Part 23

MANUEL DE ABREU MOUSINHO wrote in Spanish a brief account of the conquest of Pegu by Salvador Ribeiro de Sousa, of which a Portuguese version appeared in the 1711 edition of Mendez Pinto’s travels: _Breve discurso em que se contem a conquista do reyno de Pegu_, nearly a century after the original edition, _Breve Discvrso en qve se cventa_, &c. (1617). The _Jornada do Maranhão feita por Jeronymo de Albuquerque em 1614_ is ascribed to DIOGO DE CAMPOS MORENO, who took part in that _conquista_. It was published in the _Collecção de Noticias para a Historia e Geographia das Nações Ultramarinas_.[477] The second volume of this collection contains several re-translations of _Navegações_ (by Thomé Lopez and anonymous Portuguese pilots) surviving in Italian in Ramusio. It would require a separate volume to give an account of all the sixteenth-and seventeenth-century narratives of newly conquered countries written in Portuguese and often immediately translated into many European languages, e.g. the _Novo Descobrimento do Grão Cathayo_ (1626) by the Jesuit ANTONIO DE ANDRADE (_c._ 1580-1634), or the _Relaçam_ of the Jesuit ALVARO SEMMEDO (1585?-1658) written in Portuguese but published in the Spanish translation of Faria e Sousa: _Imperio de la China_ (1642). However unliterary, they are often so vividly written as to be literature in the best sense.

PEDRO DE MAGALHÃES DE GANDAVO, of Braga, whose _Regras_ (1574) ran into three editions before the end of the century, described Brazil and its discovery in two short works: _Historia da prouincia Sãcta Cruz_ (1576) and _Tratado da terra do Brazil_ first published in 1826 in the _Collecção de Noticias_. This collection also prints works of the following century, such as the _Fatalidade historica da Ilha de Ceilão_[478] by Captain JOÃO RIBEIRO, who had served the king as a soldier for eighteen years in the _preciosa ilha de Ceilão_. His manuscript, written in 1685, was translated and published in French (1701) 135 years before it was printed in Portuguese. Gandavo’s _Historia_ (48 ff.), his first work (_premicias_), was introduced by _tercetos_ and a sonnet of Luis de Camões, who speaks of his _claro estilo_, and _engenho curioso_. The author himself in a prefatory letter says that he writes as an eyewitness, content with a ‘plain and easy style’ without seeking _epithetos exquisitos_.

The Jesuit BALTHASAR TELLEZ[479] (1595-1675) won considerable fame as an historian and prose-writer in his _Cronica da Companhia de Iesus_ (2 pts., 1645, 1647) in which he forswears what he calls the artifices and liberties of ordinary _seiscentista_ prose. He also edited the work of the Jesuit missionary MANUEL DE ALMEIDA (1580-1646), recasting it in an abbreviated form: _Historia Geral da Ethiopia a Alta ov Preste Ioam_ (1660), for which Tellez’ friend, Mello, provided a prefatory letter. Almeida, born at Viseu, had gone to India in 1601 and in 1622 was sent to Ethiopia, where he became the head of the mission. He died at Goa after a life of much hard work and various adventure. In writing his history of Ethiopia he made use of the _Historia da Ethiopia_ of an earlier (1603-19) head of the mission, PEDRO PAEZ (1564-1622), who had started for Ethiopia in 1595 but was captured by the Turks and only ransomed in 1602. Although a Spaniard by birth (born at Olmeda), Paez wrote in Portuguese. A third Jesuit missionary, MANUEL BARRADAS, born in 1572 at Monforte, who went to India in 1612, was also a prisoner of the Turks for over a year at Aden. In 1624 he went to _Ethiope, terre maldite_, and remained there some ten years. Of his three treatises the most important is that entitled _Do Reyno de Tygrê e seus mandos em Ethiopia_. The modern editor of these works, P. Camillo Beccari, considers that their authors’ simple style caused their treatises to be regarded rather as the material of history than in themselves history,[480] but their value for us is in this very simplicity and in the detailed observation which bring the country and its inhabitants clearly before us. Scarcely less important, as material for history and as human documents, are the _Cartas_ from Jesuits in China and Japan, especially the collection of 82 letters (Coimbra, 1570), and that of 206 letters (Evora, 1598). The Jesuit FERNAM CARDIM at about the same time rendered a like service to Brazil in his _Narrativa epistolar_, edited in 1847 by F. A. de Varnhagen. A more important work on Brazil was that of GABRIEL SOAREZ DE SOUSA (_c._ 1540-92)--the _Tratado descriptivo do Brasil em 1587_, which its modern editor, F. A. de Varnhagen, described in a moment of enthusiasm as ‘the most admirable of all the works of the Portuguese _quinhentistas_’. Two other works of interest, half history, half travels, are the _Jornada do Arcebispo de Goa Dom Frey Aleixo de Meneses_ (1606) by ANTONIO DE GOUVEA, Bishop of Cyrene (_c._ 1565-1628), in three parts, describing the archbishop’s life and visits in his diocese; and the _Discvrso da Iornada de D. Gonçalo Covtinho á villa de Mazagam e sev governo nella_ (1629). The writer--the admirer of Camões and alleged author of the 1614 life of Sá de Miranda--who, as he says, had grown white in the council-chamber, lived on till 1634. He here relates with much directness his voyage and four years’ Governorship (1623-7).

