The Other Exile The Other Exile E-Book

Abdul Rahman Azzam

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 541

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

The first known inhabitant of St Helena – long before Napoleon –  was a 16th-century Portuguese renegade. In 1506 Fernão Lopes, a member of his country's minor nobility, travelled to Goa in search of honour and wealth. There he converted to Islam, married a Muslim, fought his former countrymen, and was eventually captured – his nose and hands publicly cut off for treachery. Eventually sailing for home, he jumped ship at St. Helena, becoming the island's first inhabitant, with only a black cockerel for company. News of Lopes reached the King of Portugal. Picked up by a ship sent especially for him, Lopes so impressed the King, and the Pope in Rome, that he was granted one wish. He requested his return to St Helena. Based on brand new research by A R Azzam, author of the acclaimed Saladin (Longman, 2007), The Other Exile is at once a historical adventure story and a meditation on solitude. It is a story about redemption in one of the darkest periods in Europe and the tale of the haunting relationship between man and wild nature.  

Leseprobe

THE OTHER EXILE

THE OTHER EXILE

The Remarkable Story of Fernão Lopes, the Island of Saint Helena, and a Paradise Lost

A R AZZAM

Published in the UK in 2017 by Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre, 39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP email: [email protected]

Sold in the UK, Europe and Asia by Faber & Faber Ltd, Bloomsbury House, 74–77 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DA or their agents

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Distributed in Australia and New Zealand by Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd, PO Box 8500, 83 Alexander Street, Crows Nest, NSW 2065

Distributed in South Africa by Jonathan Ball, Office B4, The District, 41 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock 7925

Distributed in India by Penguin Books India, 7th Floor, Infinity Tower – C, DLF Cyber City, Gurgaon 122002, Haryana

ISBN: 978-178578-183-4

Text copyright © 2017 Abdul Rahman Azzam

The author has asserted his moral rights.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Typeset in Goudy Oldstyle by Marie Doherty

Printed and bound in the UK by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

Man is committed at birth to two journeys. The first he cannot escape, for this is the journey of action and experience as he travels down the stream of his own lifetime … The second journey is upstream using time and locality only as starting points, leading beyond their zone. This is the journey described in countless myths and legends, the arduous, perilous way towards the centre of being, the passage from the ephemeral and illusory towards the eternal real.

CHARLES LE GAI EATON, KING OF THE CASTLE

To my parents, To memories of Beirut And above all to Inaam, in my heart forever.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

So many people have contributed their thoughts, suggestions and help during the writing of this book and I am truly grateful to all of them. My lack of Portuguese meant I had to lean heavily on João Paulo Oliveira e Costa who kindly introduced me to João Luís Ferreira, who in turn laboriously scoured the archives in search of Lopes. Many thanks also to Ângela Xavier and to Hélder Carvalhal as well as to Annemarie Jordan Gshwend, who patiently answered my amateurish questions as I tried to get my head around a period of history I knew so little about. Thanks also to Simona Cattabiani, whose encouragement and faith in my early drafts will see this book appearing in Portuguese.

I was fortunate to have some conversations with Beau Rowlands, an expert on Saint Helena and one of the very few living people to have written about Lopes. It was Rowlands who pointed out some very interesting developments in Lopes’ life which I pursued in my book.

A special mention has to go to my agent Isobel Dixon at Blake Friedmann, who was the first to read my initial draft. She saw the potential of the story and introduced me to Tom Webber at Icon Books. Tom’s constant challenges, prodding and editing of the manuscript improved the work immeasurably.

Finally a mention to Moji, because Moji will always be Moji.

CONTENTS

Introduction

PART I – The First Journey

1 A Kingdom Far Away

2 ‘Well-greased and stowed away’

3 The Lost Boys of Portugal

4 Waiting in Belém

5 ‘The moon lies’

6 ‘I will build walls of Muslim bones’

PART II – The Second Journey

7 An Islamic Lake

8 ‘Out of stubbornness he wanted to die and kill them all’

9 ‘Perfume-drenched nincompoops’

10 ‘The elixir of mirth and pleasure’

11 Banastarim

PART III – The Third Journey

12 Caesar Is Dead

13 A Portuguese Robinson Crusoe

14 Fragments of an Ancient World

15 The Shadow of the Past

16 ‘A soul in dispute’

17 ‘The enemies we brought among us’

18 Like a New Layer of the Kabayi

19 No Harm Will Come to You

PART IV – The Fourth Journey

20 Mangoes and Mulberry Trees

21 What Does He Want?

22 The Streets of Lisbon

23 A Mysterious Kingdom

24 ‘A Desert out of a Paradise’

Afterword

A Note on the Sources

Suggested Further Reading

Permissions

Colour Plates

INTRODUCTION

Solitude has its coordinates. At exactly latitude 15.25 degrees, 55 minutes South, longitude 5.25 degrees, 45 minutes West, 1,143 miles west of Angola, 1,800 miles east of Brazil, a remote rock lies in an endless ocean.

Once there had been a time when the English, not normally so careless, had allowed him to escape, but now they settled on a volcanic island, in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean, a mere ten and a half miles long and six miles wide, so isolated that there was no need for a prison. From the moment that Napoleon set foot on Saint Helena he understood that his fate was sealed, but in so many ways, so was that of the island. Henceforth it was no longer possible to imagine the island sans Bonaparte as he raged and railed against his fate, a Corsican Lear on an empty stage. And yet if Helena, the saintly mother of Constantine the Great after whom the Portuguese, in 1502, had named the place, could somehow intervene to silence the Corsican, and to gently coax the island to tell its tale, perhaps it would choose to tell a different story: one not as dramatic, but in its own way more haunting and profound. It would tell the story of another, earlier, exile, but one of a different nature: not a forced exile but a self-imposed one; not a recriminatory exile but a redemptive one. And in its strange and poignant tale of Fernão Lopes, the island of Saint Helena may just help us unlock one of the great secrets of life – the secret of solitude.

