Chapter C: R. = Cancioneiro de Resende. Lisboa, 1516 (= Cancioneiro Geral) (4)

[186] His son Fernam de Pina became _Cronista Môr_ in 1523. The immediate successor of Zurara as _Cronista Môr_ was VASCO FERNANDEZ DE LUCENA, whose life must have coincided almost exactly with the sixteenth century. He represented King Duarte at the Council of Basel in 1435, and according to Barbosa Machado, who calls him _um dos varões mais famosos da sua idade assim na profundidade da litteratura como na eloquencia da frase_, he was still living in 1499. Unfortunately none of his works have survived. His manuscript translation of Cicero’s _De Senectute_ and other works were destroyed in the Lisbon earthquake (1755).

[187] Much later, in the first third of the seventeenth century, CASPAR DIAZ DE LANDIM wrote a _copiosa relação_ from a point of view unfavourable to D. Pedro and dedicated it to the Duke of Braganza: _O Infante D. Pedro, Chronica Inedita_, 3 vols. (1893-4).

[188] _Tudo o contheudo no siguiente trautado eu o uy e ouuy_ (1911 ed., p. 2).

[189] 1911 ed., p. 117: Ichoa (= Blind). The fact that no other name is given shows that then as now Basques were known by their nicknames. The same name figures in ‘Pierre Loti’s’ _Ramuntcho_ (1897): Itchoua. In the sixteenth century Martim Ichoa and João de Ychoa appear among the _moradores_ of King Manuel’s household (1518). The substantive _ichó_ (= _armadilha_), derived from _ostiolum_, is used by Diogo Fernandez Ferreira (_Arte da Caça_) and Garcia de Resende (_Cron. João II_).

[190] The extremely interesting list of his important library has been published in _Provas Genealogicas_, i. 544, in the 1842 ed. of _Leal Conselheiro_, and edited by Dr. T. Braga in _Historia da Univ. de Coimbra_, i. 209. It contained _O Acypreste de Fysa_ (= the Archpriest of Hita) and _O Amante_, i. e. the translation by Robert Payne, Canon of Lisbon, of Gower’s _Confessio Amantis_.

[191] p. 9, _Fiz tralladar em el alguus capitullos doutros livros_: the _Vita Christi_, St. Thomas Aquinas, Diogo Afonso Mangancha on Prudence, Cicero, _De Officiis_, St. Gregory.

[192] It contains papers written at various times (between 1428 and 1438). The date 1435 occurs p. 474. Cf. p. 169, King João I (†1433), _cuja alma Deos aja_.

[193] His modern editor, José Ignacio Roquette (1801-70), comments (p. 37) on the passage _he bem de lavrar e criarem_ as a great grammatical _discordancia_ and _erro_, but it is by no means certain that King Duarte did not omit one of the personal infinitives deliberately, for the sake of euphony, as the _-mente_ is omitted in the case of two or more adverbs.

[194] _Corregendo e acrecentando o que entendeo ser compridoiro acabou o liuro adeante scripto._

[195] Damião de Goes (_Cr. do Pr. D. Joam_, cap. 88) says 1476. His father Diogo Fernandez was _Reposteiro Môr_ at the Court of King Duarte, and his mother a half-sister of the Archbishop of Braga. One of his sons was the famous and unfortunate Viceroy of India (1505-9), D. Francisco de Almeida.

[196] Seventy-four black-letter double column folios, unnumbered, of fifty lines each. The colophon runs: _Acabouse do_ [so] _emprimir este lyuro chamado boosco delleytoso solitario p. Hermã de cãpos bombardeiro del Rey nosso Sẽhor cõ graça & preuilegio de sua alteza em ha muy nobrem_ [so] _& sempre leal çidad_ [so] _de lixboa cõ muy grande dilligencia. Ano da encarnaçã de nosso Saluador & Redentor jhesu x̃po. De mil & quinientos & quinze a vinte quatro de Mayo_ (_Bib. Nacional de Lisboa_, Res. 176 A [lacking f. 1]). Nicolás Antonio thus refers to the work (_Bib. Nova_, ii. 402): _Anonymus, Lusitanus, scripsit & nuncupavit Serenissimae Eleonorae Reginae Ioanis II Portugalliae Regis Coniugi librum ita inscriptum. Bosco deleitoso. Olisipone 1515._

[197] He can do _ho que lhe praz_; at sunrise he goes up _alguũ outeiro de boo & saaom aar_ far from the _delleytaçoões do mundo_, _arroydo do segre_ and _os auollimentos & trasfegos das çidades_.

[198] The _malauẽturado negociador que ̃qr seer rico tostemẽte_.

[199] See _Grundriss_, p. 249, and _Divi Lavrentii Ivstiniani Protopatriarchae Veneti opera Omnia_ (Coloniae, 1616), pp. 728-70: _De Vita Solitaria_.

[200] Cf. 1910 ed., pp. 1, 4. The writer claims to be only a compiler: _começo este livro nom como autor e achador das cousas em elle contheudas mas como simprez aiuntador dellas em huũ vellume_. It has been attributed to the Infante D. Pedro and to João I.

[201] e.g. p. 85: _Ca per entender entende o entendedor e per entender é entendido o entendido e o entendedor entende que elle mesmo é Deos._

[202] The title is simply _Ho Flos Sctõrȝ em lingoajẽ ̃porgueˢ_. The colophon says that it _se chama ystorea lombarda pero comuũmente se chama flos sanctorum_.

[203] _Aqui se começa ha payxam do eterno Principe christo Jhesu nosso Senhor & saluador segundo os sanctos quatro euangelistas._

[204] The only known copy exists in the Biblioteca Nacional, Lisbon. The colophon (in Spanish) gives the alternative title (_das tres virtudes_). The French original was also called _Trésor de la Cité des Dames_.

[205] See J. Leite de Vasconcellos, _Lições de Philologia Portuguesa_, p. 137.

