Portuguese literature

The father of Portuguese history, Fernam Lopez (c. 1380-c. 1460), had grown up with the generation that succeeded Aljubarrota, and from his earliest years imbibed the national enthusiasm of the time. He had himself seen Nun’ Alvarez as a young man and the heroes who had fought in a hundred fights to free their country from a foreign yoke, and he had listened to many a tale of Lisbon’s sufferings during the great siege.[162] Since 1418, at latest, he was employed in the Lisbon Torre do Tombo (the State Archives), for in that year he was appointed keeper of the documents (escrituras) there. Sixteen years later, King Duarte, who as prince encouraged him to collect materials for the work,[163] entrusted him with the task of writing the chronicles of the Kings of Portugal (poer em caronycas as estorias dos reys), and at the same time (March 19, 1434[164]) assigned him a salary of 14,000 réis. His work at the Torre do Tombo covered a period of over thirty years. He won and kept the confidence of three kings, was secretary to João I (escrivam dos livros) and to the Infante Fernando (escrivam da puridade), whose will exists in Lopez’ handwriting.[165] His son Martinho accompanied the Infante to Africa as doctor, and died (1443) in prison soon after the prince. The last document signed by Lopez as official is dated 1451; in July 1452 he seems to have resigned his position at least temporarily, and on June 6, 1454, he was definitely superseded by Zurara as being ‘so old and weak that he cannot well fulfil the duties of his post’. That he lived for at least five years more we know from the existence of a document (July 3, 1459) referring to the pretensions of an illegitimate son of Martinho which Fernam Lopez rejected.[166] Of the chronicles of the first ten Kings of Portugal written by Lopez[167] only three survive: the Cronica del Rei Dom Joam de boa memoria, Cronica del Rei Dom Fernando, and Cronica del Rei Dom Pedro. The latter is but a brief sketch, and lacks the unity which the subject-matter gives to the other two. His chronicles of the seven earlier kings disappeared in the revised versions of subsequent historians. Although they no doubt incorporated large slices of his work with little alteration, the freshness and the style are gone, the good oak hidden beneath coats of paint. It was a proceeding the more deplorable in that Lopez had been at great pains to discover and record the truth, ‘the naked truth’.[168] His successor, Zurara, represents him as ‘a notable person’, ‘a man of some learning and great authority’;[169] he travelled through the whole of Portugal to collect information and spent much time in visiting churches and convents in search of papers and inscriptions, while King Duarte had documents brought from Spain for his use. Whatever sources he utilized, Latin, Spanish, or Portuguese, he stamped his work with his own individuality. He himself frequently refers to previous historians, and often expresses his disapproval of their methods.[170] He seems to have drawn largely from a Latin work of a certain Dr. Cristoforus. Keenly alive to the dignity and responsibilities of history, he was anxious that his work should be well ordered and philosophical.[171] He has been called the Portuguese Froissart, but he combines with Froissart’s picturesqueness moral philosophy, enthusiasm, and high principles, is in fact a Froissart with something of Montaigne added, and easily excels Giovanni Villani or Pero López de Ayala. The latter must descend from the pedestal given him by Menéndez y Pelayo,[172] since he only occasionally rises to the height of Fernam Lopez, as in the account of the murder of the Infante Fradique, which Lopez copies very closely (although abbreviating it as really foreign to his history), evidently appreciating such dramatic touches as the sentence which describes how, as the murdered man advanced through the palace, ever fewer went in his company. By the side of the laborious prose and precocious wisdom of King Duarte this child of genius seems to give free rein to his pen, but it is his greatness and his title to rank above all contemporary chroniclers, not only of Portugal but of Europe, that he could combine this spontaneity