I first came across Fernão Lopes by accident and in the most unlikely of places. Researching a paper regarding hostage-taking in Beirut in the 1980s, I stumbled across a book written by a Frenchman, Jean-Paul Kauffmann, who had been seized by militias and held for three years in Lebanon, and had later travelled to Saint Helena to write a reflective book on captivity. The subject, naturally, was Napoleon, but halfway through the book Kauffmann mentioned that while on Saint Helena he had learned of another exile who had been there 300 years earlier than Bonaparte and who, he enigmatically noted, was a ‘Portuguese Muslim’ and the island’s only living human inhabitant. It was a passing reference – a historical amuse-bouche – and Kauffmann’s comment intrigued me, but not for long. At that time I had just been commissioned to write a biography of Saladin and for the next few years I immersed myself in the world of Sultans and Lionhearts. And that seemed that. Except that it was not. On occasion, as I was busy researching an arcane point on the Third Crusade, I would find myself wondering: what could possibly have brought a 16th-century ‘Portuguese Muslim’ to a deserted island in the South Atlantic? And could it really be true that he had been the only living soul there? The answer, astonishingly, was yes.

Saladin over, to satisfy my curiosity I briefly turned my attention back to this enigmatic Portuguese Muslim. Having spent years reading hundreds of documents on Saladin, I was dismayed to find that only a handful mentioned Lopes. I struggled with the sources: there were inconsistencies and gaps in the story, and I remained frustrated by my inability to read the original documents in Portuguese. But the more I read the more the story drew me in: it stretched from Lisbon to Goa, from the society of fidalgos to Hindu dancing girls and from the most terrible torture and disfigurement to a redemptive and transformative exile on an isolated island. Above all and throughout it was the image of Lopes on a deserted island that haunted me from the first reading, and that continued to haunt me. I became determined that the story of Fernão Lopes needed to be written.

In The Other Exile, I chose to write the story of one man and his journey through life – a journey lived on many levels, worldly and spiritual – but I was not sure what kind of book would emerge. The reason was simple: though the adventure story of a real-life Portuguese Robinson Crusoe was undoubtedly intriguing, full of drama, treachery and heroism, I sensed that the real story lay elsewhere, and that its importance lay in what was unsaid. Ultimately it was not just a story about a man or an adventure or even an island. It was a story about us and what makes us human. But though one can write about the geography of Lopes’ physical journey, how does one express the geography of his spiritual one? Words in themselves hold no power, spiritual descriptions offer no genuine or profound meaning. How does one express the mystical when by its own nature it cannot be contained in words? In many ways I chose to write the story of Lopes as an adventure story partly because I could not describe the spiritual journey, but also in the hope that the adventure will be an embarkation point from which the reader can enter into the drama of the soul.

This is Fernão Lopes’ story. It was only later, after I first stumbled across him as a ‘Portuguese Muslim’ living in isolation on a deserted island a thousand miles away from anyone, and after I decided to write about him, that I began to understand I had unwittingly entered midway into his story. If to understand a man’s life one needs to understand it in its totality, then in order to move forwards it was important to begin the journey by going backwards. Only this way could we attempt to answer the question of why Fernão Lopes was on the island with any sense of profundity. Today the story of Fernão Lopes is largely forgotten, even though there was a time when it was well known, and if this book aims to bring him back to life then it is for one purpose only: to allow him to tell his story. The Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, perhaps Portugal’s most famous 20th-century literary figure, asks an astute question in his writings: who, he enquires, if they are Portuguese, can live within the narrow bounds of just one personality, just one nation, just one religion? Lopes was born in the Golden Age of Portugal, the age of explorers like Vasco da Gama and Bartolomeu Dias, but his life also bridged two seismic events which profoundly transformed and traumatised Portugal during this period. Both fundamentally challenged the very identity of what it meant to be Portuguese. In telling the story of Fernão Lopes, one is naturally drawn to telling the story of this remarkable period.

PART I

The First Journey

‘My soul waits for the Lord more than the watchmen for the dawn; Indeed more than the watchmen for the dawn.’

PSALM 130: 6

CHAPTER ONE

A Kingdom Far Away

As our story begins at the end of the 15th century, Portugal lay at the end of the world: a frontier to nowhere. Beyond its coast there was nothing but ocean, not even islands. There was a time when it had been one of the ‘five kingdoms’ in the Iberian Peninsula. Four were Christian: Portugal, Castile, Aragon and Navarre, and one was Muslim – Granada. At the beginning of the 16th century, Castile had conquered Granada and Navarre, and was united with Aragon, emerging as the great Kingdom of Spain. As for the fifth kingdom, Portugal, it was a land defined by what it was, but equally importantly by what it was not. It was not Spain – despite the logic of geography which dictated otherwise. There was no overwhelming reason why Portugal should be distinct from the rest of the Iberian Peninsula, a fact which led a contemporary Portuguese historian to describe its independence as a geographical absurdity. It was not Spain, even though matrimonial unions were so close and frequent that it is possible to claim that the kingdoms of Portugal and Castile were ruled by a single dynasty during the entire Middle Ages. Undoubtedly a distinct national language, which borrowed heavily from Lusitanian and Arabic, helped in cementing its separate identity. Similarly, a medieval Portuguese would recognise today’s country, since even 500 years ago the land had already assumed approximately the political shape it retains today, by far the first European state to do so.

