Portuguese literature
Historia e Geographia das Nações Ultramarinas_.[477] The second volume
of this collection contains several re-translations of _Navegações_ (by
Thomé Lopez and anonymous Portuguese pilots) surviving in Italian in
Ramusio. It would require a separate volume to give an account of all
the sixteenth-and seventeenth-century narratives of newly conquered
countries written in Portuguese and often immediately translated
into many European languages, e.g. the _Novo Descobrimento do Grão
Cathayo_ (1626) by the Jesuit ANTONIO DE ANDRADE (_c._ 1580-1634), or
the _Relaçam_ of the Jesuit ALVARO SEMMEDO (1585?-1658) written in
Portuguese but published in the Spanish translation of Faria e Sousa:
_Imperio de la China_ (1642). However unliterary, they are often so
vividly written as to be literature in the best sense.
PEDRO DE MAGALHÃES DE GANDAVO, of Braga, whose _Regras_ (1574) ran
into three editions before the end of the century, described Brazil
and its discovery in two short works: _Historia da prouincia Sãcta
Cruz_ (1576) and _Tratado da terra do Brazil_ first published in 1826
in the _Collecção de Noticias_. This collection also prints works
of the following century, such as the _Fatalidade historica da Ilha
de Ceilão_[478] by Captain JOÃO RIBEIRO, who had served the king as
a soldier for eighteen years in the _preciosa ilha de Ceilão_. His
manuscript, written in 1685, was translated and published in French
(1701) 135 years before it was printed in Portuguese. Gandavo’s
_Historia_ (48 ff.), his first work (_premicias_), was introduced by
_tercetos_ and a sonnet of Luis de Camões, who speaks of his _claro
estilo_, and _engenho curioso_. The author himself in a prefatory
letter says that he writes as an eyewitness, content with a ‘plain and
easy style’ without seeking _epithetos exquisitos_.
The Jesuit BALTHASAR TELLEZ[479] (1595-1675) won considerable fame as
an historian and prose-writer in his _Cronica da Companhia de Iesus_
(2 pts., 1645, 1647) in which he forswears what he calls the artifices
and liberties of ordinary _seiscentista_ prose. He also edited the work
of the Jesuit missionary MANUEL DE ALMEIDA (1580-1646), recasting it
in an abbreviated form: _Historia Geral da Ethiopia a Alta ov Preste
Ioam_ (1660), for which Tellez’ friend, Mello, provided a prefatory
letter. Almeida, born at Viseu, had gone to India in 1601 and in 1622
was sent to Ethiopia, where he became the head of the mission. He died
at Goa after a life of much hard work and various adventure. In writing
his history of Ethiopia he made use of the _Historia da Ethiopia_ of
an earlier (1603-19) head of the mission, PEDRO PAEZ (1564-1622), who
had started for Ethiopia in 1595 but was captured by the Turks and only
ransomed in 1602. Although a Spaniard by birth (born at Olmeda), Paez
wrote in Portuguese. A third Jesuit missionary, MANUEL BARRADAS, born
in 1572 at Monforte, who went to India in 1612, was also a prisoner of
the Turks for over a year at Aden. In 1624 he went to _Ethiope, terre
maldite_, and remained there some ten years. Of his three treatises
the most important is that entitled _Do Reyno de Tygrê e seus mandos
em Ethiopia_. The modern editor of these works, P. Camillo Beccari,
considers that their authors’ simple style caused their treatises
to be regarded rather as the material of history than in themselves
history,[480] but their value for us is in this very simplicity and in
the detailed observation which bring the country and its inhabitants
clearly before us. Scarcely less important, as material for history and
as human documents, are the _Cartas_ from Jesuits in China and Japan,
especially the collection of 82 letters (Coimbra, 1570), and that of
206 letters (Evora, 1598). The Jesuit FERNAM CARDIM at about the same
time rendered a like service to Brazil in his _Narrativa epistolar_,
edited in 1847 by F. A. de Varnhagen. A more important work on Brazil
was that of GABRIEL SOAREZ DE SOUSA (_c._ 1540-92)--the _Tratado
descriptivo do Brasil em 1587_, which its modern editor, F. A. de
Varnhagen, described in a moment of enthusiasm as ‘the most admirable
of all the works of the Portuguese _quinhentistas_’. Two other works of
interest, half history, half travels, are the _Jornada do Arcebispo de
Goa Dom Frey Aleixo de Meneses_ (1606) by ANTONIO DE GOUVEA, Bishop of
Cyrene (_c._ 1565-1628), in three parts, describing the archbishop’s
life and visits in his diocese; and the _Discvrso da Iornada de D.
Gonçalo Covtinho á villa de Mazagam e sev governo nella_ (1629). The
writer--the admirer of Camões and alleged author of the 1614 life of Sá
de Miranda--who, as he says, had grown white in the council-chamber,
lived on till 1634. He here relates with much directness his voyage and
four years’ Governorship (1623-7).
The _Saudades da Terra_ (1873) of GASPAR FRUCTUOSO (1522-91), who
was born at S. Miguel in the Azores, was written in 1590 and waited
three centuries in manuscript for an editor. Both its title and the
‘preamble’, in which Truth says that she will write of nothing but
sadness, are misleading, since the book is an account--in good,
straightforward style after the manner of Castanheda and other
historians--of the discovery and subsequent conditions of various
islands, especially of Madeira and the lives of its Governors. ANTONIO
CORDEIRO (1641-1722), Jesuit, of Angra, wrote at the age of seventy-six
an uncritical but interesting work entitled _Historia Insulana das
Ilhas a Portugal sujeitas no Oceano Occidental_ (1717), based partly on
Fructuoso’s manuscript.
