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Translator: Charles Raymond Beazley Edgar Prestage

Other: The Hakluyt Society

WORKS ISSUED BY

The Hakluyt Society.

THE CHRONICLE OF THE DISCOVERY AND CONQUEST OF GUINEA.

THE CHRONICLE OF THE DISCOVERY AND CONQUEST OF GUINEA.

WRITTEN BY

GOMES EANNES DE AZURARA;

NOW FIRST DONE INTO ENGLISH BY CHARLES RAYMOND BEAZLEY, M.A., F.R.G.S.,

LATE FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD; CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE LISBON GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY;

AND

EDGAR PRESTAGE, B.A.OXON.,

KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE PORTUGUESE ORDER OF S. THIAGO; CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE LISBON ROYAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, THE LISBON GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY, ETC.

VOL. I

With an Introduction on the Life and Writings of the Chronicler.

BURT FRANKLIN, PUBLISHER NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Published by BURT FRANKLIN 514 West 113th Street New York 25, N. Y.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE HAKLUYT SOCIETY REPRINTED BY PERMISSION

PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

TO HIS MOST FAITHFUL MAJESTY DOM CARLOS Io, KING OF PORTUGAL AND THE ALGARVES, THIS WORK IS BY PERMISSION DEDICATED.

COUNCIL OF THE HAKLUYT SOCIETY.

EDITORS' PREFACE.

The first volume includes about half of the text, together with an Introduction on the Life and Writings of Azurara, which it is hoped will be found more exhaustive and accurate than any previous notice of the historian.

We have to thank Senhor Jayme Batalha Reis, who has looked through the present version as far as the end of vol. i, and has kindly offered many suggestions. Among other Portuguese scholars who have been of service to us, we would especially mention Dr. Xavier da Cunha, of the Bibliotheca National, Lisbon; Senhor Jos? Basto, of the Torre do Tombo, and General Brito Rebello. In a lesser degree we owe our acknowledgments to D. Carolina Micha?lis de Vasconcellos and Dr. Theophilo Braga, the chief authorities on all that pertains to Portuguese literature, as well as to the late Conselheiro J. P. de Oliveira Martins, whose untimely death robbed his country of her foremost man of letters.

C. R. B. E. P.

THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF AZURARA.

LIFE.

"Lidar sem descan?o parece ter sido o moto d'Azurara." VIEIRA DE MEYRELLES.

The materials at hand for a study of the life and work of the second great Portuguese Chronicler are, considering the age in which he lived and the position he held, somewhat disappointing, and no one of his countrymen has been at the pains to work them up satisfactorily. They naturally fall into three divisions--his own writings, documents directly relating to his life or merely signed by him in his official capacity, and the witness of historians. There exists but one contemporary description of Azurara, that by Mattheus de Pisano, author of the Latin history of the Capture of Ceuta, though this is supplemented by the contents of two letters addressed to the Chronicler by Affonso V and the Constable D. Pedro respectively, as well as by what can be gleaned from documentary sources and from Azurara himself. In the next century--the 16th--some assistance may be derived from the traditions preserved by Barros, the historian of the Indies, as also from his critical judgments together with those of Dami?o de Goes, the famous Humanist and friend of Erasmus. These are all in a sense primary authorities, while the others who have discoursed of, or incidentally mentioned him are but secondary, namely, Nicolau Antonio, Jorge Cardoso, Barbosa Machado, Jo?o Pedro Ribeiro, the Viscount de Santarem, Alexandre Herculano, Vieira de Meyrelles, Innocencio da Silva, Sotero dos Reis, and Rodriguez d'Azevedo.

Gomes Eannes de Azurara, to give the modern spelling of his name, though he always signed himself simply "Gomes Eanes" or "Gomes Annes", was the son of Jo?o Eannes de Azurara, a Canon of Evora and Coimbra; but, beyond the fact of this paternity, we know nothing of his father, and only by conjecture is it possible to arrive at the name of his mother, as will hereafter appear. He is said to have come of a good family, on the ground of his admission into the Order of Christ.