Although Atlantic in location, Portugal’s soul was Mediterranean, its people closer in character to the Greeks than to the Bretons or Basques. In the North, rain swept across mountainous ranges and valleys of great beauty, rendering the landscapes green and the summers mild. Beer, not wine, was drunk and people cooked with butter and not olive oil, which was undoubtedly a Celtic legacy. Further south the mountains receded and the land was flatter, with fiercely oppressive, stifling summers. Here one found an abundance of grapes, citrus fruits and figs as well as wine, olives and cork. North or south, Portugal was an impoverished land, overwhelmingly rural, with small, heavily walled towns between which communications were so bad that only those with access to the rivers could export their produce. Roads barely existed and there were no coaches. People had to move by horse, mule or donkey. Many simply travelled on foot. Only the endless sea which framed the land offered an alternative, as fishermen trawled the bleak windswept shores and tributaries for sardines and explored its waters for cod and herring. The land was sparsely populated, and there was a terrible reason for this. By the time the plague, known as the Black Death, had run its course in 1352 it had taken more than 30 per cent of the population of Portugal with it. But still the plague was not satisfied and it returned again and again, consuming all those who crossed its path. Neither the wealthy nor the poor were spared its pestilence. Nor were the pious, who prayed fervently but in vain to Saint Sebastian to intercede, for neither supplication nor potion came to their aid. Sweeping through the monastery of São Pedro in the city of Coimbra, the plague killed every human soul inside. Even when it had finally eased its terrible grip on the country, further disasters were to follow: between 1309 and 1404, eleven earthquakes are known to have struck Portugal, and the region suffered 22 famines. By 1450, Portugal’s population had declined from 1.5 million to about 900,000.

Born in the early 1480s in Lisbon, Fernão Lopes grew up during Portugal’s so-called Golden Age, the most memorable period in the country’s history, unmatched before or after. This was the age of Bartolomeu Dias, the first European to sail around the southern tip of Africa, of Vasco da Gama and of Pedro Álvares Cabral, the discoverer of Brazil. Portugal launched its empire like a drunken love affair: chaotic and random, impetuous and cruel. During Lopes’ youth the Portuguese sailors, formerly impoverished fishermen who trawled for sardines, rounded the Cape of Good Hope and sailed to India, founding settlements and trading posts as far away as Brazil and Africa, the Malay Archipelago, Macao and Japan. An achievement of astonishing audacity, it was an empire which typified the Portuguese character. In parts it was the consequence of Christian otherworldliness but also of plundering piracy and the bounty of enterprising adventurers. It was an empire which saw gold pour in and then slip away. Portugal’s overseas expansion was a confusion of plans: an unfolding saga of ambitious kings, rapacious merchants, political magnates, travellers and pilgrims, all searching for opportunities.

As a Lisboeta born and bred, Lopes was a native of the city the Portuguese knew as the ‘Lady and Queen of the Ocean’. Bathed on one side by the sea, Lisbon’s three other sides were dominated by five hills, giving the city an irregular semblance, not completely level and not completely uneven. With a population of roughly 50,000, the city was the same size as contemporary Bruges, half that of London and only one-quarter that of Venice. Its natural environment, on the slopes of the hills overlooking the Tagus, with fertile land and a deep-water harbour, attracted merchants and traders from across Europe. In its streets English, French and Flemings jostled for space with mariners, fishermen and Genoese. On its most prominent hill stood the royal castle. Below there were houses and monasteries on the slopes. It was a city packed with churches, which were used not just as places of worship, but also as meeting places, and even places of amusement where dances were held and troubadours and jesters were heard. People ate and drank and slept in churches. They also spoke and laughed and argued loudly, and they did so standing, since it was not until the middle of the 15th century that benches were introduced. At the foot of the castle there were three Jewish quarters whose gates shut at night, while the Muslims had their own living quarters near the city’s fortified walls just below the castle. Opposite the castle stood a Carmelite monastery and on the same hill was the Monastery of the Friars, a building where the young Lopes, had he visited it, could have marvelled at the embalmed crocodile hanging in the choir. In 1492 Hieronymus Münzer, a cartographer and humanist from Austria, visited Lisbon as part of a tour of the Iberian Peninsula and remarked on the presence of the embalmed crocodile, albeit with no explanation of how it came to be there.

Throughout, the city bustled with activity. From the Alfama district, clinging to the slopes of the Monte do Castelo – where Lopes was most probably born – to the Baixa district, with its vibrant crowded streets and houses – some up to four or five storeys high – where all manner of luxuries from gold and spices to elephants and wild parrots could be bought and traded, to the Praça do Rossio where, as a young boy, Lopes could have watched horse racing, bullfights and public executions while munching on almonds and figs. Although there are no records of how Lopes lived in Lisbon, we do know that Portuguese houses were notable for being poorly illuminated and barely ventilated, and for having no privacy. Indeed most of the inhabitants stayed away from their homes all day. Houses were small, and those with more than four rooms were rare and only for the wealthiest. In many houses the rooms did not have any walls and were divided by curtains or wooden panels. Furnishings in the houses tended to be very austere, with woollen tapestries used as insulation against the cold and the heat. Carpets were put on the floor, with the less wealthy using mats. The prevailing building materials were wood, nails, rammed earth, tile, stone, clay, sand and lime. Again, only the wealthiest could construct using stone slabs.

On occasion Lopes would have visited the fish market where the smell of sardines was everywhere and slaves sat languidly near empty baskets awaiting the arrival of the fishing boats. Fish was consumed in great quantities in Lisbon, particularly on religious days. But it was not just the fishermen, for near them vegetable sellers, confectioners, butchers, bakers and pastry makers also jostled to sell their wares. Fruit was plentiful, but the oranges were bitter and were used as lemons, since sweet oranges did not come to Portugal until a century later. Though there were vegetables for sale – spinach, turnips, radishes, lettuce, carrots, cucumber, asparagus, mushrooms and pumpkins, for example – they were eaten only by the poor who could not afford meat. The wine Lopes would have drunk was normally diluted with water since that was the custom, and he would not have drunk tea or coffee, which was unknown. Like most he was likely fast developing a taste for sugar, which was considered a spice and which was, at 50 times the price of honey, prohibitively expensive. From a young age, like most Portuguese of his age, he would have adopted the Arab habit of washing his hands before eating, and he would only ever have eaten with the knife he carried. Indeed, no one would ever leave their house without a knife and even the priests were armed. Lisbon was a filthy city. Despite being situated on the banks of a river, no one had had the idea of digging a canal where the filth could be discharged. Instead slaves carried buckets of excrement to the sea during the day, invariably spilling a quantity onto the ground. As one Portuguese contemporary acidly noted, ‘The wise men who devote their time to splitting hairs to make laws have not yet found a time to issue one ordering that this refuse be carried out during the night’. Musk, amber and gum all recently brought from India were burned constantly to disguise the odour. On occasion the stench was alleviated by a waft of cooked meat and roast beef coursing through the streets, from one of the street stalls.