with the scruples of an accurate historian, and be at once careful and impetuous, or, as Goes calls him, copious and discreet. He assigns speeches of considerable length to the principal actors, but they contain not mere rhetoric[173] but arguments such as might well have been used; and the frequent shorter sayings of humbler persons, often anonymous and as illuminating as graffiti, have the stamp of truth and bring the scenes most clearly before us. Indeed, every sentence is living; his unfailing qualities are rapidity and directness. Sometimes the sound of galloping horses or the loud murmur of a throng of men is in his pages. He ever and anon rivets the reader’s—the listener’s—attention by some captivating phrase, by his quaintly expressed wisdom, by his personal keenness and delight in the ‘marvellous deeds of God’ (maravilhas que Deos faz) or in the actions of his heroes (Oo que fremosa cousa era de veer!). His chronicles are not only a succession of imperishably vivid scenes—King Pedro dancing through his capital by night, the escape of Diogo Lopez, the punishment of D. Inés’ murderers, the siege of Lisbon, the murder of D. Maria Tellez—but describe fully and with skilful care the character of the actors, pleasure-loving King Ferdinand, cunning, audacious, and accomplished Queen Lianor Tellez, wise and noble Queen Philippa, even morose Juan I, and principally the popular Mestre d’Avis and his great Constable, Nun’ Alvarez Pereira. And the Portuguese people is delineated both collectively and as individuals, in its generous enthusiasm, unreasoning impetuosity, and atrocious anger. That Lopez paid attention to his style is proved by his modest disclaimer bidding the reader expect no fremosura e afeitamento das pallavras, but merely the facts breve e sãamente contados, em bom e claro estilo. His style is always clear and natural, the serviceable handmaid of his subject, admirably assuming the colour and sound of the events described, and his longest sentences are never obscure. He wrote his history on a generous scale, for in the rapidity of his descriptions this inimitable story-teller preserved his leisure. His last chronicle ended with the expedition to Ceuta (1415). The kernel of that chronicle had been the illustrious deeds and character of Nun’ Alvarez, also described in the hitherto anonymous Coronica do condestabre de purtugal, of which the earliest edition is dated 1526. Large tracts of this chronicle are included, with alterations, in Lopez’ Chronicles of King Fernando and King João I. Dr. Esteves Pereira and Snr. Braamcamp Freire have now independently come to the conclusion that it is the work of Lopez, clearly an earlier work[174] written shortly after the death of Nun’ Alvarez (1431), i. e. before he concluded the Cronica de D. Fernando[175] and wrote the Cronica de D. Joam, at which he was working in 1443.[176] We are forced to accept this view, although of course it is no argument to say that the conscientious and scrupulous Fernam Lopez could not be a plagiarist since it was the duty of the official chronicler of the day to incorporate the best work of other historians. Lopez’ authorship is borne out by two passages which at a first glance seem to refute it. In chapter 55 of the Cronica de D. Joam (1915 ed., p. 120) he introduces the version given in the Cronica do Condestabre (cap. 22) with the words ‘now here some say’ (ora aqui dizem algũs), and then cites huũ outro estoriador, cujo fallamento nos pareçe mais rrazoado, i. e. he now rejects the version (of algũs) which he had adopted in his earlier work. In chapter 152 (1915 ed., p. 281) he similarly quotes what dizem aqui algũs and then the version of huũ outro compillador destes feitos, de cujos garfos per mais largo estillo exertamos nesta obra segundo que compre, rrecomta isto per esta maneira, a manner which is not that of the Cronica do Condestabre. But indeed the style of the two works is conclusive. A single age does not produce two Fernam Lopez any more than it produces two Montaignes or two Malorys. Those who read the continuation of the Cronica de D. Joam (i. e. the Cronica da Tomada de Ceuta, completed in 1450) by Gomez Eanez de Zurara (c. 1410-74) find themselves in a very different atmosphere. We are told[177] that this soldier, turned historian, acquired his learning late in life, and he parades it like a new toy. Aristotle, Avicenna, and all the Scriptures are in his preface; Job, Ovid, Hercules, and Xenophon, a motley company, mourn the death of Queen Philippa (cap. 44). Sermons extend over whole chapters, although, as he is careful to state, the exact words of the preachers could not be given.