It was only as it were by an afterthought that the historians turned
to consider the history of Portugal as apart from separate chronicles
of the kings or episodes of Eastern conquest. The historical scheme
of João de Barros was too vast to be executed by one man and the
European part was never written. André de Resende likewise failed to
carry out his project of a history of Portugal. PEDRO DE MARIZ (_c._
1550-1615), son of the Coimbra printer, Antonio, in the last four of
his _Dialogos de Varia Historia_ (1594) between a Portuguese and an
Italian, embraces the whole history of Portugal, but these dialogues,
although industriously written in good plain style, were eclipsed by
the appearance three years later of the first part of the _Monarchia
Lusitana_ (1597). Its author, a young Cistercian monk of Alcobaça,
FREI BERNARDO DE BRITO (1569-1617), in the world Balthasar de Brito de
Andrade, at once became known as one of the best writers of his time,
and he is still reckoned among the masters of Portuguese prose. His
style, clear, restrained, copious, proved that the mantle of Barros had
fallen upon worthy shoulders. But, despite his rich vein of humanity,
as a historian he is far inferior to Barros and even more uncritical
than Mariz. The value of evidence seems to have weighed with him little
when it was a question of exalting his language, literature, religion,
or country, and he used and incorporated documents entirely worthless.
Whether he deliberately manufactured spurious documents to serve
his purposes cannot be known, but he seems at least to have quoted
authorities which had never existed.[481]
In a word he failed to make good use of the incomparable material which
the library of Alcobaça afforded. His was a misdirected erudition,
and we would willingly exchange the knowledge of where Adam lies
buried, or on what day the world began, or how Gorgoris, King of
Lusitania, who died 1227 years after the Flood, invented honey, for
accurate details of more recent Portuguese history. Yet he had the
diligence and enthusiasm of the true historian and made use, sometimes
a skilful use,[482] of coins and inscriptions. His brief _Geographia
antiga da Lusytania_ also appeared in 1597, and in the same year the
Cistercian Order appointed him its chronicler. Thus he interrupted
his main work--the second part of the _Monarchia Lusitana_ was only
published in 1609--in order to write the _Primeira Parte da Cronica de
Cister_ (1602).[483] This, in many ways his best work, runs to nearly
a thousand pages, and treats of the saints of the Order and especially
of the life of the charming St. Bernard, with contemporary events in
Portugal.[484] It was to be followed by two other parts, but Brito’s
early death at his native Almeida on his way back to Alcobaça from
Spain, a year after he had been appointed _Cronista Môr_ (1616), left
his work unfinished. He is remembered as a fine stylist, a poet who
wrote history rather than as a great historian. Mariana, the Latin
original of whose _Historia de España_ (1592) he knew and quoted, is by
comparison almost a scientific writer--at least he is not, like Brito,
pseudo-scientific.
The two parts of the _Monarchia Lusitana_ written by Brito ended with
the beginning of the Portuguese monarchy. Parts 3 and 4, by FREI
ANTONIO BRANDÃO (1584-1637), to whose sincerity and skill Herculano
paid tribute, appeared in 1632 and carried it down to the year 1279.
Brandão had spent nearly ten years collecting and sifting documentary
evidence for his work and is a far better historian than Brito,
although in style he is not his equal. His nephew FREI FRANCISCO
BRANDÃO (1601-80), _vir modestus, diligens et eruditus_, succeeded Frei
Antonio as _Cronista Môr_ and wrote Parts 5 and 6 (1650), describing
the reign of King Dinis. The style was less well maintained in Part 7
(1633) by FREI RAPHAEL DE JESUS (1614-93). Part 8 (1727), the last to
be published, was added by FREI MANUEL DOS SANTOS (1672-1740) over a
century after the publication of the first Part, but only brought the
history to the battle of Aljubarrota (1385). Santos’ Part 7 as well as
Parts 9 and 10 remained in manuscript. His prose is worthy of a work
which is a monument of the language, not of the history of Portugal.
Perhaps the truest epitaph of this history as a whole--after allowance
has been made for Brito’s style and the excellent work of Antonio
Brandão--is a severe sentence from the preface of the author of Part 7:
‘There are histories whose tomes are tombs.’
It could hardly, perhaps, be expected that the historians of the reigns
of King Manuel and King João III should pass over events in the East as
already fully related, and in Damião de Goes’ _Cronica do Felicissimo
Rey Dom Emanvel_ and Francisco de Andrade’s _Cronica de Dom João III_
(1613), although they lose much by compression, they still occupy a
disproportionate space. Andrade wrote most correct prose, even in
his poems, and the style of his history is excellent, but neither of
these works gives any adequate account of the internal history of
Portugal, any more than does that of Frei Luis de Sousa on João III’s
reign, in which there should have been more scope for originality. The
same prominence is given to India in the history of JERONIMO OSORIO
(1506-80), Bishop of Silves, _De Rebvs Emmanvelis Regis Lvsitaniae_
(1571), written in Latin in order to spread the knowledge of these
events _per omnes reipublicae Christianae regiones_.[485] Osorio, whose
father, like Lopez de Castanheda’s, had been a judge (_ouvidor_) in
India, was born at Lisbon, but studied abroad, at Salamanca, Paris,
and Bologna. After occupying the Chair of Scripture at Coimbra for a
brief space, he went to Lisbon and became secretary to the Infante
Luis. In 1560 he was made Archdeacon of Evora and four years later
Bishop of Silves. (The see was removed to Faro three years before his
death and his title is sometimes given as Bishop of Algarve.) A few
remarkable letters in Portuguese, in one of which (1567) he attempted
to convert Queen Elizabeth, show that he was skilled in the use of his
native tongue; his countrymen delighted to call him the Portuguese
Cicero. According to Sousa de Macedo ‘many people came from England,