The city in which Lopes was growing up was changing fast and there was no greater sign of this than on the Rua Nova, Lisbon’s first named street. Its full name, Rua Nova Grande dos Mercadores, made explicit its purpose: ‘The Great New Street of Merchants’. It cut a distinctive line across the Baixa district, linking the four directions of the city, and was situated between Lisbon’s two richest parishes: the São Julião church with its three naves at the northern side and Madalena at the eastern end. More importantly, Rua Nova ran parallel to the Tagus waterfront where boats setting out for and returning from India docked. The street also lay a short distance from the riverside wharf near Rossio Square, where the market and public auctions of goods, furniture and slaves were held. In 1517 the dramatist Torres Naharro in his play Propalladia has a Portuguese shepherd declare that ‘God is Portuguese, from the middle of Rua Nova’. Certainly an ambitious claim for a street, even if it lay at the heart of the capital of a mercantile empire. For the kings of Portugal, however, it was imperative that a New Jerusalem be built on the banks of the Tagus, one which befitted their claim to be Sovereign of the World, and at the heart of this city would be Rua Nova which would embody the architectural identity and reflection of the royal vision. For this reason João II decreed that the street should be meticulously measured in length and width, and the elevation of the buildings accurately recorded. And similarly, João’s successor Afonso V was determined to introduce order and symmetry in place of the ‘cluttered look’, which was a reflection of the medieval organic Islamic city that the Alfama area of Lisbon represented. In 1500 Rua Nova received royal recognition when the King elected to relocate there from his medieval palace in Alfama. Lopes would have watched as the new palace was put up at what seemed to be a furious pace of construction. The palace was strategically positioned just a few steps from Lisbon’s mercantile hub, and embedded within it on the lower floors were the custom houses of Africa and India, lying underneath the royal quarters. Just west of the palace was the shipyard, the Ribeira das Naus. The presence of the new palace meant that the Rua Nova now became the most fashionable location to live in Lisbon and properties and rents there were the most expensive in the city. It was here that one came to see and be seen, and where the richest merchants lived, many of whom were German and Flemish.

Almost daily as a boy Lopes would have traversed the Rua Nova and come across the merchants, seated on wooden benches in front of their shops deep in conversation, revealing little but listening intently to any gossip that could help further their profits. On that bustling street there was one magnificent house that stood out. The young Lopes may have been among those who stopped at its gates to gaze at its grandeur. He would not have needed to ask who lived there for it was well known in Lisbon. The Florentine merchant Bartolomeo Marchionni, now a Portuguese citizen, was an enormously wealthy man after having acquired a monopoly to trade from the Portuguese Crown. Indeed, he was considered the wealthiest man of his time, and he was a close confidant of the King, from whom he leased his property. It was hard to imagine that any man other than the King could possess such fabulous wealth and splendour, and during their daily errands many Lisboetas paused and, gazing at the house, asked themselves how it was possible to be so wealthy. But everyone who lived in Lisbon already knew that the answer was India. Fernão Lopes grew up in a Portugal gripped by an urgent and pressing question: why should Lisbon not replace Venice or Genoa as the commercial capital of Europe? For years the Portuguese could hardly have failed to notice that a quintal of pepper costing three ducados in Malabar could be sold in Lisbon for 40 ducados, nor could they ignore the fact that the lucrative eastern trade in gold and spices was an obvious source of prosperity to the Islamic countries and to the Italian maritime republics. The overland route to the East was, however, firmly in the hands of the Mamluk Muslim Sultanate – a slave dynasty which overthrew the Ayubids and ruled over Egypt until its defeat by the Ottomans in the early years of the 16th century. Indeed after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, the routes of Syria and Egypt had gradually dried up for the non-Muslims. What was clear was that there could be no trade with India through the land route that did not go via Muslim lands. But what if there was a way to circumvent the land route, and to forge a sea route that could link Europe with India and the eastern territories; a route which would destroy the Arab trade monopoly? What if, in other words, there was a way to cut out the middleman and trade directly, and more profitably, with the producer? As early as 1291 two Genoese brothers – the Vivaldis – had tried to open a sea route to the East, sailing down the Moroccan coast. They were never seen again. But the idea did not die with the Vivaldis, rather it persisted and grew.

Young boys of Lopes’ day idolised the great hero Prince Henrique, famous to us today as Henry the Navigator (1394–1460), and grew up enraptured by his stories. A royal prince and a patron of explorers, Henrique was convinced that India was closer to the east of Portugal than the west and he was determined to prove it. Before Henrique, sailors and navigators had sailed towards Africa with great fear and trepidation. No Portuguese sailor had ever gone south of latitude 27 degrees North, for beyond that lay the ‘Sea of Darkness’, where sea monsters and boiling waters awaited. But Henrique was curious to know how far the coast extended, and he sent fourteen expeditions into the ‘Sea of Darkness’ for a multitude of motives: to advance geographical and scientific knowledge, to spread the Christian faith and to search for the mythical Prester John – rumoured to be a potentate who held a great Christian empire which he ruled beyond Muslim territory in Ethiopia. Henrique also thirsted for Guinea gold, and wished to control its sources in the Upper Niger and Senegal Rivers, as well as to add to the lucrative slave trade. In 1424 one of his squires, Gil Eanes, rounded Cape Bojador in a barca – a small square-rigged craft – taking an enormous step forward. By 1441 Portuguese captains, braving a dangerous lee shore, contrary winds and adverse currents, had reached the white cliffs on the coast of Mauritania, and by the mid 1440s they were sailing in the waters of Upper Guinea. Progress, however, continued to be slow and dangers were everywhere, from the treacherous shoals to the poisoned arrows with which the Portuguese were welcomed by African warriors. The Portuguese learned quickly, and calculated that if they sailed away from the coast with the wind on their beam they would reach a zone of winds which would ease their journey. By 1460 they had gone as far as Sierra Leone and the Gulf of Guinea, which they believed to be the southernmost tip of Africa. One year later, however, Pedro de Sintra skirted the shores of Sierra Leone and made contact with the inhabitants of what is today Liberia. Then, in the 1480s, the Portuguese reached Timbuktu and Mali and in 1486 the Chief of the Ughoton in Benin accompanied João de Aveiro back to Lisbon, causing a sensation in the Portuguese court. Trade opportunities with West Africa had opened everyone’s eyes. Soon it was not just the Crown or the nobility who were enriching themselves, but Portuguese of all classes who were supplementing the meagre returns they gained from the agriculture which had supported generations before them with various forms of trade. Fishermen, traders and shipbuilders all now looked across the sea.