§ 4

_The Cancioneiro Geral_

The silence that falls on Portuguese poetry after the early _Cancioneiros_ lasts for over a century, scarcely interrupted by the twilight murmurings of the later Galician poets, and is only broken for us by the publication of the _Cancioneiro Geral_ five years before the death of King Manuel. The native _trovas_ had no doubt continued to be written by many poets in a country where poetry is scarcely rarer than prose, far commoner than good prose. But no one had cared to preserve them in a collection corresponding to the _Cancionero de Baena_ in Spain. When Portuguese poetry again emerges into the clear light of day Spanish influence is in full swing and behind it looms that of Italian poetry, the natural continuation of one side of the _Cancioneiro da Vaticana_. No Spanish poet now writes in Portuguese, many Portuguese in Spanish. Popular poetry and royal troubadours have alike disappeared, leaving a narrow circle of Court rhymesters. It is to one of these that we owe the collection which embraces the poetry of the day, from the middle of the fifteenth century to the actual year of publication, 1516. Stout, good-natured GARCIA DE RESENDE (_c._ 1470-1536), a favourite alike with king and courtiers, often the butt of the Court poets’ wit--he is a tunny, a barrel, a wineskin, a melon in August--belonged to an old family which in the sixteenth century distinguished itself in literature. Born at Evora and brought up in the palace as page and then as secretary of King João II, he had every opportunity of observing the events which he so graphically describes in his _Vida de Dom João II_ (1545).[206] Talented and many-sided, Resende continued in high favour during the succeeding reigns: in 1498 as secretary he accompanied King Manuel to Castille and Aragon, and in 1514 was chosen for the much coveted post of secretary to Tristão da Cunha’s mission to Rome with wonderful presents for Pope Leo X. Resende not only drew and wrote verses but was a musician and an accomplished singer: _de tudo intende_ laughed his friend Gil Vicente. Perhaps it only required the stress of adversity to inspire to greatness this blunted, prosperous courtier--_fidalgo da casa del Rei_. He was not a great poet, although he excelled the Court poets of the fifteenth century. As historian he has been unjustly condemned. If in his Chronicle of João II he made use of Ruy de Pina’s manuscript chronicle, first published in 1792, it must be remembered that it was customary for the official historians to regard their predecessors as existing mainly for purposes of plagiarism. Herculano called Resende’s chronicle a poor bundle of anecdotes,[207] and no doubt Resende was not a Herculano nor a Fernam Lopez but a more limited Court chronicler. He is none the less delightful because he deals not in tendencies and abstractions but in concrete details and persons, Court persons. With an artist’s eye for the picturesque he makes his readers see the event described, and his chronicle is throughout singularly vivid and dramatic. He is certainly an attractive writer, and perhaps he is also instructive. The incident, for instance, of the Duke of Braganza being kept waiting while a scaffold of the latest Paris pattern is being erected for his execution (1483), which a grander historian might have omitted, is possibly not without its significance and shows _francesismo_ in action four centuries before Eça de Queiroz. Besides various minor works in prose Resende composed, not without misgiving,[208] a long survey of the events of his day in some 300 _decimas_: _Miscellania e Variedade de Historias_, which throws curious and valuable light on the times. His literary work was prompted by a real desire to serve his country. His delicate appreciation of the past appears in his remarkable and charming verses on the death of Inés de Castro; and wishing in so far as lay in his power to remedy the Portuguese neglect which had allowed so many poems and records and _gentilezas_ to perish, he collected what he could of past and present poets and published them in one great volume which he dedicated to the Infante João: _Cancioneiro Geral_ (1516), often known as the _Cancioneiro de Resende_ to distinguish it from the Spanish _Cancionero General_ (1511). Resende wrote to the poets of his acquaintance requesting them in verse to send him their poems, and they sent him answers, also in verse, accompanying their poems.[209] The receipt of these he would acknowledge as editor, promising, still in verse, to have them printed. Politeness no doubt induced him to include more than his judgement warranted, for his own poems are superior to those of most of his contemporaries. A large number of the _Cancioneiro’s_ poems--some 1,000 poems by between 100 and 200 poets--should scarcely have been included, for, however well they might answer their purpose as occasional verse, they were not intended as a possession for ever, and massed together produce an effect of dull and endless triviality. These love poems can indeed be as monotonous, the satiric poems as coarse, licentious, and irreverent, as those of the _Cancioneiro da Vaticana_. One of the poets, D. João Manuel, like King Alfonso X of old, does beseech his colleagues to cease singing of Cupid and Macias and turn to religious subjects. But it was not Garcia de Resende’s purpose to include religious verse. Poems recording great deeds and occasions he would gladly have printed in larger number, but, as he (among others) complained in his preface, it was characteristic of the Portuguese not to record their deeds in literary form. Satiric verses he included in plenty, satire being one of the recognized functions of the poet’s art: _per trouas sam castigados_.[210] But if we turn to the poems of his collection we are amazed by the pettiness of the subjects, and our amazement grows when we remember that this was the period in the world’s whole history most calculated to awe and inspire men’s minds with the thought of vast new horizons. While Columbus was discovering America, Bartholomeu Diaz rounding the Cape of Good Hope, Vasco da Gama sailing to India, or Afonso de Albuquerque making desperate appeals for men and money to enable him to maintain his brilliant conquests, the Court poets were versifying on an incorrectly addressed letter, a lock of hair, a dingy head-dress, a very lean and aged mule, the sad fate of a lady marrying away from the Court in Beira, a quarrel between a tenor and soprano, a courtier’s velvet cap or hat of blue silk, a button more or less on a coat, the length of spurs, fashions in sleeves: themes, as José Agostinho de Macedo might say, ‘prodigiously frivolous’. When news reached Lisbon of the tragic death of D. Francisco de Almeida and of the