Sá de Miranda passed his early years by the banks of the river Mondego, considered a source of inspiration to many other poets.

Verse-making and gallantry occupied much of his time at court, and he became one of a group comprising the greatest nobles and most celebrated poets of the age, including Bernardim Ribeiro and Cristóvão Falcão, who surrounded the courtier Leonor de Mascareñas.

He had come out of the university so good a lawyer that he was able to act as ad interim professor of his faculty, and he was offered a judicial post, but refused it.

[2] Sá de Miranda travelled to Italy in 1521, where he was able to make contact with many writers and artists of the Renaissance, including Vittoria Colonna[1] (who was his distant relative), Pietro Bembo,[1] Sannazzaro and Ariosto.

[2] On his way home, in 1526, he visited Spain, meeting classical writers Juan Boscan and Garcilaso de la Vega.

[5] He introduced the sonnet,[1] the elegy, the eclogue, the ottava rima[2] and other classical poetic forms, adapting the Portuguese language to the Italian hendecasyllable verse.