Part 24

Scarcely less celebrated than Goes, the archaeologist LUCIO ANDRÉ DE RESENDE (1493?-1573),[501] friend of Goes, Clenardus, and Erasmus, left the Dominican convent of Bemfica, in which he was a novice, in order to study abroad, at Salamanca, Paris, and Louvain. ‘Tall, with very large eyes, curling hair, rather dark complexion but of a cheerful, open countenance’, living in his house (_as casas de Resende_) at Evora among his books and coins, statues and inscriptions--his small garden hedged with _marmores antigos_ as, according to Brito, too often were peasants’ vine-yards--he exercised a considerable influence on the writers of his time[502] and was held in high esteem by the Emperor Charles V and by King João III. The principal of his own works were written in Latin, but besides his _De Antiquitatibus Lusitaniae_ (1593), which was edited by Mendez de Vasconcellos with the addition of a fifth book from notes left by the author, he composed in Portuguese a ‘brief but learned’ _Historia da Antiguidade da Cidade de Evora_ (1553). In his _Vida do Infante Dom Duarte_ (1789)[503] he did not write the ‘very copious history’ which Paiva de Andrade[504] said the subject required. He did better, for this sketch of a few pages is a little masterpiece in which the vignettes, for instance, of the boatman and his figs, or the meal in the mill, must ever retain their vividness and charm. Resende had been the prince’s tutor and writes of what he saw; he shows that he could decipher a person’s character as keenly as a Latin inscription. Resende’s legitimate successor in archaeology, MANUEL SEVERIM DE FARIA (1583-1655), scarcely belongs to the sixteenth century although he wrote verses in 1598 and 1599. He succeeded his uncle as Canon (1608) and Precentor (1609) of Evora Cathedral and resigned in favour of his nephew Manuel de Faria Severim as Canon in 1633 and Precentor in 1642. Living in ancient Evora when the memory of Resende was still fresh, this antiquary of the pale face and blue eyes, ‘store-house of all the treasures of the past’,[505] with his medals and statues and choice library of rare books, soon rivalled Resende’s fame. His most important works are _Discursos varios politicos_ (1624) containing four essays and the lives of Barros, Camões, and Couto, and _Noticias de Portugal_ (1655).

A less attractive personality is that of MANUEL DE FARIA E SOUSA (1590-1649), born near Pombeiro (Minho), a most accomplished, industrious, but untrustworthy author who wrote mainly in Spanish. His _Epitome de las Historias Portuguesas_ was published in 1628 at Madrid, where he spent the greater part of his life, and where he died. He seems to have retained a real affection for his native country, but he was not a man of independent character and bestowed his flatteries as his interest required. After the Restoration of 1640 he stayed on at the Spanish Court, and there appears to be some doubt whether it was João IV, his nominal master, or Philip IV of Spain that he served best. His long historical works, _Europa Portuguesa_, _Asia Portuguesa_, _Africa Portuguesa_, appeared posthumously, between 1666 and 1681. He is most pleasant when he is not trying to ‘make’ history but is simply describing, as in his account of the various provinces of Portugal.[506] In his own not over-modest verdict in Part 4 of the same volume, _De las primazias deste Reyno_, he was _el primero que supo historiar con más acierto_. Faria e Sousa was enthusiastic but unscrupulous and he has been severely handled by the critics. With posterity he has fallen between two stools, since the Spanish are only moderately interested in his subject, Portugal, and the Portuguese consider him to belong to Spanish literature.

FOOTNOTES:

[436] Antonio Vieira, _Historia do Futuro_ (1718), p. 24: _esta historia era o silencio de todas as historias_.

[437] _O primeiro Portugues que na nossa lingoa as [façanhas] resuscitei._ João de Barros, in his preface, makes a similar claim: _foi o primeiro_.

[438] Cf. vi. 37, 38; vii. 77, 78; or vi. 100, where the ships bristling with the enemy’s arrows are likened to porcupines.

