PINTO, FERNO MENDES

born c. 1510, Montemor-o-Velho, Port. died July 8, 1583, Almada, near Lisbon Portuguese adventurer and author of the Peregrinao (1614, Peregrination; The Voyages and Adventures of Fernand Mendez Pinto), a literary masterpiece depicting the impression made on a European by Asian civilization, notably that of China, in the 16th century. Pinto went to India in 1537 and later claimed to have travelled, fought, and traded in almost every part of Asia during the next 21 years and also to have experienced drastic reversals of fortune, having been made 13 times a prisoner and 17 a slave. In China, for example, he was convicted of plundering royal tombs and, as punishment, had his thumbs severed and was sentenced to a year of hard labour on construction of the Great Wall. The Peregrinao was written after Pinto's return to Portugal in 1558. He settled in Almada, married, and received a pension from King Philip. Pinto's Peregrinao is of no geographic value, but it is of great interest as depicting the impression made on an intelligent Portuguese by the civilizations of the Far East and for its thinly veiled criticism of the behaviour of his compatriots in Asia.