Centenary

THE ORIENT AND OTHER REPORTS: FROM ZACUTO TO THE FAILURE OF THE QUALITATIVE LEAP OF NEW PUBLISHING IN PORTUGAL

Acácio Fernando de Sousa*

[INTRODUCTION]

The 1990's have been marked by commemorations of the Portuguese Expansionist period, and we are only two years away from celebrating the fifth centenary of that definitive maritime link with the East. From then on an enormous number of accounts have turned up which have been able to give a new picture of the ancient, mystical East.

This could have been the pretext for a great leap forward for the printing press in Portugal but it did not happen. However a certain chronological ephemerides deserves mention, for having been one of the instrumental published works which aided the arrival of the Portuguese in India.

§ 1. FROM THE BEGINNINGS OF THE PRINTING PRESS TO ABRAÃO ZACUTO

By 1996, five hundred years had gone by since the first publication of a important scientific work in Portugal. We are obviously referring to the astronomical tables known as the Almanach Perpetuum compiled by the Jewish astronomer, Abraão Zacuto. He had already been working on them since 1476, long before his arrival in Portugal and they ended up being printed in the presses of Abraão d'Orta in Leiria [central Portugal], from where they were published dated the 25th of February 1496. That same year Zacuto left the country, due to the expulsion or forced conversion of Jews as decreed by king Dom Manuel I (°1469-r.1495-†1521).

As is well known, these revolutionary tables for astronomical orientation were the ones used by Vasco da Gama for his route to Calcutta, and could have been the beginning of a typographical bridge between East and West. Therefore they contributed not only to the technical development of this craft in Portugal, advancing ahead of Europe through the edition of constant and fascinating reports arriving from 1498, but also to the faster and wider recognition of this country as a new maritime power.

With regard to scientific development during the reigns of Dom João II (°1455-r.1481-†1495) and Dom Manuel I, the Jewish question contributed much to the later regression of science and to what took place during those reigns. This apparent paradox can also be explained by the fact that both the printing press and information on the Orient in the sixteenth century were a result of the Portuguese Renaissance. In speaking of the printing press and information we have to describe them separately first, then combine them to see how they developed throughout that century.

In a period in which the conditions arose for finding new and valuable cabedais (rules of measurement), in conjunction with with new concepts and quests for knowledge too, the advent of the printing press in Portugal had quite specific features which were to do with the social class which greater wealth had produced and the anathemas which went along with it.

The first news of publishing1 from the fifteenth century does not appear to cast any doubt on the fact that this revolutionary technology came to Portugal through the help of wealthy, hardworking Jewish communities. They set up offices in locations where they would be best established and where an infrastructure already existed, as was the case in Leiria with its paper factory2 and they grew into the most prosperous areas.

The texts printed then were mystical, belonging to a closed, threatened community which needed to lay the foundations of their beliefs, grounded more and more in the Talmud, as a means of maintaining their identity. Even when the first printed works appeared in the Catholic language, they were produced in Jewish workshops and continued to be exclusively of a religious nature, as was the case with the Tratado da Confissom (Confession Treatise), the Breviarium Bracharense (Breviary of Braga), the Vita Christi (Life of Christ) and others, which meant that from a Catholic point of view, this religious standard was imposed by the reigning ecclesiastical-scholastic spirit of atrophy in the up and coming liberal bourgeois.

Consequently the profane or popular press only emerged later, after the conversion or the departure of the Jewish masters, although sometimes they had been known to print books of a scientific nature for the first time in Portugal, as was already mentioned with Abraão Zacuto's Almanach Perpetuum of 1496. At any rate these where isolated events which were more the exception than the rule3

With regard to Zacuto, he arrived in Portugal in 1492 as a refugee from Spain and quickly became highly regarded for his merits as an astronomer, physicist and mathematician. He achieved this thanks to a great opening in the field of nautical science in Portugal, so that his treatise on astrological orientation became fundamental for navigational use over great distances and was translated from Hebrew into Latin by his disciple, José Vizinho. This meant that what was the first lay work of a scientific nature, broke the barrier of printing only sacred material.

