Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery Part 8

In fact, compa.s.s, astrolabe, timepiece, and charts, were all in use on the Mediterranean about 1400, just as they were to be found among the Arab traders of the Indian Ocean.

In this section it will be enough to glance hastily at the later and growingly independent science of Christendom, from the time that it ceased merely to follow the lead of Islam, and thought and even invented for itself. In another chapter we have seen something of the lasting and penetrating influence of Greek and Moslem and Hindu tradition upon the Western thought, which has conquered by absorbing all its rivals; we must not forget that some original self-reliant work in geographical theory not less than in practical exploration is absolutely needed to explain the very fact of Prince Henry and his life--a student's life, far more even than a statesman's. And after all, the invention of instruments, the drawing of maps and globes, the reckoning of distances, is not less practical than the most daring and successful travel. For navigation, the first and prime demand is a means of safety, some power of knowing where you stand and where to go, such as was given to sailors by the use of the magnet.

"Prima dedit nautis usum magnetis Amalphis," says Beccadelli of Palermo, but the earliest mention of the "Black ugly stone" in the West is traced to an Englishman. Alexander Neckam, a monk of St. Albans, writing about 1180 on "The Natures Of Things," tells us of it as commonly used by sailors, not merely as the secret of the learned. "When they cannot see the sun clearly in cloudy weather, or at night, and cannot tell which way their prow is tending, they put a Needle above a Magnet which revolves till its point looks North and then stops." So the satirist, Guyot de Provins, in his _Bible_ of about 1210, wishes the Pope were as safe a point to steer by in Faith as the North Star in sailing, "which mariners can keep ahead of them, without sight of it, only by the pointing of a needle floating on a straw in water, once touched by the Magnet."

It might be supposed from this not merely that the magnet was in use at the end of the twelfth century, but that it had been known to a few _savants_ much earlier; yet when Dante's tutor, Brunetto Latini, visits Roger Bacon at Oxford about 1258, and is shown the black stone, he speaks of it as new and wonderful, but certain, if used, to awake suspicion of magic. "It has the power of drawing iron to it, and if a needle be rubbed upon it and fastened to a straw so as to swim upon water, the needle will instantly turn towards the Pole-Star. But no master mariner could use this, nor would the sailors venture themselves to sea under his command if he took an instrument so like one of infernal make."

[Ill.u.s.tration: SKETCH-MAP OF DULCERT'S PORTOLANO OF 1339. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]

It was possibly after this that the share of Amalphi came in; it may have been Flavio Gioja, or some other citizen of that earliest commercial republic of the Middle Ages, which filled up so large a part of the gap between two great ages of progress, who fitted the magnet into a box, and by connecting it with the compa.s.s-card, made it generally and easily available. This it certainly was before Prince Henry's earliest voyages, where he takes its use for granted even by merchant coasters, "who, beyond hugging the sh.o.r.e, know nothing of chart or needle." In any case it would seem that prejudice was broken down, and the mariner's compa.s.s taken into favour, at least by Italian seamen and their Spanish apprentices, in the early years of the fourteenth century, or the last years of the thirteenth, and that when the Dorias set out for India by the ocean way in 1291, and the Lisbon fleet sailed for the western islands in 1341, they had some sort of natural guide with them, besides the stories of travellers and their own imaginings.

About the same time (_c._ 1350) mathematics and astronomy began to be studied in Portugal, and two of Henry's brothers, King Edward and the Great Regent Pedro, left a name for observations and scientific research. Thus Pedro, in his travels through most of Christendom, collected invaluable materials for discovery, especially an original of Marco Polo and a map given him at Venice, "which had all the parts of the earth described, whereby Prince Henry was much furthered."

Good maps indeed were almost as valuable to him as good instruments, and they are far clearer landmarks of geographical knowledge. There are at least seven famous charts (either left to us or described for us) of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, which give a pretty clear idea of what Henry's own age and his father's thought and knew of the world--some of which we believe to have been used by the Prince himself, and each of which follows some advance in actual exploration.

