Praça Francisco-Rodrigues Lobo, Leiria

The main square of the old town is named after the famous Portuguese writer and poet, a native of Leiria and the founder of the literary Baroque in Portugal. Francisco Lobo was born in 1580 into a family of "new Christians," the name given to Jews and Muslims who converted to the new faith. In 1596, the young man went to study law at the University of Coimbra and in the same year wrote his first poetic ballads (Romances), which immediately attracted attention. In 1601, his first novel Primavera (Spring) was published, which gave rise to the "pastoral cycle", a collection of poems Eclogae pastoris, published in 1604, brought the writer wide fame in the Pyrenees. Later works have a socio-political connotation - the novel The Court in the Village (1619) tells about the customs that prevailed at the court of King Philip III. The work expresses the disappointment of the Portuguese nobility in the Iberian Union, as a result of which Portugal lost its national state institutions.

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