Longing for the Homeland

The celebrated work of Dr Gaspar Frutuoso is the richest and most abundant store of news and information that we possess about our archipelago. Were it not for this work, the history of Madeira in the 15th and 16th centuries would be reduced to the few pages left to us by a handful of old chroniclers and to the documents recorded in the municipal archive of this city. All who toil at the thankless task of gathering materials for the history of our land must draw on this abundant stream. It has defects and gaps, entirely excusable given the circumstances in which it was written, but it is unquestionably a work of the highest value, both for the copious and interesting information it provides and for the remarkable qualities as historian, man of letters and scholar that its author reveals in it.

It was in the peaceful retreat of the presbytery of the parish (freguesia) of Ribeira Grande, on the island of São Miguel, where he was parish priest, that Dr Gaspar Frutuoso (volume II, page 57) wrote the ‘Longing for the Homeland’ (Saudades da Terra). It is a very extensive work, divided into six books, covering the history of the archipelagos of the Canary Islands, Cape Verde, Madeira and the Azores. In the second book, which deals with our archipelago, Dr Frutuoso refers in more than one place to Jerónimo Dias Leite (volume I, page 361), a canon of Funchal Cathedral (the Sé) (Sé do Funchal), who supplied him with much material for writing that book. In his own words: ‘And of Gonçalo Aires Ferreira, the root of these, they all say that he wrote the Discovery of the Island of Madeira, set down in truth, as I have said, on three sheets of paper; and the reverend Canon Jerónimo Dias Leite, no less learned than inquisitive, Chaplain to His Majesty, afterwards compiled it, enlarged it and polished it with his grave and refined style, written on eleven sheets of paper, and sent it to me when it was requested on my behalf, through the intercession of the noble Belchior Fernandes de Crasto, resident in the City of Ponta Delgada (‘slender point’), on this island where we are, and because the most magnificent Marcos Lopes, a wholesale merchant of great and honourable dealings who lived on this island of São Miguel, much esteemed and loved here for his good qualities and magnificent disposition, and now residing in Lisbon with a great house and a greater name, had it requested of him at my entreaty. From this writing, and from many other accounts that I sought from various persons of the island of Madeira and of other parts, all worthy of trust, and from other things that I saw and read, I gathered and composed this whole account of the discovery of the said Island, ordering, arranging, reducing, adding, and putting everything into chapters, in the manner in which I am telling it.’

This second book was published in 1873, with the following wording on its title page: As Saudades da Terra pelo Doutor Gaspar Fructuoso. História das ilhas do Porto Sancto, Madeira, Desertas e Selvagens. Manuscripto do seculo XVI annotado por Alvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo, bacharel formado em direito pela Universidade de Coimbra, professor de oratória, poetica e litteraria no lyceu nacional do Funchal, e advogado na Ilha da Madeira Funchal. Typ. Funchalense. 1873. It has XI-920 pages: the first 310 contain the text of Dr Gaspar Frutuoso and the remainder the valuable annotations of Dr Álvaro de Azevedo. Printing began around the middle of 1870 and was completed on 16 April 1873. The title page of this volume does not say so, but the publication comprises only the second book of Frutuoso’s vast work.

The illustrious annotator of the ‘Longing for the Homeland’ describes how he acquired the manuscript used for the printing in the following terms: ‘We obtained our copy of the ‘Longing for the Homeland’ from Mr João Diogo Pereira de Agrela da Câmara, of the town (vila) of Santa Cruz (‘Holy Cross’), on this island of Madeira. In the first quarter of this century it was copied, at the order of Mr João Agostinho Pereira de Agrela da Câmara, holder of the entail (morgado), from the autograph which, for that purpose and as a most special favour, Mr André de Ponte do Quental, of the island of São Miguel, had brought to Madeira when he came here to marry Dona Carlota de Bettencourt e Freitas. – This was assured to us by Mr Pedro Agostinho Pereira de Agrela da Câmara and by the said Mr João Diogo, sons of the aforementioned João Agostinho, holder of the entail, whom we never came to know, but who we know was one of the most learned Madeirans of his time and a lover of good books, some of which we acquired from his library.’

