Part 6

[75] Their antiquarian interest was recognized over three centuries ago. Cf. Argote de Molina, _Nobleza de Andalvzia_ (Seuilla, 1588), f. 151 v.: _es un libro de mucha curiosidad assi por la poesia como por los trages de aquella edad ̃q se veen en sus pinturas_.

[76] Some of King Alfonso’s _Cantigas_ were recited in the same way. C. M. 172 implies this in the lines:

Et d’esto cantar fezemos Que cantassen os iograres

And of this we made a song for the _joglares_ to sing.

[77] Their popular origin is borne out by the music. See H. Collet et L. Villalba, _Contribution à l’étude des Cantigas_ (1911). Cf. also P. Meyer, _Types de quelques chansons de Gautier de Coinci_ (_Romania_, vol. xvii (1888), pp. 429-37): _paroles pieuses à des mélodies profanes_.

[78] Padre Nobrega came upon a crowd of _pobres pedintes peregrinos_ at Santiago feasting merrily and having _grandes contendas entre si_ as to which of them was cleverest at taking people in. The trick of one of them was to declare that, being captive in Turkey, _encommendando-me muito á Senhora ... achei-me ao outro dia ao romper da alva em terra de Christãos_ (Simão de Vasconcellos, _Cronica_, Lib. I, § 22). Cf. Jeronymo de Mendoça, _Jornada de Africa_, 1904 ed., ii. 34, and Frei Luis de Sousa, _Hist. de S. Domingos_, I. i. 5.

[79] i. e. besides the Spanish _cantiga_ (C. C. B. 363), C. C. B. 359, which belongs to the _Cantigas de Santa Maria_, and C. C. B. 372, which consists of a single line.

[80] _El Rei aia tres jograes en sa casa e non mais._

[81] Riquier’s _segriers per totas cortz_ (King Alfonso X (C. M. 194) speaks of a _jograr andando pelas cortes_). See also C. V. 556. The word probably has no connexion with _seguir_ (to follow). Possibly it was used originally to differentiate singers of profane songs, _cantigas profanas e seculares_. Frei João Alvarez in his _Cronica do Infante Santo_ has ‘obras ecclesiasticas e _segrãaes_’; King Duarte counted among _os pecados da boca_ ‘cantar cantigas _sagraaes_’, The _Cancioneiros_ show that the _segrel_ was far less common than the _jogral_ in the thirteenth century. For _segre_ (= _saeculum_) see _infra_, p. 93, n. 2.

[82] For instances see H. R. Lang, _The Relations of the Earliest Portuguese Lyric School with the Troubadours and Trouvères_ (_Modern Language Notes_ (April, 1895), pp. 207-31), and C. D. L., pp. xlviii et seq.

[83] This poet, Fernam Gonçalvez de Seabra or Fernant Gonzalez de Sanabria (C. V. 338; C. C. B. 330-7; C. A. 210-21, 445-7), apparently obtained some fame by his mystification, unless the object of his devotion was as high-placed as the Portuguese princess for love of whom, according to legend, D. Joan Soarez de Paiva died in Galicia. The latter wrote in the first years of the thirteenth century (C. V. 937, _Randglosse_ xi). They are the only two Galician-Portuguese poets--besides King Dinis--mentioned in Santillana’s letter.

[84] _Poetica_, ll. 126, 130. Much of the information of this _Poetica_ (printed in C. C. B.) may be gleaned from the _Cancioneiros_, but it shows how carefully the different kinds of poem were distinguished. There were apparently special names for poems to trick and deceive: _de logr’ e d’arteiro_, and for festive laughter poems: _de risadelha_ (or _refestela_?) = _de riso e mote_. Santillana’s _mansobre_ is, it seems, a misprint for _mordobre_. It occurs again in the _Requesta de Ferrant Manuel contra Alfonso Alvarez_ (_Canc. de Baena_, 1860 ed., i. 253):

Sin lai, sin deslai, sin cor, sin descor. Sin dobre, mansobre, sensilla o menor. Sin encadenado, dexar o prender.