[439] 1496, the generally accepted year of his birth, is the calculation of Severim de Faria, followed by Barbosa Machado, Nicolás Antonio, &c. As he retired at the end of 1567 it is difficult not to suspect (from his love of method and the decimal system) that he was born in 1497--the year of Vasco da Gama’s expedition.

[440] 400,000 _réis_. He also obtained the privilege of trading with India free from all taxes so as to clear a profit of 1,600,000 _réis_. Innocencio da Silva adds ‘yearly’ to this sum, mentioned by Severim de Faria. In any case Barros’ complaints of his poverty seem misplaced.

[441] Faria e Sousa (_Varias Rimas_, pt. 2 (1689), p. 165), says that neither Lopez de Castanheda nor Barros was widely read, one of the reasons being the length of their histories.

[442] According to Pero de Magalhães de Gandavo (_Dialogo em defensam da lingua portvgvesa_) Barros ‘is in Venice preferred to Ptolemy’.

[443] His account of the fleet leaving Lisbon (I. v. 1) _is_ that of an eyewitness.

[444] _Mais trabalhamos no substancial da historia que no ampliar as miudezas que enfadam e não deleitam_ (I. vii. 8). Cf. I. v. 10 (1778 ed., p. 465); III. ix. 9 (p. 426); III. x. 5 (p. 489). Yet the vivid light thrown by the details recorded in other writers, such as the ‘bushel of sapphires’ sent to Albuquerque by one of the native kings, or the open boat drifting with a few Portuguese long dead and a heap of silver beside them, is of undeniable value. Goes inserts details, but is too late a writer to do so without apology, like Corrêa and Lopez de Castanheda: _pode parecer a algũa pessoa_ [e. g. his friend Barros] _que em historia grave nam eram necessarias estas miudezas_ (_Cron. do Pr. D. Joam_, cap. cii).

[445] e.g. the following mortar of conjunctions between the stones on p. 335 of _Decada_ II (1777 ed.) opened at hazard: _nas quaes ... que ... que ... qual ... que ... como ... que ... que ... o qual ... cujos ... que ... que ... que ... posto que ... como ... porque ... que_.

[446] _E sendo eu moço servindo a El Rey D. João na guardaroupa_ (_Dec._ IV. iii. 8). In _Dec._ VII. viii. 1 he speaks of having served João III for two years as _moço da camara_ (1555-7). In the same passage he embarks for India in 1559 aged _fifteen_. In _Dec._ VII. ix. 12 (1783 ed. p. 396) he is eighteen (April 1560).

[447] According to the Governor, Francisco Barreto, he was more at home with arms than with prices (_Dec._ IX. 20, 1786 ed., p. 160). Another passage in the _Decadas_ proves him to have been an excellent horseman.

[448] Cf. _Dec._ IV. iii. 8 (1778 ed. p. 234).

[449] He himself describes with great detail and pathos the wrecks of the ships _N. Senhora da Barca_ (VII. viii. 1), _Garça_ (VII. viii. 12), _S. Paulo_ (VII. ix. 16), _Santiago_ (X. vii. 1), as well as that of Sepulveda (_Dec._ VI. ix. 21, 22). In his account of the loss of the _S. Thomé_ (which was printed in the _Historia Tragico-Maritima_, in the _Vida de D. Paulo de Lima_, and no doubt in the lost eleventh _Decada_), the separation of D. Joana de Mendoça from her child is one of the most tantalizing and touching incidents ever penned.

[450] _Não particularizo ninguem_ (_Dec._ XII. i. 7).

[451] What he lacks in _gravidade_ (cf. _Dec._ X. x. 14)--he is quite ready to admit that he writes _toscamente_ (VII. iii. 3), _singelamente, sem ornamento de palavras_ (VI. ii. 3), _simplesmente, sem ornamento nem artificio de palavras_ (V. v. 6)--he makes good by directness as an eyewitness, _de mais perto_ (IV. i. 7; cf. IV. x. 4 _ad init._). When he had not himself been present he preferred the accounts of those who had, as Sousa Coutinho’s description of the siege of Diu (_Commentarios_) _em estilo excellente e grave, e foi o melhor de todos, porque escreveo como testemunha de vista_, V. iii. 2) or Miguel de Castanhoso’s _copioso tratado_ (V. viii. 7). Among the traces of his close touch with reality are the popular _romances_, _cantigas_, _adagios_, which Barros would have deemed beneath the dignity of history.