[178] Philosophy had been graciously woven into Lopez’ narrative, but here it stands in solid icebergs interrupting the story. And if he wishes to say that memory often fails in old age he must quote St. Jerome; a date occupies half a page, being calculated in nine or ten eras;[179] and the style is sometimes similarly inflated, so that ‘next morning’ becomes ‘When Night was bringing the end of its obscurity and the Sun began to strike the Oriental horizon’ (cap. 92). He also delights in elaborate metaphors.[180] But it must not be thought that Zurara is all froth and morals: in between his purple patches and erudite allusions he tells his story directly and vividly, and, what is more, he has his enthusiasm and his hero. Nun’ Alvarez has faded into the background, but in his place appears the intense and fervent spirit of Prince Henry the Navigator. His partiality for Prince Henry appears in the Cronica de D. Joam, and in his Cronica do Descobrimento e Conquista da Guiné it is still more evident.[181] In this chronicle, written at the request of King Afonso V and finished in the king’s library in February 1453, he made use of a lost Historia das Conquistas dos Portugueses by Afonso Cerveira, and profited by much that he had heard from the Infantes Pedro and Henrique and other makers of history. For Zurara was a sincere and painstaking historian,[182] and when the king bade him record the deeds of the Meneses in Africa (the Cronica do Conde D. Pedro de Meneses was completed in 1463, and the Cronica dos Feitos de D. Duarte de Meneses about five years later) he was not content with the ‘recollections of courtiers’, but set out for Africa (August 1467) and spent a whole year there gathering material at first hand. An affectionate letter[183] from King Afonso to the historian in his voluntary exile shows the pleasant relations existing between the liberal king and his grateful librarian. He praises him as well learned in the arte oratoria,[184] and for undertaking of his own free will a journey which was imposed on others as a punishment, and promises to look after the interests of his sister while he is away. Zurara was a Knight of the Order of Christ, with a comenda near Santarem, owned other property, and suffered himself to be adopted by a wealthy furrier’s widow, an unusual proceeding for a person in his station. But if, as this indicates, he had a love of riches (satisfied by the king’s generosity and this fortunate adoption), this in no way interfered with his work of collecting and verifying evidence nor affects the truth of his chronicles. He had proposed to write that of Afonso V, but the king, wisely considering that his reign was not yet over, refused his consent,[185] and this chronicle was reserved for the pen of Ruy de Pina (c. 1440-1523?).[186] Herculano’s ‘crow in peacock’s feathers’ has been somewhat harshly treated by modern critics. Not he but the taste and fashion of his time was to blame if he laid desecrating hands on the invaluable chronicles of Fernam Lopez, and thus became the ‘author’ of the chronicles of the six kings, Sancho I to Afonso IV. The mischief is irreparable, but it is well at least that these chronicles should have been dealt with by Ruy de Pina, and not, for instance, by the uncritical Duarte Galvão (c. 1445-1517); the friend of Afonso de Albuquerque, who died in the Arabian Sea when on his way as Ambassador to Ethiopia, and who as Cronista Môr revised the Cronica de D. Afonso Henriquez (1727). Ruy de Pina has further been attacked because the people no longer figures, and the king figures too prominently, in the chronicles for which he was more directly responsible: Cronica de D. Duarte, Cronica de D. Afonso V, and Cronica de D. João II. That is to censure him for faithfully recording the changed times and not writing