We may add that a considerable part of the Paris manuscript of the Chronicle of Guinea has been collated for the present edition with the printed text as published by Santarem, and the result proves the accuracy of the latter.
We have to thank Senhor Jayme Batalha Reis, who has looked through the present version as far as the end of vol. i, and has kindly offered many suggestions. Among other Portuguese scholars who have been of service to us, we would especially mention Dr. Xavier da Cunha, of the Bibliotheca National, Lisbon; Senhor José Basto, of the Torre do Tombo, and General Brito Rebello. In a lesser degree we owe our acknowledgments to D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos and Dr. Theophilo Braga, the chief authorities on all that pertains to Portuguese literature, as well as to the late Conselheiro J. P. de Oliveira Martins, whose untimely death robbed his country of her foremost man of letters.
C. R. B.
E. P.
October, 1896.
THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF AZURARA.
Life.
"Lidar sem descanço parece ter sido o moto d'Azurara."
Vieira de Meyrelles.
The materials at hand for a study of the life and work of the second great Portuguese Chronicler are, considering the age in which he lived and the position he held, somewhat disappointing, and no one of his countrymen has been at the pains to work them up satisfactorily. They naturally fall into three divisions—his own writings, documents directly relating to his life or merely signed by him in his official capacity, and the witness of historians. There exists but one contemporary description of Azurara, that by Mattheus de Pisano, author of the Latin history of the Capture of Ceuta, though this is supplemented by the contents of two letters addressed to the Chronicler by Affonso V and the Constable D. Pedro respectively, as well as by what can be gleaned from documentary sources and from Azurara himself. In the next century—the 16th—some assistance may be derived from the traditions preserved by Barros, the historian of the Indies, as also from his critical judgments together with those of Damião de Goes, the famous Humanist and friend of Erasmus. These are all in a sense primary authorities, while the others who have discoursed of, or incidentally mentioned him are but secondary, namely, Nicolau Antonio, Jorge Cardoso, Barbosa Machado, João Pedro Ribeiro, the Viscount de Santarem, Alexandre Herculano, Vieira de Meyrelles, Innocencio da Silva, Sotero dos Reis, and Rodriguez d'Azevedo.
Gomes Eannes de Azurara, to give the modern spelling of his name, though he always signed himself simply "Gomes Eanes" or "Gomes Annes",1 was the son of João Eannes de Azurara, a Canon of Evora and Coimbra; but, beyond the fact of this paternity, we know nothing of his father, and only by conjecture is it possible to arrive at the name of his mother, as will hereafter appear. He is said to have come of a good family, on the ground of his admission into the Order of Christ.
As with several other Portuguese men of letters, the respective years of Azurara's birth and death are unknown,2 and two localities dispute the honour of having given him to the world; but there seems little doubt that this "bonus Grammaticus, nobilis Astrologus, et magnus Historiographus," as his friend Pisano calls him,3 was born in the town of his name, in the Province of Minho, at the very commencement of the 15th century. In proof of this it should be stated that Azurara expressly declares in his Chronica de Ceuta, which was finished in 1450, that he had not passed "the three first ages of man" when he wrote it.4
The dispute as to his birthplace between the Azurara in Minho and the Azurara in Beira5 is not easy to settle, but tradition favours the former, and until the end of the last century no writer had ventured to doubt that the ancient town at the mouth of the River Ave, which received its first charter, or "foral", from the Count D. Henrique in 1102 or 1107, was the early home of the Chronicler.6 Such evidence as exists in favour of the latter place is slight, consisting only of inferences drawn from a document, dated August 23rd, 1454, in which Affonso V grants certain privileges to two inhabitants of Castello Branco, who were accustomed to collect the Chronicler's rents and bring them to Lisbon. From this it has been argued by such able critics as Vieira de Meyrelles and Rodriguez d'Azevedo that these rents must have issued out of family property situate at the Azurara in Beira, which happens to be in the district of Castello Branco, and hence that the Chronicler was a native of Beira rather than of Minho.7 The conclusion seems far-fetched, to say the least, for it is just as likely that these two men were agents for a benefice, or "commenda", at Alcains, in the same district, which Azurara possessed at the time this grant was made.8
The early life of the Chronicler is almost a blank. Until the year 1450, in which he wrote his first serious Chronicle, though not, perhaps, his first book, we have little beyond the meagre information, supplied by Mattheus de Pisano,9 that he began to study late—"dum maturæ jam ætatis esset"—and that he had passed his youth without acquiring the rudiments of knowledge—"nullam litteram didicisset"10—to which some later authorities have added—he spent his early years in the pursuit of arms, a statement likely enough to be true. It seems probable that he obtained a post in the Royal Library during the brief and luckless reign of D. Duarte (1433–1438), or shortly afterwards, as assistant to the Chronicler Fernão Lopes, whom he succeeded, for he was actually in charge of it early in the reign of Affonso V, in 1452, and finished the Chronica de Guiné in that place in 1453.
Tradition has it that he entered the Order of Christ as a young man, for he came to be Commander therein, a position only obtainable at that time by regular service in the Order, and by seniority; but the nature of these services, and the advancement which Azurara gained by them, cannot precisely be determined, because the early private records of the Order, together with the