Landi (Count Giulio de)

When we dealt with Father Manuel Constantino on page 300 of vol. 1 (2nd ed.) of this Elucidário, we intended to transcribe some passages from the article we had published in O Jornal (‘The Newspaper’) of 29 July 1934 under the title ‘Pela História da Madeira–Notas Bibliográficas’. In that article we had revealed the plagiarism that this Manuel Constantino had committed of the book by Count Giulio de Landi, which had been published in an Italian translation by Alemanio Fino in 1574. Through a mere oversight it was not transcribed, and this is done here, as a supplement to the article on Father Manuel Constantino:

“

Certainly, from Barbosa Machado down to the present day, the wish must often have arisen for a fuller knowledge of the Insulae Materiae historia. . . It was the only printed work dealing exclusively with this archipelago, since no other published works existed apart from the few pages to be found in some chroniclers, such as Zurara, Barros, Galvão and Damião de Góis. It seems that Constantino’s work became very rare from the outset, perhaps because it had been printed in Rome and perhaps also owing to other unknown circumstances. We know of only two references that show an accurate knowledge of the book: that of the annotator of ‘Island History’ (Historia Insulana) in 1866, and that of Dr Jordão de Freitas, in 1911.

It should therefore come as no surprise that the author of this brief article advised the purchase, albeit at a high price, of an extremely rare copy that had turned up in Vienna, Austria, and promptly arranged for its translation into Portuguese. He also wrote the Preliminary Note and the copious notes that accompanied the publication of this translation, produced in this city in 1930.

What, then, was our surprise and our disappointment when, two years ago, we learnt that there existed a printed work on Madeira earlier than Constantino’s, published in the city of Piacenza in 1574 and written by Count Giulio Landi! Our surprise rose to indignation when we discovered that the work of Doctor Manuel Constantino was a slavish copy, a brazen plagiarism, of Landi’s work, apart from a few slight alterations!

It was our esteemed friend Dr Jordão de Freitas, a distinguished scholar of the historical sciences, who gave us this news in a most interesting letter received at the time. We did not publish it in full, as we had intended, because it has regrettably been lost. What had happened was this: the learned director of the Ajuda Library (Biblioteca da Ajuda), in connection with the printing of the Insulae Materiae Historia, had told our illustrious friend Mr Henrique Hinton of the existence of this work predating Constantino’s, of which he knew only the title, the author’s name and the year of publication. Mr Hinton had a search made in London, through an authorised intermediary, in the famous library of the British Museum, and there discovered the extremely rare book, perhaps the only surviving copy. He at once had a complete photographic copy made of it, which he presented to the Funchal Municipal Library (Biblioteca Municipal do Funchal).

When Dr Jordão de Freitas published an interesting pamphlet in 1911 entitled Quando foi descoberta a Madegra?, he had closely examined the copy of the Insulae Materiae Historia held in the National Library in Lisbon (Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa). When, about two years ago, he was given access to the photographic copy of Count Giulio Landi’s work, he recognised without difficulty that the former was an outright plagiarism of the latter. From the comparison he then made, he even pointed out the small differences between the two works, as he informed us at once in the letter referred to above. The title of the work in question, which served as the text for the literal copy that is the Insulae Materiae Historia, is, ipsis verbis, as follows: ‘La descrittione de l'Isola de la Madera, gia scritta ne la lingua latina, dal molto Ill. Signor conte Giulio Sandi, et hora tradotta dal latino ne la nostra materna lingua, dal reverendo A. Alemanio Fini, ne la quale i contengono molto belle, e deletteuoli narrationi; e massimamente l'agricoltura del Zucchero, e li costumi degli huomini di quel paese, e li nobili esercitii Cavalereschi; e particolarmente il giuoco di Canne, & il modo di lottare, e la Caccia de li Tori à piedi, & à Cavallo, V'é posta anco la Descrittione latina del primo autore di tutte le souradette cose, acciò possa il lettore leggere in quella lingua che sia piu di gusto suo. In Placenza, appresso Francesco Conti. 1574’ (‘The description of the Island of Madeira, formerly written in Latin by the most Illustrious Count Giulio Sandi, and now translated from Latin into our mother tongue by the Reverend A. Alemanio Fini, containing very fine and delightful narratives, above all on the cultivation of sugar, the customs of the people of that country and their noble knightly exercises, and in particular the game of canes, the manner of wrestling and bullfighting on foot and on horseback; the Latin description by the original author of all the aforesaid matters is also included, so that the reader may read in whichever language is most to his taste. At Piacenza, by Francesco Conti. 1574’).

As the wording of the title transcribed above shows, the work was originally written in Latin by Count Giulio Landi and translated into Italian by Father Almenio Fini. It was published in the city of Piacenza in 1574 and contains both the original Latin text and its Italian translation. The book has 95 numbered pages, besides the title page. The first twelve are taken up by two dedications, one by Almenio Fini and the other by Giulio Landi, written in Italian and addressed to the princess of Piacenza and Parma. The Italian text follows, running from p. 13 to p. 54, and the Latin continues up to p. 95, the last page of the book.

As we have said above, we were greatly surprised, and also greatly displeased, that a man of the moral, social and intellectual standing of Dr Manuel Constantino should have committed the plagiarism which, in the light of a comparison of the works mentioned, we are bound to attribute to him. We even went so far as to suppose that we were perhaps facing an intricate bibliographical problem, which might one day be adequately cleared up by the emergence of new evidence for research and criticism, hitherto unknown.