[85] e. g. C. V. 300: _Por Deus, se ora, se ora chegasse Con el mui leda seria._

[86] _q’coi_ (C. V. M.), _qual cór_ (C. V. B.). D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos proposes _quiça_ (cf. C. V. 1006, I. 8).

[87] _Aqueste cantar da egoa que non andou na tregoa_ (C. V. 956).

[88] Or D. Joan Garcia de Guilhade. See C. A. M. V. ii. 407-15.

[89] C. V. 28-38, 343-61, 1097-1110; C. A. 235-9; C. C. B. 373-6.

[90] A large number of _cantigas_ by the same hand would emphasize the monotony of the kind and provide an unwelcome mirror for contemporary bards. Of Roy Queimado (fl. 1250) other love-lorn poets said that he was always dying of love--in verse.

[91] Soares de Brito in his _Theatrum_ mentions ‘Ferdinandus Garcia _Esparavanha_, optimus poeta’ (= _bom trovador_).

[92] See p. 31.

[93] See _Randglosse_ xii. An incidental interest belongs to this poem of eighteen dodecasyllabic lines from the fact that in C. V. B. it is printed in thirty-six lines, as a proof of the early predominance of the _redondilha_.

[94] Cf. the Provençal passage in Milá y Fontanals, _De los Trobadores_, p. 62.

[95] He thus overlapped Dante’s life by four years at either end.

[96] T. A. Craveiro, _Compendio_ (1833), cap. 5: _D. Diniz trouxe a idade de ouro a Portugal_.

[97] A late echo of the early (Alfonso X) legislation against the _jogral_ is to be found in King Duarte’s _Leal Conselheiro_, cap. 70: _Dos Pecados da Obra_. These include _dar aos jograaees_. Nunez de Leam translates _joglar_ as _truão_ (1606).

[98] C. V. 80-208 (= C. D. L. 1-75, 77-128, 76) and C. C. B. 406-15 (= C. D. L. 129-38). C. V. 116 = C. V. 174.

[99] _Cronica del Rei D. Diniz_, 1677 ed., f. 113 v.

[100] _Mandou hum livro delles escrito por sua mão a seu avò ... o qual eu vi na livraria do Real Convento do Escurial, em folha de papel grosso, de marca pequena, volume de tres ou quatro dedos de alto, de letra grande, latina, bem legivel, e o que ly era de Louvores a Nossa Senhora, e outras cousas ao divino_ (_Eva e Ave_, 1676 ed., pp. 128-9). This interesting passage is not included in those quoted in C. A. M. V. ii. 112-17; it is obviously the source of no. 17. It does not imply that the poems were exclusively religious. Can the book three or four fingers in height have been the _Canc. da Ajuda_ (460 millimètres) from which a section of sacred poems may have been torn? If so the letters _Rey Dõ Denis_ (C. A. M. V. i. 141) would explain the attribution to King Dinis.

[101] The language of C. M. and the Portuguese _Cancioneiros_ was of course the same. Identical phrases occur.

[102] He twice visited Oxford, he says, in order to see the library, which he describes--_hũa das grandes cousas do mundo_ (_Eva e Ave_, 1676 ed., p. 156). At the Escorial he also examined an original manuscript of St. Augustine (ibid., p. 150).

[103] C. C. B. 406-15.