First of all comes the Venetian map of Marino Sanuto, drawn about 1306, and putting into map-form the ideas that inspired the first Italian voyages in the Atlantic. On this the south of Africa is washed by the sea as the Vivaldi had hoped to find it, but the old story of a central zone "uninhabitable from the heat" still finds a place, helping to keep up the notion of the Tropical Seas, "always kept boiling by the sun,"

that held its own so long. Besides this, in Sanuto's map there is no evidence that anyone had really been coasting Africa; Henry is not antic.i.p.ated and can hardly have been much helped by this very hypothetical leap in the dark.

But the Florentine map of 1351, called the Laurentian Portolano, is to all appearance a record of the actual discoveries of 1341 and 1346, and a wonderful triumph of guess-work if it is nothing better. For Africa is not only made an island, but the main outline of its coast is fairly drawn; in its western corner the headlands, bays, and rivers are laid down as far as Bojador, and the three groups of Atlantic islands, Azores, Canaries, and Madeira, appear together for the first time.

Beyond this names grow scarce, and on the great indent of the Gulf of Guinea, enormously exaggerated as it is, there is nothing to show for certain any past discovery, which suggests that this map was made for two purposes. First, to record the results of recent travel; secondly, and chiefly, to put forward geographical theories based upon tradition and inference, what men of old had told and what men of the present could fancy.

Long after the Italian leaders.h.i.+p in exploration had pa.s.sed westward, Italian science kept control of geographical theory; the Venetian maps of the brothers Pizzigani in 1367, and of the Camaldolese convent at Murano in 1380 and 1459, and the work of Andrea Bianco in 1436 and 1448, are the most important of mediaeval charts, after the Laurentian, and along with these must be reckoned that mentioned above as given in 1425-8 to Henry's brother, Don Pedro, on his visit to Venice. This treasure has disappeared, but it was said by men of Henry's day and aftertime, who saw it in the monastery of Alcobaca, to show "as much or more discovered in time past than now." If their account is even an approach to the truth, it was in itself proof sufficient of the supremacy and almost monopoly of Italians in geographical theory.

With 1375 and the Catalan map of that year, which specially refers to the Catalan voyage of 1346 and may be taken as one result of the same, we come to Spanish parallels; but until the death of Henry in 1460, Italian draughtsmen were in possession, and Fra Mauro's great map of 1459, the evidence and result, in great measure, of the Navigator's work, could only be drawn by Venetians for the men whose discoveries it recorded.

But there is one other point in Italian map-science which is worth remembering. At a time when most schemes of the world were covered with monsters and legends, when cartography was half mythical and half miscalculated, the coasting voyagers of the Mediterranean had brought their _Portolani_ or sea charts to a very different result. And how was this? Did they get right, as it were, by chance? "They never had for their object," says the great Swedish explorer and draughtsman, Baron Nordenskjold, "to ill.u.s.trate the ideas of some cla.s.sical author, of some learned prelate, or the legends and dreams of feats of Chivalry within the Court circle of some more or less lettered feudal lord." They were simply guides to mariners and merchants in the Mediterranean seaports; they were seldom drawn by learned men, and small enough, in return, was the attention given them by the learned geographers, the men of theory, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

But these plans of practical seamen are a wonderful contrast in their almost present-day accuracy to the results of theory let loose, as we see them in Ptolemy and the Arabian geographers, and in such fantastics as the Hereford Mappa Mundi, so well known in England. Map-sketches of this sort, were unknown to Greeks and Romans, as far as we can tell. The old Peripli were sailing directions, not drawn but written, and the only Arabian coast-chart known to us was copied from an Italian one. But from the opening of the twelfth century, if not before, the western Mediterranean was known to Christian seamen--to those at least concerned in the trade and intercourse of the great inland sea,--by the help of these practical guides.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LAURENTIAN PORTOLANO OF 1351. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]

