Chapter C: R. = Cancioneiro de Resende. Lisboa, 1516 (= Cancioneiro Geral) (3)

for if this poem is not genuine, and the fact that it was first published by Brito[143] at once lays it open to grave suspicion, it is nevertheless undoubtedly based on popular tradition of a yearly tribute of maidens to the Moors such as the Greeks paid to the Minotaur, and must be the echo of some Algarvian song. Its simple repetitions have a haunting rhythm, but they are perhaps a little too emphatic. The impression is that its author had been struck by the repetitions in songs heard on the lips of the people, perhaps crooned to him in his infancy (cf. _Miscellanea_, p. 25: _sendo eu muito menino_), and worked them up in this poem. One early epic poem Portugal undoubtedly possessed, the _Poema da Batalha do Salado_, by AFONSO GIRALDEZ, who himself probably took part in the battle (1340). The subject of the poem is the same as that of the Spanish _Poema de Alfonso Onceno_, but whether its treatment was similar we cannot say, as only forty lines of the Galician-Portuguese poem survive. Since the authorship of the Spanish poem is doubtful and its rhymes run more naturally in Galician than in Spanish, the theory has arisen, among others, that Rodrigo Yannez, whose name perhaps denotes a connexion with Galicia, merely translated the poem of Afonso Giraldez. But against this it is argued that Yannez or Eanez was a Galician or wrote Galician lyrics (there are several poets of that name in the _Cancioneiro da Vaticana_), and when called upon to compose an epic--for Spain a late epic--chose Castilian, the traditional language of such poetry, and in executing his design found that his enthusiasm had outrun his knowledge of Castilian.[144] It is not strange if so brilliant a victory inspired two poets independently with its theme. It is perhaps more extraordinary that both should have chosen a metre (8 + 8) which has called for remark as showing the _romance_ through the _cantar de gesta_.[145] Frei Antonio Brandão, indeed, called the Portuguese poem a _romance_, a type of poem which did not exist in the fourteenth century. Since the battle was fought in Spain it would be considered in Brandão’s day a proper subject for a _romance_, but would be noticeable as being written in Galician. Castilian was throughout the Peninsula regarded as the fitting medium for the _romance_, as for its father the epic, just as, a century earlier, Galician was the universal language of the lyric.[146] Portuguese poets, if they wrote a _romance_, would usually do so in Spanish. The best-known instance is Gil Vicente’s fine poem (_muy sentido y galan_ as the 1720 editor says) of _D. Duardos e Flerida_, which only belongs to Portuguese literature through the excellent ‘translation of the Cavalheiro de Oliveira’, among whose papers Garrett professed to have found it. Portugal possessed no epic _cantares de gesta_ of her own, had not therefore the stuff out of which the _romances_ were formed, and the birth of the _romance_ coincided with the predominance of Spanish influence in Spain. It is therefore surprising to find in Portugal a large number of _romances_ unconnected with Spain, the explanation being that, having accepted with characteristic enthusiasm the new thing imported from abroad, the Portuguese turned to congenial themes, of love, religion, and adventure. Had the _romances_ been elaborated in the same way as in Spain, we might have expected a large number of anonymous Portuguese _romances_ dealing with the Breton cycle, and indeed with early Portuguese history, so rich in heroic incidents. The fact that this is not the case and the number of _romances_ collected in Tras-os-Montes alike point to their Spanish origin, while their frequency in the Azores denotes how popular they became later in Portugal. In the sixteenth century their Spanish character was recognized. The poor _escudeiro_ in _Eufrosina_ is bidden go to Spain to gloss _romances_, and in the seventeenth century, as a passage in Mello’s _Fidalgo Aprendiz_ well shows, they were better liked if written in Spanish. The partiality for Spanish applied to poetry of other kinds, and Manuel de Galhegos says (1635) that it is a bold venture to publish poetry in Portuguese.[147] But it did not as a rule extend to popular poetry. It is therefore noteworthy that the nurse in Gil Vicente sings _romances_ in Spanish.[148] Dr. Theophilo Braga, who considers Spanish influence on the _romances_ in Portugal to have been ‘late and insignificant’,[149] is obliged, in order to support his argument, to quote not Portuguese but Spanish _romances_.[150] Nor is it a happy contention that Portuguese _romances_ were not printed owing to _desleixo_, since the publication of Spanish _romances_ at Lisbon cannot be attributed merely to a craze for things foreign. More persuasive is the theory, developed by D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos,[151] that many _romances_ in Spanish were the work of Portuguese poets, especially those related to the Breton cycle, such as _Ferido está Don Tristan_, those concerned with the sea, and those of a soft lyrical character, as _Fonte Frida_ and _La Bella Malmaridada_. However that may be, the fact that _romances_ appear on the lips of the people in Gil Vicente, that is, before the publication of the _romanceros_, indicates how rapidly their popularity spread,[152] and accounts for their numerous progeny in Portugal, collected in the nineteenth century. True historical _romances_ the Portuguese did not possess, unless we are to consider that certain lines which occur in Vicente’s parody of _Yo me estaba allá en Coimbra_, in Garcia de Resende’s _Trovas_, and elsewhere, are echoes of a Portuguese _romance_ on the death of Inés de Castro.