The following is a list of Azurara's works in the order in which they were written:—
(a) "Milagres do Santo Condestabre D. Nuno Alvres Pereira."
This volume, of doubtful authenticity, which was never printed, has now been lost. Senhor Oliveira Martins was unable to find a trace of it when engaged on his recently-published life of the Holy Constable,86 and suggests that it may have perished, along with so many other literary treasures, in 1755, during the Great Earthquake. Jorge Cardoso, in his Agiologico Lusitano,87 quotes a passage from Azurara's work, and Santa Anna gives the substance of it in his Chronica dos Carmaelitas, expressly declaring that he had seen the original MS., which was then preserved among the Archives of the Carmo Convent.88
(b) "Chronica del rei D. Joam I de boa memória e dos reys de Portugal o decimo. Terceira parte em que se contém a tomada de Ceuta." Composta por Gomez Eannes D'Azurara Chronista Mór destes Reynos & impressa na linguagem antiga. Em Lisboa. Com todas as licenças necessarias. Á custa de Antonio Alvarez, Impressor del-rei N.S. 1644, pp. X−283 fol. Such is the full title of the Chronica de Ceuta as given in the one and only published edition.
Following the Chronicle come accounts of the death of King João and the translation of his body to Batalha, extracted from the Chronica de D. Duarte, as well as a copy, with translation, of the epitaph on his tomb, and then his will and a general Index. MSS. of this Chronicle exist in the Bibliotheca National in Lisbon, and in the Torre do Tombo. The former place contains a defective one, dating from the middle of the 16th century, as well as one of the second part of the same period apparently complete. The latter boasts a MS. (No. 366) of the 15th century, in large folio, written on paper in red and black, which derives importance from its early date, and exhibits a text practically identical with that of the book described above; while of the others, one may be attributed to the 16th century and two to the 17th. The Oporto Municipal Library has an 18th-century MS. of this Chronicle.89
(c) "Chronica do Descobrimento e Conquista de Guiné, escrita por mandado de El-Rei D. Affonso V sob a direcção scientifica, e segundo as instrucçoës do illustre Infante D. Henrique pelo Chronista Gomez Eannes de Azurara; fielmente trasladada do Manuscripto original contemporaneo, que se conserva na Bibliotheca Real de Pariz, e dada pela primeira vez á luz per diligencia do Visconde de Carreira, Enviado Extraordinario e Ministro Plenipotentiario de S. Majestade Fidelíssima na corte da França; precedida de uma Introducção e illustrada com algumas notas pelo Visconde de Santarem. … . e seguida d'um Glossario das palavras e phrases antiquadas e obsoletas." Paris, 1841. Fol. pp. XXV−474, with frontispiece portrait of D. Henrique from this same MS.
The letter which Azurara addressed to King Affonso V, when he forwarded the Chronicle, is printed in facsimile and precedes the Introduction.
There are three separate impressions of this Chronicle—one on parchment, of which the Bibliotheca National in Lisbon possesses a copy, another on large paper, both of these being folio size, and a third on small paper octavo size.
Two early MSS. of the Chronicle exist: one, very handsome and perfect, in the Paris National Library, from which the printed edition was made; and the other, bearing date 1506, in the Royal and National Library at Munich. The latter belonged to Valentim Fernandes, a German printer, established in Lisbon from the end of the 15th century to past the middle of the 16th, who owned many MSS. of great value, which have been studied by Schmeller in his Ueber Valentī Fernandez Alemā und seine Sammlung von Nachrichten über die Entdeckungen und Besitzungen der Portugiesen in Afrika und Asien bis zum Jahre 1508. The imprint of this essay is 1845.
The Munich MS. is an abridgment; many of the rhetorical passages, ch. i, and nearly the whole of chs. iii-vii, being omitted. Valentim Fernandes, who transcribed, if he did not compile, this summary, which he finished on November 14th, 1506, commences his chapters at the eighth of the Paris MS., and reduces the original number of chapters from ninety-seven to sixty-two.
The text of the Paris MS. seems to have been added to at some later time, and, at any rate, is not in the state in which Azurara left it in 1453, the year the Chronicle was finished, because certain passages speak of D. Henrique as though already deceased, while he only died in 1460.90 Innocencio thinks Azurara emended his work after the Prince's death, and inserted some reflections on his life and moral qualities, without continuing the narrative, or passing the limit he had at first marked out, namely 1448.
The history of the MS., and the discovery in 1837 by the Lusophile, Ferdinand Denis, of the Paris copy, together with a description thereof, is related by the Viscount de Santarem in his Introduction, and deserves perusal.91 Fragments of the Chronicle were known to Barros, who incorporated them in his Asia, but Goes never saw it at all, and it would seem to have disappeared from Portugal in the 16th century.92 Frei Luiz de Sousa, the great Dominican prose writer, met with a MS. copy at Valencia, in the possession of the Duke of Calabria, one of whose ancestors, a King of Naples, had received it, he was informed, from D. Henrique himself.93 We know from another source that this MS. was still in Spain at the beginning of the last century, but how it reached its present resting-place, the National Library in Paris, remains a mystery.
(d) "Chronica do Conde D. Pedro (de Menezes) Continuada aa tomada de Cepta, a qual mandou El-Rey D. Affonso V deste nome, e dos Reys de Portugal XII, escrepver." Such is the title of this Chronicle, which was published in Vol. II of the Ineditos, and runs from page 213 to the end. It is there preceded by an Introduction of six pages, dealing with the life and works of Azurara, from the pen of the erudite Abbade Corrêa da Serra.
There exists a valueless MS. of this Chronicle in the Bibliotheca National in Lisbon of the end of the 17th century, and another equally devoid of interest in the Academia das Sciencias. Mr. Quaritch recently offered one for sale,94 which derives importance from having been copied from another of early date, and was kind enough to send it for our inspection. It is a small folio, beautifully written on paper, containing 164 leaves with thirty-one lines to the page, and was transcribed from a MS. on parchment of 233 folios in a single column, which had been itself finished in Lisbon on July 24th, 1470, by João Gonçalvez, the scribe who copied the Paris MS. of the Chronica de Guiné. The copy belonging to Mr. Quaritch has some marginal notes without value, and must, to judge from the writing, have been made in Portugal at the very beginning of the 17th century, or, as he says, about 1620. The text is the same as that printed in the Ineditos.
(e) "Chronica do Conde D. Duarte de Menezes."
This was published for the first time in Vol. III of the Ineditos, and has there no separate title page, but the heading of the first chapter reads as follows:—"Comecasse a Historia, que fala dos feitos que fez o Illustre e muy nobre Cavaleiro Dom Duarte de Menezes, Conde que foi de Viana, Alferes Del-Rey e Capitão por elle na Villa Dalcacer em Affrica. A qual foi primeiramente ajuntada e escripta per Gomez Eanes de Zurara, professo Cavalleiro, e Comendador na Ordem de Christus, Chronista do mesmo Senhor Rey, e Guardador mór do Tombo de seus Regnos."
All the MSS. of this Chronicle are defective, and we know from the Royal Censor that they were in the same state as early as the reign of Dom Sebastião. In fact, more than a third of the work has disappeared, and is represented by lacunæ. The Bibliotheca National in Lisbon has three, the Torre do Tombo two, and the Bibliotheca da Academia Real das Sciencias one MS. of this Chronicle; all show the same gaps. The only MS. of value