By bringing Hebrew exclusivity to an end, at least on the surface, the secular book would give new opportunities for printing workshops. However it would not manage to achieve the continual presence that scientific works did.

It is also interesting to note to whom the printed book was initially destined. In Portugal it was restricted to an avid, but deeply religious élite, quite apart from the other bureaucratic élite, who solicited at court with the theogony of the time and stayed within that milieu. This meant that the influence of rabbis and clergy would override that of lawyers, bankers and businessmen who did not have the relevant printed works at their disposal.

On the other hand, there was still a third intellectual channel which, within the most classical Humanist spirit, to avoid an epistemological rupture with the Ancient World, and at the same time distrusting the new ideas of technological progress, refused to associate learning with evolution. This had already occurred with the substitution of parchment for paper and it would happen again with this new technology which vulgarised learning, sometimes to the point of heresy. Examples of this were the substitution of a formal manuscript by the printer, or of sacred language for the vernacular.

Modéstia (humility) and carência (privation)4 at a mental rather than physical level, was detrimental to the advent of typography and produced an anxious spurt of various religious, intellectual and political censorships which would last throughout the next centuries. As if the delay in the spread of new knowledge, (in which Portugal had already played a major role by the end of the fifteenth century), was not enough, for the true justification of Hebrew domination and of the specific interests of their publications it is necessary to make a new proposal. Such a proposal would explain the combination of all the restrictions which became even more noticeable within the context of the splendid glory of the sixteenth century.

§2. THE DREAM AND REALITY OF THE EAST IN IDEOLOGICAL INTERESTS OF THE PERIOD

Alongside what we have just put forward, Renaissance thinking not only searched for the 'Homem Novo' ('New Man') but fostered the resurgence of the Classics. Therefore when Jerusalem fell and the commercial boom of the Eastern trade routes was seen as supporting the Holy Land, the Portuguese participated in a zealous revival of the enchanting myth of the Orient. This myth of the East had already captured the Western imagination of people like Isidoro of Seville, Gregory of Tours and had fired the apostolistic idea of converting India, which brought St. Thomas Aquinas' martyrdom in the sixteenth century. 5

From the Lower Middle Ages on, with the visits of various travellers and Abraham de Cresques's Atlas, tales of marvellous things distorted any thread of reality. This prompted the revival in the belief that the Indris and Ganges were the sacred rivers of Eden and stimulated the idea of the existence of Catholic communities lost on the other side of the Muslim world, to excite minds of those so in need of new vitality and pious pretexts.

Not event the voyages of men like Piano del Carpine, Marco Polo or already in the fifteenth century, Nicola dei Conti, exposed the reality of Cathay, India, Ptolomy's enclosed Oceans, or of the vast, powerful Ethiopia, imagined as such but ultimately reduced to, in a gradual and disappointing way, the African country already in decline as found by the Portuguese.

However, it is interesting to point out a certain European intellectual macro structure apparent between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Western values wanting to react to various dramatic events which had happened at this time, like the Hundred Years War (1337-1453), recurring famines, and the fall of Constantinople (1261) and Jerusalem (1187), were existing in a contradiction between the veneration of money-making commerce and the difficulty of breaking with the theogony and spirit of the Crusades, or with the stimulating heroism and superior countenance of the bourgeois sinfully selling their souls for gold.

By adding the reconquering of mythical sites to these ideas, the Roman ideological influence in King Dom Manuel's attitude with regard to European politics did not seem so strange. As we shall see, it was perhaps because of this that even in the fifteenth century the Portuguese were already in possession of reliable information about Taprobana, later Ceylon, which was conveyed as if from the Greek classics.

In spite of a battle like Aljubarrota (14th of August 1385), which affected Europe in the fourteenth century, the conquest of Moorish Territory in the African continent in 1415, and the later advance along the entire African coast at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Portugal continued to be a peripheral country and was still treated as such by the most influential European political opinion makers of the period.

