Part 26

In the preface (1570) to his _Regra Geral_, written in 1565, GONÇALO FERNANDEZ TRANCOSO[536] (_c._ 1515-_c._ 1590) professed not to have sufficient literary skill even for this simple calendar of movable feasts. Yet in the previous year (1569), in which at Lisbon he lost both wife and children in the great plague (a beloved daughter of twenty-four, a student son, and a choir-boy grandson), in order to distract his mind from these sorrows,[537] he wrote a remarkable work, unique of its kind in Portuguese literature; or at least he wrote then the first two books, which appeared under the title _Contos e historias de proveito e exemplo_ (1575).[538] A third part was published posthumously in 1596. The number and kind of the editions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries testify to its popularity, but since the eighteenth century no new edition has been printed and the book has fallen into a strange neglect.[539] Trancoso did not claim originality: he merely collected stories from what he had heard or read.[540] The stories, only thirty-eight in number, are very various. The subjects of many of them resemble those of Franco Sacchetti’s _Novelle_ or Giovanni Francesco Straparola’s _Le xiii Piacevoli Notti_, and some are directly imitated from Boccaccio’s _Il Decamerone_ or Giovanni Battista Giraldi’s _Gli Ecatommiti_ or from Matteo Bandello (†1565).[541] But often they are traditions so widespread that they occur in many authors and languages, as that (ii. 7) which corresponds to Straparola’s third _Notte_ and of which Dr. F. A. Coelho recorded twenty-one other foreign versions, besides four popular variants in Portuguese; or i. 17, in which the cunning answers to difficult questions are similar to those in Sacchetti, No. 4 (_Mestre Bernabò signor di Milano_), and Dr. Braga’s _Contos tradicionaes do povo portuguez_, No. 71 (_Frei Joam Sem Cuidados_). Others are apparently of oriental origin, as the judge’s verdict, worthy of Sancho Panza (i. 15), or the king and the barber (iii. 3). But the subject and place (Lisbon, Oporto, Evora, Coimbra, &c.) of most, although not of the longest, of these tales are Portuguese.[542] Some are trifling anecdotes which acquire a charm and vividness through their popular character and the author’s simple details of description, as the picture of the peasant family near Oporto sitting round the fire after their supper of maize-bread and chestnuts (i. 10). The author is not content that we should draw our own moral, but this scarcely spoils the reader’s pleasure in these malicious and ingenious tales.