The _Saudades da Terra_ (1873) of GASPAR FRUCTUOSO (1522-91), who was born at S. Miguel in the Azores, was written in 1590 and waited three centuries in manuscript for an editor. Both its title and the ‘preamble’, in which Truth says that she will write of nothing but sadness, are misleading, since the book is an account--in good, straightforward style after the manner of Castanheda and other historians--of the discovery and subsequent conditions of various islands, especially of Madeira and the lives of its Governors. ANTONIO CORDEIRO (1641-1722), Jesuit, of Angra, wrote at the age of seventy-six an uncritical but interesting work entitled _Historia Insulana das Ilhas a Portugal sujeitas no Oceano Occidental_ (1717), based partly on Fructuoso’s manuscript.

It was only as it were by an afterthought that the historians turned to consider the history of Portugal as apart from separate chronicles of the kings or episodes of Eastern conquest. The historical scheme of João de Barros was too vast to be executed by one man and the European part was never written. André de Resende likewise failed to carry out his project of a history of Portugal. PEDRO DE MARIZ (_c._ 1550-1615), son of the Coimbra printer, Antonio, in the last four of his _Dialogos de Varia Historia_ (1594) between a Portuguese and an Italian, embraces the whole history of Portugal, but these dialogues, although industriously written in good plain style, were eclipsed by the appearance three years later of the first part of the _Monarchia Lusitana_ (1597). Its author, a young Cistercian monk of Alcobaça, FREI BERNARDO DE BRITO (1569-1617), in the world Balthasar de Brito de Andrade, at once became known as one of the best writers of his time, and he is still reckoned among the masters of Portuguese prose. His style, clear, restrained, copious, proved that the mantle of Barros had fallen upon worthy shoulders. But, despite his rich vein of humanity, as a historian he is far inferior to Barros and even more uncritical than Mariz. The value of evidence seems to have weighed with him little when it was a question of exalting his language, literature, religion, or country, and he used and incorporated documents entirely worthless. Whether he deliberately manufactured spurious documents to serve his purposes cannot be known, but he seems at least to have quoted authorities which had never existed.[481]

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.’

It could hardly, perhaps, be expected that the historians of the reigns of King Manuel and King João III should pass over events in the East as already fully related, and in Damião de Goes’ _Cronica do Felicissimo Rey Dom Emanvel_ and Francisco de Andrade’s _Cronica de Dom João III_ (1613), although they lose much by compression, they still occupy a disproportionate space. Andrade wrote most correct prose, even in his poems, and the style of his history is excellent, but neither of these works gives any adequate account of the internal history of Portugal, any more than does that of Frei Luis de Sousa on João III’s reign, in which there should have been more scope for originality. The same prominence is given to India in the history of JERONIMO OSORIO (1506-80), Bishop of Silves, _De Rebvs Emmanvelis Regis Lvsitaniae_ (1571), written in Latin in order to spread the knowledge of these events _per omnes reipublicae Christianae regiones_.[485] Osorio, whose father, like Lopez de Castanheda’s, had been a judge (_ouvidor_) in India, was born at Lisbon, but studied abroad, at Salamanca, Paris, and Bologna. After occupying the Chair of Scripture at Coimbra for a brief space, he went to Lisbon and became secretary to the Infante Luis. In 1560 he was made Archdeacon of Evora and four years later Bishop of Silves. (The see was removed to Faro three years before his death and his title is sometimes given as Bishop of Algarve.) A few remarkable letters in Portuguese, in one of which (1567) he attempted to convert Queen Elizabeth, show that he was skilled in the use of his native tongue; his countrymen delighted to call him the Portuguese Cicero. According to Sousa de Macedo ‘many people came from England, Germany and other parts with the sole object of seeing him’.[486] In England certainly his book was highly prized, and both Dryden and Pope praised Gibbs’ translation, although Francis Bacon noted the diffuseness of Osorio’s style: _luxurians et diluta_, certainly not a just verdict on the style as a whole; we have but to think of the concise sketches of Albuquerque (_De Rebus_, p. 380) and King Manuel (p. 478). Osorio acknowledged his ample debt to the chronicle of Goes, which he describes as written ‘with incredible felicity’. FREI BERNARDO DA CRUZ, who accompanied King Sebastian to Africa in 1578 as chaplain, in his _Cronica de El Rei D. Sebastião_ wrote the history of his life and reign and happily describes him as ‘a young king without experience or fear’. The _Cronica do Cardeal Rei D. Henrique_ (1840) completed the history of the house of Avis. It chronicles in fifty-four diminutive chapters the eighteen months’ reign of the _pouco mimoso e severo_ Cardinal King Henry. It was written in 1586,[487] and, although anonymous, is ascribed with some probability to the Jesuit Padre ALVARO LOBO (1551-1608).