[153] But that is not to say that they did not possess _romances_, and many of these might be almost as old as their Spanish models, although not derived directly from _cantares de gesta_. These Portuguese _romances_ or _xacaras_ (in the Azores _estorias_ and _aravias_) often differ from the Spanish in a certain vagueness of outline and sentimental tone. They are frequently of considerable length. Many of them are undoubtedly of popular origin and have a large number of variants in different parts of the country. If there are none to compare with _Fonte Frida_ or _Conde Arnaldos_ (which belong to Castilian literature, whatever the nationality of their authors), they nevertheless, with a total lack of concentration, present many natural scenes and incidents of affecting pathos and an attractive simplicity. One of the best and most characteristically Portuguese is _A Nau Catharineta_, and others almost equally famous are _Santa Iria_, _Conde Nillo_, and _Brancaflor e Flores_. The second edition of Dr. Theophilo Braga’s _Romanceiro_ runs to nearly two thousand pages. The first two volumes contain over 150 _romances_ (together with numerous variants). Of these 5 belong to the Carolingian, 8 to the Arthurian cycle, 63 are _romances sacros_ or _ao divino_, 11 treat of the cruel husband or unfaithful wife. In the third volume are reprinted _romances_ composed by well-known Portuguese authors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It must be admitted that Spain generously repaid to Portugal the loan of the Galician language for lyrical composition--although in each case it was the lender’s literature that profited (especially if some of the most beautiful Spanish _romances_ were the work of Galician or Portuguese poets). But even after the birth of the _romance_ Spain continued to cultivate the Galician lyric, until the second half of the fifteenth century. The last instance is supposed to be a Galician poem by Gomez Manrique (1412-91), uncle of the author of _Recuerde el alma dormida_, No. 65 in the _Cancioneiro Gallego-Castelhano_. This collection, published by Professor Lang at the suggestion of D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, contains the meagre crop of Portuguese verse of the transition period from 1350 to 1450, meagre in quality and quantity. One name dominates the period. The love and tragic fate of MACIAS (second half 14th c.), _o Namorado, idolo de los amantes_, gave him a renown similar to but far exceeding that of D. Joan Soarez de Paiva in the preceding century. As the ideal lover he is met with at every turn in the Portuguese poetry of the fifteenth century,[154] and later became the subject of Lope de Vega’s _Porfiar hasta morir_ (1638). Of his story we know definitely nothing, but some lines in one of his poems, _En meu_ _cor tenno ta lança_ and _Aquesta lança. .. me ferio_, would appear to have inspired the famous legend which dates from the end of the fifteenth century. Imprisoned at Arjonilla in Andalucía for paying court to his _sennora_, he continued to address her in song and was killed by the lance that her infuriated husband hurled through the prison window. In an older version, that of the Constable D. Pedro in his _Satira de felice e infelice vida_, he saved the lady of his heart from drowning, and afterwards, as he lingered where she had stood, was struck down by the jealous husband. According to Argote de Molina,[155] both he and the husband served in the household of D. Enrique de Villena (1385-1434), who was perhaps only six when Macias died. Most of the twenty poems ascribed to Macias that survive are written in Galician, and of many, as _Loado sejas amor_,[156] the authorship is doubtful. Clearly his fame would act as a strong magnet to poems of uncertain origin. The matter is of the less importance in that these poems, however love-sick, have but little literary merit. If the Galician JUAN RODRIGUEZ DE LA CÁMARA, a native, like Macias, of Padron, was the real author of the _romance_ of _Conde Arnaldos_ (which is improbable), he was a far greater poet than his friend. Both the lyrics and the prose of his _El Sieruo libre de Amor_ are in Castilian. Of the other two fourteenth-century Galician poets mentioned by Santillana, FERNAM CASQUICIO and VASCO PEREZ DE CAMÕES (†1386?),[157] no poems have survived. The latter, a knight well known at the Court of King Ferdinand and an ancestor of Luis de Camões, played a leading part in the troubles preceding the battle of Aljubarrota, He had come to Portugal from Galicia, and his name appears frequently in the pages of Fernam Lopez (where it is written Caamoões) till the year 1386. In the middle of the sixteenth century he is mentioned by Sá de Miranda’s brother-in-law as a Court poet corresponding to Juan de Mena in Spain. But there were other poets whose verse was probably not inferior to that of Perez de Camões and Casquicio. Besides Macias the _Cancioneiro Gallego-Castelhano_ contains the names of sixteen writers whose poems may not attain high distinction but prove that the Galician lyric continued to be cultivated by poets in the fourteenth and first half of the fifteenth century in Castille and Leon, Aragon and Catalonia. The Archdeacon of Toro, GONÇALO RODRIGUEZ (fl. 1385),[158] was one of a group of such poets; a man with a keen zest of living and capable of vigorous verse, in which he took a characteristic delight (_a minna boa arte de lindo cantar_). In his farewell poem _A Deus Amor, a Deus el Rei_, which Cervantes perhaps remembered, he bids good bye to the _trobadores con quen trobei_, and in a quaint humorous testament he mentions a number of friends and relatives, two of whom, at least, his cousin Pedro de Valcacer or Valcarcel and Lope de Porto Carreiro, also wrote verse. In the last of the sixteen stanzas (_abbacca_) of this _testamento_ the Archdeacon appoints his namesake Gonçalo Rodriguez de Sousa and Fernan Rodriguez to be his executors. He may have been alive in 1402, for a Doctor Gonçalo Rodriguez, Archdeacon of Almazan, is mentioned as one of the witnesses to the oath taken by the city of Burgos to the Infante María in that year.