The dispute as to his birthplace between the Azurara in Minho and the Azurara in Beira is not easy to settle, but tradition favours the former, and until the end of the last century no writer had ventured to doubt that the ancient town at the mouth of the River Ave, which received its first charter, or "foral", from the Count D. Henrique in 1102 or 1107, was the early home of the Chronicler. Such evidence as exists in favour of the latter place is slight, consisting only of inferences drawn from a document, dated August 23rd, 1454, in which Affonso V grants certain privileges to two inhabitants of Castello Branco, who were accustomed to collect the Chronicler's rents and bring them to Lisbon. From this it has been argued by such able critics as Vieira de Meyrelles and Rodriguez d'Azevedo that these rents must have issued out of family property situate at the Azurara in Beira, which happens to be in the district of Castello Branco, and hence that the Chronicler was a native of Beira rather than of Minho. The conclusion seems far-fetched, to say the least, for it is just as likely that these two men were agents for a benefice, or "commenda", at Alcains, in the same district, which Azurara possessed at the time this grant was made.

Three years elapsed between the writing of his second and third books, and there can be little doubt that Azurara spent this period partly in the Royal Library and partly among the Archives, which were then housed in the Castle of S. Jorge in Lisbon, continuing his study of the history of his own and foreign countries in the chronicles and documents those places contained.

Azurara begins by some reflections on well-doing and gratitude, the conclusion to which he illustrates by quotations, and then goes on to tell the origin of his work, which lay in the King's desire that the great and very notable deeds of D. Henrique should be remembered, and that there should be an authorised memorial of him, even as there was in Spain of the Cid, and in Portugal itself of the Holy Constable, Nun' Alvarez Pereira. The Chronicler justifies his task by summing up the profits that had accrued from the Prince's efforts--firstly, the salvation of the souls of the captives taken by the Portuguese in their expeditions; secondly, the benefit which their services brought to their captors; and thirdly, the honour acquired by the fatherland in the conquest of such distant territories and numerous enemies.

The next six Chapters relate the doings of this expedition, which ended in the capture of two hundred and thirty-five natives.

Chapters XCIV and XCV are devoted to the trafficking venture of the year 1447, the unhappy fate of the Scandinavian Vallarte, and an expedition to the fisheries off the Angra dos Ruyvos.

But to return to our subject--the Life of the Chronicler.

On June 6th, 1454, Azurara received the reward of his past services, being appointed Keeper of the Royal Archives , at the instance of, and in succession to, Fern?o Lopes. It is probable that the office of Chief Chronicler was conferred on him at the same time and implied in the grant, though it is not verbally mentioned there, since in the document next referred to he is actually named Chronicler. The King, in his letter of appointment, after reciting that Fern?o Lopes is very old and weak, so that he cannot well serve his office, says he confides in Gomez Eanes de Zurara, Knight Commander of the Order of Christ, "by the long education we have given him and the service we are receiving and expect to receive at his hands", and therefore grants him the post to hold in the same manner, and with the same rights and profits as were enjoyed by his predecessor therein.

Pinheiro Grande is situate in the province of Estremadura and Archbishopric of Lisbon, and its ancient Commenda belonged to the Templars down to the year 1311, and from 1319 to the present century to the Order of Christ. In the Statutes of the latter Order, published in 1628, it is stated to have been worth 550 milreis for many years--"ha muitos annos". Granja d'Ulmeiro is a small place in the Bishopric of Coimbra, and the same Statutes give the value of its Commenda. called of St. Gabriel. at 150 milreis, "in the year 1582".

Besides these two Commendas, Azurara still continued to hold that of Alcains, as we learn from the document already referred to, granting certain privileges to his agents in Castello Branco, and dated the 23rd of the same month and year. The revenue of these three Commendas, together with his official salary, must have sufficed to make of him a wealthy man, for it should be remembered that the purchasing power of the milreis was then nearly six times greater than at the present day. He seems, however, to have relinquished the benefice of Alcains shortly afterwards, for it does not appear again among his titles, and henceforth he is only credited with the other two.