In 1481 the great João II took the throne. It was João who truly launched Portugal’s great age of exploration. Prior to his reign, Portuguese expansion and exploration along the coast of West Africa had been directed either by junior members of the royal family or enterprising merchants and traders. However, under João, the Crown for the first time took a leading role in the organisation and financing of Portuguese expeditions, putting into effect what Henrique had once dreamed of. In 1482, and again in 1485, João sent Diogo Cão, the first recorded European to see the Congo River, southwards along the coast of Africa. When in 1486 Christopher Columbus presented João with a proposal to seek a westerly passage to India, the King of Portugal rejected it, not because he was ignorant or uninterested, but because he was convinced that there was a more direct route. João had sent out emissaries over land to East Africa and India via the Mediterranean, and he was certain that a sea route was navigable. In the same year that he turned down Columbus, João sent out a fleet to find the end of Africa. Departing from Portugal in 1486, the navigator Bartolomeu Dias led his vessels far south along the coast, diligently recording and naming new points as he passed them. At one point very strong adverse winds blowing south-south-east prevented his ships from continuing, and he decided to turn away from the African coast, and sail west for fifteen days, then south, and finally east towards the coast of Africa once again. Pushing on, despite severe disapproval from his crew, Dias finally rounded a cape that the Portuguese initially named the Cape of Storms, ultimately marking the end of Africa. Later this cape was renamed the Cape of Good Hope. But then, although it finally seemed that the long-cherished prize was at hand, no further ships were sent out from Lisbon: João had more important things on his mind.

‘The King is a man of simple habits, not at all prodigal, and who knows to make the best of everything’, so wrote the cartographer Hieronymus Münzer in 1492 about João II, who was one of the most, if not the most, formidable European rulers of the time. For his rival, Isabella of Castile, he was simply ‘The Man’, and for contemporaries he was ‘a man who commanded others and who was commanded by no one’. Over his Catholic kingdom, the King held authority. To all and before God his duties were clear: to ensure the fair pursuit of justice, to defend his territory and to preserve religious orthodoxy throughout the land. It was he who held the balance between opposing elements and ambitions, between those in the interior of the country and those on the coast, between those who favoured closer relations with Castile and those who opposed them, between the competing nobility high and low. But the throne of Portugal was not mandated from Heaven, nor was it an absolute monarchy. Whereas a strong tradition of sacred monarchy existed in England and France, where sovereigns were both anointed and crowned, this was not the case in Portugal where the principle of kingship in the late Middle Ages dictated that the King earn his right to rule. To win the crown he needed to be seen as being more than a first among equals. To retain it he had to convince the people – effectively the nobility – that he had the legitimate right to rule. The primary way this could be achieved was through the expansion of the royal household and by bringing a greater number of nobles into his service. So, despite the harsh economic conditions, the King could not be seen to have a small household, since that was a sign of both vulnerability and a lack of largesse. It also denigrated kingship – after all the King was God’s representative on earth, and God was not poor.

Christian virtue and liberality were the key to good kingship, but so was wisdom. It was the Crown which awarded titles and granted seigneuries to the nobility, and the Crown could also rescind them. Lords of manors had the right to hold manorial courts and collect their rents, but if the Crown wished to collect taxes, the lords had to carry out the royal will. If the kingdom went to war, the lords had to raise an army. It was a social contract and a bond of trust: the nobles afforded great powers to the King to enable him to maintain order and justice, make law and coin money, and in return they expected the appropriate rights and privileges. The strength of a king depended on his ability to prevent the nobility from checking or even usurping his authority, and tension and conflict were inevitable, since a poor king was a weak king. João was said to have complained that he had been left as only ‘king of the road’. Determined to stand up to the challenge to his authority posed by the powerful aristocratic families, João imposed an oath on his subjects by which they had to swear on their knees to deliver to him any castle or town they held on demand. The chief opponents to the King were the Duke of Braganza (who was also João’s brother-in-law) and the Duke of Viseu, who was responsible for the border with Castile and had amassed tremendous wealth through monopolies. João knew that to assert his royal authority, his strength had to be on display, and he had the Duke of Braganza publicly beheaded for treason. Nor could he show signs of weakness, and shortly afterwards he personally stabbed to death the Duke of Viseu. Both acts were as shocking as they were violent, and it is possible João may have felt remorse, for he now summoned the Duke of Viseu’s younger brother, Manuel, aged only fifteen, to appear before him. In a tearful audience João declared that he loved Manuel as much as his son and promised to make him his heir in the event that he should have no legitimate descendants. It was a grand gesture, and a public one. How the death of his brother at the hands of the King affected Manuel’s feelings can only be guessed at for he wisely kept silent, and though he listened to João’s tearful exhortations, he knew they were largely meaningless. There were six persons who had better claims to the throne, and in any case the King was in rude health.