as if he were his own grandfather. Pina was no flatterer, but the chronicle of João II inevitably centred round the king, and, in spite of its excellence and of the moving incident of Prince Afonso’s death, is less attractive than those which are a record of freer, jollier times. Born at Guarda, of a family originally Aragonese, Pina served as secretary on an embassy to Castille in 1482 and on two subsequent occasions, and in the same capacity in a special mission to the Vatican in 1484. He became secretary (escrivão da nossa camara) to King João II, and succeeded Lucena as Cronista Môr in 1497. Both King João II and King Manuel showed their appreciation of his services, and Barros lent authority to a foolish story that Afonso de Albuquerque sent him rubies and diamonds from India as a reminder, in Corrêa’s phrase, to glorificar as cousas de Afonso de Albuquerque. Ruy de Pina in his chronicles of King Duarte and Afonso V used material collected by Fernam Lopez and Zurara, and he in turn left material for the reign of King Manuel of which Damião de Goes availed himself, while his Cronica de D. João II was laid under contribution by Garcia de Resende. It may be doubted whether the Cronica de D. Afonso V contains much that is not Ruy de Pina’s own. It was poetical justice that the interest of the story should be transferred from the Infante Henrique to the Infante Pedro.[187] His death and that of the Conde de Abranches at Alfarrobeira are told with the most impressive simplicity, which produces a far greater effect than the long exclamação that follows. Lacking Lopez’ genius, but possessed of an excellent plain style, which only becomes flowery on occasion, and on his guard against what he calls the vicio e avorrecimento da proluxidade, Pina relates his story straightforwardly, almost in the form of annals. He does not attempt to eke out his matter with rhetoric and has chapters of under fifty words. The Cronica de D. Afonso V effectively contrasts the characters of the weak and chivalrous Afonso, who is praised as man but not as king, and the vigorous practical João II, and has an inimitable scene of the meeting of the former and Louis XI at Tours in 1476. The glow of Fernam Lopez is absent, but Pina none the less deserves to be accounted an able and impartial historian.

To the fifteenth century belongs the Cronica do Infante Santo. It is impossible to read unmoved the clear and unaffected story of the sufferings and death (1437-43), as a captive of Fez, of this the most saintly of the sons of King João I and Queen Philippa. It was written at the bidding of his brother, Prince Henry the Navigator, with the skill born of a fervent devotion, by Frei João Alvarez, an eyewitness[188] of D. Fernando’s misfortunes and one of the few of his companions to survive (till 1470 or later). A curious indication of the writer’s accuracy in detail is the correct spelling of a Basque name,[189] of the meaning of which he was probably ignorant.

The founder of the dynasty of Avis, King João I (1365-1433), found time in his busy reign of forty-eight years to encourage literature, ardently assisted no doubt by English Queen Philippa, and was himself an author. His keen practical spirit turned to Portuguese prose, and while as a poet he confined himself to a few prayers and psalms, in prose he caused to be translated the Hours of the Virgin and the greater part of the New Testament, as well as foreign works such as John Gower’s Confessio Amantis (c. 1383), and himself wrote a long treatise on the chase. This Livro da Montaria, which has little but the title in common with Alfonso XI’s Libro de Montería, lay unpublished for four centuries, but is now available in a scholarly edition by Dr. Esteves Pereira from the manuscript in the Lisbon Biblioteca Nacional. Valuable and interesting in itself, this book is of great significance in Portuguese literature by reason of the impulse thus given to Portuguese prose. It is impossible as yet to estimate the full value of the prose works that followed: many are lost, others remain in manuscript, as the Orto do Sposo by Frei Hermenegildo de Tancos, or the Livro das Aves. But with King João’s son and successor Portuguese prose came into its kingdom.

