Portuguese literature
of the latter, this might account for Zurara’s assertion that he
wrote _Amadis_ in the reign of Fernando. But the chief obstacle
to the authorship of Vasco is the existence in the _Cancioneiro
Colocci-Brancuti_ (Nos. 230 and 232 A) of a song by Joan de Lobeira,
_Leonoreta, fin roseta_, which reappears with slight variations in
Montalvo’s _Amadis_ (Lib. II, cap. xi: _este villancico_). It would
seem then that Joan, not Vasco, wrote _Amadis_. Joan de Lobeira,[135]
or Joan Pirez Lobeira, flourished in the second half of the thirteenth
century, and so we have _Amadis_ dating not only from the reign of King
Dinis but from the first half of his reign. But does the existence of
the poem entail that of a prose romance? The early mention of Tristan,
e.g. by Alfonso X, does not necessarily imply the existence of a
thirteenth-century Peninsular _Tristan_ in prose. May we not accept
the poem, written in the stirring metre, dear to men of action, used
by Alfonso X (C. M. 300), as merely a proof of the popularity of the
story, fondness for an episode perhaps treated in greater detail in
the Anglo-French original than in Montalvo’s version? Certainly it is
in the highest degree improbable that a Spaniard, writing at the end
of the fifteenth century, should extract a poem from the Portuguese
_Cancioneiros_ and insert it in his prose; but the improbability
disappears if in the middle of the fourteenth century a Portuguese
(Vasco de Lobeira), perhaps drawn to the story by the poem of his
ancestor, incorporated it in his romance. The late Antonio Thomaz
Pires in 1904 discovered at Elvas the will of a João de Lobeira,
_mercador_, who died there in 1386, and in Dr. Theophilo Braga’s
latest opinion[136] there were three Portuguese versions of _Amadis_:
that of the father, this João de Lobeira, written in the time of King
Dinis (a long-lived race these Lobeiras!), that of the son,[137] Vasco,
and a third by Pedro de Lobeira in the first half of the fifteenth
century. The threefold authorship of this family heirloom is even more
_cruu de creer_ than the theory that a single Lobeira--Vasco--wrote it
in the middle of the fourteenth century. A certain note of disapproval
of _Amadis_ as fabulous, shared by Portuguese and Spanish writers,[138]
perhaps indicates a fairly late date: its irresponsible fiction would
be less excusable if it was written in an age which was beginning to
attach serious importance to _nobiliarios_ and ‘true’ chronicles.
Moreover, if the Portuguese adaptation of an Anglo-French legend had
been even remotely as developed as the form in which we now have
it, the Infante Afonso must have seen at once that the faithfulness
of Amadis was absolutely essential to the story. But especially the
fact that the Portuguese _Cancioneiros_, familiar with Tristan and
the _matière de Bretagne_, are silent on the subject of _Amadis_ is
significant.
In Gottfried Baist’s argument, based on a rigid division between
early lyric poetry (as Portuguese) and early prose (as Spanish), the
Leonoreta lyric, far from being a stumbling-block, is actually a
sign of the Spanish origin of _Amadis_: as a fragment (14th c.) of a
prose _Tristan_ exists in Spanish, and five Portuguese Tristan _lais_
figure in the _Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti_, so the Leonoreta poem
belongs to a Spanish _Amadis_ in prose. But although the priority and
relations of early Portuguese and Spanish prose works are intricate
and have not yet been thoroughly studied, it is clear that in many
cases versions have been more carefully preserved in conservative
Spain, while the Portuguese through neglect, fire, and earthquake have
perished, and also that the natural tendency and development of prose,
in view of the growing power of Castille and the greater pliancy of
the Portuguese, was from Portuguese to Spanish, not from Spanish to
Portuguese. And in one instance at least we have an early Portuguese
prose work of the first importance, the _Demanda do Santo Graall_,
which with its gallicisms can by no stretch of imagination be accounted
a version from the Spanish. It is plainly legitimate to hold that
the story of Amadis was first reduced to book form in the Peninsula
in precisely the same way as was the story of Galahad, i.e. as a
fourteenth-century Portuguese adaptation with the French text in view.