The _Jornada de Africa_ (1607) by JERONIMO DE MENDOÇA, of Oporto, is divided into three parts, describing the expedition and the battle of Alcacer Kebir, the ransoms and escapes of the captives, and the death of Christian martyrs in Africa. Its object was to refute certain statements in Conestaggio’s recent work _Dell’unione del regno di Portogallo alla corona di Castiglia_, but Mendoça had fought at Alcacer Kebir and had been taken prisoner; he thus writes as an eyewitness, and his excellent style and power of description give more than a controversial value and interest to his book and make it matter for regret that this short history was apparently his only work.

MIGUEL DE MOURA (1538-1600), secretary to five kings and one of the three Governors of Portugal in 1593, set an example too rarely followed by those who have played an important part in Portuguese history by composing a brief autobiography: _Vida de Miguel de Moura_. It was written on the eve of St. Peter’s Day, 1594, except a few pages which were added in the year before the author’s death. Incidentally it has the distinction of containing one of the longest sentences ever written (114 lines--1840 ed., pp. 126-9).

The painstaking and talented DUARTE NUNEZ DE LEAM (_c._ 1530-1608), born at Evora, son of the Professor of Medicine João Nunez, besides genealogical and legal works, _Leis extravagantes_ (1560, 1569), wrote two valuable treatises on the Portuguese language and an interesting _Descripção do Reino de Portugal_ (1610), which he finished in 1599. He also found time to spare from his duties as a magistrate to recast the chronicles of the Kings of Portugal. The _Cronicas dos Reis de Portugal_ (1600) contain those from Count Henry to King Fernando, and the _Cronicas del Rey Dom Ioam de gloriosa memoria_ those of Kings João I, Duarte, and Afonso V. Shorn of the individuality of the early chroniclers, they yet retain much of interest, and Nunez de Leam would be accorded a higher place as historian were it not for our knowledge of the inestimable value of the originals which he edited and ‘improved’. Two generations earlier Cristovam Rodriguez Azinheiro (or Acenheiro), born in 1474 (he tells us that he was sixty-one in May 1535), had treated the early chronicles in the same way, but only succeeded in retaining all that was jejune without preserving their picturesqueness in his _Cronicas dos Senhores Reis de Portugal_.[488]

More interesting personally than as historian, the humanist DAMIÃO DE GOES (1502-74[489]) was one of the most accomplished men of his time,[490] and, thanks partly to his trial before the Inquisition, partly to the not unpleasant egotism with which he chronicled autobiographical details, not only in his _Genealogia_[491] but in many of his other works, we know more of his life than we know of most contemporary writers. Traveller and diplomatist, scholar, singer, musician, he was a man of many friends during his lifetime, and the tragic circumstances of his last years have won him fresh sympathizers after his death. Born at Alenquer and brought up at the Court of King Manuel, he became page to the king in 1518, and five years later was appointed secretary at the Portuguese Factory at Antwerp. In 1529 he was sent on a diplomatic mission to Poland, and in this and the following years, on similar missions or for his own pleasure, ‘saw and conversed with all the kings, princes, nobles and peoples of Christendom’.[492] He made the acquaintance of Montaigne’s _aubergistes allemands, ‘glorieux, colères et ivrognes’_, turned aside to visit Luther and Melanchthon at Wittenberg,[493] and was for several months the guest of Erasmus at Freiburg. In Italy he lived with Cardinal Sadoletto at Padua (1534-8) and met Cardinal Bembo and other celebrated men of the day. At Louvain, too, _mihi intime carum et iucundum_, as throughout Europe, he had many devoted friends. A senator of Antwerp welcomed him in Latin verse on his return from his Scythian travels,[494] Luis Vives addressed affectionate letters to _mi Damiane_, Albrecht Dürer painted his portrait, Glareanus in his _Dodecachordon_ included music of his composition.[495]