CHAPTER TWO

‘Well-greased and stowed away’

What history labels luck, man names providence. Remarkably, in 1495, when Lopes was around fifteen years old, Manuel I, Manuel the Fortunate, whose father had been stabbed to death by the previous King, ascended to the throne of Portugal. As one never destined nor imagined for power, Manuel had been expected to retreat from the matters of the court, and, given his nature, to take up Holy Orders. His rise to power was certainly wondrous, and he believed it to be predestined – when one ascends thus it is only natural to think that it is for a purpose. Deeply pious, Manuel had, since his youth, been a devotee of Joachim of Fiore, the 12th-century hermit who taught that the prophetic texts, and particularly the Apocalypse, were the keys to understanding God’s purposes for mankind. The core of Joachimite belief revolved around a future ruler who was the Restitutor Mundi (‘Restorer of the World’) who would emerge to save his people and defeat the forces of Islam. At what stage Manuel began to see himself as being guided by the Holy Spirit, fulfilling a providential role to bring about the conversion of the world by conquest and proselytisation, is not clear; but it was beyond doubt that he was sincere in this belief. It was an extraordinary belief, but then again it was an extraordinary age. Eduardo Lourenço, the celebrated contemporary Portuguese essayist and philosopher, writes of how Portuguese identity possesses a ‘sense of congenital weakness and a magical conviction of an absolute divine protection … which is deeply imbricated in the notion of a special destiny’. This bewitching mixture was never more to the fore than in the reign of Manuel. In the two years between 1498 when Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and 1500 when Pedro Cabral landed in Brazil, Portugal succeeded in establishing a global maritime empire. Surely if this was not a sign of divine blessing and the fulfilment of biblical prophecies, then what was?

The Portugal in which Lopes grew up and over which Manuel now ruled was one where chivalric romances mingled with biblical prognostications, and ancient legends with Christian apocalyptic writings. Two legends in particular stood out as foretelling its divine role, and both involved Muslims. The first related the story of Afonso Henriques, who was to become Afonso I, the first King of Portugal. On the eve of a decisive battle with the Muslim armies in 1139, Afonso saw a great light in the sky which revealed the Cross, with Jesus crucified upon it, surrounded by angels. Afonso prostrated himself before this vision and the figure of Christ reassured him that he would be victorious and establish a kingdom which would be blessed by God: ‘It is my will to build upon you and upon your descendants, an Empire dedicated unto me, so that my name will be spread to foreign peoples.’ This legend became the founding myth of Portugal, a legend of both the divinity of its founding and the purpose for the kingdom. It was one that Manuel deeply believed in, for as soon as he assumed power he decreed the re-interment of Afonso Henriques’ body in Coimbra. As for the second legend, I shall return to that later since it has a particular poignancy with regard to our story.

To dream well in Portugal was to dream of being a fidalgo. In 15th-century Portugal the term ‘nobility’ rarely appears, nor is it ever defined, other than in vague references to men who are ‘well-born’ or who are of ‘boa linhagem’ – good lineage – or who through heredity or service were recognised as being ‘noble’. Nevertheless, approximately one in ten of the population stood apart from the rest of society. They were the fidalgos – the sons of somebody (literally filhos de algo). The term fidalgo was not a title, rather it was a distinction which affirmed a certain privilege. But not all fidalgos were equal. Numbering no more than 50 families, the grande nobreza were the most privileged in the land, and they carried the title ‘Dom’, which was conferred by the King, before their names. They were the noblest men, who sat in the King’s inner councils and in the Parliament (the Cortes) and had the King’s ear. Next on the social scale were the cavaleiros (knights), followed by the escudeiros (squires), who were associated with the royal household and who aspired to a role in administration, or an appointment to a military post. Then there were the ‘simple nobility’ – the knights who owned little more than a horse, the judges, councillors and public servants – who ‘lived nobly’. All nobles were considered vassals of the King, and all of them, from the high nobility to the simple nobility, were considered to belong to the company of fidalgos.

Since the whole essence of a fidalgo was that he was the son of ‘someone’, exactly who that someone was assumed critical importance. Quality of birth was more important than wealth and within the fidalguia (the community of fidalgos), those who were born into nobility were considered higher than those who attained that status through service to the King. In a society gripped by a collective frenzy of preserving and enhancing one’s ‘purity of blood’, genealogical sleuthing became an obsession, as the names of new-borns were registered in a book so that they would not lose their social and political meaning. To aid families in registering their genealogical records, less scrupulous genealogists were plentiful, their quills ready to expand, elaborate and often simply to forge so as to allow a family to inherit a title of nobility that was not in fact theirs. This was not just a question of preening or of social climbing. For families, wealth, power and honour depended on who they were and where they stood socially, and so did abasement, disgrace and dishonour. It mattered, and it mattered greatly, otherwise why would the Counts of Pombeiro dispute in court, over generations, what they insisted was a genealogical error relating to an ancestor who had lived 300 years before? And why did André Amaral have to prove his great-great-grandfather had been a noble before he was permitted to add his coat of arms to the official Livro do Rei d’Armas in April 1515?

Royal proclamations of the late Middle Ages always addressed ‘fidalgos, cavaleiros, escudeiros’, and Lopes belonged to the last category: an escudeiro, a squire. Initially, the squire’s role was primarily to assist a knight, for example with his shield, hence the name in Portuguese (the Portuguese for shield is escudo and for squire escudeiro). However, by the time of Lopes the position of a squire was no longer simply viewed as a transitory or preparatory one and it had become established in its own right, entitling the holder to his own stable and retinue. Fernão Lopes may have been a squire, but he was not of noble blood. It was the privilege of the King to issue, on occasion, a charter to appoint squires who were not of noble birth. This was done largely for political purposes: to balance the power of the aristocracy and the feudal nobility who were forever challenging the King’s authority. The opening formula used in most of the squire charters was ‘We [the King] take [so and so] as squire, under our special guard and commendation’. Lopes was one of those squires, appointed by charter, and his status now qualified him to ‘live nobly’. As a squire his name was registered in an ‘Enrolment Book’ which recognised his affiliation to the royal House and resulted in him receiving a moradia: a fixed amount paid by the King himself. This signalled that Lopes had become a servant of the King, with the first step in the social ladder being that of Moço de Camara – Chamber Boy – and it was under that designation that Lopes first appears in court records. Portuguese titles could grow increasingly complex and obtuse. There was for example the Escudeiro Fidalgo – Squire Gently Born – and the Fidalgo Escudeiro – Gently Born Squire – with the first title being considered as the higher grade, while the second was regarded as the lower. Lopes viewed himself, and more importantly he was viewed, as a fidalgo: and though the word technically means ‘son of someone’ with the assumed implication that this someone was a person of distinction, it was in many ways an informal label: a social group rather than a specific rank. Undoubtedly there existed a certain elasticity regarding who was a fidalgo, although a squire and a Dom were not on the same level, nor were those who were appointed squires (and hence fidalgos) considered to be the same as those born with noble blood. And yet it mattered greatly that he was recognised as a fidalgo. Indeed one can say it was all that mattered.