Nicholas d’Herberay des Essarts, we know, claimed to have discovered
fragments of _Amadis en langage picard_, Jorge Cardoso (1606-69)
declared that Pero Lobeira translated _Amadis_ from the French,[139]
and Bernardo Tasso, whose _Amadigi_ appeared in 1560, believed (_non
è dubbio_) _Amadis_ to be derived _da qualche istoria di Bretagna_.
Nor would the Portuguese, for all their familiarity with the story and
topography of the Breton cycle, be likely to compose original works
dealing with Vindilisora (Windsor) or Bristoya (Bristol). Unhappily,
however deep may be our conviction (a conviction which stands in no
need of antedating Hebrew versions of the 1508 _Amadis_) that the
Peninsular _Amadis_ was originally Portuguese, it has now ceased to
belong to Portuguese literature; another instance, if we may beg the
question, of the gravitation to Spain. The Portuguese text, of which
a copy, according to Leite Ferreira, existed in the library of the
Duques de Aveiro in the sixteenth century (1598), and, according to
the Conde da Ericeira, in the library of the Condes de Vimieiro in the
seventeenth (1686), is still missing, as it was in 1726.
FOOTNOTES:
[104] Portuguese is then _uma lingua coherente, clara, um instrumento
perfeito para a expressão do pensamento, cuja maior plasticidade
dependerá apenas da cultura litteraria_, F. Adolpho Coelho, _A Lingua
Portugueza_ (1881), p. 87.
[105] See _supra_, p. 48.
[106] See p. 160.
[107] Cf. for the seventeenth century Galhegos’ preface and _Mon.
Lusit._ V. xvi. 3: _achandose neste reino poucos que escrevão versos e
não seja na lingua estranjeira de Castilla_.
[108] e. g. _E matou a grande serpente dallagoa de lerne que auja sete
cabeças. E persegujo as pias filhas de finees que lhe aujã odio e o
queriã desherdar. E foy cõ jaasson o que adusse o velloso dourado da
ylha de colcos. E destroyu troya_, &c.
[109] Cf. _Por este exemplo este doutor nos mostra_, or _este poeta
nos dá ensinamento_, &c. The Fables of Aesop were translated into
Portuguese prose by Manuel Mendez, a schoolmaster at Lagos (Algarve):
_Vida e Fabulas do Insigne Fabulador Grego Esopo_. Evora, 1603.
[110] e. g. of an earthquake: _Era de mil e quatrocentos e quatro
desoito dias do mez de Junho tremeo a terra ao serão muy rijamente e
foi por espaço que disserom o Pater tres vezes._
[111] The _Cronica Troyana_, edited in 1900 by the Spanish
scholar and patient investigator D. Andrés Martínez Salazar, is a
fourteenth-century Galician version of Benoît de Saint-More’s _Roman de
Troie_.
[112] The name _Nobiliario_ is one of the erudite words which in
the sixteenth century, here as in so many other cases, ousted the
indigenous.
[113] Its object was _por saberem os homens fidalgos de Portugal de
qual linhagem vem e de quaes coutos, honras, mosteiros e igreias som
naturaes_.
[114] His successful wile is similar to the stratagem in _Macbeth_: _e
pois que a nave entrou pela foz cobrío-a de panos verdes em tal guisa
que cuidassem que eram ramos, ca entonce o Douro era cuberto de hũa
parte e da outra darvores_.
[115] _A escritura de maior utilidade que temos em Espanha_ (Frei
Francisco Brandão, _Mon. Lus._ V. xvii. 5).
[116] i. e. the copy printed in _Portug. Mon. Hist._ from the only
existing manuscript (= the copy by Gaspar Alvarez de Lousada Machado
(1554-1634) in the Lisbon Torre do Tombo).
[117] The ‘songs of Cornwall’ are mentioned in C. V. 1007. Cf. 1140.
[118] See C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, _Cancioneiro da Ajuda_, ii.
479-525. They are called _lais_, _layx_ (C. C. B. 7, 8).
[119] _En la grand demanda de Santo Greal Se lee._ _Gral_ is still a
common Portuguese word (= _almofariz_, a mortar).
[120] ruberte de borem is mentioned, 1887 ed., p. 44.
[121] Not to speak of _certas_, _onta_, _febre_ (= _faible_), _a voso
sciente_, which may be found in other Portuguese works of the fifteenth
century, _san_ (p. 136 _ad fin._) apparently = Fr. _s’en_.