In 1542 he was on his way to Holland with his Flemish wife when he heard that Louvain was threatened by a French force commanded by Longueval and _meus ille in Academiam Louvaniensem fatalis amor_ took him back to share its perils. He played a principal part in the defence, and finally remained a prisoner in the enemy’s hands, _quasi piacularis hostia_, as he says.[496] His imprisonment in France lasted nine months, and after paying a ransom of 6,000 ducats he went back to Louvain. The Emperor Charles V rewarded him for his services with a splendid coat of arms. In 1545, after twenty-one years of European travel, he returned with his wife and children[497] to Portugal, and three years later was entrusted with Fernam Lopez’ old post, the Keepership of the Archives. He lived in the Paços d’Alcaçova with a certain magnificence, keeping open house for all foreigners, one of whom records that already in 1565 _il se faict fort vieulx_. Six years later, on April 4, 1571, he was arrested by the Inquisition and spent twenty months in prison.

It was, perhaps, inevitable that he should have incurred suspicion, nor is it necessary to explain his trial by the enmity of certain persons at Court due to passages in his works. His life had been out of keeping with the _gravedades de Hespanha_, and the charges against him were numerous and varied. He had eaten and drunken with heretics, he had read strange books, the sound of songs not understanded of the people and organ music had issued from his house at Lisbon, he had omitted to observe fasts, he had called the Pope a tyrant, he set no store by papal indulgences or auricular confession. Even the testimony of his grand-niece is recorded, to the effect that her mother had said of Goes, her husband’s uncle, that he had no more belief in God than in a stone wall (she seems to have had Berkeleian tendencies). As usual it is less the proceedings of the Inquisition than the bad faith of the witnesses that arouse disgust. The poet Andrade Caminha, who apparently came forward of his own accord--we are not told that he was _chamado_--admitted that certain words of Goes which he now denounced had not seemed so serious to him before he knew that Goes was in the prison of the Inquisition. Goes had already been denounced to the Inquisition in 1545 and 1550, and his book _Fides, Religio Moresque Aethiopum_ (Lovanii, 1540) had been condemned in Portugal in 1541. He was examined frequently in 1571 and 1572, was left for three months without news of his family, and complained of being old, weak, and ill, and that his body had become covered with a kind of leprosy (July 14, 1572). His sentence (October 16, 1572) pronounced him to have incurred, as a Lutheran heretic, excommunication, confiscation of all his property, and the life-long confinement of his person. He was transferred to the famous monastery of Batalha in December, but his death (January 30, 1574) occurred in his own house. His return and his death probably explain one another. He was growing very old in 1565 and we must suppose that his recent experiences had not made him younger. His last request--to die among his family--was apparently granted, and the further explanations (that he fell forward into the fire, that he died of an apoplexy, was killed by order of the Inquisition, was beaten to death by the lackeys of the Conde da Castanheira, or murdered and robbed by his own servants) are superfluous. His works consist of several brief Latin treatises crowded with interesting facts (especially his _Hispania_); and in Portuguese the _Cronica do Principe Dom Ioam_ (1567) and _Cronica do Felicissimo Rey Dom Emanvel_, 4 pt. (1566, 1567). He also found time to translate Cicero’s _De Senectute_: _Livro ... da Velhice_, (Veneza, 1534). He had not the imagination of an historian, and unless events have passed before his eyes, or happen to interest him personally, he can be bald and meagre as an annalist. But in any matter which touches him closely, as the expulsion and the cruel treatment of the Jews, or the massacre of new Christians, or the account of Ethiopia, he broadens out into moving and detailed description. The result is that this long Chronicle of King Manuel is a number of excellent separate treatises rather than a history with unity and a sense of proportion. It is the work of a scholar who likes to describe directly, from his own experience. The _Cronica do Principe_ was written some months before that of King Manuel. The latter was a difficult undertaking,[498] for many persons concerned were still alive, and subjects such as the expulsion of the Jews needed delicate handling. For thirty-one years it had hung fire in the hands of previous chroniclers when in 1558 Cardinal Henrique entrusted it to Damião de Goes. After eight years the four parts were ready for press,[499] but the difficulties were not yet over, for certain chapters met with strong disapproval at Court[500] and had to be altered, so that two editions of the first part appeared in 1566 (the first being apparently submitted as a proof and not for sale), but the publication of the work as a whole was not completed before 1567.