In the above-mentioned document of privilege of August 23rd, 1454, after reciting the services rendered to Azurara by Guarcia Aires and Afomsso Guarcia--to employ the antique spelling--muleteers of Castello Branco, in collecting his rents and bringing them to Lisbon, the King grants them immunity from being forced into the service of either himself, the Infants, or the local authorities of the district in which they live. Their houses, cellars, and stables are not to be taken from them to lodge others against their will, and they are to enjoy this freedom as long as they continue to be of use to the Chronicler.

When next we hear of Azurara he is acting in his official capacity as Keeper of the Royal Archives. It seems that the people of Miranda had lost the "foral" given them by King Diniz in 1324, and required a copy of it, which Azurara made and handed to them on the 16th February 1456. This is the first of a series of certificates signed by the Chronicler that has come down to us, and the issuing of these and similar documents appears to have been one of his chief duties as Royal Archivist.

But Azurara was too valuable a man to be allowed to spend his whole time and energy in the routine work of an office; and so we find that when the King had reigned twenty years or more, which would be in or about 1458, he commissioned him to relate the history of Ceuta under the Governorship of D. Pedro de Menezes, to whom the city had been entrusted on its capture. The story runs, that for some time Jo?o I was unable to meet with anyone who would undertake the responsibility of guarding the new conquest, and, word of this having been brought to D. Pedro while he was playing at "Ch?ca", he at once hastened into the King's presence, and said he would engage to hold the city against the whole strength of Africa with the olive-wood crook he had just been wielding. Be this incident true or not, certain it is that D. Pedro de Menezes succeeded in maintaining Ceuta, despite all the efforts of the Moors to expel him; and his achievements, as chronicled by Azurara, form by themselves sufficient ground for Affonso's commission. But another reason, no doubt, influenced the King, and that was the supreme importance attached to the possession of the old city. Its position as the key of the Straits enabled the Portuguese to hinder the Moorish corsairs from raiding the Algarve, and, at the same time, to help the Christian cause by attacks on the last relic of Mohammedan power in the Peninsula, the kingdom of Grenada. Added to this, its conquest was hailed as the first step in the realisation of that cherished ideal, an African Empire: for, besides being a great trading centre and the sea-gate of Mauritania, it formed a wedge driven into the heart of the Infidel, and a fitting crown to the struggle of seven centuries, which, commencing on the morrow of the battle of the Guadalete, had ended by the establishment of the Cross in the land of the Crescent. The tide had turned at last and for ever, and the Gothic monarchy was avenged.

In this very year of 1458 occurred the first African Expedition of Affonso V, with its result, the capture of Alcacer. This event was probably the immediate cause of the writing of the Chronicle, because the record of his reign shows how the King cared more for African expansion than maritime expeditions, and how, like the old-time cavalier that he was, he preferred a land-war with the Moors to the seemingly theoretical, or at least distant, advantages to be gained by voyages of discovery. In 1460 D. Henrique died, leaving the fruit of his ceaseless endeavours to be plucked by other hands; since it was not until 1498, when Vasco da Gama cast anchor off Calicut, that the Infant's expeditions came to their legitimate conclusion, and a century of efforts received their reward.

But if Azurara possessed many of the higher qualities of an historian, he was by no means devoid of shortcomings; and two incidents, now to be related, form serious blots on his character as a Chronicler and a man.

In 1459 the Cortes met in Lisbon, and the Deputies of the People requested that a reform should be carried out in the Torre do Tombo, or Archive Office. They complained that the mass of old Registers which it was necessary to search in order to obtain copies of the documents existing there, together with the profitless prolixity of many of them, had long proved a source of great expense; and they therefore begged that such as were deemed of importance might be transcribed and the rest destroyed. This petition met with the King's approval, and Azurara charged himself with its execution, a task which seemingly occupied the remainder of his life. He acted with a zeal worthy of barbarous times, and the memory of the destruction to which he condemned documents of the highest historical importance has been preserved by tradition, and his proscription is still spoken of. He appears to have been unconscious of the harm he did, for he prefaces each of the new Registers compiled by him from the old with an account of his handiwork. True it is that Barros praises Azurara for these Registers, but in reality they are only "dry, imperfect abstracts", as one writer calls them, for they throw little light on the periods to which they relate, and were, besides, the cause of the loss of their originals. Fortunately, however, some records escaped the general destruction, for it happened that certain Municipalities had previously obtained transcripts of the most precious, while others that existed in duplicate in the Archives, unknown to anyone, came to light during the administration of another Guarda-M?r. The authorities of the City of Oporto obtained leave from Affonso V, on the 23rd March 1447, to have copies made of all the documents in the Torre do Tombo which related to them in any way, and these were furnished on December 25th, 1453, when Lopes was still Keeper of the Archives.