Despite inroads of the exotic and all the chances and changes of life and literature in this century, the Portuguese maintained their interest in the romances of chivalry, in which indeed they saw a reflection of their own prowess in the East. Dull as _Clarimundo_ may now seem, it made a great impression in its day, and was eagerly read, from Lisbon to the Moluccas.[543] Even as late as 1589 Bishop Arraez considers it necessary to say that a prince should have better ways of spending his time than _ler por Clarimundo_,[544] while Rodriguez Lobo, thirty years later, brackets it with _Amadis_ and _Palmeirim_.[545] Many a young page and _escudeiro_ must have aspired not only to pore over the _cronicas_ but to write one of his own.[546] The facility of a Barros is, however, given to few, and both Jorge Ferreira’s _Memorial_ and Moraes’ _Palmeirim de Inglaterra_ were written later in life. FRANCISCO DE MORAES (_c._ 1500-72),[547] a well-known courtier in the reign of King João III, whose Treasurer he was, and a _Comendador_ of the Order of Christ, in 1540 accompanied the Portuguese Ambassador, D. Francisco de Noronha, to Paris as Secretary, and at the French Court he fell passionately in love with one of the ladies-in-waiting of Queen Leonor (sister of the Emperor Charles V and widow of King Manuel of Portugal) named Claude Blosset de Torcy. His love was not returned: there was a great discrepancy of age between them, his knowledge of French was very slight, and his passion robbed him of wit and reason. If the Duc de Châtillon was favoured, or if the English Ambassador gave Mademoiselle de Torcy his arm, Moraes would flare up in jealousy, and when in the presence of the queen the elderly lover went down on his knees _la belle Torcy_ (to whom Clément Marot had addressed one of his _Étrennes_ and who eventually married the Baron de Fontaines) prayed him not to continue to make her as well as himself ridiculous. Moraes, after leaving France in 1543, or early in 1544, recovered from his passion and married in Portugal. Of his subsequent life little is known; he appears to have returned to France, and in 1572 he was murdered at the entrance of the Rocio, the central square of Evora. His _Cronica de Palmeirim de Inglaterra_, written in France or Portugal or both, was probably published in 1544, but the earliest existing Portuguese edition is that of Evora, 1567, which contains the dedication to the Infanta Maria, written over twenty years earlier (1544). Chiefly remarkable for the excellence of its style, _Palmeirim_ will always retain its place in Portuguese literature as a masterpiece of prose, musically soft, yet clear and vigorous. Cervantes considered it worthy to be preserved in a golden casket like the works of Homer,[548] but few of its readers will now differ from the more modern and moderate opinion of Menéndez y Pelayo that ‘it requires a real effort’ to read the whole of it. The effort required to read the miserable Spanish translation of 1547-8 is infinitely greater. The fact that this translation is of earlier date than any surviving Portuguese edition gave rise to the theory that Moraes had translated his work from the Spanish. No competent critic now believes this; any doubts that may have lingered were dispelled wittily and for ever in Mr. Purser’s able essay (1904). The Spanish version, with its painful efforts to avoid _lusitanismos_ and its palpable mistranslations (such as _suavidad_ or _alegria_ for _saudade_), shows less knowledge of the sea, of Ireland,[549] and of Portugal. Moreover, the preference of the author of _Palmeirim_ for Portugal is obvious, and the passage in which ladies of the French Court are introduced corresponds to Moraes’ _Descvlpa de hvns amores_,[550] first published with the _Dialogos_ in 1624. Moraes himself would probably not have been greatly troubled by the impudent claim set up for Luis Hurtado and Miguel Ferrer. To have made a masterpiece out of their book would have been an achievement as great as to have made it out of old French and English legends in Paris. _Palmeirim’s_ predecessors, _Palmerin de Oliva_ (1511), _Primaleon_ (1512), and _Platir_ (1533), were probably all genuinely Spanish, although some doubts have been raised as to the first of the line, _Palmerin de Oliva_ attributed to a cryptic lady, a _femina docta_ called Agustobrica.[551] Its successors were as genuinely Portuguese: to Moraes’ parts 1 and 2 DIOGO FERNANDEZ added parts 3 and 4 (1587), concerned with the deeds of Palmeirim’s son, _Dom Duardos_,[552] and BALTHASAR GONÇALVEZ LOBATO parts 5 and 6 (1602), in which are told those of his grandson, _Dom Clarisol de Bretanha_. Three brief but very lively and natural _Dialogos_ (1624) show that Moraes was not only an excellent stylist but a keen observer. The _fidalgo_ and _escudeiro_, the lawyer and the love-lorn _moço_, are all clearly and wittily presented.

FOOTNOTES:

[507] For a full list see Innocencio da Silva, _Dicc. Bibliog._ i. 377, and _Grundriss_, p. 339. Five volumes were announced by Barbosa Machado as ready for press. The modern editors, besides eleven wrecks of the sixteenth, eight of the seventeenth, and two of the eighteenth, have included three of the nineteenth century. Some of the original chap-books survive, with a fine woodcut of a tossing galleon on the title-page: _Historia da mui notavel perda do galeam grande S. Joam_ (1554?); _Relaçam do lastimozo navfragio da nao Conceiçam chamada Algaravia a Nova_ (1555); _Naufragio da nao Santo Alberto_ (1597); _Memoravel relaçam da perda da nao Conceiçam_ (1627). The _Relaçam da viagem do galeão São Lovrenço e sua perdição_ (1651) is by the Jesuit Antonio Francisco Cardim (1596-1659); the _Relaçam sumaria da viagem que fez Fernão d’Alvarez Cabral_, by Manuel Mesquita Perestrello, is an account of the wreck of the fine ship _S. Bento_, which had taken Camões to India.

[508] In this _Relaçam do naufragio da nao S. Thomé_, written in 1611, twenty-two years after the event, he refers several times to his _Decadas_.

[509] _Naufragio da nao S. Alberto_ (1593). It is a summary of a _largo cartapacio_ of the pilot.

