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.