[452] As the fleets grew, long catalogues of the captains’ names were perhaps inevitable. They are certainly out of place in a biography, but Couto’s _Vida de D. Paulo de Lima Pereira_ (1765) is really a collection of those passages from the _Decadas_ which bear on the life of Couto’s old friend, a _fidalgo muito pera tudo_. As far as chapter 32 it is told in words similar to or identical with those of _Decada_ X. Chapter 32 corresponds with the beginning of the lost _Decada_ XI.

[453] His biographer, Manuel Severim de Faria, says that he left (in manuscript) ‘a large volume of elegies, eclogues, songs, sonnets and glosses’ (Barbosa Machado calls them _Poesias Varias_), and that he wrote a commentary on the first five books of the _Lusiads_. _Carminibus quoque pangendis non infeliciter vacavit_, says N. Antonio.

[454] _Lendas_, iii. 7: _nom ouve alguem que tomasse por gloria escrever e cronizar o descobrimento da India_. In an earlier passage (i. 3) he refers to narratives of travellers such as that of Duarte Barbosa.

[455] He says (_Lendas_, ii. 5): _quando comecei esta ocupação de escrever as cousas da India erão ellas tão gostosas, per suas bondades, que dava muito contentamento ouvilas recontar_.

[456] _Lenda_, iii. 438.

[457] _Fui hum dos seus escrivães que com elle andei tres annos_ (ii. 46). Elsewhere (i. 2) he says that he went to India _moço de pouca idade_ sixteen years after the discovery of India. 1512 was fourteen years after the actual discovery (1498), but might be counted the sixteenth year from 1497.

[458] _Homens da criação d’El Rei_, says Corrêa with some pride, _de que confiasse seus segredos_ (ii. 46).

[459] Lima Felner, _Noticia preliminar_ (_Lendas_, i, p. xi).

[460] Ibid.; but Corrêa says (_Lendas_, ii. 891) that he held this post at Cochin (_almoxarife do almazem da Ribeira_) in 1525.

[461] _Por ter entendimento em debuxar._ The portraits, drawn by Corrêa and painted by ‘a native painter’ so cleverly that you could recognize the originals (iv. 597), as well as Corrêa’s very curious drawings of Aden and other cities, are reproduced in the 1858-66 edition of the _Lendas_.

[462] _Passa de cincoenta annos_ [i.e. 1512-63] _que ando no rodizio d’este serviço, aleijado de feridas com que irei á cova sem satisfação._

[463] Cf. ii. 608, 752; iii. 437; iv. 338, 537-8, 567-8, 665, 669, 730-1.

[464] He so styles his work in the preface of _Lenda_ iv.

[465] He is writing, he says, in 1561 (_Lendas_, i. 265); 1561 again (i. 995: _não cessando este trabalho até este anno_); 1563 (iii. 438); 1550 (iv. 25); 1551 (iv. 732).

[466] The value of that evidence varies. For instance, he assures us (iii. 689) that he saw with his own eyes a native 300 years old and his son of 200; yet there is something suspicious in the roundness of the figures.

[467] _Escrevia com elle as cartas pera El Rei_ (ii. 172).

[468] Albuquerque in one of his letters (No. 95) says that in Portugal a man is hanged for stealing Alentejan _mantas_. Corrêa repeats this phrase twice (_Lendas_, ii. 752; iv. 731).

[469] Cf. ii. 247: _Eu ouvi dizer a Afonso d’Albuquerque_.

[470] _Neste meu trabalho não tomei sentido senão escrever os feitos dos Portugueses e nada das terras_ (iii. 66). Cf. i. 651, 815; ii. 222.

[471] Latino Coelho, _Fernão de Magalhães_ in _Archivo Pittoresco_, vi. (1863), p. 170 et seq.