§3. FROM THE THE STATUS OF AVANTGUARDE TO BACKWARDNESS

With the undertaking of maritime expansion, avant-guarde conditions were created, progressively forming a new intellectualism along the path of the new experimental areas of knowledge. However in spite of this, Portugal never effectively fostered a rationalisation of the live experiences it encountered, and though the new riches for Europe were transported through Lisbon thereby attracting numerous foreigners, Dom Manuel would vehemently fight against the nicknames of 'Pequeno rei' ('Little King') or 'Rei da pimenta' ('Pepper King'), 6 as he was in just such a contradiction between the perceptions of the nobility or those of vile commercialism.

When the conditions seemed to be there to enable Portugal to assume a position at the forefront of European intellectualism, it only happened through a single piece of information, inspite of being extraordinarily important. We are referring to the cartographic revolution which began in the fourteenth century with the introduction of a portulano (port and sailing directory with charts for navigators) for which Portugal was recognised as a major contributor.

Along with national and international cartographers like Cantino, there was all the new and reliable information sent by Portuguese sailors who went to open unexplored geographical horizons and to give a new way of perceiving the world, destroying once and for all the Ptolemaic concepts. These seamen had specifically used advanced scientific works like the studies of Zacuto.

On the other hand, the arrival of the Portuguese in the East and the discovery of the realities of previous mythical references, meant that the art of typography continued flourishing there, in spite of difficulties mainly due to the Jewish question, but still did not take advantage of the opportunity of a systemised diffusion of all this flow of innovations. In fact, it was not the first accounts from these new geographical horizons which rolled onto the printing press with the Portuguese master printers as they strongly adhered to the strict rule concerning any divulgence concerning countries where Portuguese ships had landed.

The ruling attitude, be it a secrecy policy or not, would not manage to prevent oral accounts, or the handing around of travel notes, which not only reached the very ears of those people it wanted to restrict, but would also raise the attention of foreign editors. Valentim Fernandes, a German who received various favours from the Court of King Dom Manuel I, was the perfect example of a foreigner who realised the extraordinary value of this information about the East early on, information which continued developing a strong legendary and fantastical element.

Through both the reports which he channelled into Germany, and reports which were obtained outside the country, Portuguese news were reaching the printing presses in Spain, France, Italy and around Reformation Europe, in various editions and translations.

What was at stake was not only the eventual secrecy policy, but also the inquisitional net of censorship which was afraid that new geographical and anthropological concepts would put the old intellectual, dogmatic and scholarly foundations of knowledge at risk. Above all, there was the effect of this macro structure and the need for a splendid image for Dom Manuel I and later Dom João III (°1502-r. 1521-†1557), who saw to it that this image continued in Portugal to the detriment of practical and scientific information.

Paradoxically, the Portuguese kings became aware of the relationship between the message and the means of communication early on and, while the most objective aspects of expansionist politics were secretive, though far from anything which could suggest espionage, they were already far more interested in influencing a European public opinion. They took an interest in emotionally charged points of view whenever they told of Catholicism's great achievements which had brought new triumphs for the Portuguese over the barbarians or infidels.

Luís Filipe Barreto identified a structural model in the Portuguese Expansion. 8We can also illustrate, in accordance with this model, a structure in the combination of information sent for specific recipients, from cartographic to nautical tables and routes and other marine books solely for the use of master sailors, which would carry on until the seventeenth century.

In the field of geography and anthropology, according to that particular researcher, these would be areas of major attraction for potential general readership. They centred on the comparative observation of the religious, ethnological and hierarchical relationship between the worlds understood to be barbaric and civilised. It was the discovery of 'another civilisation' from a comparative understanding worked out in maps, like Pero Vaz de Caminha's Carta do Achamento do Brasil (Map of the Discovery of Brazil), the equally global as circumstantial descriptions, as in Duarte Barbosa's Livro das coisas do Oriente (An Account of the Countries Bordering on the Indian Ocean and their Inhabitants), and Tomé Pires' Suma Oriental (Oriental Summa), or even the travel tales like Francisco Álvares' Verdadeira Informação das Terras de Prestes João das Índias (The True Account of the Lands of Prester John of the Indies), which attracted them.