There existed a prevailing feeling that young nobles should be encouraged to pursue an education, and an ordinance dated 1500 stipulated that squires were not to receive their living allowance or moradia unless they had been given a note from their Master of Grammar, attesting to their attendance at lessons and their satisfactory progress therein. Consequently Lopes, who would have been in his early teens, was (one imagines to his consternation) put through the rigours of Latin grammar. He also studied classical works including Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Pliny and Cicero, and read the histories of great kings and leaders. In addition, he studied the Bible, astrology and planetary theory. It appears that the education of young nobles was undertaken by schools attached to the university, and by affiliates of the university who were attached to the royal chapel. This was not surprising, given the close proximity of the royal palace to the university. Lopes’ thorough early education was in large measure attributable to the impact of print technology of the late 15th century. Whereas previously books were extremely expensive and difficult to obtain, now less wealthy nobles were afforded the opportunity of greater access to the written word. Printers made their money from mass production, printing editions of between 250 and 500 copies. One of the first printing presses in Portugal was set up in Lisbon where Valentim Fernandes and João Pedro de Cremona became primary printers for the Crown. Among their first printed works were books on grammar and breviaries or books of private prayer.

As a squire under the ‘special guard and commendation’ of the King – which effectively meant growing up under his tutelage and serving him – two career paths were open to Lopes: either a role in administration or an appointment to a military post. For Lopes, however, there was ultimately only one dream, and that was to become a knight. A knight exemplified honour, nobility and justice. For a young man of Lopes’ time, a life of valour expressed on the battlefield was the one that counted, indeed the only one that mattered, and, as soon as he was appointed a squire, Lopes would have undergone rigorous military training. He was taught double-handed sword fencing, how to deliver fast and forceful blows, how to dodge and how to sidestep, above all how to block and strike at the same time. He also learned how to fight with a halberd, a pike fixed with an axe head. It was a formidable weapon, and Lopes would have had to train hard to handle it; how to thrust with the spike or smash with the hammer side or chop with the axe side, how to use the shaft to block, or even how to use it to unhook a rider. The training Lopes was subjected to was both fierce and thorough, for the Portuguese had acquired decades of battle experience. Since 1415, when João I had conquered Ceuta, they had fine-tuned their fighting skills in Morocco in a variety of ways, in small-scale skirmishes, siege warfare, sorties for plunder or the conquest of new cities. In many ways Morocco became the military schooling ground for the Portuguese, the place where the young and not so young nobility headed to practise and perfect the arts of war and combat.

There had been a time when knights derived their honour from hand-to-hand combat, and the cavalry charge was usually the most effective part of any battle. But that time was passing and the advent of gunpowder – whereby small firearms were largely replacing crossbows – was transforming traditional methods of warfare. However, as warfare changed, knights struggled to adapt, since for centuries they had been inculcated in the virtues of chivalry and taught to despise foot soldiers. The idea of killing someone from a distance appeared to the knight as cowardly and lacking in honour, but gradually they were forced to accept that these foot soldiers might replace them as the first arm in the field of battle. In other words, knights increasingly had to give up a way of life, and they did so with the utmost reluctance. Don Quixote is of course the most famous example of the desperate noble combatant who cannot accept that the world has changed. In a similar vein, Baldassare Castiglione, a contemporary of Lopes, wittily expressed the impact of these changes in a dialogue in The Book of the Courtier:

‘But to come to specific details, I judge that the first and true profession of the courtier must be that of arms…’

‘Well then,’ the lady retorted, ‘I should think that since you are not at war at the moment, and you are not engaged in fighting, it would be a good thing if you were to have yourself well-greased and stowed away in a cupboard with all your fighting equipment, so that you avoid getting rustier than you are already.’

As a squire Lopes was quick to discover that life at court did not come cheap. If he aspired to being a knight then military prowess would not have been enough: he also needed to dress well, serve a generous table and have a following. He needed to be literate and knowledgeable and he needed to be a patron to artists. There really was only one way he could afford all this: he needed to be as close to the King as possible to obtain patronage, and for that, a presence at court was vital, since a favourable position translated into both prestige and monetary rewards. In a court where there was a fine dividing line between the formal and the informal, being noticed by the King could lead to a rapid rise, and accordingly courtiers became more conscious of their outward image. Some curled their hair while others plucked their eyebrows. Some wore clothes made from velvet, satin and taffeta, while others adorned their clothing with jewels and precious stones. On one occasion when the King changed the style of his beard to a more modern French one, the barbers of Lisbon worked furiously as the whole court trimmed their beards overnight. But it was not just a matter of preening: being careless or negligent about one’s clothing could lead to public censure from none other than the King. Elegant manners, fine clothes and witty conversations could not conceal the machinations of the calculating courtiers who kept a close eye on the King and a closer one on their rivals.

