Medina e Vasconcelos (Francisco de Paula)

The well-known author of ‘The Zarco Epic’ (Zargueida), who in his day enjoyed great renown as a poet, was born in the parish (freguesia) of the Sé in this city on 20 November 1768, the son of Teodoro Felix de Medina e Vasconcelos and Dona Ana Joaquina Rosa de Vasconcelos. He died a political exile on the island of Santiago, in the Cape Verde archipelago, in 1824, at the age of 56. We believe that the distinguished Medina e Vasconcelos family living in that archipelago descends from this illustrious fellow countryman of ours. The great Madeiran satirical poet Francisco Clementino de Sousa was also descended from Francisco de Paulo Medina.

There is little material to enable us to write a biography of the poet Medina in any detail. Some of the poems in his volume Poesias Lyricas show that he was twenty years old when he enrolled at the University of Coimbra (Universidade de Coimbra), which must have happened in 1788; he adds that ‘in the space of only two winters he heard the learned lectures of the sages who explain the mysteries of the sciences.’ Dr Azevedo says that, Medina having been ‘from his youth a follower of the ideas of the philosophers of the 18th century, this led, around 1790, to his being imprisoned for a year and a half in Coimbra, and afterwards forced to leave the city and expelled from the University for ever.’ The severity of this punishment seems to indicate that very serious charges weighed on Medina, but he utterly rejects them when he declares that it was ‘a false crime, never even conceived by me’. The poet wrote two Epistolas in verse to the rector of the University, Dom Francisco Rafael de Castro, one shortly after his imprisonment and the other when ‘already, sir, twelve moons have passed since I began weeping among tyrannous irons’. These letters were meant to implore the prelate’s protection and to obtain his release. It is not known whether Medina’s heartfelt poetic inspiration moved the inflexible magistrate, who was perhaps little swayed by the plaintive pleas of a poor, helpless student. It is certain, however, that he was set free a few months later, returning to his native land around 1792.

If Medina’s verses are to be believed, he led a life of bitter tribulations, both in Madeira and in mainland Portugal, which came to a sad end with his banishment to Cape Verde. Between 1792 and 1823 he made several visits to Portugal, and possibly abroad, though we do not know; on one occasion he was away from Madeira for about six years. It was surely during these more or less prolonged stays on the mainland that he published some of his volumes of verse, which appeared in Lisbon in 1797, 1805 and 1806.

Medina e Vasconcelos, who, in the words of Dr Álvaro de Azevedo already cited, showed himself from his youth a follower of the ideas of the 18th-century philosophers, was also a staunch supporter of the Constitution of 1821. For this reason he was caught in the net of the special judicial commission (alçada) that came to this island in 1823 (vol. I, p. 32) to conduct a rigorous and oppressive judicial inquiry (devassa) into the events that had taken place here at the proclamation of the first representative government in our country. The six magistrates who made up the commission arrived in Funchal on 26 August 1823 and delivered their sentence on 24 October of the same year. It states that Medina e Vasconcelos, ‘forgetful of the duties of honour and of a loyal subject, and of the ties that bound him most closely as a public official, had the reckless audacity to utter in public most grievous insults offensive to the decorum, veneration and respect due to the Throne and to the royal persons of Their Majesties, so grave that they are judged unworthy of being written in this judgment’. The same sentence asserts that he belonged to Freemasonry (Maçonaria) and took part in its work, having contributed notably to the proclamation and establishment of constitutional government in this archipelago. He was sentenced ‘to eight years of penal exile (degredo) in the State of Angola, with disqualification from offices of Justice or the Treasury, and to fifty thousand réis (old Portuguese money of account; 1$000 = 1,000 réis, 1:000$000 = one conto = 1,000,000 réis) to the Exchequer’.

Medina e Vasconcelos died in the capital of the Cape Verde archipelago in 1824, that is, shortly after the sentence banishing him to Angola had been passed; the reasons for the change in the place where the penalty was to be served are unknown to us. This fellow countryman of ours held the post of notary in Funchal when he was tried by the commission and banished to Cape Verde.

In a short critical appraisal of Medina’s poetry, Inocêncio Francisco da Silva says the following: ‘As a lyric poet he belonged to the French school; his verses are in general sonorous and well crafted, and he certainly did not lack naturalness. He aspired to sound the epic trumpet; but it is clear that this undertaking was far beyond his talent, and so in the two attempts he composed in that genre he never managed to rise above mediocrity. There are, however, in both of them, episodes that do not tarnish his muse and that may be read with pleasure.’

Of Medina e Vasconcelos’s compositions, it was ‘The Zarco Epic’ that brought him the greatest renown, and it is still today the best known of them all. It is an epic poem in ottava rima, modelled on the classical forms of the ancient epic. It is divided into ten cantos and contains more than five thousand lines. It deals with the discovery of Madeira by João Gonçalves Zarco, taking the discoverer’s surname as the title of the poem. It contains a series of interesting episodes with some felicitous poetic digressions, among which the legend of Robert Machin stands out. The actual discovery of this island is described only in Canto X. The poem is preceded by a sonnet dedicated to Bocage, to which that distinguished poet replied with another sonnet, which is without doubt the finest composition in this volume.

The Arquivo Historico da Madeira and the Diário de Noticias of 15 July 1928 contain some previously unpublished information about the poet Medina e Vasconcelos.