defeat of Afonso de Albuquerque[211] and the Marshal D. Fernando de Coutinho before Calicut, with the death of the latter, Bras da Costa wrote to Garcia de Resende that at this rate he would prefer to have no pepper, and Resende answered that for his part he certainly had no intention of embarking. But, as a rule, such events received not even so trivial a comment, and no doubt the poets felt that the verse which served to pass the time at the _serões_ was inadequate to any great occasion. But the _trovador segundo as trovas de aquelle tempo_[212] had little idea of what subjects were suitable or unsuitable to poetry. A typical instance of the themes in which they delighted is an event which seems to have produced a greater impression than the discovery of new worlds: the return from Castille of a gentleman of the Portuguese Court wearing a large velvet cap. For over 300 lines of verse this cap is bandied to and fro by the witty poets. It must weigh four hundredweight, says one. Another advises him to lock it up _em arcaaz_ until he can turn it into a doublet; another bids him sell it in the Jews’ quarter. Small wonder, chimes in a fourth, that no galleys come now with velvet from Venice.[213] ‘I would not wear it at a _serão_, not for a million,’ says another. ‘A Samson could not wear it all one summer,’ is the comment of a sixth. Another remarks that he would rather read Lucan (or Lucian) (_antes leria por luçam_) in the heat of the day than wear it. ‘He will need a cart to bring it to the _serão_,’ says yet another. The wit, it will be seen, is not brilliant, although it may have effectively nipped this budding Castilian fashion and enlivened an evening. But there were duller contests. For score on score of pages the rival merits of sighing and of loving in silence are discussed by poet after poet (_O Cuidar e Sospirar_). Such a subject once started tended to accumulate verses like a snowball. But the _Cancioneiro_ also contains poems on serious topics, although they are rarer, as well as delicate, airy nothings (_sutiles nadas_) like Vimioso’s _vilancetes_.[214] There are two poems on the death of King João II, there is Luis Anriquez’ lamentation on the death of the Infante Afonso (1491), that of Luis de Azevedo on the death of the Infante Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, at Alfarrobeira, and a few poets, like Resende himself, stand out from the rest. Besides the elaborate Spanish poem by that noble prince the Constable D. Pedro we have several long poems dealing with high matters of the soul or the State. The sixty-one interesting stanzas by the querulous, satirical, intolerant ALVARO DE BRITO PESTANA treat of the condition of the city of Lisbon and the decay of morals. The correspondent of Gomez Manrique and contemporary of his nephew Jorge, in the metre of whose famous _Coplas_ he wrote, he was present at the battle of Alfarrobeira. His _trovas_ on the death of Prince Afonso, with the recurrent _choremos perda tamanha_, are wooden and artificial and his sixteen alliterative verses scarcely belong to literature, but at least he chose themes which were not concerned with passing Court fashions. The few simple lines written as he lay dying show him at his best.[215] His friend and distant relative FERNAM DA SILVEIRA, _o Coudel Môr_, is concerned with more mundane matters. A man of noble birth and high character, he was held in great honour by Afonso V and João II. The latter, a keen judge of men, had implicit confidence in the justice of this upright magistrate, who was also a soldier, a poet, and a finished courtier. He deals with affairs of State, writes an account in _trovas_ of six syllables of the _Cortes_ held by the king at Montemôr in 1477 and a short poem, on the appointment of various bishops in 1485. Or he sends a poem to his nephew Garcia de Mello with detailed instructions as to how he should dress and behave at Court. His _trovas_ are thoroughly Portuguese, vigorous, concise, and picturesque. He is less at home in the _trovas de poesia_ (i. e. _de arte mayor_) written on a journey from Évora to Thomar, but he could skilfully turn a short love poem, and for a wager of capons for Easter (with Álvaro de Brito) wrote a stanza containing as many rhymes as it has words. In fine he belonged to his age, but his poetry bears the impress of his strong character and his love of Portuguese ways. On the other hand, the younger brother of the Conde de Cantanhede, D. JOÃO DE MENESES (†1514), wrote indifferently in Portuguese or Spanish. He fought for many years in Africa, although his slight love poems, fluent and harmonious, give no sign of a life of action, and died in the expedition against Azamor.[216] Another soldier, courtier, and poet marked out by birth and ability was D. JOÃO MANUEL (_c._ 1460-99), son of the Bishop of Guarda. Legitimized in 1475 and brought up at Court with the prince Manuel, he continued to be a favourite after the latter’s accession, became Lord High Chamberlain, and was sent to the Court of Castille in 1499 to arrange the marriage of the king with the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. In Spanish octaves he had written a lament on the death of Prince Afonso, which both in feeling and technique excels the verses of Álvaro de Brito on the same subject. Towards the end of his poem he introduces the saying of St. Augustine that ‘our soul exists not where it lives but where it loves’, which in the following century was quoted by two writers so different as Ferreira de Vasconcellos and Frei Heitor Pinto and soon became a commonplace. In other works he shows a high seriousness, sometimes a sententious strain, combined with a very real poetical talent. His death during his mission to Castille was a loss for the Court and for Portuguese poetry. By another writer, FERNAM DA SILVEIRA (†1489), we have but a few poems, the principal of which is a lament for his own death, in the metre of Manrique, which he places on the lips of various ladies of the Court. His death was tragic, for, having succeeded his father as secretary to King João II, he took part in the ill-fated conspiracy of the Duke of Viseu. After lying hidden in the house of a friend he fled in disguise to Castille and thence to France, but, although he thus succeeded in prolonging his life for five years, the king’s justice relentlessly pursued and he was stabbed to death at Avignon. A favourite of João II, especially before his accession, was NUNO PEREIRA (fl. 1485), _homem galante, cortesão e bom trovador_, who married the daughter of the _Coudel Môr_ and valiantly sustained the part of _Cuidar_ against his relative Jorge da Silveira’s _Sospirar_ in the great literary tournament of the courtiers. Later, after serving as Governor (_Alcaide_) of