II

1325-1521

§ 1

_Early Prose_

With prose a new period opens, since, although there are Portuguese documents of the late twelfth century[104] and the Latin chrysalis was in an advanced stage of development even earlier, prose as a literary instrument does not begin before the fourteenth century or the end of the thirteenth at the earliest. The fragments of an early _Poetica_[105] clearly show how slow and awkward were still the movements of prose at a time when poetry had attained an exceedingly graceful expression. The next two centuries redressed the balance in the favour of prose. The victory of Aljubarrota (1385) made it possible to carry on the national work begun by King Dinis--the preparation of Portugal’s resources for a high destiny. In this constructive process literature was not forgotten, and indeed its deliberate encouragement, as though it were an industry or a pine-forest, may account for the fact that it consisted mainly of prose--chronicles, numerous translations from Latin, Spanish, and other languages, works of religious or practical import. The first kings of the dynasty of Avis, who rendered noble service to Portuguese literature, were not poets, and in the second half of the fifteenth century Spanish influence, checked at Aljubarrota, succeeded by peaceful penetration in recovering all and more than all that it had lost, till it became common to hear lyrics of Boscan sung in the streets of Lisbon,[106] and uncommon for a Portuguese poet to versify in his mother tongue.[107] Prose was more national. King Dinis had encouraged translation into Portuguese, and among other works his grandfather King Alfonso the Learned’s _Cronica General_ was translated by his order. The only edition that we have, _Historia Geral de Hespanha_ (1863), is cut short in the reign of King Ramiro (cap. ccii, p. 192). The first ‘O’ of the preface in the manuscript contains the king in purple robe and crown of gold, pen in hand, with a book before him. The style is primitive, often a succession of short sentences beginning with ‘And’.[108] In the convents brief lives of saints, portions of the Bible, prayers and regulations were written in Portuguese. Thus we have thirteenth-or fourteenth-century fragments of the rules of S. Bento, _Fragmentos de uma versão antiga da regra de S. Bento_, with its traces of a Latin original (e. g. _os desprezintes Deos_ = _contemnentes Deum_); the _Actos dos Apostolos_, written in the middle of the fifteenth century by Frei Bernardo de Alcobaça and Frei Nicolao Vieira, that is, copied by them from an older manuscript; the eloquent prayers (_Libro de Horas_) translated by another Alcobaça monk, Frei João Claro (†1520?); the _Historias abreviadas do Testamento Velho_, printed from a manuscript of the fourteenth century, or of the thirteenth retouched in the fourteenth. The translation is close; the style foreshadows that of the _Leal Conselheiro_. The importance of these and other fragmentary versions of the Bible, in which there can rarely be a doubt as to the meaning of the words, is obvious. Extracts from the _Vida de Eufrosina_ and the _Vida de Maria Egipcia_, published in 1882 by Jules Cornu from the manuscripts formerly in the Monastery of Alcobaça, now in the Torre do Tombo, show that they were written in vigorous if primitive prose (14th c.). _A Lenda dos Santos Barlaam e Josaphat_ is perhaps a little later (end of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth century). The _Visão de Tundalo_, of which the Latin original, _Visio Tundali_, was written by Frei Marcos not long after the date of the vision (1140), exists in two Portuguese versions, probably both of the fifteenth century (Monastery of Alcobaça). The _Vida de Santo Aleixo_ also exists in two codices belonging to the middle and beginning of the fifteenth century, and Dr. Esteves Pereira, who published the latter, considers that the variants point to an earlier manuscript of the beginning of the fourteenth or end of the thirteenth century. To about the same period (14th-15th c.) belong the _Lenda de Santo Eloy_, the _Vida de Santo Amaro_, the _Vida de Santa Pelagia_, and many similar short devout treatises and legends which concern literature less than the development of the Portuguese language. Both literature and philology are interested in the early fifteenth-century work printed by Dr. Leite de Vasconcellos from the manuscript in the Vienna _Hofbibliothek_: _O Livro de Esopo_, which consists not of direct translations[109] from _Exopo greguo_ of Antioch but of _estorias ffremosas de animalias_, told in the manner of Aesop, half a century before William Caxton and Robert Henryson, with great naturalness, vigour, and brevity.