[510] _pedirme meu tio Ioam de Barros que lhe screuesse muito particularmente todos os lugares deste meu caminho._

[511] _Verd. Inf._, p. 110: _nam era pera velhos_.

[512] This seems to have aroused the resentment of Barros (_Asia_, III. iv. 3). The author, he says, had no learning. In II. iii. 4 he again refers to him slightingly as ‘a certain Francisco Alvarez’. Barros as grammarian similarly ignored Oliveira.

[513] Barbosa Machado says, _ultimamente em o Convento de Goa, para onde tinha passado no anno de 1622 falleceu com saudade_, &c. Innocencio da Silva read this with a comma after _passado_.

[514] Afonso de Albuquerque mentions another surgeon Mestre Afonso in India in his time, i.e. half a century earlier. The value of the _Itinerario_ consists in its having been written as a diary on the journey, and its author, perhaps thinking of Mendez Pinto, says _hee hũu grande descuido de homens que fazem semelhantes viagens e as nom escreuem ... porque a memoria nom pode ser capaz de tamanha cousa e tantas particularidades_ (p. 82).

[515] According to Barbosa Machado he entered the Jesuit College as a novice in 1645 and died in 1712 _aet._ 78. Godinho also wrote a life of Frei Antonio das Chagas.

[516] He was the son of D. Jorge, illegitimate son of João II., and was created Duke of Aveiro.

[517] See the important works by Colonel Cristovam Ayres, _Fernão Mendes Pinto_, 1904; _Fernão Mendes Pinto e o Japão_, 1906.

[518] His work did not appear till 1614 and it is uncertain to what extent it was edited by the historian Francisco de Andrade. It is thought that the account of his services as missionary in Japan may have been excised owing to the hostility of the Jesuits.

[519] Cap. 223: _eu respondi acrecentando em muitas cousas que me perguntava por me parecer que era assim necessario á reputação da nação portuguesa_.

[520] Cf. caps. 14, 70, 88, 114, 126, 198, 204. The complaint is echoed by almost every Portuguese traveller of the day. Bishop Osorio refers to the _fidei faciendae difficultas_; even the truthful and exact Francisco Alvarez fears his readers’ disbelief.

[521] Cf. Faria e Sousa (_laudari a laudato!_): _Yo le tengo por muy verdadero_; A. de Sousa Macedo, _Eva e Ave_, ii. 55, 1676 ed., p. 495: _El Rey Catholico D. Philippe II, quando veio a Portugal, gostava de ouvir a Fernão Mendes, em cujas peregrinaçoens & sucessos que dellas escreveo mostrou o tempo com a experiencia a verdade que se lhe disputava antes que ouvesse tantas noticias d’aquellas partes_; Soares, _Theatrum_: _diu apud Lusitanos fidem non meruit donec rerum qui secuti sunt eventus et aliorum scripta nihil Ferdinandum a vero discrepasse confirmarunt_; Manuel Bernardes, _Nova Floresta_, i (1706), p. 124: _as Relações do nosso Fernão Mendez Pinto que não merecem tão pouco credito como alguns lhe dão_. ‘Either never man had better memory or he was the most solemn liar that ever put pen to paper’ is the verdict of José Agostinho de Macedo (_Motim Literario_, 1841 ed., ii. 17).

[522] In France he was known as du Jardin. Familiarly this great botanist seems to have been called Herbs. A copy of the first edition of the _Coloquios_ has GRACIA DORTA O ERVAS on the back of the binding. This might be an ignorant mistake for D’ELVAS.

[523] The Governor’s brother, Pero Lopez de Sousa, wrote a _Diario da Navegação_ (1530-2) first published at Lisbon in 1839. The soldier in Couto’s _Dialogo_ says, _não vai tão mal negociado hir por Fysico môr pois todos os que este cargo serviram tiraram nos seus tres annos sete ou oito mil cruzados_.