the town of Portel, he retired to live in the country, and presents a happy picture of himself in the midst of harvesters and pruners. He finds, he says, more pleasure in his vines, in the chase, in digging and watering his garden, than in being a favourite at Court. He had not always thought thus, for when the lady he was courting married a rival he could devise no worse fate for her than to bid her go and die among the chestnut groves of Beira. He had, indeed, made a name for himself by his courtly satire, which he turned to good use in ridiculing those who came back from Castille with a supercilious disdain for everything Portuguese. It is pleasant to find him bidding them not speak their ‘insipid Castilian’ in his presence. DIOGO BRANDAM (†1530) of Oporto wrote an elaborate poem in octaves on the death of King João II. He also used the octosyllabic metre with breaks of single lines (_quebrados_) of four syllables, so familiar in Gil Vicente’s plays, and in his _Fingimento de Amores_ (27 verses of 8 octosyllabic lines), under Spanish-Italian influence, he touches a richer, more generous vein of poetry: the poet-lover descends into the region of Proserpine, the dominion of Pluto, and sees the torments of Love’s followers. His _vilancete_ to the Virgin is in the same metre with the difference that the verses have seven lines only (_abbaacc_). The spirit of Jorge de Manrique is absent from the stanzas written in the metre of his _Coplas_ by LUIS ANRIQUEZ on the fatal accident which ended the life of Prince Afonso in his teens. His lamentation on the death of King João II is written in octaves, as that of Diogo Brandam, which they resemble. Both poets invoke Death: _Ó morte que matas quem é prosperado_ (Brandam); _Ó morte que matas sem tempo e sazam_ (Anriquez). Other historical poems by Anriquez in the same metre are the verses written on the occasion of the transference of the remains of João II and thirty-five stanzas addressed to James, Duke of Braganza, when he left Lisbon with his fleet to attack Azamor in 1513. If we turn from these somewhat heavy pieces to Anriquez’ other poems we find a hymn in praise of the Virgin, written more in the manner of Alfonso X, and various love _cantigas_. The nephew of D. João de Meneses, Joam rroiz de saa, that is, JOAM RODRIGUEZ DE SÁ E MENESES (1465?-1576), studied in Italy as a disciple of Angelo Poliziano (†1594) and died a centenarian. He wrote a poem in _decimas_ describing the arms of the noble families of Portugal, and translated into _trovas_ three long letters from the Latin which by their spirit of _saudade_ appealed to Portuguese taste: Penelope to Ulysses, Laodamia to Protesilaus, and Dido to Aeneas. He was also versed in the Greek language, and for his noble character and courtly ways as well as for his learning and poetical talent was venerated by the younger generation into which he lived: Antonio Ferreira salutes him as the ‘ancient sire of the muses of this land’. The ‘most discreet’ D. FRANCISCO DE PORTUGAL, first Conde de Vimioso (†1549), although he did not live to be a centenarian, also survived most of the poets of João II’s reign and died towards the end of that of João III. Son of the Bishop of Evora and great-grandson of the first Duke of Braganza, he was created a count by King Manuel in 1515, and was equally renowned as soldier, statesman, courtier, and poet, ‘wise and prudent in peace and war’. His _Sentenças_ (1605), over one hundred of which are rhymed quatrains, were published by his grandson D. Anrique de Portugal. Some of these moral sayings have considerable subtlety, and they reveal a fine character and insight into the character of others.[217] Most of his poems, in Spanish and Portuguese, preserved in the _Cancioneiro_ are brief _cantigas_ which prove him to have been a skillful versifier and a typical Court poet. On the other hand, a feeling for Nature, a constant command of metre, and a certain passionate sadness mark out an earlier poet, DUARTE DE BRITO (fl. 1490), the friend of D. João de Meneses, from most of the other writers in Resende’s song-book. The _redondilha_ in his hands is no wooden toy but a living, moving instrument. His most celebrated poem, _em que conta o que a ele & a outro lhaconteçeo com huũ rrousinol & muitas outras cousas que vio_, is written after the fashion of Diogo Brandam’s _Fingimento de Amores_ and Garci Sanchez de Badajoz’ _Infierno de Amor_, in imitation of the Marqués de Santillana’s _El Infierno de los Enamorados_; but there is real feeling in these eighty verses of eleven lines (of which the eighth and eleventh are of four, the rest of eight syllables). The Italian influence, working through Spanish, was already present in Portuguese poetry in the fifteenth century, although Brito writes exclusively in _redondilhas_, as indeed does the introducer of the new style, Sá de Miranda, in the few and short poems which he contributed to the _Cancioneiro_ immediately before its publication. Duarte de Brito did not condescend to those artificial devices which give us in this _Cancioneiro_ a poem of sixty lines all ending in _dos_, alliterative stanzas, and other verbal tricks. The real business of the _serões_, so far as poetry was concerned, was _ouvir e glosar motes_. These _glosas_ and the similar _cantigas_ and _esparsas_, short poems of fixed form, often written with skill and spontaneous charm, were merely one of the necessary accomplishments of a courtier. Such a view of poetry could scarcely give rise to great poets, and these versifiers indeed styled themselves _trovadores_, reserving the name of poet for those who wrote, often but clumsily, in _versos de arte mayor, de muita poesia_. But, worse still, the poets of the _Cancioneiro_ were often scarcely Portuguese.[218] Many wrote in Spanish, and Spanish influence is to be found at every turn: that of Juan de Mena, Gomez and Jorge Manrique, Rodriguez de la Cámara, Macias, Santillana. Unlike Macias, who is but a name, Santillana is not mentioned, but his influence is constantly felt. On the other hand, King Dinis, unexpectedly introduced once as a poet by Pedro Homem (fl. 1490)--_invoco el rei dom Denis Da licença Daretusa_--is nowhere imitated. By method, subject, and foreign imitation, this Court poetry was thus inevitably artificial and uninspired. Perhaps in the whole _Cancioneiro_ the only poem marked by authentic fire is that of the obscure FRANCISCO DE SOUSA--the few lines beginning _Ó montes erguidos, Deixai-vos cair_. The contributions of Sá de Miranda, as those of three other famous poets, give no sign of the coming greatness of the contributor. The names of the other three are Bernardim Ribeiro, Cristovam Falcão, and the prince of all these poets, here the humblest of Cinderellas, Gil Vicente.