The court was an increasingly cultured place, with the King often being entertained by poets reciting songs whose roots lay in the Gallego-Portuguese tradition of troubadour poetry of the 12th and 13th centuries, and which were later collected in the Cancioneiro Geral. Every Sunday and on holy days the King listened to flutes, horns, harps, drums and fiddles. He also liked to listen to Moorish music while dining, and this was an occasion when squires like Lopes would be required to be present at court to dance. At court Lopes would have noted that Manuel had a demonstrable taste for Moorish things. Women and children sat not on chairs but on cushions, and Muslim dancers and musicians participated in court festivities. Muslim influence was also visible in the strict segregation of the living quarters of men and women, with spaces so strictly separated that men could not even pass by the threshold of women’s apartments. Kingship in Portugal underwent a significant transformation during Manuel’s rule. At first the steps were barely perceptible; the King’s chair and his dining table were raised on a dais to set them apart. But it soon came to be that one could not be seated in the presence of the King nor retain one’s hat when addressing him. Under Manuel the theatricality became more dramatic and pronounced; he was the first Portuguese King to be called ‘Majesty’, and when travelling he rode on horseback sheltered by a canopy of rich brocade. On special occasions, his cavalcade was accompanied by a range of his exotic animals: five elephants and a rhinoceros, as well as a Persian horse on which sat a hunting lynx.

It was thanks to Manuel that Lopes rose in society. We do not know how the young Lopes came to royal attention but from the moment of his proclamation as a squire, he owed his career to the royal House. He also owed the House his loyalty and fealty, for he was directly paid, promoted and honoured by the King. It was Manuel who was responsible for Lopes’ education, for his upkeep, for his armour. It was normal for the King to bless marriages and though we have no record of it, we can assume that he would have blessed Lopes’ marriage in Lisbon. In addition, it was the King of Portugal who would later send Lopes to India as an officer in his pay. The King more than anyone had seen how bloody the internecine struggles between the nobility could be, and he needed nobles who were loyal to him. Since Lopes was not originally of noble birth, his elevation to the nobility was based purely and solely on Manuel’s prerogative. In return Manuel expected loyalty and obeisance from his squires. It was a bond they dared not break.

As the 15th century came to a close, the situation in Portugal was as stark as it was simple: the borders with Castile had been set, the Muslims had been expelled and there were no wars to be fought. If the King did not make war, then it followed that he could not grant the nobles lands, jobs or rents that matched their honourable status. Consequently many noblemen began to look elsewhere to prove their military capabilities and gain promotions and honour. Even though it was not fitting for noblemen to trade, doing it in the name of the King and dealing with a Crown monopoly was another matter. Many noblemen increasingly acted as factors – agents overseeing the sale of goods overseas – and were employed as administrative and trade officers. As noblemen began to head to the new settlements in the islands the Portuguese had discovered, they began to acquire land, and what had been impossible in the old kingdom now became possible abroad. Profits were to be made from the gold, slaves and ivory from the Guinea coast, from the sugar cane plantations in the Cape Verde Islands, and from the grain of Morocco. Service in North Africa could also be seen as a penance, an act of self-punishment which could help restore the blemished reputation of a nobleman. In 1513, Dom Jaime, Duke of Braganza, killed his wife, whom he erroneously believed to be unfaithful. Overwhelmed by remorse and in search of a deed as reparation for his guilt, the Duke personally raised an army of more than 4,000 troops to lead into the city of Azemmour. After all, what greater reparation could there be than fighting the Muslims?

As far as the King was concerned, external adventure and warfare were excellent ways to distract the nobility and provide them with a vehicle for social mobility, while still retaining their loyalty to the Crown. Overseas adventure gave the nobility a chance to live a life they could never otherwise have imagined and to obtain a social status they would never have achieved had they remained in Portugal. Above all it was the minor nobility (with whom Fernão Lopes identified) who sought to prove their military capabilities, win honour and acquire new properties or rents. Very few of the higher nobility, or at least the first sons, left Portugal. Instead it was the lower nobility, the squires and the knights, who captained the ships: they were the warrior group of the crews, they were also the administrative and trade officers. Above all they were the ones who strove to show their capacity to serve the Crown as warriors. They were the young nobles. Their time had come.

CHAPTER THREE

The Lost Boys of Portugal

A king needs a queen, and since it was the custom for kings of Portugal to wed Castilian princesses, Manuel began negotiations for his marriage to the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic monarchs of Castile. They, however, refused to countenance any proposal until Manuel followed their example and rid Portugal of its Jews. That was the price Manuel had to pay to secure this alliance and what followed is one of the most shameful and controversial episodes in Portugal’s history. By and large, the Jews of Portugal, spread across the kingdom, from the border with Galicia in the North to the towns of the Algarve in the South, lived in judiarias (Jewish quarters) which had their own butchers, hospitals, schools, bathhouses and in some cases even brothels and prisons. Although all Jews were ordered to wear a distinctive red symbol on their clothing or a yellow symbol on their hats, their freedom to practise their faith was protected: they were governed by their own rabbis and magistrates, and forced conversions to Catholicism were expressly forbidden. In fact the free practice of Judaism (and of Islam) was not merely recognised, but also guaranteed by law. Thus, the first collection of codified Portuguese laws, the Ordenações Afonsinas, proclaimed by King Afonso V in the mid-15th century, outlawed the forced conversion of Jews to Christianity. Jews had a virtual monopoly on financial operations such as the collection of state and seigneurial revenues and the administration of customs and excise. Nearly all the royal treasurers were Jews, as were the royal bankers, as were almost all the court physicians. The Jews were also learned: the first book printed in Portugal was the Hebrew Pentateuch and of the first fifteen books printed in Portugal twelve were Hebrew religious classics printed by Jews for a Jewish audience. The fact was, Portugal was a safe haven to which the Jews of Spain had been flocking in droves, especially after anti-Jewish riots had broken out in Seville in 1391 and spread across the Iberian Peninsula, leading to the massacre of thousands of Jews and the forced conversion of many more thousands. A century later, in 1492, with the Spanish Edict of Expulsion, which gave Jews four months to convert or depart, they once again fled to Portugal.