1325-1521
§ 1
_Early Prose_
With prose a new period opens, since, although there are Portuguese
documents of the late twelfth century[104] and the Latin chrysalis
was in an advanced stage of development even earlier, prose as a
literary instrument does not begin before the fourteenth century or
the end of the thirteenth at the earliest. The fragments of an early
_Poetica_[105] clearly show how slow and awkward were still the
movements of prose at a time when poetry had attained an exceedingly
graceful expression. The next two centuries redressed the balance in
the favour of prose. The victory of Aljubarrota (1385) made it possible
to carry on the national work begun by King Dinis--the preparation
of Portugal’s resources for a high destiny. In this constructive
process literature was not forgotten, and indeed its deliberate
encouragement, as though it were an industry or a pine-forest, may
account for the fact that it consisted mainly of prose--chronicles,
numerous translations from Latin, Spanish, and other languages, works
of religious or practical import. The first kings of the dynasty
of Avis, who rendered noble service to Portuguese literature, were
not poets, and in the second half of the fifteenth century Spanish
influence, checked at Aljubarrota, succeeded by peaceful penetration
in recovering all and more than all that it had lost, till it became
common to hear lyrics of Boscan sung in the streets of Lisbon,[106] and
uncommon for a Portuguese poet to versify in his mother tongue.[107]
Prose was more national. King Dinis had encouraged translation into
Portuguese, and among other works his grandfather King Alfonso the
Learned’s _Cronica General_ was translated by his order. The only
edition that we have, _Historia Geral de Hespanha_ (1863), is cut short
in the reign of King Ramiro (cap. ccii, p. 192). The first ‘O’ of the
preface in the manuscript contains the king in purple robe and crown
of gold, pen in hand, with a book before him. The style is primitive,
often a succession of short sentences beginning with ‘And’.[108] In
the convents brief lives of saints, portions of the Bible, prayers and
regulations were written in Portuguese. Thus we have thirteenth-or
fourteenth-century fragments of the rules of S. Bento, _Fragmentos de
uma versão antiga da regra de S. Bento_, with its traces of a Latin
original (e. g. _os desprezintes Deos_ = _contemnentes Deum_); the
_Actos dos Apostolos_, written in the middle of the fifteenth century
by Frei Bernardo de Alcobaça and Frei Nicolao Vieira, that is, copied
by them from an older manuscript; the eloquent prayers (_Libro de
Horas_) translated by another Alcobaça monk, Frei João Claro (†1520?);
the _Historias abreviadas do Testamento Velho_, printed from a
manuscript of the fourteenth century, or of the thirteenth retouched in
the fourteenth. The translation is close; the style foreshadows that of
the _Leal Conselheiro_. The importance of these and other fragmentary
versions of the Bible, in which there can rarely be a doubt as to the
meaning of the words, is obvious. Extracts from the _Vida de Eufrosina_
and the _Vida de Maria Egipcia_, published in 1882 by Jules Cornu from
the manuscripts formerly in the Monastery of Alcobaça, now in the
Torre do Tombo, show that they were written in vigorous if primitive
prose (14th c.). _A Lenda dos Santos Barlaam e Josaphat_ is perhaps
a little later (end of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth
century). The _Visão de Tundalo_, of which the Latin original, _Visio
Tundali_, was written by Frei Marcos not long after the date of the
vision (1140), exists in two Portuguese versions, probably both of the
fifteenth century (Monastery of Alcobaça). The _Vida de Santo Aleixo_
also exists in two codices belonging to the middle and beginning of
the fifteenth century, and Dr. Esteves Pereira, who published the
latter, considers that the variants point to an earlier manuscript
of the beginning of the fourteenth or end of the thirteenth century.
To about the same period (14th-15th c.) belong the _Lenda de Santo
Eloy_, the _Vida de Santo Amaro_, the _Vida de Santa Pelagia_, and many
similar short devout treatises and legends which concern literature
less than the development of the Portuguese language. Both literature
and philology are interested in the early fifteenth-century work
printed by Dr. Leite de Vasconcellos from the manuscript in the Vienna
_Hofbibliothek_: _O Livro de Esopo_, which consists not of direct
translations[109] from _Exopo greguo_ of Antioch but of _estorias
ffremosas de animalias_, told in the manner of Aesop, half a century
before William Caxton and Robert Henryson, with great naturalness,
vigour, and brevity.
