The Author's invocation.
O thou Prince little less than divine! I beseech thy sacred virtues to
bear with all patience the shortcomings of my too daring pen, that would
attempt so lofty a subject as is the recounting of thy virtuous deeds,
worthy of so much glory. For the eternal duration of these thy actions,
if the end of my attempt be profitable, will exalt thy fame and bring
great honour to thy memory, giving a useful lesson to all those princes
that shall follow thine example. For of a certainty it is not without
cause that I ask pardon of thy virtues, knowing my insufficiency to
compass such a task, and that I have more just reason to expect blame
for doing less than I ought, than for saying over much. Thy glory, thy
praises, thy fame, so fill my ears and employ my eyes that I know not
well where to begin. I hear the prayers of the innocent souls of those
barbarous peoples, almost infinite in number, whose ancient race since
the beginning of the world hath never seen the divine light, but who are
now by thy genius, by thy infinite expense, and by thy great labours,
brought into the true path of salvation, washed in the waters of
baptism, anointed with the holy oil, and freed from that wretched abode
of theirs, knowing at this present what darkness lay concealed under the
semblance of light in the days of their ancestors. I will not say with
what filial piety, as they contemplate the divine power, they are ever
praying for a reward to thy great merits--for that is a matter which
cannot be denied by him who hath well considered the sentences of St.
Thomas and St. Gregory[N8] on the knowledge possessed by spirits
concerning those who have been, or are, profitable to them in this
world. I see those Garamantes,[N9] those Ethiopians, who live under the
shadow of Mount Caucasus, black in colour, because of living just
opposite to the full height of the sun's rays--for he, being in the head
of Capricorn, shineth on them with wondrous heat, as is shown by his
movements from the centre of his eccentric, or, in another way, by the
nearness of these people to the torrid zone,--I see the Indians of the
greater and the lesser India,[N10] all alike in colour, who call upon me
to write of thy gifts of money and of raiment, of the passing of thy
ships, and of thy hospitality--which those received who, either to visit
the Apostle,[N11] or to see the beauty of the world, came to the ends of
our Spain. And those dwellers on the Nile, whose multitudes possess the
lands of that ancient and venerable city of Thebes,[N12] they, too,
astonish me, for I see them clothed in thy livery, and their bodies,
that had never known a covering, now carrying robes of varied colours,
while the necks of their women are adorned with jewels of gold and
silver in rich workmanship. But what has caused this save the
munificence of thine expenses and the labours of thy servitors, set in
motion by thy beneficent will, by the which thou hast transported to the
ends of the East things created in the West? Yet not even the prayers
and the cries of these peoples, though they were many, were of such
price as the acclamations I heard from the greatness of the Germans,
from the courtesy of the French, from the valour of the English, and
from the wisdom of the Italians,[N13] cries that were accompanied by
others of divers nations and languages, all renowned by lineage and
virtues. Oh thou, say these, who enterest the labyrinth of such great
glory, why dost thou busy thyself only with the nations of the East?
Speak to us, for we traverse the lands and encircle the circumference of
the Earth, and know the Courts of Princes and the houses of great lords.
Know that thou wilt not find another that can equal the excellency of
the fame of this man, if thou judgest by a just weight of all that
pertains to a great prince. With reason mayst thou call him a temple of
all the virtues. But how plaintive do I find the people of our nation
because I place the testimonies of some other race before theirs. For
here in Portugal I meet with great lords, prelates, nobles, widowed
ladies, Knights of the Orders of Chivalry, Masters and Doctors of the
holy faith, with many graduates of every science, young scholars,
companies of esquires, and men of noble breeding, with mechanics and an
untold multitude of the people. And some of these shew me towns and
castles; others villages and fields; others rich benefices; others great
and wealthy farms; others country houses and estates and liberties;
others charters for pensions and for marriages; others gold and silver,
money and cloth; others health in their bodies and deliverance from
perils which they have gained by means of thee; others countless
servants both male and female; while others there are that tell me of
monasteries and churches that thou didst repair and rebuild, and of the
great and rich ornaments that thou didst offer in many holy places.
Others, again, pointed out to me the marks of the chains they bore in
the captivity from which thou didst rescue them. What shall I say of the
needy beggars that I see before me laden with alms? And of the great
multitude of friars of every order that shew me the garments with which
thou didst clothe their bodies, and the abundance of food with which
thou didst satisfy their necessities? I had already made an end of this
chapter, had I not descried the approach of a multitude of ships with
tall sails laden from the islands thou didst people in the great Ocean
Sea,[N14] which called on me to wait for them, as they longed to prove
that they ought not to be omitted from this register. And they displayed
before me their great cattle-stalls, the valleys full of sugar cane from
which they carried store to distribute throughout the world: they
brought also as witnesses to their great prosperity all the dwellers in
the kingdom of the Algarve.[N15] Ask, said they, whether these people
ever knew what it was to have abundance of bread until our Prince
peopled the uninhabited isles, where no dwelling existed save that of
wild beasts. Next they shewed me great rows of beehives full of swarms
of bees, from which great cargoes of wax and honey are carried to our
realm; and besides these, lofty houses towering to the sky, which have
been and are being built with wood from those parts. But why should I
mention the multitude of things that were told me in thy praise, though
all of them were things that I could write without injuring the truth?
Let me tell how there now sounded in my ears some other voices very
contrary to these I have recounted hitherto: voices for which I should
have felt great compassion had I not discovered them to be the cries of
those outside our law. For there addressed me countless souls of Moors,
both on this side the Straits, and also beyond,[N16] of whom many had
died by thy lance in the cruel war thou hast ever waged against them.
And others presented themselves before me loaded with chains, their
countenances pitiable to behold, men who were captured by thy ships
through the strength of the bodies of thy vassals; but in these I
noticed that they complained not so much of the ill fortune that
overtook them at the end as of their fate in earlier life, that is, of
the seductive error in which that false schismatic Mohammed[N17] left
them. And so I conclude my preface, begging that if thy great virtues,
if the excellence of thy great and noble deeds, suffer any loss by my
ignorance and rudeness, thy magnanimous greatness may vouchsafe to look
on my fault with a propitious countenance.