From the middle of the thirteenth century, when the use of the compa.s.s began on the coasts of southern Europe, the Portolani began to be drawn with its aid, and by the end of the same century, by the time of our Hereford map (_c._ 1300), these charts had reached the finish that we see and admire in those left to us from the fourteenth century. For, of the 498 specimens of this kind of practical map now left to us, there is not one of earlier date than the year 1311. Among these specimens not merely the ma.s.s of materials, but the most important examples, not merely 413 out of 498, but all the more famous and perfect of the 498 are Italian. The course begins with Vesconte's chart, of the year 1311, and with Dulcert's of 1339, and the outlines of these two are faithfully reproduced, for instance, in the great Dutch map of the Barentszoons (_c._ 1594), for the type once fixed in the fourteenth century, recurs steadily throughout the fifteenth, and sixteenth. The type was so permanent because it was so reliable; every part of the Mediterranean coast was sketched without serious mistake or disproportion, even from a modern point of view, while the fulness and detail of the work gave everything that was wanted by practical seamen. Of course this detail was in the coast lines, river mouths, and promontories; it only touched the land features as they touched the seas. For the Portolani were never meant to be more than mariners' charts, and became less and less trustworthy if they tried to fill up the inland s.p.a.ces usually left blank. For this, we must look to the highest cla.s.s of mediaeval theoretical maps, those founded on Portolani, but taking into their view land as well as water and coast line. And such were the celebrated examples[29] we have noticed already.

[Footnote 29: _Of_ 1306, 1351, 1367, 1375, 1380, 1436, 1448, 1459.]

NOTE.--It was a man of theory, Raymond Lulli (1235-1315), of Majorca, the famous Alchemist, who is credited with the first suggestion of the idea of seeking a way to India by rounding Africa on the West and South.

CHAPTER VI.

PORTUGAL TO 1400.

1095-1400.

Henry the Navigator is the Hero of Portugal, as well as of discovery, the chief figure in his country's history, as well as the first leader of the great European expansion; and the national growth of three hundred years is quite as much a part of his life, quite as much a cause of his forward movement, as the growth of Christendom towards a living interest in the unknown or half-known world around.

The chief points of interest in the story of Portugal are first the stubborn restless independence of the people, always rising into fresh vigour after a seeming overthrow, and secondly their instinct for seamans.h.i.+p, which Henry was able to train into exploring and colonising genius. There was no physical justice in the separate nationality of the Western Kingdom of Lisbon any more than of the Eastern Kingdom of Barcelona. Portugal[30] was essentially part of Spain, as the United Provinces of William of Orange were essentially part of the Netherlands; in both cases it was only the spirit and endurance of the race that gave to some provincials the right to become a people, while that right was denied to others.

[Footnote 30: See Note 1, page 137.]

And Portugal gained that right by a struggle of three hundred years, which was first a crusade against Islam; then a war of independence against brother Christians of Castille; last of all a civil strife against rebels and anarchists within.

In the twelfth century the five kingdoms of Spain were clearly marked off from the Moslem States and from one another; by the end of the fifteenth there is only the great central Realm of Ferdinand and Isabella, and the little western coast-kingdom of Emanuel the Fortunate, the heir of Prince Henry. Nations are among our best examples of the survival of the fittest, and by the side of Poland and Aragon we may well see a meaning in the bare and tiresome story of the mediaeval kingdom of Portugal. The very fact of separate existence means something for a people which has kept on ruling itself for ten generations. Though its territory was never more than one fourth of the peninsula, nor its numbers more than one third of the Spanish race--from the middle of the twelfth century, Portugal has stood alone, with less right to such independence from any distinction of place or blood, than Ireland or Navarre, fighting incessantly against foes without, from north, east, and south, and keeping down the still worse foes of its own household.

[Ill.u.s.tration: N.W. SECTION OF THE CATALAN MAP OF 1375-6. (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]

But the meaning of the growth of the Portuguese power is not in its isolation, its stubbornly defended national distinction from all other powers, but in its central and as it were unifying position in modern history--as the guide of Europe and Christendom into that larger world which marks the real difference between the Middle Ages and our own day.