FOOTNOTES:

[206] _Historiadores Portugueses_ in _Opusculos_ (1907), ii. 27. The author of the _Theatrum_ has a similar verdict: _Scripsit Chronicam Ioannis II ut quidem potuit sed longe impar regis et rerum magnitudinis._

[207] _Sem letras e sem saber_, he says modestly, _me fui nisto meter._

[208] The book has as many titles as editions, that of 1545 being _Lyuro das Obras de Garcia de Resẽde que trata da vida e grãdissimas virtudes_, &c.

[209] Or he would seek to obtain them through a friend as in the case of _o Cancioneiro do abade frei Martinho_ of Alcobaça. It is improbable that Resende, who valued friendship above good poetry, altered the manuscripts he received, in spite of Francisco de Sousa’s permission: _as quaes podeys enmendar_.

[210] _Prologo._ ‘Had you forgotten that _trovas_ are still written in Portugal?’ asks Nuno Pereira of one of his victims; and of a dress it is said that it would be _certo de leuar Trouas de riso e mote_. Cf. the phrase _dar causa a trovadores_.

[211] Or Albuquerque would be mentioned in a game of _Porque’s_ (why’s) common among the _praguentos da India_: _Porque Afonso d’Albuquerque Dá pareas a el rey de Fez?_

[212] Zurara, _Cr. de D. Joam_, cap. 29.

[213] The _Cancioneiro_ contains many references to Venice. The _pimenta de Veneza_ mentioned in one of the poems must have sounded strange to Portuguese readers in 1516.

[214] e. g. _Meu bem, sem vos ver Se vivo um dia, Viver nam queria. Caland’ e sofrendo Meu mal sem medida, Mil mortes na vida Sinto nam vos vendo, E pois que vivendo Moiro toda via, Viver nam queria._

[215] _La t’arreda Satanas, Cristo Jesu a ti chamo, A ti amo, Tu Senhor me salvarás. O sinal da cruz espante Minha torpe tentaçam, Com devaçam Espero dir adiante._

[216] One of his poems has the heading: _Outro vilançete seu estãdo em Azamor antes ̃q se fynasse_.

[217] e.g. _A culpa de quem se ama doe mais & perdoase mais asinha, Nam pede louvor quem o merece, Da fee nace a rezam da fee_, &c.

[218] D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos goes so far as to call the Portuguese _Cancioneiro Geral_ a mere supplement or second part of the Spanish _Cancionero General_ (_Estudos sobre o Romanceiro_, p. 303).

III

The Sixteenth Century [1502-80]

§ 1

_Gil Vicente_

In Portugal a splendid dawn ushered in the sixteenth century. The discovery of the sea route to India, while it gave an impulse to science and literature, also increased religious fervour, since the Portuguese who contended against the Moors in India were but carrying on the work of their ancestors five centuries earlier in Portugal. Old-fashioned Portugal thus only gradually welcomed the Renaissance and stood firm against the Reformation. But in the reign of João III (1521-57) the University of Coimbra came to be one of the best-known universities in Europe. André de Gouvêa (†1548), whom Montaigne called ‘sans comparaison le plus grand principal de France’,[219] and Diogo de Teive returned from the Collège de Sainte-Barbe to inaugurate its studies, and many of its chairs were offered to distinguished Portuguese and foreign scholars, such as Ayres Barbosa (†1540) and George Buchanan (1506-82), as well as to Portuguese humanists such as Antonio de Gouvêa and Achilles Estaço (†1581). Nicholas Cleynarts or Nicolaus Clenardus (1493 or 1494-1542), Professor of Greek and Hebrew at Louvain, came to Portugal from Salamanca as tutor to the Infante Henrique in 1533, and from Portugal wrote some of his wittiest letters.[220] He found Coimbra a second Athens, and few great Portuguese writers of the century had not spent some years there or at the University before it was transferred to Coimbra from Lisbon in 1537. King João III and especially his son, the young prince João (1537-54), Cardinal Henrique (1512-80), and the many-sided Infante Luis (1506-55), _favorecedor de toda habilidad_, himself a poet of no mean order[221] and pupil of Pedro Nunez, eagerly patronized letters; the household of the accomplished Infanta Maria (1521-77) became the ‘home of the Muses’[222]; learned Luisa Sigea (†1560), of French origin, but born at Toledo and brought up in Portugal, wrote a Latin poem in praise of _Syntra_; her sister Angela, Joana Vaz, and Publia Hortensia de Castro were likewise noted for their learning, and D. Lianor de Noronha (1488-1563), daughter of Fernando, Marques de Villareal, did good service to Portuguese prose by her encouragement of translations. But Portuguese literature lost something by its latinization, and it is pleasant to turn back half a century to a time when it was humbler and more national. The ‘very prosperous’ Manuel I, Lord of the Ocean,[223] Lord of the East,[224] had been seven years king, Vasco da Gama had returned triumphantly from Calicut (1497-9), Cabral had discovered Brazil for Portugal (1500), Afonso de Albuquerque (†1515) stood on the threshold of his career of conquests and glory, the Portuguese Empire was advancing from North Africa to China,[225] the gold and spices were beginning to arrive in plenty from the East, and hope of honour and riches was drawing nobleman and peasant to Lisbon, when GIL VICENTE (_c._ 1465-1536?) introduced the drama into his

dear, dear land,
Dear for its reputation through the world.