The earliest entry of the _Cronica Breve do Archivo Nacional_ is dated 1391, and both it and the _Cronicas Breves e memorias avulsas de Santa Cruz de Coimbra_ are laconic annals of the first kings of Portugal, a few lines covering a whole reign. The _Livro da Noa de Santa Cruz de Coimbra_ is an extract from the _Livro das Heras_ of the same convent, and is, as the latter title indicates, a similar simple chronicle of events by years.[110] It begins in Latin, then Latin and Portuguese entries alternate till 1405. From 1406 to the end (1444) they are exclusively Portuguese. The _Cronica da Ordem dos Frades Menores_ (1209-85) is a fifteenth-century Portuguese translation of a fourteenth-century Latin chronicle, and has been carefully edited by Dr. J. J. Nunes from the manuscript in the Lisbon Biblioteca Nacional; the _Vida de D. Tello_ (15th c.), and the _Vida de S. Isabel_, the Queen-consort of King Dinis (earlier 15th c.), are ‘historical’ biographies which contain more legend and less history than the _Cronica da Fundaçam do Moesteiro de S. Vicente de Lixboa_ (_Cronica dos Vicentes_), a fifteenth-century version from a Latin original, _Indiculum_, of the eleventh century. There is far more life if equal brevity in the _Cronica da Conquista do Algarve_ (_Cronica de como Dom Payo Correa. .. tomou este reino de Algarve aos Moros_)--a rapid, vivid sketch which reads almost like a chapter out of Fernam Lopez. Here at last was some one with will and power to make the dry bones live.[111] But meanwhile history of another kind had been written from a very early date. As a first rough catalogue of names the _livros de linhagens_, books of descent, as they were called by their compilers,[112] go back farther than the chronicles or religious prose, but so far as concerns their claim to literary form they belong like those to the fourteenth century. Of the four that have come down to us the _Livro Velho_ is a jejune family register (11th-14th c.); the second is a mere fragment of the same kind. The manuscript of the third (_O Nobiliario do Collegio dos Nobres_) was bound up with the _Cancioneiro da Ajuda_, and together with the fourth, _O Nobiliario do Conde D. Pedro_, represents the lost original of the _Livro de Linhagens_ of D. PEDRO, CONDE DE BARCELLOS (1289-1354). The _Nobiliario do Conde_ has been shown by Alexandre Herculano, who printed it from the manuscript in the Torre do Tombo, to be the work of various authors extending over more than a century (13th-14th), the Conde de Barcellos being but one of them. It was in fact compiled like a modern peerage,[113] and was not intended to be final, new entries being added as time made them necessary, so that the passage _diz O Conde D. Pedro em seu livro_ is as natural as the mention of Innocencio da Silva in a later volume of his great dictionary. But it was this son of King Dinis who with infinite diligence searched for documents far and wide, had recourse to the writings of King Alfonso X and others, and spared no pains to give the work an historical as well as a genealogical character. His researches (_Ouue de catar, he says, por gram trabalho por muitas terras escripturas que fallauam das linhagens_) set an excellent example to Fernam Lopez. Certainly the _Livro de Linhagens_ is a vast catalogue of names, with at most a brief note after the name, as ‘he was a good priest’ or ‘a very good poet’; but it also gives succinct stories of the Kings of the Earth from Adam, including Priam, Alexander, Julius Caesar, and the early kings of Portugal, and it contains rare but charming intervals, green oases of legend and anecdote, such as the tale of King Lear with its happy ending, or the account of King Ramiro going to see his wife, who was a captive of the Moors.[114] Count Pedro, by his humanity and his generous conception of what a genealogy should be, really made the book his own. It was naturally consulted by the early chroniclers, its worth was recognized by the ablest author of the _Monarchia Lusitana_,[115] and recently, in the skilful hands of D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, it has rendered invaluable service in reconstructing the lives of the thirteenth-century poets.[116]

The _Livro de Linhagens_ refers not only to King Lear but to Merlin, King Arthur, Lancelot, and the Isle of Avalon. Many other allusions, both earlier and later, to the Breton cycle, the _matière de Bretagne_, are to be found in early Portuguese literature: to the lovers Tristan and Iseult, to the _cantares de Cornoalha_,[117] to the chivalry of the Knights of the Round Table. In the fourteenth century many in Portugal were baptized with the name of Lancelot, Tristan, and Percival; and Nun’ Alvarez (1360-1431) chose Galahad for his model, and came as near realizing his ideal as may be given to mortal man. In Gil Vicente’s time the name Percival had already descended to the sphere of the peasants: as Passival (i. II) in 1502 (_Auto Pastoril Castelhano_) and Pessival (i. 117) in 1534 (_Auto de Mofina Mendes_).