The earliest entry of the _Cronica Breve do Archivo Nacional_ is
dated 1391, and both it and the _Cronicas Breves e memorias avulsas
de Santa Cruz de Coimbra_ are laconic annals of the first kings of
Portugal, a few lines covering a whole reign. The _Livro da Noa de
Santa Cruz de Coimbra_ is an extract from the _Livro das Heras_ of
the same convent, and is, as the latter title indicates, a similar
simple chronicle of events by years.[110] It begins in Latin, then
Latin and Portuguese entries alternate till 1405. From 1406 to the
end (1444) they are exclusively Portuguese. The _Cronica da Ordem
dos Frades Menores_ (1209-85) is a fifteenth-century Portuguese
translation of a fourteenth-century Latin chronicle, and has been
carefully edited by Dr. J. J. Nunes from the manuscript in the Lisbon
Biblioteca Nacional; the _Vida de D. Tello_ (15th c.), and the _Vida
de S. Isabel_, the Queen-consort of King Dinis (earlier 15th c.), are
‘historical’ biographies which contain more legend and less history
than the _Cronica da Fundaçam do Moesteiro de S. Vicente de Lixboa_
(_Cronica dos Vicentes_), a fifteenth-century version from a Latin
original, _Indiculum_, of the eleventh century. There is far more life
if equal brevity in the _Cronica da Conquista do Algarve_ (_Cronica de
como Dom Payo Correa. .. tomou este reino de Algarve aos Moros_)--a
rapid, vivid sketch which reads almost like a chapter out of Fernam
Lopez. Here at last was some one with will and power to make the
dry bones live.[111] But meanwhile history of another kind had been
written from a very early date. As a first rough catalogue of names
the _livros de linhagens_, books of descent, as they were called by
their compilers,[112] go back farther than the chronicles or religious
prose, but so far as concerns their claim to literary form they belong
like those to the fourteenth century. Of the four that have come down
to us the _Livro Velho_ is a jejune family register (11th-14th c.);
the second is a mere fragment of the same kind. The manuscript of the
third (_O Nobiliario do Collegio dos Nobres_) was bound up with the
_Cancioneiro da Ajuda_, and together with the fourth, _O Nobiliario
do Conde D. Pedro_, represents the lost original of the _Livro de
Linhagens_ of D. PEDRO, CONDE DE BARCELLOS (1289-1354). The _Nobiliario
do Conde_ has been shown by Alexandre Herculano, who printed it from
the manuscript in the Torre do Tombo, to be the work of various
authors extending over more than a century (13th-14th), the Conde de
Barcellos being but one of them. It was in fact compiled like a modern
peerage,[113] and was not intended to be final, new entries being added
as time made them necessary, so that the passage _diz O Conde D. Pedro
em seu livro_ is as natural as the mention of Innocencio da Silva in
a later volume of his great dictionary. But it was this son of King
Dinis who with infinite diligence searched for documents far and wide,
had recourse to the writings of King Alfonso X and others, and spared
no pains to give the work an historical as well as a genealogical
character. His researches (_Ouue de catar, he says, por gram trabalho
por muitas terras escripturas que fallauam das linhagens_) set an
excellent example to Fernam Lopez. Certainly the _Livro de Linhagens_
is a vast catalogue of names, with at most a brief note after the
name, as ‘he was a good priest’ or ‘a very good poet’; but it also
gives succinct stories of the Kings of the Earth from Adam, including
Priam, Alexander, Julius Caesar, and the early kings of Portugal, and
it contains rare but charming intervals, green oases of legend and
anecdote, such as the tale of King Lear with its happy ending, or the
account of King Ramiro going to see his wife, who was a captive of the
Moors.[114] Count Pedro, by his humanity and his generous conception
of what a genealogy should be, really made the book his own. It was
naturally consulted by the early chroniclers, its worth was recognized
by the ablest author of the _Monarchia Lusitana_,[115] and recently,
in the skilful hands of D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, it
has rendered invaluable service in reconstructing the lives of the
thirteenth-century poets.[116]
The _Livro de Linhagens_ refers not only to King Lear but to Merlin,
King Arthur, Lancelot, and the Isle of Avalon. Many other allusions,
both earlier and later, to the Breton cycle, the _matière de Bretagne_,
are to be found in early Portuguese literature: to the lovers Tristan
and Iseult, to the _cantares de Cornoalha_,[117] to the chivalry of the
Knights of the Round Table. In the fourteenth century many in Portugal
were baptized with the name of Lancelot, Tristan, and Percival; and
Nun’ Alvarez (1360-1431) chose Galahad for his model, and came as near
realizing his ideal as may be given to mortal man. In Gil Vicente’s
time the name Percival had already descended to the sphere of the
peasants: as Passival (i. II) in 1502 (_Auto Pastoril Castelhano_) and
Pessival (i. 117) in 1534 (_Auto de Mofina Mendes_).