Dressed as a herdsman on the night of June 7, 1502, he congratulated the queen on the birth of the Infante, later King João III (born during the night of June 6), in a Spanish monologue of 114 lines. This speech gives promise of two qualities apparent in his later work: extreme naturalness (the embarrassed peasant wonders open-mouthed at the grand palace and his thoughts turn at once to his village) and love of Nature (mountain and meadow are aflower for joy of the new prince born). But, it may reasonably be asked, where is the drama? It consists principally in the _vaqueiro_, who is restless as one of the wicked in a Basque _pastorale_. He rushes into the queen’s chamber, has a look at its luxuries, turns to address the queen, declares that he is in a hurry and must be going, leaps in gladness, and finally introduces some thirty courtiers in herdsman’s dress who offer gifts of milk, eggs, cheese, and honey. There is little in this simple piece--the _Visitaçam_, or _Monologo do Vaqueiro_--to foreshadow the sovereign genius,[226] the Plautus, the Shakespeare[227] of Portugal that was Gil Vicente. His life is wrapped in obscurity, and the known existence of half a dozen contemporary Gil Vicentes makes research a risky operation. There was a page (1475) and an _escudeiro_ (1482) of King João II, an official at Santarem, a Santarem carpenter (†1500), there was a Gil Vicente in India in 1512,[228] and a Gil Vicente goldsmith at Lisbon. We know that the poet spoke of himself as near death (_visinho da morte_) in 1531, although apparently in good health. This would seem to place his birth a few years before 1470.[229] Unfortunately the _Auto da Festa_, in which he says that he is over sixty, is undated. As, however, it was written before the _Templo de Apolo_ (1526) we may place it probably about 1525. We are thus brought back to about the same date (_c._ 1465). Almost certainly he was not of exalted parentage.[230] Indeed, he would appear to have been slighted for his humble birth, and sarcastically spoke of himself as the son of a pack-saddler and born at Pederneira (Estremadura).[231] He may have been the son of Luis Vicente or of Martim Vicente, ‘said to have been a silversmith of Guimarães’ (Minho).[232] The frequent mention of the province of Beira is, however, noticeable in his plays. If it were only that his peasants use words such as _nega_, _nego_, which according to the grammarian Fernam d’Oliveira were peculiar to Beira (in 1536),[233] it might pass for a dramatic device, since Oliveira remarks that old-fashioned words will not be out of place if we assign them to an old man of Beira or a peasant.[234] Indeed, the grammarian seems to have had Gil Vicente especially in view (he mentions him in another connexion) since three of the six words that he notes--_abem_, _acajuso_, _algorrem_--occur in three successive lines of the _Barca do Purgatorio_, and another, _samicas_, is as great a favourite with Vicente as at first was _soncas_,[235] derived from Enzina. But it is impossible to explain all the references to Beira by the supposition that _beirão_ is equivalent to rustic and Beira to Boeotia, for Beira and the Serra da Estrella intrude constantly and indeed pervade his work. He shows personal knowledge of the country between Manteigas and Fundão, and we may suspect that it was in order to connect ‘Portuguese Fame desired of all nations’ with Beira ‘our province’ rather than with rusticity that he makes her keep ducks as a _mocinha da Beira_. We do not know when Vicente came to Lisbon, nor whether, as José de Cabedo de Vasconcellos, another (17th c.) genealogist, would have us believe, he became the tutor (_mestre de rhetorica_) of King Manuel, then Duke of Beja. Of his life at Lisbon our information is almost as meagre. We know, of course, that he accompanied the Court to Evora, Coimbra, Thomar, Almeirim, and other towns to set up and act in his plays, that besides acting in his plays he wrote songs for them and music for the songs. We know that he received considerable gifts in money and in kind both from King Manuel and from João III, in whose reign he complains of being penniless and neglected. Some hold that he married his first wife, Branca Bezerra, in 1512, that he owned the _Quinta do Mosteiro_ near Torres Vedras (a supposition no longer tenable), that the name of his second wife was Melicia Rodriguez, but we have no certainty as to this, nor as to the number of his children. The accomplished Paula became musician and lady-in-waiting to the Infanta Maria before the death of her father, whom she helped--runs the legend--in the composition of his plays,[236] as she helped her brother Luis in editing them in 1562. From a document concerning another brother, Belchior, we know that Gil Vicente (_seu pae que Deus haja_) died before April 16, 1540. There is some reason to believe that he died in the year of his last play (1536) or early in 1537. From his assertion that the mere collection of his works was a great burden to his old age[237] we might judge him to have been very old, but he may have been worn out with labour in many fields and his health had not always been good. He suffered from fever and plague, which brought him to death’s door in 1525, and he had grown stout with advancing age. An incident at Santarem on the occasion of the great earthquake of 1531, so vividly described by Garcia de Resende, shows him in a very attractive light, for by his personal prestige and eloquent words he succeeded in restraining the monks and quieting the half-maddened populace, and thus saved the ‘new Christians’ from ill-treatment or massacre.