The early Portuguese _Cancioneiros_ contain many references to this cycle, and the _Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti_ opens with five celebrated songs,[118] imitations of Breton _lais_, with rubrics explaining their subjects, and mentioning King Arthur and Tristan, Iseult, Cornwall, Maraot of Ireland, and Lancelot. Whether they were incorporated in the _Cancioneiro_ from a Portuguese _Tristam_ earlier than the Spanish version (1343?), or, as is more probable, directly from the Old-French _Historia Tristani_, their presence here is a sufficient witness to the Portuguese fondness for such themes. It was but natural that a Celtic people living by the sea, delighting in vague legends and in foreign novelties, should have felt drawn towards these misty tales of love and wandering adventure, which carried them west as far as Cornwall and Ireland, and also East, through the search for the Holy Grail. It was natural that they should undergo their influence earlier and more strongly than their more direct and more national neighbours the Castilians, whose clear, definite descriptions in the twelfth-century _Poema del Cid_ would send those legends drifting back to the dim regions of their birth. (Even to-day connexion with and sympathy for Ireland is far commoner in Galicia than in any other part of Spain.) Unhappily, most of the early Portuguese versions of the Breton legends have been lost. King Duarte in his library possessed _Merlim_, _O Livro de Tristam_, and _O Livro de Galaaz_. The probability that these were written in Portuguese, not in Spanish, is increased by the survival of _A Historia dos Cavalleiros da Mesa Redonda e da Demanda do Santo Graall_, as yet only partially published from the manuscript (2594) in the Vienna _Hofbibliothek_. It was written probably in the fourteenth century, perhaps at the end of the thirteenth, although the Vienna manuscript is more recent and belongs to the fifteenth century, in which the work was referred to by the poet Rodriguez de la Cámara.[119] It is a Portuguese version of the story of the Holy Grail, and, although not a continuous translation, was evidently written with the French original (doubtfully ascribed to Robert de Boron,[120] author of a different work on the same subject) constantly in view. Traces of French remain in its prose.[121] This was clearly part of a larger work,[122] perhaps of a whole cycle of works dealing with the search for the Holy Grail. The only others that we have in print are the _Estorea de Vespeseano_ and the _Livro de Josep ab Arimatia_, the manuscript of which was discovered in the nineteenth century in the Torre do Tombo. This, in the same way as the _Demanda do Santo Graall_, is a later (16th c.) copy of a thirteenth-fourteenth-century Portuguese translation or adaptation from the French, and retains in its language signs of French origin. The incunable _Estorea de Vespeseano_ (Lixboa, 1496) is a work in twenty-nine short chapters, which only incidentally[123] refers to the Holy Grail, but recounts vividly the event mentioned in the _Demanda_[124]: the destruction of Jerusalem by Vespasian and Titus. It was also known formerly as _Destroyçam de Jerusalem_.[125] It is an anonymous translation, made in the middle of the fifteenth century, not from the French _Destruction de Jérusalem_, but from the Spanish _Estoria del noble Vespesiano_ (_c._ 1485 and 1499). Dr. Esteves Pereira believes that the 1499 Spanish edition is a retranslation from the Portuguese text originally translated from the Spanish.

Tennyson’s revival of the Arthurian legend in England evoked no corresponding interest in Portugal in the nineteenth century, and the primitive and touching story as published in 1887 has left Sir Percival in the very middle of an adventure for over a generation. The descent of the Amadis romances from the noble ideal of chivalry of King Arthur’s Court is obvious, but their exact pedigree, the date and nationality of the first ancestor of the Amadis who is still with us, has been the subject of some little contention.