The early Portuguese _Cancioneiros_ contain many references to
this cycle, and the _Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti_ opens with five
celebrated songs,[118] imitations of Breton _lais_, with rubrics
explaining their subjects, and mentioning King Arthur and Tristan,
Iseult, Cornwall, Maraot of Ireland, and Lancelot. Whether they were
incorporated in the _Cancioneiro_ from a Portuguese _Tristam_ earlier
than the Spanish version (1343?), or, as is more probable, directly
from the Old-French _Historia Tristani_, their presence here is a
sufficient witness to the Portuguese fondness for such themes. It was
but natural that a Celtic people living by the sea, delighting in
vague legends and in foreign novelties, should have felt drawn towards
these misty tales of love and wandering adventure, which carried
them west as far as Cornwall and Ireland, and also East, through the
search for the Holy Grail. It was natural that they should undergo
their influence earlier and more strongly than their more direct
and more national neighbours the Castilians, whose clear, definite
descriptions in the twelfth-century _Poema del Cid_ would send those
legends drifting back to the dim regions of their birth. (Even to-day
connexion with and sympathy for Ireland is far commoner in Galicia than
in any other part of Spain.) Unhappily, most of the early Portuguese
versions of the Breton legends have been lost. King Duarte in his
library possessed _Merlim_, _O Livro de Tristam_, and _O Livro de
Galaaz_. The probability that these were written in Portuguese, not in
Spanish, is increased by the survival of _A Historia dos Cavalleiros
da Mesa Redonda e da Demanda do Santo Graall_, as yet only partially
published from the manuscript (2594) in the Vienna _Hofbibliothek_.
It was written probably in the fourteenth century, perhaps at the end
of the thirteenth, although the Vienna manuscript is more recent and
belongs to the fifteenth century, in which the work was referred to
by the poet Rodriguez de la Cámara.[119] It is a Portuguese version
of the story of the Holy Grail, and, although not a continuous
translation, was evidently written with the French original (doubtfully
ascribed to Robert de Boron,[120] author of a different work on the
same subject) constantly in view. Traces of French remain in its
prose.[121] This was clearly part of a larger work,[122] perhaps of
a whole cycle of works dealing with the search for the Holy Grail.
The only others that we have in print are the _Estorea de Vespeseano_
and the _Livro de Josep ab Arimatia_, the manuscript of which was
discovered in the nineteenth century in the Torre do Tombo. This, in
the same way as the _Demanda do Santo Graall_, is a later (16th c.)
copy of a thirteenth-fourteenth-century Portuguese translation or
adaptation from the French, and retains in its language signs of French
origin. The incunable _Estorea de Vespeseano_ (Lixboa, 1496) is a work
in twenty-nine short chapters, which only incidentally[123] refers
to the Holy Grail, but recounts vividly the event mentioned in the
_Demanda_[124]: the destruction of Jerusalem by Vespasian and Titus.
It was also known formerly as _Destroyçam de Jerusalem_.[125] It is an
anonymous translation, made in the middle of the fifteenth century,
not from the French _Destruction de Jérusalem_, but from the Spanish
_Estoria del noble Vespesiano_ (_c._ 1485 and 1499). Dr. Esteves
Pereira believes that the 1499 Spanish edition is a retranslation from
the Portuguese text originally translated from the Spanish.