Punctilious and affectionate, gifted with many virtues and graces, the half-English King Duarte (1391-1438), o Eloquente, shared the high ideals of all the sons of João I. Liable to fits of melancholy, and of less active disposition than his brothers Henrique and Pedro, he proved himself not less gallant in action than they at the taking of Ceuta in 1415, and had even earlier been entrusted by his father with affairs of State. His scruples as philosopher-or rather student-king during his unhappy reign of five years may have hampered his decisions, but his love of truth made the saying palavra de rei proverbial. The corroding cares of State prevented him from giving all the time he would have wished to literary studies, but he was a methodical collector of books[190] and papers written by himself and others, and his great work, Leal Conselheiro (c. 1430), consisted of such a collection on moral philosophy and practical conduct, addressed to his wife, Queen Lianor. It contains 102 chapters, often stray papers, sometimes translated from other authors.[191] Besides a detailed consideration of virtues and vices which are treated with an Aristotelian precision, and always with preference for the Portuguese as opposed to the latinized word, it has chapters on the art of translation, food, chapel services, and other subjects.[192] The book reveals a character of rare charm, combining humility with a clear instinct for what was right, humanity with common sense. His literary genius was akin to that of his father; he scarcely possessed poetical talent, although he translated in verse the Latin hymn Juste Judex, and possessed in his library a Livro das Trovas del Rei, in all probability a collection of the poems of others. Wit and originality he also lacked. But as a prose-writer he ranks among the greatest Portuguese authors, and in style was indeed something of an innovator, using words with an exactness and scrupulous nicety hitherto unknown in Portugal. He gave the matter long and serious consideration, and the directness of his style corresponds to his sincerity of thought. His clear, concise sentences and careful choice of words show a true artist of unerring instinct in prose.[193] King Duarte wished to be read as Sainte-Beuve recommended that one should read the Caractères of La Bruyère: peu et souvent (pouco ... tornando algũas vezes). The first part of the precept has been followed, but unhappily for Portuguese prose the second has been neglected. In his youth the king was noted for his horsemanship, and his Livro da Ensinança de bem cavalgar toda sella is a practical treatise based on his personal experience (nom screvo do que ouvi, as he says) begun when he was prince, laid aside after his accession, and left unfinished at his death. It is remarkable, like the Leal Conselheiro, for the excellence of its style and the manly, thoughtful character of its author. But for his premature death, King Duarte might have done for Portuguese prose what Alfonso X and Don Juan Manuel had done for Castilian. An excellent translator himself, he encouraged translations into Portuguese, in Portugal and Spain; the Bishop of Burgos, Don Alonso de Cartagena, translated Cicero for him, and the Dean of Santiago Aristotle. More active than King Duarte, more literary than his younger brother Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), D. Pedro (1392-1449), created Duke of Coimbra after the capture of Ceuta in 1415, became almost a legendary figure owing to his extensive travels (1424-8)—andou as sete partes do mundo—and his equally exaggerated reputation as a poet, through confusion with his son the Constable. Regent from 1438 to 1448, he resigned when the young king, his nephew and son-in-law, Afonso V, came of age. His enemies succeeded in effecting his banishment from Court. Civil strife followed, and D. Pedro fell in a preliminary skirmish at Alfarrobeira in May 1449. Had he been granted a peaceful old age he would probably occupy a more important place in Portuguese literature. Apart from the historical value of his letters, his chief claim to be remembered literarily consists in the translations from the Latin, principally from Cicero, undertaken under his supervision or by himself personally, as the De Officiis, which was dedicated to King Duarte and is still unpublished. The Trauctado da Uirtuosa Benfeyturia was originally a translation by the prince of Seneca’s De Beneficiis. Except the dedication to King Duarte (between 1430 and 1433), the work as it stands in six books is properly not D. Pedro’s, since he had not leisure for the corrections and additions which he wished to make, and accordingly handed over his translation and the original to his confessor, Frei João Verba, who made the necessary alterations,[194] and expanded the book from a literal translation to a paraphrase of the De Beneficiis. The reader who does not bear this in mind might be startled to find references in a work of Seneca’s to St. Thomas, Nun’ Alvarez, the noble knight Abraham, or the virtuous knight Cid Ruy Diaz. The work lacks King Duarte’s gift of style which set the Leal Conselheiro high above contemporary prose.

Lopo de Almeida, created first Count of Abrantes in 1472,[195] accompanied D. Lianor, daughter of King Duarte, on her marriage to the Emperor Frederick III in 1451. In four letters written to King Afonso V from Italy (February to May 1452) he displays a keen eye for colour and much directness in description, so that the Emperor bargaining miserly over the price of damask or the two wealthy Italian dukes so sorrily horsed (em sima de senhos rocins magros) remain in the memory, and the letters are more original than most of the Portuguese prose of the century.