This body of information was precisely what became the most dangerous for established standards and being the most provocative from an editorial point of view, was also subjected to the greatest political and religious censorship. Just as the Carta (Letter) by Vaz de Caminha was cut of the most imprudent parts when the public saw it, so were the important books by Barbosa and Tomé Pires and only after 1550 would they be published by Ramusio, who surmounted countless obstacles in order to obtain them. 9

However, some of this literature would end up being the most useful for ideological propaganda, in works approved by the authorities. As we have already mentioned, it greatly interested them to convey the message surrounding the facts of the arrival at dreamlike horizons and of Catholic civilisation's victories over Islam, of which Portugal became the interpreter. At a critical stage in 1521, this would be the reason for the publication of the Carta das Novas (New Letters) about the ambassadorship of Dom Rodrigo de Lima to the real Ethiopia, or the Verdadeira Informação [...] (True Account [...]) and other works by Miguel Castanhoso which would be published later on. 10

King Dom Manuel I was interested in publishing his letters to the Pope, where he told of the conquest of Malacca and the expedition to Taprobana (finally, Ceylon), because he suspected that this would bring him resounding recognition and he would actually see this fully confirmed. Also King Dom João III would continue this epistolar duty, writing of the events at Dio and the victories over the Rumes and only from them would the well received eulogies of Dom João de Castro and the epic poems of Jerónimo Corte-Real and equally Luís de Camões come to light. 11

Nevertheless everything became more difficult after the Council of Trent (1551-1552). The intolerance for whatever could harm official doctrine became stronger. It ended up only just allowing heroic and Catholic praises and a few publications by Portuguese writers abroad, such as opinions on the historic feats of the Portuguese, published in Leuven by António de Castilho and Damião de Góis, 12 or the publication of collections by men like Montalboldo and later Ramusio and collections by other anonymous writers made of Portuguese texts which were not allowed in their own country.

§4. CONCLUSION

In Portugal, at the same time as a new technological world was breaking out, another geographical world was also being revealed and whether each one bought their own myths or not, both would flow into a single identity traced by the contradictory mentality of the Renaissance, with its dichotomies of Ancient and Modern, and of revolutionary mentality and political-ecclesiastical censorship.

The position of being a peripheral condition country lead the great Expansionist Kings, Dom Manuel I and Dom João III, to exercise control over printing and publishing books to prevent the breakdown of secrecy, and above all to convey an ideological message charged with symbolism which exalted their images in Europe. Their idea of the Crusades and the continuity of the fantasy of the Orient was full of stereotyped and backward symbolism.

With the great contribution given by map making to this revolutionary instrument of information, from the fifteenth century onwards, Portugal seemed to have the conditions which could have allowed it to take the lead in the relationship between new geographical horizons and the spread of information which they produced, the very information which they disapproved of in the end.

By placing this into historical, graphical and intermediary terms, we can say that Portugal, by establishing the basis for a world economy and by defining a new perception of world geography long before the "global village" of Marshall MacLuhan (°1911-†1980), had not entirely included itself in the Guttenberg Galaxy (1692) and took up publishing only in a selective way. Within these parameters, Abraão Zacuto could have been the first victim.

Translated from the Portuguese by: Linda Pearce

NOTES

1 Referring in this text to a work published in Leiria in 1496, with regard to Zacuto, the term "imprimissão" ("to print" on "to publish") is in homage to the studious leiriense, Américo Cortez Pinto, who in spite of his regionalistic vein, produced the excellent work Da famosa arte da Imprimissão, Lisboa, Ulisseia, 1948.

2 The first mention of an Alvará Régio (Royal Ruling) for a paper fulling mill, is in King Dom João I's (°ca 1357-r.1385-†1433) Carta (Letter) of the 29th of April 1211, saying it was set up in Leiria. Curiously, the mill still exists today and works as a cereal grinder, which he had expressly forbidden in the fifteenth century.