[159] In that case he must have been transferred to Almazan, some 150 miles farther up the Duero. More chequered was the career of GARCI FERRANDEZ DE GERENA (_c._ 1340-_c._ 1400). Having married one of King Juan I’s dancing girls (_una juglara_) in the belief that she was rich, he repented when he found _que non tenia nada_. He next became a hermit near Gerena, and, this not proving more congenial than married poverty, he embarked ostensibly for the Holy Land, but in fact landed at Malaga with his wife and children. At Granada he turned Moor, satirized the Christian faith, and deserted his wife for her sister. After such proven inconstancy we may perhaps doubt the sincerity of his repentance when he returned to Christianity and Castille at the end of the fourteenth century. But for all his weakness and folly he seems not to have sunk utterly out of the reach of finer feelings; he sang various episodes of his life, e.g. when he went to his hermitage (_puso se beato_), in lyrics of some charm, and addressed the nightingale in a dialogue, as did his contemporary, ALFONSO ALVAREZ DE VILLASANDINO (_c._ 1345-_c._ 1428). This Castilian Court poet, born at Villasandino near Burgos and possessed of property at Illescas, was of a sleeker and more subservient mind than Garci Ferrandez and prospered accordingly, _en onra e en ben e en alto estado_. He wrote to order and was considered the ‘crown and king of all the _poetas e trovadores_ who had ever existed in the whole of Spain’. This extravagant claim of his admirers need not prevent us from recognizing that there is often real feeling and music in his poems, of which the _Cancionero de Baena_ has preserved over twenty. He writes in varying metres with unfailing ease and harmony, rarely sinks into mere verbal dexterity, and well deserves to be considered the best of these later Galician poets. Side by side with the lyric the _cantiga d’escarnho_ continued to flourish. Alfonso Alvarez (C. G. C. 48) upbraids Garci Ferrandez for renouncing the Christian faith and leaguing himself with the Devil (_gannaste privança do demo mayor_); Pero Velez de Guevara (†1420), uncle of the Marqués de Santillana, addresses a satiric poem to an old maid, and an anonymous poet in a vigorous _sirventes_ attacks degenerate Castille, _cativa, mezela Castela_, perhaps, as Professor Lang thinks, immediately after the Portuguese victories of Trancoso, Aljubarrota, and Valverde in 1385. Five fragmentary poems belong to the Infante D. PEDRO (1429-66), Constable of Portugal. There are, besides his three short Portuguese poems in the _Cancioneiro de Resende_, only forty-one lines in all, for while Galician, already separated from her twin sister of Portugal, went to sleep--a sleep of nearly four centuries--in these last accents of her muse preserved in the _Cancionero de Baena_, the Infante Pedro turned definitely to the new forms of lyric appearing in Castille. As a transition poet he may be mentioned here before his father D. Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, since his prose works, which would naturally place him with his father and with D. Duarte, his uncle, belong, together with most of his poetry (_prosas_ and _metros_) to Spanish literature. By stress of circumstance rather than any set purpose he inaugurated the fashion of writing in Castilian, a fashion so eagerly taken up by his fellow-countrymen during the next two centuries. After the tragic death of his father at Alfarrobeira (1449) he escaped from Portugal, of which his sister Isabel was queen,[160] spent the next seven years as an exile in Castille, and after returning to his native land died an exile, but now as King of Aragon (1464-6). His life of thirty-seven years was thus as full of wandering adventure as that of any troubadour of old. To him Santillana addressed his celebrated letter on the development of poetry, and his own influence on Portuguese literature was important, for he introduced not only a new style of poetry, including _oitavas de arte maior_, but the habit of classical allusion and allegory. His first work, _Satira de felice e infelice vida_, was written in Portuguese before he was twenty, but re-written by himself in Castilian, the only form in which it has survived. This firstfruit of his studies was dedicated to his sister, Queen Isabel, whose death (1455) he mourned in his _Tragedia de la Insigne Reyna Doña Isabel_ (1457), a work of deep feeling and some literary merit, first published by D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos 444 years after Queen Isabel’s death. His longest and most important poem, in 125 octaves, _Coplas del menosprecio e contempto de las cosas fermosas del mundo_ (1455), reflects the misfortunes of his life and the high philosophy they had brought him. Under a false attribution to his father, the Duke of Coimbra[161] (his Portuguese poems were also wrongly ascribed to King Peter I of Portugal, through confusion with the later King Peter, of Aragon), it was incorporated in the _Cancioneiro de Resende_, which appeared half a century after the Constable’s death.