[472] Corrêa himself seems to have been rather unsuccessful than scrupulous in amassing money. He tells without a hint of embarrassment (ii. 432) how he took the white and gold scarf (_rumal_) of the murdered Resnordim (or Rais Ahmad) and sold it for 20 _xarafins_ (about £7), and (iii. 281) helped to dispose of stolen goods in 1528 at Cochin.

[473] _Protestando d’em meus dias esta lenda nom mostrar a nenhum_ (i. 3).

[474] _Que colligi dos proprios originaes._ The work is a history of events in India, not a biography of Albuquerque, the first forty years of whose life are represented only by half a dozen sentences (1774 ed., iv. 255).

[475] _Aquelle tão pouco venturoso como sciente & valeroso Antonio Galvão_ (João Pinto Ribeyro, _Preferencia das Letras ás Armas_, 1645). In his youth in India he won the regard of that keen judge of men, Afonso de Albuquerque, who could see in him nothing to find fault with except his excessive generosity.

[476] _Tratado. Prologo_ [3 ff.]. _Em este tractado con noue ou dez liuros das cousas de Maluco & da India que me o Cardeal mandou dar a Damiam de Goes._

[477] Vol. i, No. 4.

[478] Vol. v, No. 1 (1836).

[479] The name would seem to have been really Tillison, i.e. son of John Tilly, who married a granddaughter of Moraes, the author of _Palmeirim_.

[480] He speaks of their _lingua alquanto negletta e lo stile molto semplice, naturale e piano, la qual cosa deveva apparire un’ anomalia a confronto della lingua purgata con cui si scriveva allora in Portogallo_ (_Contenuto della storia del Patriarca Alfonso Mendez_, p. 115). This work was written in Latin in 1651 by AFONSO MENDEZ (1579-1656), born at Moura, who became Patriarch of Ethiopia in 1623. This splendid edition (_Rerum Aethiopicarum Scriptores_) also contains three volumes of _Relationes et Epistolae Variorum_ (Romae, 1910-12).

[481] Nicolás Antonio dwells more than once on the invisibility of Brito’s authorities (_Bib. Vet._ i. 65, 453; ii. 374): _Nos de invisis hactenus censere abstinemus_. Antonio Brandão, Brito’s successor, he says, _nullum horum vidit librorum quos Brittus olim historiae suae Atlantes iactaverat; nihil autem horum librorum (quod mirum si ibi asservabantur) vidit_. Soares (_Theatrum_) remarks epigrammatically: _fama est eloquentiam minus desiderari quam fidem_.

[482] From a comparison of inscriptions he notes the similarity between the Etruscan and ‘our ancient’ (Iberian?) letters. The Iberians may have originally gone East from Tuscany.

[483] His _Elogios dos Reis de Portugal_ appeared in 1603.

[484] ff. 248 v.-249 v. give a very curious description of Ireland: _tam remota de nossa conversação e metida debaixo do Polo Arctico_. Brito had not inherited Barros’ knowledge of geography and confuses Ireland with Iceland, but is far richer in fables, as these pages delightfully prove.

[485] To Spanish readers they were presented later by Faria e Sousa in his _Asia_.

[486] _Flores de España_ (1631), f. 248. Arias Montano refers to him as a close friend (_Doc. inéd._ t. xli. p. 386).

[487] See _Cronica_, p. 46.

[488] Ten chronicles from Afonso I to João III. He says (1824 ed., p. 12): _Estam em este presente vollume recopiladas, sumadas, abreviadas, todas as lembranças dos Reys de Portugal das caroniquas velhas e novas sent mudar sustancia da verdade._

[489] _Dise ̃q hee de jdade de setenta anos, hos faz ẽ este feuʳᵒ ̃q vẽ_ (Examination before the Inquisition, April 19, 1571). The name appears as Goes, Gooes, Goiz, Guoes, Guoez, Guoiz, Goyos. Goes is a small village some twenty miles north-east of Coimbra. The name also occurs in the Basses-Pyrénées. See P. A. de Azevedo, _Alguns nomes do departamento dos Baixos Pirineos que teem correspondencia em Portugal_ (_Boletim da Ac. das Sciencias de Lisboa_, viii (1915), pp. 280-1). It may be one more trace of the former occupation of the whole Peninsula by the Iberians (= high, on the height, as in Goyetche, &c.).

