Portuguese literature
[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_,