The glorious enterprises and discoveries of King Manoel’s reign naturally found many chroniclers. Fernão Lopes de Castanheda spent more than twenty years over his “History of the Discovery and Conquest of India by the Portuguese” (1554), scrupulously visiting the places and many of the persons concerned. The knowledge thus acquired was all the wealth he brought back with him from India, and he was reduced to accept the office of beadle of the Faculty of Arts at Coimbra University. The style of his history is plain and unadorned, sentence after sentence beginning with “And”; the narrative is simple and outspoken, and has an ingenuous freshness suitable to the account of the “seas ne’er traversed before.” Some of his pages, as the description of the natives of Malabar, might have come straight out of Herodotus. João de Barros, of Vizeu (1496-1570) began the famous Decadas, describing the Portuguese conquests in the East, and wrote a romance of chivalry and a Portuguese grammar. His Decadas were continued by Diogo de Couto (1544-1616), who was able to bring to their composition the knowledge from fifty years of personal experience in India. Gaspar Correa, born in 1495, wrote the Lendas da India, and was killed in a quarrel, or perhaps deliberately murdered at Malaca in 1564. Bras d’Albuquerque (1500-1580) composed the Commentarios of his father, the great Affonso d’Albuquerque, from original letters written by the latter in India to King Manoel, a straightforward account marked by much restraint and regard for truth, and enlivened by vivid scenes here and there. Many of those who went to India, missionaries, adventurers, soldiers, officials, wrote narratives of their experiences. The Roteiros of Vasco da Gama and João de Castro are of remarkable interest both for their contents and their style. There are few more stirring and pathetic narratives than those of the tragedies of the sea, the Historia Tragico-Maritima (Lisbon, 2 vols., 1735-6), tales of shipwreck which made the greatest impression on those who read and listened to them. One suspects that Mendes Pinto wrote some of his wonderfully vivid shipwreck scenes under the recollection of those longer narratives, to the most famous of which, the Shipwreck of Sepulveda, he refers in his memoirs. Antonio Tenreiro wrote an Itinerario of his journey by land from India to Europe, combining with this an account of other travels. His principal journey was from Ormuz to Tripoli by camel with a single Arab (Mouro alarve) attendant, taking twenty-two days to cross the desert. From Tripoli he proceeded to Cyprus, Crete, Ferrara, Genoa, thence “with much fear of the Turks,” by sea to the coast of Valencia, and on to Toledo and Lisbon. He observes minutely and raps out his information in concise disconnected sentences. Pantaleão de Aveiro wrote an Itinerary of the Holy Land, Frei Gaspar Fructuoso the Saudades da Terra, Frei Gaspar da Cruz a Tratado das Cousas da China e de Ormuz.
Great Prose Works.
Apart from these profane writings, there were several notable preachers in this century, as the celebrated Archbishop of Braga, Frei Bartholomeu dos Martyres (1514-90), Frei Miguel dos Santos (d. 1595), only one of whose sermons, on the death of King Sebastian, remains. Of Diogo de Paiva de Andrade (1528-75) 181 survive (3 vols., 1603, 4, 15), and there are three volumes (1611, 3, 6) of those of Frei Francisco Fernandes Galvão (1554-1610). Heitor Pinto (d. 1584), Professor of Scripture at Coimbra University, wrote eleven dialogues: Imagem da vida christã (Coimbra, 2 vols., 1563, 72). The Trabalhos de Jesus by Frei Thomé de Jesus did not appear till 1620 and 1629 (Lisbon, 2 pts.). Gonçalo Fernandes Trancoso is remembered by his Contos e historias de proveito e exemplo, twenty-nine of which first appeared in 1585. João de Lucena wrote the life of St. Francis Xavier: Historia da Vida do Padre Francisco Xavier. Samuel Usque, a Portuguese Jew of Lisbon, composed a Consolaçam ás tribulações de Israel (Ferrara, 1552), much needed in that period of massacres of “new Christians.” It is written in a coloured and exuberant style, recalling at times that of the Spanish writer Luis de León. All these works and many more, though unequal in merit, are worth recording and reading partly from the interest of the facts and descriptions they contain, and partly because after them good Portuguese prose only occasionally revisited the earth.
Gil Vicente.
But, of course, the sixteenth century, for all the excellence of its prose, was also the golden age of Portuguese poetry. Gil Vicente (about 1470-1540), although he inaugurated the Portuguese drama in 1502, was essentially a lyric poet. In his work the true spirit of old Portugal survives, a spirit of simple mirth with dance and song, and a note of gaiety so rare in Portuguese literature. His plays are of extreme value to students of Portugal in the sixteenth century, the cantigas and romances, etc., which they contain are for all time.
Miranda.
Francisco de Sá de Miranda (c. 1490-1558) brought back from his travels in Italy the fixed resolve to introduce the Italian metres into Portuguese poetry, and, retiring some years later from the Court, devoted the rest of his life to poetry, gardening, and the chase in the beautiful province of Minho. A man of austere and noble character, he was less generous to himself than to his friends, wrote an early biographer. Friends he had many, among the peasants and shepherds of the Minho hills, the neighbouring nobles and poets from all parts of Portugal. He imprinted his individuality on his poems written in the new style, and especially on his eclogues composed in the old octosyllabic redondilhas. Among his friends were Diogo Bernardes, some thirty years his junior, who celebrated his beloved river Lima, on whose banks was his birthplace, with a softness and fluency in the new metres not given to Sá de Miranda, and whose sonnets rivalled those with which Camões soothed an exile’s grief; Antonio Ferreira (1528-1569), who was the first to write a classical drama, Inés de Castro, and who remained faithful to Portuguese when most of his contemporaries wrote indifferently in Portuguese or Spanish; Dom Manoel de Portugal (1520-1606), the first poet to follow Sá de Miranda in adopting the Italian measures; Pedro de Andrade Caminha (c. 1520-89), highly praised by his contemporaries, but whose verse has a certain wooden quality foreign to theirs. To name all the poets whose verse was inspired by the genius of those spacious times were an endless task. Frei Agostinho da Cruz (c. 1540-1619) wrote verses, like his brother Diogo Bernardes—
Na ribeira do Lima em tenra idade.
Of Francisco de Sá de Meneses, Conde de Mattosinhos (he was created Count of Mattosinhos in 1580 and died there in 1584) much of the poetry has been lost, but what survives is of high excellence. His delightful verses to the river Leça were not rediscovered till the nineteenth century, by Dr. Sousa Viterbo in the Torre do Tombo.
Bernardim Ribeiro.