FOOTNOTES:

[140] 1867 ed., p. 333.

[141] Ibid., pp. 304-7.

[142] _Cronica de Cister_, Bk. VI, cap. 1, 1602 ed., f. 372. It has been several times reprinted: cf. J. F. Barreto, _Ortografia_ (1671), p. 23; Bellermann, _Die alten Liederbücher_, p. 5; _Grundriss_, p. 163.

[143] _Monarchia Lusitana_, 1609 ed., ii. 296 (also in _Miscellanea_, 1867 ed., pp. 25-6; Bellermann, pp. 3-4).

[144] See _Grundriss_, p. 205. D. Ramón Menéndez Pidal supports the suggestion of Leonese authorship (_Revista de Filología Española_, I. i (1914), pp. 90-2).

[145] See J. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, _Littérature Espagnole_, 1913 ed., p. 64.

[146] Cf. Rodriguez Lobo, _Primavera_ (1722 ed.), p. 369: _tinhão os nossos guardadores por muyto difficultoso fazeremse em a lingoa Portugueza, porque a tem por menos engraçada para os romances_. Sousa de Macedo says that _Romance he poesia propria de Hespanha_, but Hespanha here means Spain and Portugal and he instances Góngora and Rodriguez Lobo (_Eva e Ave_, 1676 ed., p. 130).

[147] See _infra_, p. 258.

[148] _Obras_, 1834 ed., ii. 27.

[149] _Hist. da Litt. Port._, ii (1914), pp. 267-87.

[150] Ibid., pp. 280-5.

[151] _Estudos sobre o Romanceiro Peninsular. Romances velhos de Portugal_, Madrid, 1907-9.