[490] See Marqués de Montebello, _Vida de Manoel Machado de Azevedo_ (1660), p. 3, ap. J. de Vasconcellos, _Os Musicos Portugueses_, i. 268.

[491] ff. 269 v.-71. The original manuscript disappeared, but a copy (that of the Marqueses de Castello Rodrigo) is in the Biblioteca Nacional at Lisbon.

[492] Antonio Galvam, _Tratado_, f. 59 v. He visited the Courts of Charles V, François I, Henry VIII, and Pope Paul III. Nicolás Antonio says of him (_Bib. Nova_): _morum quippe suavitate atque elegantia, ergaque doctos liberalitate insinuabat se in cuiusque animum qui Musarum commercio frueretur, facile atque alte_.

[493] He arrived on Palm Sunday, 1531, and learning that Luther was preaching at once left the inn to hear him, but could only understand the Latin quotations. Next day he had dinner (_jantar_) with Luther and Melanchthon and afterwards returned to Luther’s house, where the latter’s wife regaled them with a dessert of nuts and apples. Thence he went to Melanchthon’s house and found his wife spinning, shabbily dressed.

[494]

Venisti nimium usque et usque et usque Expectate tuis.

[495] Lib. III, pp. 264, 265: _Aliud Aeolij Modi exemplũ authore D. Damiano à Goes Lusitano_.

[496] He had gone with others to negotiate terms and, when barely half an hour was allowed to refer the terms to the Senate, remained in the enemy’s camp in order to create a delay by conversing with Longueval. Meanwhile relief had been received and the Senate refused the terms.

[497] In his trial he says that three of them became monks: _meteo tres filhos frades_.

[498] Cf. _Prologo_: _em que muitos, como em cousa desesperada, se nam atreveram poer a mão_. One of these ‘many’ was Goes’ rival, the eloquent Bishop Antonio Pinheiro.

[499] The fourth part was approved on January 2, 1566.

[500] For the grounds of this disapproval see _Crítica contemporanea á Chronica de D. Manuel_, 1914, ed. Edgar Prestage from a manuscript in the British Museum. Dr. Joaquim de Vasconcellos and Mr. G. J. C. Henriques have dealt very ably with many interesting points of Goes’ life and works.

[501] His friend Diogo Mendez de Vasconcellos (1523-99), Canon of Evora, says that he died in 1575 _aet._ 80 (so the _Theatrum_: _obiit octogenarius A.C._ 1575). Probably the 5 is an error or misprint for 3, and the 80 correct.

[502] Luis de Sousa (_Hist. S. Dom._, Pt. I, Bk. i, cap. 2) praises his _juizo e curiosidade de bom antiquario_, and there are many similar passages in other writers. Resende furnished Barros, as Severim de Faria later furnished Brito, with materials and advice.

[503] In a similar though more elaborate work (88 ff.) Frei Nicolau Diaz (†1596) told the life and death of Princess Joana (†May 1490): _Vida da Serenissima Princesa Dona Joana, Filha del Rey Dom Afonso o Quinto de Portugal_ (1585).

[504] _Casamento Perfeyto_, 2ᵃ ed. (1726), p. 61.

[505] _Monarchia Lusitana_, Pt. V, Bk. xvii, cap. 5. Bernardo de Brito also praises him, and Frei Antonio Brandão acknowledges his debt to him. Faria e Sousa says that he received from him _cantidad de papeles_.

[506] _Europa Portuguesa_, vol. iii, pt. 3. Portugal, he says, is a perpetual Spring, and he speaks of the women who earn their living by selling roses and other flowers in Lisbon, of the almonds of Algarve, the excellent honey, &c., &c. Vol. i covers the period from the Flood to the foundation of Portugal; vol. ii goes down to 1557; vol. iii to Philip II of Spain.