[524] _Libro di Odoardo Barbosa Portoghese._

[525] He must have spent many a half-hour in the corner bookshop in Goa mentioned by Couto (_Dec._ VI. v. 8, 1781 ed., p. 400): _o canto onde pousa um livreiro_--unless this is a misprint for _luveiro_, as the neighbouring _sirgueiro_ seems to indicate. The growth of Portuguese literature in the East would furnish matter for a curious essay. Great folios like the _Cancioneiro de Resende_ (see Lopez de Castanheda, v. 12, and Barros, _Asia_, III. iii. 4, for the strange use made of it in India) and the _Flos Sanctorum_ were taken out, and it is improbable that they were brought back when every square inch was required for pepper. Thousands of precious volumes must have gone down in shipwrecks, others--profane books and _autos_--were thrown overboard at the bidding of the priests. For the fate of a case of Hebrew Bibles (_briuias_) see Corrêa, _Lendas da India_, i. 656-7. _Amadis de Gaula_ was apparently in India in 1519 (Lopez de Castanheda, v. 16). A most interesting list of books ready to be sent to the Negus of Abyssinia in 1515 is given in Sousa Viterbo’s _A Livraria Real_ (1901), p. 8.

[526] Unless Corrêa’s description (_Lendas_, iv. 288-9) is earlier. Other events recorded by Corrêa which must have closely affected Orta are the fate of a bachelor of medicine strangled and burnt by the Inquisition at Goa in 1543 (iv. 292) and the outbreak of small-pox, from which 8,000 children died there in three months in 1545 (iv. 447). The _Dialogo da perfeyçam & partes que sam necessarias ao bom medico_ (1562), with the exception of the dedicatory letter to King Sebastian and the title, is written in Spanish (25 ff.). Apparently AFONSO DE MIRANDA found it in Latin among the books of his son Jeronimo (who had studied at Coimbra and Salamanca) and translated it.

[527] _Composto_, he says (_Coloquios_, i. 5). Dimas Bosque (ib. i. 11) says _começado_.

[528] Thus he contributed to the fact, which he notices in the _Tratado da carta de marear_, that the Portuguese sea enterprises were based on careful preparation. The _nonius_ was perfected in the following century by Vernier.

[529] _Tratado da Sphera_, Preface.

[530] This volume contains also two brief treatises by Nunez in Portuguese: _Tratado ... sobre certas duuidas da nauegação_, answering certain questions put to him by Martim Afonso de Sousa, and _Tratado ... em defensam da carta de marear_, addressed to the Infante Luis. The _De Sphaera_ of Joannes de Sacro Bosco was printed with a preface by Philip Melanchthon in 1538. Arraez, in his _Dialogos_, 1604 ed., f. 56, says: _sei algo da Sphera porque quando Pero Nunez a lia a certos homens principais eu me achava presente_.

[531] He himself says that he was born in the excellent city of Lisbon (_Esmeraldo_, iv. 6), and he was one of the captains sent out by João II to continue the discovery of the West Coast of Africa. In 1520-2 he was Governor of the fortress of S. Jorge da Mina, but his last years were spent in poverty.

[532] Other works of a similar nature, _livros das rotas_ or _derrotas_, are printed in _Libro de Marinharia_. _Tratado da Aguia de Marear_ [1514] _de João de Lisboa_ [†1526]. _Copiado e coordenado por J. I. Brito Rebello_, 1903. Cf. also G. Pereira, _Roteiros Portuguezes da viagem de Lisboa á India nos seculos xvi e xvii_, 1898; H. Lopes de Mendonça, _Estudos sobre navios portuguezes nos seculos xv e xvi_, 1892, and _O Padre Fernando Oliveira e a sua obra nautica_, 1898 (pp. 147-221 contain _O Liuro da fabrica das naos_, of which, says the preface, _ninguem escreveo ateegora_); and Sousa Viterbo, _Trabalhos nauticos dos portuguezes nos seculos xvi e xvii_ (_Historia e Memorias da Ac. das Sciencias_, tom. vii (1898), _mem._ 3; tom. viii (1900), _mem._ 1). Diogo de Sá’s _De Navigatione_ was published in Paris in 1549; the _Arte Practica de Navegar_ (1699) by the _Cosmographo Môr_ Manuel Pimentel (1650-1719) appeared a century and a half later and had several editions in the eighteenth century.

[533] Fr. Antonio de San Roman, _Historia General de la India Oriental_, Valladolid, 1603.

[534] _De Rebvs Emmanvelis_ (1571), p. 380: _Non erat alienus a literis, & cum otium erat lectione sacrarum praecipue literarum oblectabatur._

[535] Pt. 1, 1572 ed., f. 224: _não feyto por mão do nosso Olãda nẽ do vosso Michaël Angelo mas por meu bayxo ingenho_.

