Correia Henriques (José Anselmo)

José Anselmo Correia Henriques was born in the parish (freguesia) of Ribeira Brava (‘wild river’) around 1777. He belonged, albeit through illegitimacy, to an old and noble family of this island, being the natural son of António João Correia Bettencourt Henriques and the brother of Fernando José Correia Brandão Bettencourt Henriques, Viscount of Torre Bela and Portugal’s minister in Prussia and Sweden.

We do not know what academic qualifications José Anselmo Correia Henriques possessed, but to hold the posts he filled and to write the books he published, he must certainly have been a man of uncommon talent and rare intellectual culture. Since he followed a diplomatic career and was a devoted cultivator of letters, he no doubt received his training in some course of higher education, or at least at the Colégio dos Nobres. There the dead languages, Greek and Latin, were then taught, along with the living languages French, English and Italian, and history, mathematics, physics, drawing, architecture, horsemanship, fencing, etc.

He pursued a career in diplomacy, and the only post we know him to have held in it is that of Portugal’s representative to the Hanseatic cities. As is generally known, these were Hamburg, Bremen and others, which formed a kind of confederation with diplomatic representation in almost the whole of Europe. Many of his literary works were printed in various European cities, and from this it may perhaps be inferred that he resided in some of them as a member of the diplomatic corps and belonged to Portugal’s legations at various foreign courts. It is very likely that the works published in Paris, London, Hamburg, Venice and Christiania indicate that their author stayed for longer or shorter periods in those cities, carrying out consular or diplomatic duties.

He was in Rio de Janeiro when the Portuguese court and government were established there, holding several posts of trust under the Prince Regent, Dom João.

Among the works of Correia Henriques mentioned by Inocêncio Francisco da Silva, we would single out his Obras Poeticas, of which he appears to have published only the first volume; the mock-heroic poems A Padeira de Aljubarrota and Perodana; the tragedy Revolução de Portugal; the comedy Escola de Escandalo; and many others. If these are not masterpieces of their kind, they nonetheless reveal considerable literary ability and great intellectual culture. He translated the poem Arte da guerra by Frederick, King of Prussia, as well as other works, and in 1821 he also published in London a political journal to which he gave the title O Zorragar das côrtes novas. He died in Lisbon in 1831 and was the father of the 1st Count of Seixal (‘pebble shore’).