§ 6

_Quinhentista Prose_

Had latinization and the Renaissance come to Portugal in a quiet age it is not pleasant to think what havoc they might have wrought on Portuguese prose in the unreal atmosphere of the study. Fortunately they found Portugal in turmoil. Stirring incidents and adventures were continually occurring which needed no heightening of rhetoric or Latin pomp of polysyllables. A scientific spirit of accuracy was abroad, and the missionaries and adventurers, travellers, mariners, merchants, officials, and soldiers who recorded their experiences wrote as men of action, with life and directness.

Few stories are more intense and affecting than those told by the Portuguese survivors of shipwreck in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Twelve of these appeared in the original collection edited by BERNARDO GOMES DE BRITO (born in 1688): _Historia Tragico-Maritima_ (2 vols., 1735, 6).[507] The earliest and most celebrated is the _Relaçam da mui notavel perda do galeão grande S. João_ [June 24, 1552], an anonymous narrative based on the account of a survivor, Alvaro Fernandez, probably the ship’s mate, which tells of the death of D. Lianor de Sepulveda and her husband with a simple pathos and dramatic power unattained by the many poets who later treated the same theme. But the accounts of the wreck of the _S. Bento_ (1554), the _Conceição_ (1555), the _S. Paulo_ (1561), of D. Jorge de Albuquerque (1565), and others, are scarcely less moving. The ships, of 1,000 tons, as the _Aguia_, ‘the largest vessel that had hitherto sailed to India’ (1558), and under, often with rotten rudder, or the whole ship rotten, _sepulturas dos homens_, with few boats, careless and ignorant pilots, badly careened, overloaded, overcrowded, ill-supplied with worm-eaten biscuit, ‘poisonous’ wine, and insufficient water, seemed to invite destruction. Between 1582 and 1602 alone thirty-eight ships were lost. The sea was not the only enemy: corsairs off the coast of Portugal, French, Dutch, and English, Lutheran heretics who threw overboard beads and missals, or a Turkish fleet ‘in sight of Ericeira’, exacted their toll when all other dangers had been successfully overcome. The story is told immediately after the event, sometimes almost in the form of a diary or log, or years later, by survivors or based on the account of survivors, and it varies according as the narrator is the captain of the ship, a landsman with a dislike of sailors, a plain soldier, a Jesuit priest, a Franciscan monk, a distinguished Lisbon chemist (Henrique Diaz in i. 6), or a famous historian (ii. 3 by Diogo do Couto,[508] ii. 4 by João Baptista Lavanha[509]). All or most of their accounts are masterpieces of vivid phraseology. We follow as in a novel their adventures as the sea ‘breaks into flower--_quebrando em frol_’, as they are stranded on a desert island, boarded in sight of home, entrapped by savages, devoured by wild beasts, tottering, _arrimados em paos_, exhausted by thirst and hunger, or prostrated by heat, in comparison with which the _calmas_ of Alentejo ‘are but as Norwegian cold’: toils and perils borne with heroic courage, told with the simplicity of heroes, without _adorno de palavras nem linguagem floreada_.

Many books of travel were the natural consequence of the discovery of India. The historian João de Barros’ passion for knowledge, especially geographical knowledge, was the first cause[510] of the learned and instructive _Chorographia_ (1561) of his nephew Gaspar Barreiros (†1574), a description of the places through which he passed on his way to Rome in 1545 to thank the Pope on behalf of the Infante Henrique, _Cardinalem amplissimum_, for his cardinal’s hat. But this work (edited by his brother, Lopo Barreiros) was an exception. Most of the travel books were concerned with the far East.

The _Livro em que da relação do que viu e ouviu no Oriente_ (1516) by DUARTE BARBOSA of Lisbon, brother-in-law of Fernam de Magalhães, exists in a Portuguese manuscript in the Public Library of Oporto, but was first published in Portuguese in 1821 as a translation from the Italian _Libro di Odoardo Barbosa Portoghese_, itself a translation from a copy at Seville. The author had spent the greater part of his youth in India, and his work contains vivid and accurate notes on Eastern lands and cities, especially Malabar.