Tennyson’s revival of the Arthurian legend in England evoked no
corresponding interest in Portugal in the nineteenth century, and
the primitive and touching story as published in 1887 has left Sir
Percival in the very middle of an adventure for over a generation. The
descent of the Amadis romances from the noble ideal of chivalry of
King Arthur’s Court is obvious, but their exact pedigree, the date and
nationality of the first ancestor of the Amadis who is still with us,
has been the subject of some little contention.
_Amadis de Gaula_ has indeed been doubly fortunate. The successor
of Lancelot, Galahad, and Tristan as a fearless and loyal knight, he
early won his way in the Peninsula; he was spared by the priest and
barber in the _Don Quixote_ scrutiny, and now when Vives’ ‘pestiferous
books’,[126] those ‘serious follies’, are no longer read widely, he has
received a new span of immortality as a corpse of Patroclus between the
contending critics. The problem of the date and authorship has become
more fascinating than the book. Champions for Spain and Portugal come
forward armed for the fight: Braunfels, Gayangos, Baist are met by
Theophilo Braga, Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Marcelino Menéndez
y Pelayo, while Dr. Henry Thomas holds the scales. The ground is thick
with their arrows. And beneath them all lies the simple ingenuous
story as retold by Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo in or immediately after
1492 and published in 1508, still worth reading for its freshness and
for its clear good style, which Braunfels, following up the praise in
Juan de Valdés’ _Diálogo de la Lengua_ (_c._ 1535), declared could
not be a translation.[127] The argument, conclusive in the case of
the masterpiece of prose that is _Palmeirim_ _de Inglaterra_, loses
its force here, since Montalvo himself tells us that he corrected
the work from old originals. Naturally we are curious to know what
these _antiguos originales_ were, but the question did not arise in
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: readers did not then concern
themselves greatly with the origin and authorship of a book; they were
content to enjoy it. Evidently _Amadis_ was enjoyed both in Spain and
Portugal. It is mentioned in the middle of the fourteenth century in
the Spanish translation, by Johan Garcia de Castrogeriz, of Egidio
Colonna’s _De regimine principum_, at the very time, that is, when
the Spanish poet and chronicler, Pero López de Ayala (1332-1407),
was reading _Amadis_ in his youth.[128] Half a century later, in the
last quarter of the fourteenth century, a poem by Pero Ferrus in the
_Cancionero de Baena_ refers to _Amadis_ as written in three books.
This is one of the most definite early references to _Amadis_, but of
course reference to the book by a Spaniard does not necessarily imply
that it was written in Spanish, and indeed some of the vaguer allusions
may refer to a French or Anglo-French original. The most frequent
Spanish references occur in the _Cancionero de Baena_, which was
compiled in the middle of the fifteenth century, at a period, that is,
which the last Galician lyrics written in Spain connected with the time
when all eyes were turned to Portuguese as the universal language of
Peninsular lyrics. Because the Portuguese language was used throughout
Spain in lyric poetry, it is sometimes argued as if the Portuguese had
no prose, could only sing. (The more real division was not between
verse and prose but between the Portuguese lyrical love literature and
the Spanish epic battle literature, and the early romances of chivalry,
although written in prose, belong essentially to the former.) The prose
rubrics of the Portuguese _Cancioneiros_ and the _Poetica_ of the
_Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti_ are sufficient to dispel this delusion.
Whether this _Poetica_ be contemporary (13th c.) of the lyrics or
later (14th c.), it offers a striking contrast between the clumsiness
of its prose and the smooth perfection of the poetry for which it
theorizes. Miguel Leite Ferreira’s statement (1598) that _Amadis_ is
contemporary with the lyrics is therefore remarkable. He says that the
archaic (time of King Dinis) language of the two sonnets--_Bom Vasco
de Lobeira_ and _Vinha Amor pelo campo trebelhando_--written by his
father, Antonio Ferreira (1528-69), is the same as that in which Vasco
de Lobeira wrote _Amadis of Gaul_. We know that King Dinis encouraged
not only lyric poetry but also translations into Portuguese prose, but
all the early Portuguese prose works are assigned to the fourteenth,
not the thirteenth century. One of the earliest, the _Demanda do Santo
Graall_, the language of which bears a close relation to that of the
_Cancioneiros_, still belongs to the fourteenth century. Probably
the later development of prose misled Leite Ferreira into making
fourteenth-century prose contemporary with thirteenth-century verse.
