Dias (Baltasar)

Little is known of the personal circumstances of this Madeiran, although in his day he enjoyed great renown as a poet and as the author of several plays (autos), which the common people read avidly and which went through many editions. It is vaguely recorded that he was born in the parish (freguesia) of Sant’Ana, and it is presumed that he spent a considerable part of his life on the mainland, in the Kingdom (reino, i.e. mainland Portugal), where he died in a year we cannot determine. Diogo Barbosa Machado says in his Bibliotheca Lusitana (‘Portuguese library’) ‘that he was one of the celebrated poets who flourished in the reign of King Sebastian, chiefly in the composition of autos, with the circumstance of being blind from birth’. The Diccionario Bibliographico of Inocêncio Francisco da Silva, in volume 1, merely reproduces the brief notice given by Diogo Barbosa Machado.

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This tragedy (that of the Marquis of Mantua), of which there are several later reprints, was recently included by Viscount de Almeida Garrett in volume III of his Romanceiro (vol. XV of his Works), from page 195 to 296, where readers may see it. There the opinion is expressed that this Portuguese version of a ballad originally French or Provençal dates from the end of the 14th century, or at the latest from the beginning of the 15th. If so, it would certainly not be by Balthasar Dias, and it had been wrongly attributed to him by our bibliographers; the illustrious critic, however, seems unaware of this, for he says not a word about Balthasar Dias, nor that the work ever circulated under his name.

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I should dearly have liked to shed more light on what concerns this old poet, whose productions, whether his own or attributed to him, are as well known and widespread as his personal circumstances and the precise and certain period in which he lived are unknown. I should also have liked to verify whether, besides the editions listed above, taken from the Bibl. Lus. and repeated in the Academy’s Catalogo, there are other, earlier ones, as seems probable if the author lived in the period claimed. I cannot yet satisfy this wish, however, since the investigations made so far have produced no satisfactory result.

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If, as I hope, I obtain further information, I shall set out in the Supplemento whatever has been added. What is undeniable, whether or not the works that circulate under his name are by Balthasar Dias, is that they (if not all, then most of them) have been reprinted again and again; and that, despite the errors with which they are riddled, which often distort the sense, they have touches so national and so pleasing to the people that even today they are sought after and read both in Lisbon and in the provinces. “Go round (says one of our most eminent modern authors) the cottages in the villages and the workshops and craftsmen’s stores in the towns, and in almost all of them you will find one or another of the many editions of the autos of St Alexis, St Catherine, the Empress Porcina, the Malice of Women, etc.”',

In volume VIII of his Diccionario, Inocêncio adds the following: ‘Concerning this poet of ours, the certain period in which he lived and the time when the productions whose authorship is attributed to him were first printed, there remains the same scarcity of information that makes everything relating to him obscure and doubtful.’ In Teófilo Braga’s Recapitulação da Historia da Litteratura Portuguesa II. Renascença, on p. 308, the following interesting information is found:

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Of all the poets of the school of Gil Vicente he was the people’s favourite, and their affection for him endures still: he is read and performed in the villages. “A man lacking sight”, a 17th-century manuscript says of him, and this is confirmed by the royal decree (alvará) of 29 February 1537 granting the privilege for the publication of his works: “I make known that Baltazar Dias, blind, of the island of Madeira, told me by his petition that he has written certain works, both in prose and in verse, which have already been seen and approved, and some of them printed, as I could see from a public instrument that he presented before me. And since he wishes to have the said works that he has written printed, and others that he hopes to write, being a poor man with no other means of living, owing to the lack of his sight, than selling the said works, he asked me that I be pleased, as an act of charity, to grant him a privilege so that no person may print or sell his works without his licence, under a certain penalty.” The privilege was granted and a fine of thirty cruzados imposed on any counterfeiter, and the following condition was laid upon him: “if he should write any works touching on matters of our holy faith, they shall not be printed without first being seen and examined by Master Pedro Margualho; and once they have been seen by him and he finds that they speak of nothing that ought not to be spoken of, he shall issue him a certificate to that effect, with which certificate I am pleased that such works be printed, and not otherwise.

These rigours of ecclesiastical censorship were systematised in the first Index of condemned autos issued by the Cardinal Infante Dom Henrique in 1551, and in those that banned autos on subjects taken from the Bible and the Gospels. The Auto del rei Salomão, the versified Auto da Paixão de Christo and the Auto da Feira da Ladra have been lost. Still very much alive today are the Auto de Santo Aleixo and the Auto de Santa Catherina, drawn from the narratives of the Legenda Aurea, and the tragedy of the Marquez de Mantua. He had a lively poetic sense, which is why the Historia da Imperatriz Porcina, the Malicia das Mulheres and the Conselhos para bem casar are still read in the villages. From a stanza of this popular satire we know that he spent his last years in Beira: