elected to replace her as A MADEO I and was
also a cabinet member under the First
Republic. Sagasta withdrew from public life
after the Bourbon restoration of 1875.
Emerging as the leader of the new Lib-
eral Party in 1880, Sagasta returned to the
premiership in 1885 and repeatedly held
that office in rotation with the conservative
chief A NTONIO C ÁNOVAS DEL C ASTILLO until
the latter's death in 1897. Confronted with
a deteriorating situation in C UBA , Sagasta
offered the rebels there a statute of auton-
omy but was unable to avert the loss of the
island in the catastrophic 1898 war with
the United States. Although Sagasta would
continue to lead the country until 1902, he

348