Manuel Gonçalves da Costa

Manuel Gonçalves da Costa was born in Quintela, parish of Penude, municipality of Lamego in the 1rst August 1910. He started his studies in the Seminary of Lamego and then he moved to a school of the Jesuits Company in Spain. When he returns to Portugal he graduates in the Philosophical Institute in Braga with a paper on Chinese Philosophy.
He is ordained priest in Rome in the 13th May 1942. When he was attending the Theology School of the Gregorian University, the 2nd World War forced him to go the Catholic University of Granada. Afterwards he went to the University of Dublin, in Ireland where he graduated in History in 1945. Again in Rome he specialized in Paleography, he dedicated himself to Archival in the Jesuit Curia and he was a researcher of the Vatican archives.

Back to Portugal he started teaching in the Seminaries of Lisbon, Évora and Lamego. In 1950 he started living in Lamego and he became priest of Lalim. The Bishop D. João da Silva C. Neves entrusted him with the task of writing the Bishop History of the city of Lamego, work he evolves in 8 volumes, 6 of which already published. He had a scholarship of the Gulbenkian Foundation for the research of Priest Jerónimo Lobo itinerary, explorer and missionary in Ethiopia, paper presented in Abis Abeba University in 1966, in the range of a Meeting about Ethiopian Studies.    

His wide historical investigation work is the result of an intellectual labour and an exceptional mind. He was admitted as a member of the Portuguese Academy of History in 1975 and the City Council of Lamego honoured him with the Gold Medal in October 1980.
He passed away in April 1997 and he is buried in Cabido tomb in Santa Cruz graveyard of Lamego.

Published main work:
Inácio de Azevedo, o homem e a sua época (1946); Itinerário e outros escritos inéditos do Pe. Jerónimo Lobo (1971); Lutas Liberais e Miguelistas em Lamego (1974); Inéditos de Filosofia em Portugal (1978); Fontes Inéditas Portuguesas para a História da Irlanda (1981); História do Bispado e Cidade de Lamego (1977); Jerónimo Lobo reveals Ethiopia to Europe (Adis Adeba, 1969); Seminário e Seminaristas de Lamego (1990).