For Henry the Navigator breathed into his countrymen the spirit of the old Norse rovers, that boundless appet.i.te for new knowledge, new pleasures, new sights and sounds, which underlay the exploration of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries--the exploration of one half of the world's surface, the finding of a new continent in the south and in the west, and the opening of the great sea-routes round the globe. The scientific effects of this, starting from the new proof of a round world won by a Portuguese seaman, Magellan; and the political effects, also beginning with the first of modern colonial empires, founded by Da Gama, Cabral, and Albuquerque, are too widespread for more than a pa.s.sing reference in this place, but this reference must be connected with the true author of the movement. For if the industrial element rules modern development; if the philosophy of utility, as expressing this element, is now our guide in war and peace; and if the subst.i.tution of this for the military spirit[31] is to be dated from that dominion in the Indian seas which realised the designs of Henry--if this be so, the Portuguese become to us, through him, something like the founders of our commercial civilisation, and of the European empire in Asia.

[Footnote 31: W.H. Lecky, _Rationalism_.]

By the opening years of the fifteenth century, Portugal--in a Catholic rather than a Cla.s.sical Renaissance--had already entered upon its modern life, some three generations before the rest of Christendom. But its mediaeval history is very much like that of any other of the Five Spanish Kingdoms. Like the rest, Portugal had joined in driving the Moors from the Asturias to Andalusia, in the two hundred years of successful Western Crusade (1001-1212). In the same time, between the death of the great vizier Almanzor, the last support of the old Western Caliphate (1001), and the overthrow of the African Moors, who had supplanted that Western Caliphate,--between those two points of Moslem triumph and Christian reaction, the Portuguese kingdom had been formed out of the County granted in 1095 by Alfonso VI. of Leon to the free-lance Henry of Burgundy.

For the next three hundred years (1095-1383), under his descendants who reigned as kings in Guimaraens or Lisbon, we may trace a gradual but chequered national rise, to the Revolution of 1383 with two prominent movements of expansion and two relapses of contraction and decline.

First comes the formation of a national spirit by Count Henry's widow Donna Theresa and her son Affonso Henriquez, who from a Lord of Coimbra and Oporto, dependent on the Kingdom of Gallicia or of Leon, becomes the first free King of Portugal. His victories over the Moors in taking Lisbon (1147) and winning the day of Ourique (1139), are followed by the first wars with Castille and by the time of quiet organisation in his last years under the regency of his son Sancho, the City Builder. The building and planting of Sancho is again followed by the first relapse, into the weakness of Affonso II., and the turbulent minority of Sancho II. Const.i.tutional troubles begin with the First Sancho's quarrel with Innocent III. and with the appearance of the first national Cortes under Chancellor Julian.

The second forward movement starts with Affonso III., "of Boulogne," who saves the kingdom from anarchy and conquers the Algarves, on the south coast, from Islam; who first organises the alliance of Crown and people against n.o.bles and clergy, and, in the strength of this, defies the interdict of Urban IV.

Diniz, his b.a.s.t.a.r.d son, for whose legitimation he had made this same struggle with Rome, follows Affonso III., in 1279, and with him begins the wider life of Portugal, her navy and her literature, her agriculture, justice, and commerce.

The second relapse may be dated from the Black Death (1348), which threatened the very life of the nation, and left behind a sort of chronic weakness. National spirit seemed worn out; Court intrigue and political disaster the order of the day; the Church and Cortes alike effete and useful only against themselves.

But in the revival under a new leader, John, the father of Prince Henry, and a new dynasty--the House of Aviz--and its "Royal Race of Famous Infants," in the years that follow the Revolution of 1383, the older religious and crusading fervour is joined with the new spirit of enterprise, of fierce activity, and the Portugal thus called into being is a great State because the whole nation shares in the life and energy of a more than recovered liberty.

Before the age of King Diniz, before the fourteenth century, there is little enough in the national story to suggest the first state-profession of discovery and exploration in Christian history. But we must bring together a few of the suggestive and prophetic incidents of the earlier time, if we are to be fully prepared for the later.