[536] Or Gonçalo Fernandez of Trancoso (Beira). His name has no connexion with the phrase _contar historias a trancos_ (_de coq à l’âne_).

[537] Preface addressed to the Queen in Pt. 1. His object was _prender a imaginação em ferros_.

[538] Timoneda’s _El Patrañuelo_ appeared in the following year.

[539] See, however, Dr. Agostinho de Campos’ selections (1921).

[540] _O que aprendi, ouui ou li_ (1624 ed.); _o que aprendi, vi ou li_ (1734 ed.).

[541] See Menéndez y Pelayo, _Orígenes de la Novela_, tom. ii (1907), p. lxxxvii et seq.

[542] The alternation of the indigenous and the exotic may be seen in the spelling of the same name as Piro (= Pero, Pedro, Peter) and Pyrrho (Pyrrhus) in iii. 8.

[543] _Ropica Pnefma_, 1869 ed., p. 2.

[544] _Dialogos_, 1604 ed., f. 157. A third edition of _Clarimundo_ (1601) had appeared before the second edition of the _Dialogos_.

[545] _Corte na Aldea_ (1619), _Dialogo_ 1 (1722 ed., p. 5).

[546] Moraes, _Dialogo_ 1 (1852 ed., p. 11).

[547] Barbosa Machado seems to have considered him much under seventy at the time of his death in 1572.

[548] The tradition, mentioned by Cervantes, that it was written by a learned and witty king of Portugal is clearly traceable to that other tradition that King João III as Infante had been joint-author of _Clarimundo_.

[549] Mount Brandon, Smerwick (and The Three Sisters) of the ‘pleasant’ but ‘densely wooded’ coast of Kerry, are Greek to the Spanish translator and become San Cebrian (Cyprian) and San Maurique.

[550] The title continues: _que tinha com hũa dama francesa da raynha dona Leanor per nome Torsi, sendo Portugues, pela quai fez a historia das damas francesas no seu Palmeirim_.

[551] It is scarcely possible that the author (Francisco Vazquez?) considered that Burgos, as his birthplace--his mother--had a part in the work.

[552] From being merely the legend above, the mounted knight on the title-page _Dom Duardos de Bretanha_ became the title of the book.

§ 7.

_Religious and Mystic Writers_

Amador Arraez in one of his dialogues defines mysticism thus: ‘There is a theology called mystic, as being hidden and unintelligible to those who have no part in it. It is attained by much love and few books and with much meditation and purity of heart, which alone suffices for its exercise, and consists mainly in the noblest part of our will inflamed in the love of God, its full and perfect good.’[553] ‘Our will inflamed’: perhaps these words explain the excellence of the style, the intensity and directness, of the writers in this mystic theology. Style, so shy and elusive to Flaubert and his disciples, came unsought to the religious writers of the sixteenth century, because they wrote not with an eye on verbal artifices but out of the fullness of the heart, ‘self-gathered for an outbreak’; and their works can still be read with pleasure by priest and pagan. Mysticism, inherent in the character of the Portuguese, runs through a great part of their literature; we find it, for instance, in the merry poetry of Gil Vicente or in the precious accents of Soror Violante do Ceo. Strength of character, aloofness, rapt enthusiasm, singleness of purpose: these are the qualities of mysticism at its best, and if it also manifests itself in vagueness and confusion, this was not so with the great mystic and religious writers of the golden age of Portuguese literature. To them mysticism was not a cloudy goodness or an abstract perception-dulling humanity, not a mist but a pillar of fire, in the light of which the facts and details of reality stood out the more clearly. But if the intensity of many of the mystics has its natural complement in the fervour and directness of their prose, this was not always the case, and it was not only in profane works that the Portuguese language fell into the pitfalls of _culteranismo_. All the more remarkable is the purity, the exquisite taste, the simplicity and charm of some of the later, seventeenth century, prose. The secret of this prose lay in fact in _culteranismo_ itself, the points and conceits of which were based on a recognition of the value of words. All the _seiscentistas_ set to playing with words as with unset stones of price. The more critical or inspired writers joined in the game but selected the genuine stones, leaving the rest to those who did not care to distinguish between gems and coloured glass.