[152] Lucena (_Vida_, Bk. III, cap. 3) speaks of _romances velhos em que elles_ [the natives of India] _como nos, por ser o ordinario cantar da gente, guardam o successo das memorias e cousas antigas_. The expression _romance velho_ in the sixteenth century may mean a _romance_ that has gone out of fashion. Cf. Vicente, _Os Almocreves_: _Hei os de todos grosar Ainda que sejam velhos._ _Antigo_ may similarly mean ‘antiquated’ rather than ancient. Barros, _Grammatica_, 1785 ed., p. 163, mentions _rimances antigas_. D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos considers that the _romances_ came from Spain to Portugal at the latest in the third quarter and perhaps in the first half of the fifteenth century.

[153] See _Estudos sobre o Rom. Penins._ (the lines are _Polos campos do Mondego Cavaleiros vi somar_).

[154] In later Portuguese his name was often written Mansias. So Moraes transforms Mlle de Macy’s name into Mansi.

[155] _Nobleza de Andalvzia_ (1588), ii, f. 272 v.

[156] This and two other Macias poems (_Ai que mal aconsellado_ and _Crueldad e trocamento_) are in C. G. C. (Nos. 33, 38, 41) ascribed to Alfonso Alvarez de Villasandino.

[157] The _Cancionero de Baena_ contains poems addressed to Vasco _Lopez_ de Camões, _un cavallero de Galizia_, and an answering poem by him.

[158] For the name of this hitherto anonymous poet see _The Modern Language Review_ (July 1917), pp. 357-8.

[159] Gil Gonzalez Davila, _Historia de la Vida y Hechos del Rey Don Henrique Tercero_, &c. (Madrid, 1638), p. 173. The name was a common one. The Spanish translator of Pero Menino’s _Livro de Cetreria_, Gonçalo Rodriguez de Escobar, may have been a relation. There was also a fourteenth-century poet called Ruiz de Toro.

[160] Another sister, D. PHILIPPA DE LENCASTRE (1437-97), lived in retirement in the convent of Odivellas near Lisbon, and as a dedicatory poem to her translation of the Gospels wrote the simple, impressive lines beginning

_Non vos sirvo, non vos amo,
Mas desejo vos amar._

[161] Cf. Ribeiro dos Santos, _Obras_ (MS.), vol. xix, f. 205: _A frente de todos os Poetas deste Seculo apparece como hum Ds_ [_Deus_] _da Poezia o Infante D. Pedro, filho do Snr. Rey D. João I._ In reality he was not gifted with greater poetical talent than his brothers.

§ 3

_The Chroniclers_

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.

FOOTNOTES:

[162] Lopez himself was probably of humble birth. It appears from a document presented by Dr. Pedro de Azevedo at a meeting of the _Sociedade Portuguesa de Estudos Historicos_ in July 1916 that his wife’s niece was married to a shoe-maker.

[163] Zurara, _Cron. D. Joam_, cap. 2.

[164] i.e. eighty-nine years before the first English translation of Froissart was published. Needless to say, no English translation of Lopez exists.

[165] A facsimile of a page of this lengthy document is given in Snr. Braamcamp Freire’s excellent edition of the _Primeira Parte da Crónica de D. Joam I_ (1915).

[166] See A. Braamcamp Freire, ibid., pp. xl-xlii.

[167] _Fez todas as chronicas dos Reis té seu tempo, começando do Conde dom Henrique, como prova Damião de Goes_ (Gaspar Estaço, _Varias Antigvidades de Portugal_ (1625), cap. 21, § 1); cf. Goes, _Cron. de D. Manuel_, iv. 38.

[168] _Nosso desejo foi em esta obra escrever verdade--nuamente--a nua verdade_ (_Cr. D. Joam_, _Prologo_).

[169] Zurara, _Cr. D. Joam_, cap. 2. Cf. Lopez’ preface to his _Cr. D. Joam_: _Oo com quamto cuidado e diligemçia vimos gramdes vollumes de livros, de desvairadas linguageẽs e terras; e isso meesmo pubricas escprituras de muitos cartarios e outros logares nas quaaes depois de longas vegilias e gramdes trabalhos mais çertidom aver nom podemos da contheuda em esta obra_ (1915 ed., p. 2).

[170] Usually he does this without naming the offender, but he refutes the _razões_ of Martim Afonso de Mello, a person well known at the Court of King João I and author of a technical book on the art of war, _Da Guerra_ (see Zurara, _Cr. D. Joam_, cap. 99). Mello refused the governorship of captured Ceuta in 1415. A work on a similar subject, _Tratado da Milicia_, is ascribed to Zurara’s friend and patron. King Afonso V (Barbosa Machado, i. 19).