(1.) Oporto, the "port" of Gallicia, from the formation of the county or "march" of Henry of Burgundy, seems to have given the district its name of "Portugallia," at one time as a military frontier against Islam, then as an independent State, lastly as an imperial Kingdom. Also, as the earliest centre of Portugal was a harbour, and its earliest border a river, there was a sort of natural, though slumbering, fitness for seamans.h.i.+p in the people.

(2.) Again, in the alliance of the Crown with the towns, first formed by Count Henry's wife Theresa in her regency after his death, 1114-28, and renewed by her grandson Sancho, the City Builder, and by Affonso III., the "Saviour of the Kingdom," we have an early example of the power of that cla.s.s, which was the backbone of the great movement of expansion, when the meaning of this was fairly brought home to them.

(3.) In the capture of Lisbon, in 1147, by Affonso Henriquez, Theresa's son, at the head of the allied forces of native militia and northern Crusaders--Flemish, French, German, and English--we have brought clearly before us, not merely the facts of the gain of a really great city by a rising Christian State, not merely the result of this in the formation of a kingdom out of a county, but the more general connection of the crusading spirit with the new nations of Europe. Portugal is the most lasting monument of crusading energy; it was this that strengthened the "Lusitanians" to make good their stand both against the Moors and against Castille; and it was this which brought out the maritime bent of the little western kingdom, and drew out its interest on the one and only side where that could be of great and general usefulness. The Crusades without and the policy of statesmen within, we may fairly say, made the Portuguese ready to lead the expansion of Christendom, made possible the work of Henry the Navigator. The foreign help given at Lisbon in 1147 was only a repet.i.tion on a grand scale of what had long been done on a smaller, and it was offered again and again till the final conquest of the southern districts, between Cape St. Vincent and the Guadiana (_c._ 1250), left the European kingdom fully formed, and the recovery of Western Spain from the Moslem had been achieved.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Chart of the Mediterranean Sea by WILLEM BARENTSZOON.

Engraved in copper 1595. Almost unaltered copy of a Portolano from the 14th century. (Orig. size 418 x 855 m.m.). (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]

(4.) And when the Crusading Age pa.s.sed away, it left behind an intercourse of Portugal with England, Flanders, and the North Sea coasts, which was taken up and developed by Diniz and the kings of the fourteenth century, till under the new Royal House of Aviz, in the boyhood of Henry the Navigator, this maritime and commercial element had clearly become the most important in the State, the main interest even of Government.

So, from the first mercantile treaty of 1294, between the traders of Lisbon and London, we feel ourselves beyond the mere fighting period, and before the death of Diniz (1325), there is a good deal more progress in the same direction. The English treaty of exchange is followed by similar ones with France and with Flanders, while for the protection of this commerce, as well as to prove his fellows.h.i.+p or his rivalry with the maritime republics of Italy, Diniz,[32] the "Labourer King," built the first Portuguese navy, founded a new office of state for its command, and gave the post to a great Genoese sailor, Emanuel Pessanha, 1317. With the new Lord High Admiral begins the Spanish-Italian age of ocean voyages, and the rediscovery of the Canaries in 1341 is the first result of the alliance. In 1353 the old treaty of 1294 is enlarged and safeguarded by fresh clauses signed in London, as if to guard against future trouble in the dark days then hanging over Portugal.

[Footnote 32: See Note 2, page 137.]

For the next generation (1350-1380), the national politics are bound up with Spanish intrigues and lose nearly all reference to that larger world, to which the kingdom was recalled by the Revolution of 1383, the overthrow of Castille on the battle-field of Aljubarrota, and the accession of John of Aviz. Once more intensely, narrowly national, one might almost say provincial, in peninsular matters, Portugal then returned to its older ambition of being, not a make weight in Spanish politics, but a part of the greater whole of commercial and maritime Europe. Almost ceasing to be Spanish, she was, by that very transfer of interest from land to sea, fitted for her special part,--