[122] Cf. _asi como o conto a ja deuisado_ (1887 ed., p. 7).
[123] 1905 ed., p. 95.
[124] 1887 ed., p. 43: _despois uespesiom os eyxerdou e os destruio_.
[125] 1905 ed., pp. 17, 23, 106.
[126] _De Institutione Christianae Feminae_, Bk. I, cap. 5: ‘Tum et de
pestiferis libris cuiusmodi sunt in Hispania [= the whole Peninsula],
Amadisius, Splandianus, Florisandus, Tirantus, Tristanus, quarum
ineptiarum nullus est finis; quotidie prodeunt novae: Caelistina
laena, nequitiarum parens, carcer amorum: in Gallia Lancilotus a Lacu,
Paris et Vienna, Ponthus et Sydonia, Petrus Provincialis et Magelona,
Melusina, domina inexorabilis: in hac Belgica Florius et Albus Flos,
Leonella et Cana morus, Curias et Floreta, Pyramus et Thisbe’ (_Ioannis
Ludovici Vivis Valentini Opera Omnia_, 7 vols., Valentiae Edetanorum,
1782-8, iv. 87). A Portuguese _Tristan_ may have existed, a Portuguese
original of _Tirant lo Blanch_ less probably, although Pedro Juan
Martorell, who began it in the Valencian or Lemosin _a ii de Giner de
lany 1460_, declares that he had not only translated it from English
into Portuguese but (_mas encara_) from Portuguese into Valencian. He
dedicated it to the _molt illustre Princep_ Ferdinand of Portugal. Very
probably the fame and origin of _Amadis_ accounted for this ‘English’
original, as mythical as the Hungarian origin of _Las Sergas de
Esplandian_, and for its alleged translation into Portuguese.
[127] Braunfels, _Versuch_: ‘Montalvo hatte, um einer Uebersetzung
den Ruhm des mustergiltigen Styls und des reinsten Kastilianisch zu
verschaffen, ein Geist ersten Rangs sein müssen, was er nicht war.’
Montalvo was probably not the real author even of the fourth book.
The words (in this _Prólogo_ of his _Amadis_), _que hasta aquí no es
memoria de ninguno ser visto_, refer not to the fourth book but to
Montalvo’s _Sergas de Esplandian_, which is conveniently replaced by
dots in T. Braga, _Questões_ (1881), p. 99, and _Hist. da Litt. Port._,
i (1909), p. 313, and which the priest in _Don Quixote_ properly
consigned to the flames.
[128] His connexion with Portugal was not voluntary. It was probably
when he was a prisoner after the battle of Aljubarrota (1385) that he
wrote the _Rimado de Palacio_, in which (st. 162) _Amadis_ is mentioned.
[129] For the later writers of Galician (second half 14th c.) see
Professor Lang’s _Cancioneiro Gallego-Castelhano_ (1902).
[130] _Lua_ (glove), _cedo_, &c., of course occur in early Spanish
prose. _Soledad_ certainly occurs in the first three books more
frequently than in other Spanish prose. The Portuguese atmosphere is
altogether absent in _Las Sergas_.
[131] Cap. 63: _o Livro d’Amadis, como quer que soomente este fosse
feito a prazer de hum homem que se chamava Vasco Lobeira em tempo d’El
Rey Dom Fernando, sendo todalas cousas do dito Liuro fingidas do Autor._
[132] _Libro das Antiguidades_ (1549), f. 32 v.: _E daqui_ [_do Porto_]
_foi natural uasco lobeira ̃q fez os primʳᵒˢ 4 libros de amadis, obra
certo muj subtil e graciosa e aprouada de todos os gallantes, mas
comos_ [so] _estas couzas se secão em nossas mãos os Castelhanos lhe
mudarão a linguoagem e atribuirão a obra assi_ [so]. This passage is,
however, absent in the earliest manuscript. The spelling _couzas_
implies a late date for its introduction.
[133] So did Faria e Sousa, but he, too, had his Lobeira doubts, and
after noting that Vasco de Lobeira was knighted by King João I says:
‘si ya no es que era otro del mismo nombre. Pero la Escritura de Amadis