Frutuoso (Doctor Gaspar)

Gaspar Frutuoso, the celebrated author of ‘Longing for the Homeland’ (Saudades da Terra), was born in 1522 in the capital of the island of São Miguel. He was the son of noble and wealthy parents, who gave him every means of acquiring a sound and wide-ranging education.

He went to Salamanca at a tender age, and there he completed the preparatory studies for enrolment at that city’s famous university. He took his doctorate in its faculty of theology, where he was a most distinguished student and revealed an exceptional intellect. Having obtained the doctor’s laurel, he went to the diocese of Braga, but stayed there only a short time, because the repeated entreaties of his relatives, friends and admirers compelled him to return to his native city. While passing through Lisbon he was strongly urged to accept a mitre, which he firmly refused on this and on other occasions in his life.

The fame of his merits and virtues had preceded him to Ponta Delgada (‘slender point’), and Dr Gaspar Frutuoso was therefore the natural choice for the highest offices in his diocese. He always sought to excuse himself from them, content to serve as parish priest in the parish (freguesia) of the town (vila) of Ribeira Grande, where he lived for many years, where he died and where he lies buried.

He was of truly remarkable modesty and simplicity of manner, ‘preferring an obscure and tranquil life, devoted to work and study, to the brilliant and showy positions to which his talent, his vast learning and his eminent virtues could undoubtedly have entitled him.

He died in the town of Ribeira Grande on 24 August 1591, aged 69, and was buried in its parish church, where the following epitaph could be read on his tombstone: ‘Here lies Doctor Gaspar Frutuoso, who was Vicar and Preacher of this Church, vere a truly Apostolic man, distinguished in letters and virtues.’

It was in the peaceful retreat of his presbytery at Ribeira Grande that he wrote the vast work ‘Longing for the Homeland’, which was followed by the Saudades do Céo, which it seems he never completed.

The year 1922 marked the fifth centenary of the birth of Dr Gaspar Frutuoso, and a commission was formed in the city of Ponta Delgada to commemorate the date in fitting style. It also took the opportunity to give due prominence to the eminent qualities as prose writer, historian and humanist that had made this illustrious native of São Miguel famous. To the warmest applause of all, the Centenary Promotion Committee decided that the greatest tribute it could pay to the author of ‘Longing for the Homeland’ would be to publish his vast work in full. In this way it would strengthen his memory and make it endure through the ages, while giving his contemporaries and future generations knowledge of the history of the eastern group of the Azorean islands in the 15th and 16th centuries. For weighty reasons, the commission did not carry out its original plan, but it succeeded in publishing the third and fourth books of the Saudades, which cover the history of the islands of São Miguel and Santa Maria, which form the administrative district of Ponta Delgada.

They make up four large volumes, whose value and interest are enriched by an extensive study of the historian of the islands, in which the subject is entirely exhausted, whatever the many aspects from which we might judge and appreciate him. The learned Noticia Bibliográfica das Saudades da Terra by Mr João Simas and, above all, the biography and appraisal of Gaspar Frutuoso and his work by Mr Rodrigo Rodrigues are studies that reveal not only patient and conscientious historical research combined with the most refined and rigorous critical spirit, but also a profound understanding of the gifts and qualities that should characterise the work of the writer, the scholar and the historian, taking into account the conditions of the time, the environment and the other special circumstances in which the work was produced. Of Mr R. Rodrigues’s masterly study, chapter III deserves particular mention. Entitled O Humanista, o Historiador, e o Valor da sua Obra (pp. XXXIX–LV), it can, without any exaggeration, be placed on the same level as similar works by Dona Carolina Michaelis, Teófilo Braga, Mendes dos Remédios and Fidelino de Figueiredo, the most authoritative masters of literary historiography in our country.

In 1866 the mortal remains of Dr Gaspar Frutuoso, which lay in the parish church of the town (vila) of Ribeira Grande, were transferred to the municipal cemetery of the same town. They were interred in a modest mausoleum that the town’s Municipal Council (Câmara Municipal) had erected to the memory of the illustrious historian of the islands.