One of the most important early prose works is the Boosco Delleytoso (1515). It consists of 153 short chapters,[196] and is dedicated (on the verso of the frontispiece portraying the ‘delightful wood’) to Queen Lianor, widow of King João II. It is a homily in praise of the hermit’s life of solitude and against worldly joys and traffics, and is marked by a pleasant quaintness, an intense and excellent style, a fervent humanity and love of Nature. The hermit’s independent and healthy life[197] is contrasted with that of the merchant in cities.[198] In chapter I the repentant sinner is introduced in ‘a very thick wood of very fair trees in which many birds sang very sweetly’ near ‘a very fair field full of many herbs and scented flowers’—frolles de boo odor. He prays to be delivered from this darkness of death, and a very fair youth appears ‘clothed in clothes of gleaming fire and his face shone as the sun when it rises in the season of great heat’. His ‘glorious guide’, grorioso guyador, leads him to a dona sabedor and to dom francisco solitario, who in a fremoso fallamento praises the solitary life and condemns those who are puffed up with the conceit of learning, in itself ‘a very fair thing’. He tells of the lives of saintly hermits; St. Bernard, St. Thomas Aquinas, Dom Seneca, Dom Cicero, a mui comfortosa donzella, and others exhort the sinner to leave the world, and he ends by relating his frequent raptures until his soul is carried to the terra perduravil. In its main subject, praise of the solitary life, the book recalls the title of the treatise ascribed to D. Philippa de Lencastre: Tratado da Vida Solitaria, a translation or adaptation from the Latin of Laurentius Justinianus.[199] The latter’s De Vita Solitaria is, however, quite different from the Boosco deleytoso, which was probably composed before the birth of D. Philippa (1437).

Another remarkable early work is the anonymous Corte Imperial (14th or early 15th c.), the language of which often bears traces of a Latin original.[200] Many of its sentences are veritable dobres and mordobres in prose,[201] and to a superficial reader will have little meaning; but in fact this mystic treatise is closely reasoned. It may have some connexion with similar works by Juda Levi, Ramon Lull, and Don Juan Manuel. In a corte or parliament the Church Militant, in the person of a ‘glorious Catholic Queen’ argues with Gentile, Moor, and Jew on the nature of God and the Trinity. The Gentiles and Moors gradually accept her doctrines, but the Jewish rabbis prove more contumacious. Saints and angels and all the company of heaven discourse sweet music in the intervals of the discussion. One of the best known of the many other important translations of this time was the Flos Sanctorum (1513),[202] which begins[203] with extracts from the Gospels and has a savour of the Bible about its prose. There were many later versions of the Gospel story, as A Paxã de Jesu Christo Nosso Deos e Senhor, &c. (1551); Tratado en que se comprende breue e deuotamente a Vida, Paixão e Resurreição, &c. (1553); Traatado em q̃ se contẽ a paixam de x̃po, &c. (1589?). But the earliest and most splendid, an incunable of which Portugal has reason to be proud on account of its beautiful print, is the Vita Christi (Lixboa, 1495), translated em lingoa materna e portugues linguagem from the original of Ludolph von Sachsen by the Cistercian monk Frei Bernardo de Alcobaça (†1478?), at the bidding of Queen Isabel, sister of the Constable D. Pedro, in the middle of the fifteenth century (1445).

Another notable translation for the same queen is the Espelho de Christina (1518),[204] from the French of Christine de Pisan: Livre des trois vertus pour l’enseignement des princesses (1497). The Portuguese manuscript, translated from the French manuscript nearly half a century before the latter appeared in print,[205] was published at the bidding of Queen Lianor (wife of João II), who so keenly encouraged Portuguese art, language, and literature. Her squire Valentim Fernandez’ version of Marco Polo, Marco Paulo, was published at Lisbon in 1502. The Espelho de Prefeyçam (1533) was translated from the Latin by the Canons of Santa Cruz, Coimbra, and edited by Bras de Barros (c. 1500-59), Bishop of Leiria and cousin of the historian João de Barros. A Portuguese version of a scriptural work entitled Sacramental, originally written in Spanish by Clemente Sanchez de Vercial, was published apparently in 1488 (it would thus be one of the earliest books printed in Portugal), and was reprinted at Lisbon in 1502.