The Infante whom he here on the strength of the passage in Montalvo’s
_Amadis_ identifies with the son of King Dinis, not with the earlier
Prince Afonso (_c._ 1265-1312), may as Infante have expressed dislike
of a certain incident (the treatment of Briolanja) in the already
well-known story, and his preference would be borne in mind when the
Portuguese version was written in his reign (1325-57). If the first
Peninsular version of _Amadis_ was composed in Portuguese in the
middle of the fourteenth century, it may have been eagerly read as a
novelty by López de Ayala. In the fourteenth century most Spaniards
read, a few wrote[129] Portuguese lyrics; and there seems to be no
reason why we should rigorously confine them to the reading of verse,
to the exclusion of Portuguese prose. There is no means of deciding
with certainty whether López de Ayala and Ferrus read _Amadis_ in
Spanish or in Portuguese, but there are inherent probabilities in
favour of Portuguese. No one without a thesis to support would deny
that, generally, the cycle of the Round Table, to which _Amadis_ is
so closely related, was more congenial to the Portuguese than to
the Spanish temperament, that the geographical position of Portugal
facilitated its introduction, and that, in the particular case of
_Amadis_, the style and subject of the work, certainly of the first
three books, are Portuguese rather than Spanish. Melancholy incidents,
sentimental phrases and tears occur on nearly every page. Some critics
even discern traces of Portuguese in the language.[130]
But if we admit that _Amadis_ was written _c._ 1350, who was its
author? It is noteworthy that while in Spanish it had been attributed
to many persons, in Portugal tradition has persistently hovered round
the name of Lobeira. Unfortunately the Lobeira authorship has given
far more trouble than that of prince, Jew, or saint in Spain. Zurara,
basing his statement on an earlier fifteenth-century authority,
in a perfectly genuine passage of his _Cronica do Conde D. Pedro
de Meneses_,[131] written in the middle of the fifteenth century,
ascribes _Amadis_ to Vasco de Lobeira. In the next century Dr. João
de Barros[132] (not the historian) and Leite Ferreira agree with
Zurara.[133] There was no reason why they should say Vasco rather
than Pedro or João. According to Nunez de Leam, Vasco de Lobeira was
knighted on the field of Aljubarrota (1385), according to Fernam Lopez
he was already a knight in 1383.[134] If he was not a young but an old
knight at Aljubarrota, it is just possible that he wrote the book
thirty-five years earlier, in the same way that the historian Barros
wrote _Clarimundo_ in his youth.
If he lived on through the reigns of Pedro I (1357-67) and Fernando
(1376-83), and acquired new distinction in battle in the reign
of the latter, this might account for Zurara’s assertion that he
wrote _Amadis_ in the reign of Fernando. But the chief obstacle
to the authorship of Vasco is the existence in the _Cancioneiro
Colocci-Brancuti_ (Nos. 230 and 232 A) of a song by Joan de Lobeira,
_Leonoreta, fin roseta_, which reappears with slight variations in
Montalvo’s _Amadis_ (Lib. II, cap. xi: _este villancico_). It would
seem then that Joan, not Vasco, wrote _Amadis_. Joan de Lobeira,[135]
or Joan Pirez Lobeira, flourished in the second half of the thirteenth
century, and so we have _Amadis_ dating not only from the reign of King
Dinis but from the first half of his reign. But does the existence of
the poem entail that of a prose romance? The early mention of Tristan,
e.g. by Alfonso X, does not necessarily imply the existence of a
thirteenth-century Peninsular _Tristan_ in prose. May we not accept
the poem, written in the stirring metre, dear to men of action, used
by Alfonso X (C. M. 300), as merely a proof of the popularity of the
story, fondness for an episode perhaps treated in greater detail in
the Anglo-French original than in Montalvo’s version? Certainly it is
in the highest degree improbable that a Spaniard, writing at the end
of the fifteenth century, should extract a poem from the Portuguese
_Cancioneiros_ and insert it in his prose; but the improbability