We know a little more about him if we identify him with Gil Vicente, the goldsmith of Queen Lianor (1458-1525), sister of King Manuel and widow of King João II, whose most famous work is the beautiful Belem monstrance, wrought of the first tribute of gold from the East (from Quiloa or Kilwa).[238] The probabilities in favour of identity are so convincing that we are bound to assume it unless an insuperable obstacle presents itself. Our faith in manuscript documents and genealogies is not increased by the fact that one investigator, the Visconde Sanches de Baena (1822-1909), emerges with the triumphant conclusion that the two Gil Vicentes were uncle and nephew, while another, Dr. Theophilo Braga, declares that they are cousins. Perhaps we may be permitted to believe in neither and to restore Gil Vicente to himself. For indeed this was a singular instance of cousinly love. The goldsmith wrote verses; the poet takes a remarkable interest in the goldsmith’s art.[239] The goldsmith is appointed inspector (_vedor_) of all works in gold and silver at the convent of Thomar, the Lisbon Hospital of All Saints, and Belem. The poet is particularly fond of referring to Thomar,[240] and in its convent in 1523 staged his _Farsa de Inés Pereira_ (who lived at Thomar with her first husband), while at the Hospital of All Saints was played the _Barca do Purgatorio_ in 1518. The goldsmith was in the service of the widow of João II, Queen Lianor, who mentions two of his chalices in her will; the poet at the request of the same Queen Lianor wrote verses, probably in 1509, in a poetical contest about a gold chain and was encouraged by her to write his early plays.[241] The goldsmith was _Mestre da Balança_ from 1513 to 1517; the poet goes out of his way to refer to _os da Moeda_, familiarly but not as one of them, in 1521. He henceforth devoted himself more ardently to the literary side of his genius, speaks of himself as Gil Vicente who writes _autos_ for the king, and with an occasional sigh[242] that he can no longer afford to stage his plays as splendidly as of old (in King Manuel’s reign) produces them with increasing frequency. ‘Had Gil Vicente been a goldsmith and a goldsmith of such skill,’ said the late Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo (1856-1912), ‘it would have been impossible for him to leave no trace of it in his dramatic works and for all the contemporary writers who speak of him to have kept complete silence as to his artistic talent.’[243] But his work is essentially that of an artist (Menéndez y Pelayo himself well calls him an _alma de artista_)[244]: involuntarily one likens his sketches to some rough terra-cotta figure of Tanagra or sculpture in early Gothic, and his lyrics are clear-cut gems, a thing very rare in Portuguese literature. Intensely Portuguese in his lyrism and his satire, he is almost un-Portuguese in the extreme plasticity of his genius. Concrete, definite images spring from his brain in contrast to the vaguer effusions of most Portuguese poets. And if Queen Lianor’s goldsmith, like the troubadour _ourives_ Elias Cairel, or, to come to the fifteenth century, like Diogo Fernandez and Afonso Valente of the _Cancioneiro de Resende_,[245] set himself to write verses, this would call for no comment. Every one wrote verses. Had a celebrated poet--say the Gil Vicente of 1520--wrought the _custodia_ his contemporaries might have recorded the fact, but Gil Vicente was not a famous poet when the _custodia_ was begun in 1503. Stress was therefore naturally laid on the plays of Gil Vicente the goldsmith, not on the art of Gil Vicente the poet. The historian Barros refers in 1540 to Gil Vicente _comico_,[246] and since 1517 he had certainly been more _comico_ than _ourives_. But the _comico_ who was dramatist and lyric poet, musician, actor, preacher in prose and verse, may also have been a goldsmith. His versatility was that of Damião de Goes a little later or of his own contemporary Garcia de Resende, with genius added. The fact that the official document in which _Gil Vicente lavrador da Rainha Lianor_ is appointed to his post in the Lisbon _Casa da Moeda_ (Feb. 4, 1513[247]) has above it a contemporary note _Gil Vᵗᵉ trouador mestre da balãça_ should in itself be conclusive evidence that the poet was the goldsmith of the queen. This modest but intimate position at Court accords well with what we know of the poet and with the production of his plays. The offerings at the end of the _Visitaçam_ seem to have suggested to Queen Lianor the idea of its repetition on Christmas morning, but Gil Vicente, considering its matter inappropriate, wrote a new play with parts for six shepherds. This _Auto Pastoril Castelhano_ is four times as long as the _Visitaçam_. The shepherds pass the time in dance and song, games, riddles, and various conversation (the dowry of the bride of one of them is catalogued in the manner of Enzina[248] and the Archpriest of Hita). To them the Angels announce the birth of the Redeemer, and they go to sing and dance before _aquel garzon_. The principal part, that of the mystic shepherd Gil Terron, ‘inclined to the life contemplative’, well read (_letrudo_) in the Bible, with some knowledge of metaphysics and perhaps of the _Corte Imperial_, devoted to Nature and the _sierras benditas_, was evidently played by Gil Vicente himself. A fortnight later, for the Day of Kings, he had ready the _Auto dos Reis Magos_ (1503), again at the request of Queen Lianor, who had ‘been very pleased’ with what Vicente himself called a _pobre cousa_. This brief interval of time limited the length of the new play. Its action is as slight. A shepherd enters who has lost his way to Bethlehem. He meets another shepherd and then a hermit, whom they ply with irreverent problems. To them enters a knight of Araby, and finally the three kings, singing a _vilancete_. The _Auto da Sibila Cassandra_ has been assigned to the same year, but is probably a later play (1513?). Nearly twice as long as the _Auto Pastoril Castelhano_, it combines the ordinary scenic display--_todo o apparato_--of a Christmas _representação_ with a presentment of the early prophecies now to be fulfilled, and introduces Solomon, Isaiah, Abraham, and Moses, who describes the creation of the world. The play includes a profane theme, since Cassandra in her mystic aversion from marriage realistically portrays the sad life of married women in Portugal. Although Cassandra appears as a shepherdess and her aunt Peresica as a peasant, they speak a purer, more flowing Castilian than the _toscos, rusticos pastores_ of the preceding _autos_, and the play is remarkable for the beauty of its lyrics--_Dicen que me case yo_, _Sañosa está la niña_, _Muy graciosa es la doncella_, and _A la guerra_. For the Corpus Christi procession of 1504 was provided, at short notice from Queen Lianor, the _Auto de S. Martinho_. The subject of this piece, merely ten dodecasyllabic _oitavas_ followed by a solemn _prosa_, is that of El Greco’s marvellous picture--St. Martin dividing his cloak with a beggar, whom Vicente treats with characteristic sympathy and insight:

¿Criante rocío, qué te hice yo[249]
Que las hiervecitas floreces por Mayo
Y sobre mis carnes no echas un sayo?

The _Auto dos Quatro Tempos_, of uncertain date, acted before the Court in the Lisbon palace of Alcaçova on Christmas morning in or after 1511, opens with a mystic ode on the Nativity and a _vilancete_ (_A ti dino de adorar_) and proceeds rapidly with snatches of song in a splendid rivalry between the four seasons. The praises of Spring are sung with a delightful freshness, as are Winter’s rages, while Summer in a straw hat appears sallow and fever-stricken. Jupiter comes with countless classical allusions and David with much Latin, and they all worship together the new-born King. Very different is the _Auto da Alma_, written for Queen Lianor and acted in King Manuel’s Lisbon palace of Ribeira on the night of Good Friday, 1518 (Snr. Braamcamp Freire’s plausible suggestion in place of the commonly accepted 1508). It represents the eternal strife between the soul and sin. The soul, slowly journeying in the company of its guardian angel, is alternately tempted by Satan with the delights of the world, with fine dresses and jewels, and exhorted by the Angel, till it arrives at the Church, the Innkeeper of Souls, and confesses its guilt, imploring protection (_Ach neige, du schmerzenreiche!_). Then, while Satan in a restless fury of disappointment makes a last effort to secure his victim, the ransomed soul is fortified with celestial fare served by St. Augustine and other _doutores_. The whole theme, to which the language rises fully adequate, is treated with great delicacy and with a mystic fervour.