[171] _Cr. del Rei D. Fern._, cap. 2: _a ordenança de nossa obra_; _Cr. D. Joam_, 1915 ed., p. 51: _Certo he que quaaesquer estorias muito melhor se entemdem e nembram se som perfeitamente e hem hordenadas_; _Cr. del Rei D. Fern._, cap. 139: _guardando a regra do philosopho_ [of cause and effect].

[172] _Antología_, iv, p. xx: _Nada hay semejante en las literaturas extranjeras antes de fin del siglo xv._ The words apply more accurately to Fernam Lopez.

[173] _Leixados os compostos e afeitados razoamentos_ (_Cr. D. Joam_, _Prologo_).

[174] The references in cap. 76 and 80 to events of 1451 and 1461 are evidently later additions.

[175] Cf. _Cr. do Cond._, cap. 14 and 15, with _Cr. del Rei Fern._, cap. 166.

[176] A. Braamcamp Freire, _Cr. de D. Joam_ (1915), _Introdução_, p. xxi.

[177] By Matheus de Pisano (whom some have considered the son of Christine de Pisan). He wrote in Latin: _De Bello Septensi_ (_Ined. de Hist. Port._, vol. i, 1790), Portuguese tr. Roberto Correia Pinto: _Livro da Guerra de Ceuta_ (1916).

[178] _Não seja porem algum de tam simples conhecimento que presuma que este é o teor propria_, &c. (cap. 95).

[179] But he can also be picturesque in expressing time (like Lopez, who for ‘early morning’ says, ‘at the time when people were coming from Mass’), e.g. _Cr. D. Joam_, cap. 102 _ad fin._: Ceuta had been captured so swiftly that ‘many had left the corn of their fields stored in their granaries and returned in time for the vintage’. The whole description of the expedition against Ceuta and the attack and sack of the city are extremely clear.

[180] Cf. Goes, _Cr. D. Manuel_: _escrevia com razoamentos prolixos e cheos de metaforicas figuras que no estilo historico não tem lugar_; _Cr. do Princ. D. Joam_, cap. 17: _com a superflua abundancia e copia de palavras poeticas e metaforicas que usou em todalas cousas que screveo_. His style is less involved than is often said. Some of his sentences may contain as many as 500 words and yet be perfectly plain and straightforward, whereas Mallarmé could be obscure in five words.

[181] Cf. cap. 2: _Oo tu principe pouco menos que devinal!_ and _Tua gloria, teus louvores, tua fama enchem assi as minhas orelhas e ocupam a minha vista que nom sei a qual parte acuda primeiro._ This chronicle has the same plethora of learned quotations. Chapter 1 quotes St. Thomas, Solomon, Tully, the Book of Esther, and introduces Afonso V, King Duarte, the French duke Jean de Lançon, the Cid, Nun’ Alvarez, Moses, Fabricius, Joshua, and King Ramiro.

[182] He re-wrote the _Cronica do Conde D. Pedro de Meneses_ twice. João de Barros, who was inclined to slight earlier and contemporary historians, acknowledges his great debt to Zurara. Damião de Goes regards him less favourably.

[183] November 22, 1467 (_Coll. Liv. Ined._ iii. 3-5). There is also an affectionate letter from King Pedro of Aragon to Zurara, dated June 11, 1466, or 1460.

[184] Zurara, on the other hand, with feigned diffidence represents himself as ‘a poor scholar’, ‘a man almost entirely ignorant and without any knowledge’, and if he has any learning it is but the crumbs from King Afonso’s table (_Cr. D. Pedro_, cap. 2). He can rise to real eloquence, as in the beginning of cap. 25 of the _Cr. da Guiné_: _Oo tu cellestrial padre, que com tua poderosa maão, sem movimento de tu devynal essencia, governas toda a infiinda companhya da tua sancta cidade_, &c., or sober down into a Tacitean phrase such as that of cap. 26, describing the fate of natives of Africa brought to Portugal: _morriam, empero xraãos_ (they died, but Christians). He has a misleading trick of saying ‘The author says--_diz o autor_’, meaning himself.

[185] _Nunca me em ello quis leixar obrar segundo meu desejo_ (_Cr. D. Pedro_, cap. 1).