disappears if in the middle of the fourteenth century a Portuguese
(Vasco de Lobeira), perhaps drawn to the story by the poem of his
ancestor, incorporated it in his romance. The late Antonio Thomaz
Pires in 1904 discovered at Elvas the will of a João de Lobeira,
_mercador_, who died there in 1386, and in Dr. Theophilo Braga’s
latest opinion[136] there were three Portuguese versions of _Amadis_:
that of the father, this João de Lobeira, written in the time of King
Dinis (a long-lived race these Lobeiras!), that of the son,[137] Vasco,
and a third by Pedro de Lobeira in the first half of the fifteenth
century. The threefold authorship of this family heirloom is even more
_cruu de creer_ than the theory that a single Lobeira--Vasco--wrote it
in the middle of the fourteenth century. A certain note of disapproval
of _Amadis_ as fabulous, shared by Portuguese and Spanish writers,[138]
perhaps indicates a fairly late date: its irresponsible fiction would
be less excusable if it was written in an age which was beginning to
attach serious importance to _nobiliarios_ and ‘true’ chronicles.
Moreover, if the Portuguese adaptation of an Anglo-French legend had
been even remotely as developed as the form in which we now have
it, the Infante Afonso must have seen at once that the faithfulness
of Amadis was absolutely essential to the story. But especially the
fact that the Portuguese _Cancioneiros_, familiar with Tristan and
the _matière de Bretagne_, are silent on the subject of _Amadis_ is
significant.
In Gottfried Baist’s argument, based on a rigid division between
early lyric poetry (as Portuguese) and early prose (as Spanish), the
Leonoreta lyric, far from being a stumbling-block, is actually a
sign of the Spanish origin of _Amadis_: as a fragment (14th c.) of a
prose _Tristan_ exists in Spanish, and five Portuguese Tristan _lais_
figure in the _Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti_, so the Leonoreta poem
belongs to a Spanish _Amadis_ in prose. But although the priority and
relations of early Portuguese and Spanish prose works are intricate
and have not yet been thoroughly studied, it is clear that in many
cases versions have been more carefully preserved in conservative
Spain, while the Portuguese through neglect, fire, and earthquake have
perished, and also that the natural tendency and development of prose,
in view of the growing power of Castille and the greater pliancy of
the Portuguese, was from Portuguese to Spanish, not from Spanish to
Portuguese. And in one instance at least we have an early Portuguese
prose work of the first importance, the _Demanda do Santo Graall_,
which with its gallicisms can by no stretch of imagination be accounted
a version from the Spanish. It is plainly legitimate to hold that
the story of Amadis was first reduced to book form in the Peninsula
in precisely the same way as was the story of Galahad, i.e. as a
fourteenth-century Portuguese adaptation with the French text in view.
Nicholas d’Herberay des Essarts, we know, claimed to have discovered
fragments of _Amadis en langage picard_, Jorge Cardoso (1606-69)
declared that Pero Lobeira translated _Amadis_ from the French,[139]
and Bernardo Tasso, whose _Amadigi_ appeared in 1560, believed (_non
è dubbio_) _Amadis_ to be derived _da qualche istoria di Bretagna_.
Nor would the Portuguese, for all their familiarity with the story and
topography of the Breton cycle, be likely to compose original works
dealing with Vindilisora (Windsor) or Bristoya (Bristol). Unhappily,
however deep may be our conviction (a conviction which stands in no
need of antedating Hebrew versions of the 1508 _Amadis_) that the
Peninsular _Amadis_ was originally Portuguese, it has now ceased to
belong to Portuguese literature; another instance, if we may beg the
question, of the gravitation to Spain. The Portuguese text, of which
a copy, according to Leite Ferreira, existed in the library of the
Duques de Aveiro in the sixteenth century (1598), and, according to
the Conde da Ericeira, in the library of the Condes de Vimieiro in the
seventeenth (1686), is still missing, as it was in 1726.