In 1505 King Manuel and his Court in his Lisbon palace had witnessed the first of those _farsas_ in which Gil Vicente has sketched for all time Portuguese life in the first third of the sixteenth century. It rapidly became popular and went from hand to hand as a _folha volante_, receiving from the people the name of _Quem tem farelos?_ i.e. the first three words of the play. The plots of the twelve _farsas_ written from 1505 to 1531 are so slight that only one calls for detailed notice, the _Farsa de Inés Pereira_[250] (1523), which in its carefully defined characters and developed story more closely resembles a modern comedy. It tells how the hapless Inés, having rejected a plain suitor for a more romantic lover, a poor but deceptive _escudeiro_ presented to her by two Jewish marriage agents, learns by bitter experience the truth of the old proverb that ‘an ass that carries me is better than a horse that throws me’. But the types and persons in all these farces are etched with so much realism and humour that they bite into the memory and rank with the living malicious sketches of _Lazarillo de Tormes_. Who can forget the famished escudeiro Aires Rosado with his book of songs (_cancioneiro_) and guitar, continuing to sing beneath the window of his love while the curses of her mother fall thick as snowflakes on his head,[251] or the lady of his affections, vain and idle Isabel, or his servant (_moço_) Apariço who draws so cruel a picture of his master, or that other penniless _escudeiro_ who considers himself ‘the very palace’ and calls up his _moço_ Fernando at midnight to light the lamp and hold the inkstand while he writes down his latest verses?[252] Equally well sketched is the splendid poverty-plagued _fidalgo_ who walks abroad accompanied by six pages, but cannot pay his chaplain or his goldsmith; his ill-used, servile, ambitious chaplain[253]; the witch Genebra Pereira mixing the hanged man’s ear, the heart of a black cat, and other grim ingredients: _Alguidar, alguidar, que feito foste ao luar_[254]; the household of the Jewish tailor who delights in songs of battles-at-a-distance and is filled with pride when the _Regedor_ salutes him in the street[255]; M. Diafoirus’ lineal ancestors Mestres Anrique, Felipe, Fernando, and Torres[256]; the sporting priest[257]; the unfaithful wife of the Portuguese who has embarked for India with Tristão da Cunha; the vainglorious, grandiloquent Spaniard who takes the opportunity to pay his court to her.[258] They are all drawn from life with a master hand, even the more insignificant figures, the girl keeping ducks, the _moços_, the gipsy horse-dealers,[259] the old man amorous,[260] the carriers faring leisurely along with their mules, the braggart who disables six of his fourteen imaginary opponents, the Frenchman and Italian with their stock phrases _Par ma foi_, _la belle France_, _tutti quanti_,[261] the wily and impudent negro, the poor _ratinho_[262] Gonçalo, who loses his hare and capons and his clothes as well, the page of peasant birth ambitious to become a _cavaleiro fidalgo_, the roguish and pretentious palace pages. Side by side with these farces Vicente continued to write religious _autos_ as well as comedies and tragicomedies. The difference between these various pieces is less of kind than of the occasion on which they were produced, the _obras de devação_ on Christmas morning or other solemn day,[263] the _farsas de folgar, comedias_, &c., at the evening parties--those famous _serões_ of King Manuel’s reign to which the courtiers thronged at dusk, and which Sá de Miranda remembered with regret.[264] All provide us with realistic sketches since the background is filled with the common people, the real hero of Gil Vicente’s plays as it is of Fernam Lopez’ chronicles. Thus the _Auto da Mofina Mendes_ (Christmas, 1534), besides its heavenly _gloria_ with the Virgin, Gabriel, Prudence, Poverty, Humility, and Faith, has a very life-like peasant scene in which Mofina Mendes, personifying Misfortune, represents a Portuguese version of _Pierrette et son pot au lait_. The _Auto Pastoril Portugues_ (Christmas, 1523) is a similar scene of peasant life, relating the cross-currents of the shepherds’ loves and the finding of an image of the Virgin on the hills. The _Auto da Feira_, acted before King João at Lisbon in 1527, is a more elaborate Christmas play. Mercury, Time, Rome, and the Devil attend a fair, and this furnishes opportunity for a vigorous attack upon the Church of Rome, with her indulgences for others and her self-indulgence, who has not the kings of the Earth but herself to blame if she is rushing on ruin, ruin that will be inevitable unless she mends her ways. But to the fair also come the peasants Denis and Amancio, as dissatisfied with their wives as their wives are dissatisfied with them (their conversation is most voluble and natural), and market-girls, basket on head, come down singing from the hills. Another Christmas play, the _Auto da Fé_, was acted in the royal chapel at Almeirim in 1510, and consists of a simple conversation between Faith and two shepherds. The _Breve Summario da Historia de Deos_[265] (1527) and the _Auto da Cananea_ (written for the Abbess of Odivellas in 1534) are both based on the Bible; the former, which contains the _vilancete_ sung by Abel (_Adorae montanhas_), outlines the story of the Fall, of Job, and of the New Testament to the Crucifixion, sometimes in passages of great beauty. The latter develops the episode of the woman of Canaan (Matt. xv. 21-8). The great trilogy of _Barcas_, which ranks among Vicente’s most important works, is of earlier date. The first part, _Auto da Barca do Inferno_, was acted before Queen Maria _pera consolação_ as she lay on her death-bed in 1517, the second, _Auto da Barca do Purgatorio_, at Christmas of the following year in Lisbon, and the _Auto da Barca da Gloria_ at Almeirim in 1519. The plot, again, is of the simplest: the Devil, combining the parts of Charon and Rhadamanthus, ferry-man and judge, invites Death’s victims to show cause why they should not enter his boat; and the interest is in the light thus thrown upon the earthly behaviour of nobleman, judge, advocate, usurer, fool, love-lorn friar, the cheating market-woman, the cobbler who throve by deceiving the people, the peasant who skimped his tithes, the little shepherdess who had seen God ‘often and often’, of Count, King,[266] and Emperor, Bishop, Cardinal, and Pope. The first part ends with a noble invocation to the knights who had died fighting in Africa, and the second begins with the mystic jewelled _romance_: _Remando vam remadores_.