See: ANTT, Chancelaria de Dom João I (Chancery of King Dom João I), Livro[book]3, fols. 127 vo, 128, reproduced by PINTO, A. Cortez, op. cit. pp. 156-157, ills. 5-8.

3 If we follow the most widely known chronologies, we can confirm the great predominance of publications on religious themes until the expulsion of the Jews from Portugal, in December 1496.

See: inter alia, ANSELMO, Artur, Origens da imprensa em Portugal, Lisboa, Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 1981, pp. 417-418 — Where there are excepts or straight references to Almanach Perpetuum, the Estoria do Muy Nobre Vespasiano and the Regimento Proveitoso contra ha Pestanença, all published by Valentim Fernandes in that year too.

4 We thank Dr. Jorge Flores for bringing this concept to our attention.

See: BARRETO, Luís Filipe, Descobrimentos e Renascimento: Formas de ser e pensar nos séculos XV e XVI, Lisboa, 1983, pp. 154-155; MACEDO, Jorge Borges de, Livros Impressos em Portugal no século XVI: Interesses e Formas de Mentalidade, in "Os Lusíadas e a História", Lisboa, Verbo, 1979 — where this concept can be found printed more or less explicitly.

5 The idea of a 'mystical' Orient had already appeared as much in the Etimologias of Isidoro of Seville as in the Historia Franciscorum by Gregory of Tours.

6 The disdain would have been well understood by the Portuguese king, especially when King Louis XII (°1462-r.1498-†1515) of France made reference to these nicknames.

7 Valentim Fernandes, a notary for German businessmen with interests in Lisbon, published twenty four works, several of them in Moravia, having eight of his twenty-eight main works published in Portugal, up until the year 1500. Among translations of the classics and others such works, his publications of travel literature were considered extraordinary for the period.

8 BARRETO, Luís Filipe, Portugal: Mensageiro do mundo renascentista, Lisboa, Quetzal, 1989, pp. 38-42.

9 It was in the middle of the sixteenth century that Giovanni Battista Ramusio (†1485-†1557) managed to publish Delle Navegationi et Viaggi [...] (On Navigations and Voyages [...]) in Italy, where he included the 'Travels' of Aluise Da Ca Da Mosto (Port.: Luís de Cadamosto) and Pedro de Sintra, the 'Diaries' of Vasco da Gama and Pedro Álvares Cabral, the 'Books' of Francisco Álvares and of Duarte Barbosa, and also fragments of Tomé Pires'Suma Oriental (Oriental Summa).

10 In 1564 Castanhoso published the História das Coisas que o Mui esforçado capitão Cristóvão da Gama fez nos reinos de Prestes João (A History of the Deeds that the Valorous Captain Cristóvão da Gama Achieved in the Kingdoms of Prester John). He left manuscript notes on the sieges of Dio and Mazagan.

11 Regarding Dom João de Castro, we refer to the Roteiro da costa da India (Itinerary of the Coast of India) and the Roteiros de viagens (Itineraries of Travels), among others. Regarding Jéronimo Corte-Real, we are not speaking of the verses dedicated to the sinking of the Sepúlveda and the meditation of the sufferings of Purgatory and the Novissimo Homem, but referring to the epic Sucesso do cerco de Diu (Sucesses of the Siege of Dio). As for Camões, it is irrelevant to describe his works here.

12 Castilho published the Elogio del Rei D. João III (Eulogy of King Dom João III) and Comentário do cerco de Goa e Chaul no ano de 1570 (Commentary of the Sieges of Goa and Chaul in the Year of 1570), still leaving various manuscripts. Góis, among others, published the Commentarii Rerum Gestarum in India and Fides, Religio Moresque Aethioporum sub Imperio Preciosi Joanni, in Leuven, Belgium.

* Teacher of Luso-Asiatic History and Director of the District Archives of Leiria.

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