In a word he failed to make good use of the incomparable material which the library of Alcobaça afforded. His was a misdirected erudition, and we would willingly exchange the knowledge of where Adam lies buried, or on what day the world began, or how Gorgoris, King of Lusitania, who died 1227 years after the Flood, invented honey, for accurate details of more recent Portuguese history. Yet he had the diligence and enthusiasm of the true historian and made use, sometimes a skilful use,[482] of coins and inscriptions. His brief _Geographia antiga da Lusytania_ also appeared in 1597, and in the same year the Cistercian Order appointed him its chronicler. Thus he interrupted his main work--the second part of the _Monarchia Lusitana_ was only published in 1609--in order to write the _Primeira Parte da Cronica de Cister_ (1602).[483] This, in many ways his best work, runs to nearly a thousand pages, and treats of the saints of the Order and especially of the life of the charming St. Bernard, with contemporary events in Portugal.[484] It was to be followed by two other parts, but Brito’s early death at his native Almeida on his way back to Alcobaça from Spain, a year after he had been appointed _Cronista Môr_ (1616), left his work unfinished. He is remembered as a fine stylist, a poet who wrote history rather than as a great historian. Mariana, the Latin original of whose _Historia de España_ (1592) he knew and quoted, is by comparison almost a scientific writer--at least he is not, like Brito, pseudo-scientific. The two parts of the _Monarchia Lusitana_ written by Brito ended with the beginning of the Portuguese monarchy. Parts 3 and 4, by FREI ANTONIO BRANDÃO (1584-1637), to whose sincerity and skill Herculano paid tribute, appeared in 1632 and carried it down to the year 1279. Brandão had spent nearly ten years collecting and sifting documentary evidence for his work and is a far better historian than Brito, although in style he is not his equal. His nephew FREI FRANCISCO BRANDÃO (1601-80), _vir modestus, diligens et eruditus_, succeeded Frei Antonio as _Cronista Môr_ and wrote Parts 5 and 6 (1650), describing the reign of King Dinis. The style was less well maintained in Part 7 (1633) by FREI RAPHAEL DE JESUS (1614-93). Part 8 (1727), the last to be published, was added by FREI MANUEL DOS SANTOS (1672-1740) over a century after the publication of the first Part, but only brought the history to the battle of Aljubarrota (1385). Santos’ Part 7 as well as Parts 9 and 10 remained in manuscript. His prose is worthy of a work which is a monument of the language, not of the history of Portugal. Perhaps the truest epitaph of this history as a whole--after allowance has been made for Brito’s style and the excellent work of Antonio Brandão--is a severe sentence from the preface of the author of Part 7: ‘There are histories whose tomes are tombs.’