But Azurara was guilty of a yet graver delinquency than his destruction of the old Registers, and a charge of forgery must be brought against him. A detailed account of this affair may be read in the judgment of the Casa de Supplica??o, delivered on January 12th, 1479, from which it appears that a dispute had arisen between the Order of Christ and some inhabitants of Punhete over rights claimed by the former in the River Zezere, a tributary of the Tagus. The Order based its claim on certain documents, one being of the reign of D. Fernando, and said to have been extracted from the Torre do Tombo, in which that monarch purported to confer on the Order of Christ jurisdiction over the towns of Pombal, Soure, Castello Branco and others, to the practical exclusion of his own authority therein. When a copy of this pretended grant was produced in support of the contention, Azurara's successor in the Archives, Affonso d'Obidos, received instructions to produce the Register of D. Fernando for the purpose of comparison, and to bring the scribes engaged in the Archive Office with him; whereupon the grant was found at the end of the Register in a different writing from the rest of the book. Neither d'Obidos, nor the scribe who had copied out the Register, could say how it came there, or who had inserted it, and the latter declared that no such grant existed in the old books from which he had transcribed the present one. On further examination the pretended grant proved to be in the handwriting of "Gomez Eannes, Cleric", a servant of Azurara, and it must have been fraudulently inserted in the Register after the latter had been bound up. On the discovery of this act of forgery, judgment was, of course, given against the Order, and it was fortunate for our Chronicler that the offence he had committed in its interests remained undiscovered until after his death.

Curiously enough, in the same year Azurara was rewarded by a pension. The grant dated from Cintra, August 7th, 1459, runs as follows:--"Dom Affonso, etc., to all to whom this letter of ours shall come we make known that, considering the many services we have received and expect hereafter to receive from Gomez Eanes de Zurara, Commander of the Order of Christ, Our Chronicler and Keeper of our Archives, and wishing to do him favour, we are pleased to give him a pension of twelve white milreis from the 1st day of January next, which amount he has had of us up to the present time."

It would appear from the last line that this document is rather the confirmation of an old grant than the gift of something new, but it has been interpreted to mean that Azurara had been receiving the money from the King's privy purse, and was henceforth to have it out of the public treasury. There can be no dispute that the recipient merited the gift for his past literary services, which were an earnest of the work he was to accomplish in the future, and the value of the latter will presently appear.

We possess the copy of one certificate issued by the Chronicler in the following year, together with the record of another, their respective dates being June 27th and October 22nd, 1460. The former, dated from Lisbon, was granted in answer to the petition of the inhabitants of Nogueira, who felt uncertain about the dues they were bound to pay the Bishop of Coimbra; the latter is mentioned by J. P. Ribeiro, but seems to have disappeared from the Torre do Tombo.

For three years contemporary records are silent respecting the Chronicler, and it is not until 1466 that he comes before us again. On June 11th of that year, D. Pedro, King of Aragon, son of him who was Regent in the minority of Affonso V, and fell at Alfarrobeira, wrote Azurara a short but familiar autograph letter, which affords another proof of the intimate relations that existed between the Chronicler and the great personages of the age. In this letter, which is in response to one sent by Azurara, D. Pedro addresses him as "friend", refers to his "old kindness and sweet nature", and goes on to accept his offer to keep him informed of the progress of events in Portugal. He then takes the Chronicler into his confidence, and complains of the difficulties of his position as King of Aragon--difficulties which were aggravated by an illness that ended in his death less than a month after he had penned this epistle.

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