On the last page of the book, Dr Azevedo advertises the sale of the manuscript ‘in two folio volumes of almost two thousand pages each’. On 23 January 1876, in a letter to the Azores addressed to Dr Ernesto do Canto, Dr Álvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo reported that he had sold the said manuscript to a lord, for the Royal Library of Edinburgh, where it should be at present.

In his Bibliotheca Açoreana, the illustrious native of São Miguel Dr Ernesto do Canto states that the copy used by Dr Álvaro de Azevedo ‘lacked the necessary accuracy’, which is much to be regretted. Dr Canto made a long and conscientious comparison between a printed copy of the work published by Dr Azevedo and Dr Gaspar Frutuoso’s own autograph. In that printed copy, which is today in the public library of Ponta Delgada, he entered ‘many important corrections and additions... resulting from the collation’, as we read in the introduction to Book 3 of the ‘Longing for the Homeland’, published in 1922. In Dr Álvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo’s edition Dr Frutuoso’s text fills 310 pages, but Dr Ernesto do Canto’s collation covers only the first 239.

If Dr Gaspar Frutuoso’s work is extremely valuable and deserves our greatest admiration and gratitude, it may be said that the learned and precious annotations with which Dr Álvaro de Azevedo so richly enhanced the text of the illustrious historian of the islands are of no less importance to Madeirans, and enjoy no less credit among us. We have referred to these most valuable notes so often in the course of this work, and drawn on them so frequently, that it would be unnecessary and superfluous to discuss them at greater length here.

The people of São Miguel wished to pay fitting tribute to their most illustrious fellow islander by marking the fourth centenary of his birth, which fell last year, 1922, with the publication of his celebrated work ‘Longing for the Homeland’. The first volume, containing the history of the island of Santa Maria, has already been printed, and three more volumes on the island of São Miguel are to follow. This first volume is preceded by several chapters, running to two hundred long pages, on Dr Gaspar Frutuoso and his vast and valuable work. They are thorough and complete studies, which set the figure of the historian of the islands in brilliant relief and assign him the true place he deserves in the history of Portuguese literature. They are remarkable works of research and criticism, which greatly honour and distinguish their authors and at the same time bring well-deserved fame and renown to the Azores. The introduction to this work contains various references to Madeira and to Book 2 of the ‘Longing for the Homeland’, which deals with this archipelago, and every moderately educated Madeiran ought to own a copy of this book (1921).

Special mention must be made of the new edition of Book II of the ‘Longing for the Homeland’, published in 1925, and of the first publication of Books I, III and IV, which had until then remained unpublished, carried out later in the city of Ponta Delgada. For this we shall draw on some passages from two articles on the subject that we published in the former Diário da Madeira (‘Madeira Daily’).

As is well known, the commentator of the ‘Longing for the Homeland’ did not confine himself to writing a few brief explanatory notes on the text, expanding or completing it. He also produced, in masterly fashion, a number of historical dissertations and studies that are bound to endure as a superior work of criticism and that at the same time reveal broad and solid learning. To cite only giants of unquestioned authority on the subject, we would recall that Camilo Castelo Branco, Pinheiro Chagas and Teófilo Braga referred to these works with the most fervent praise, and it is known that the first and the last were not in the habit of squandering their literary judgements on easy and commonplace compliments...

Madeirans of moderate culture, and especially those interested in the history of this archipelago, can accept the coexistence of the works of Frutuoso and Azevedo only by regarding them as indissolubly united and, if we may be permitted to say so, as two parts of the same whole.

A luxurious edition of the 2nd book of the ‘Longing for the Homeland’ has just been produced in Porto (1925). It contains only the text of Gaspar Frutuoso, omitting the extensive and learned commentary of Dr Álvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo. The edition was ably directed by Dr Damião Peres, former rector of our lyceum (state secondary school) and now a distinguished professor at the University of Porto, who added some valuable, though not very numerous, annotations. It undoubtedly represents a good service to letters, but it will benefit above all scholars and those who devote themselves particularly to the study of our literature and its history in the period to which that work belongs.

The recent edition of the Saudades is not of prime importance to Madeirans, because it lacks what is regarded here as fundamental and of the greatest interest to all: Dr Azevedo’s Notes. Many people have consulted and know these commentaries, while few have taken the trouble to handle the archaic, though valuable, text of the historian of the islands. Hence the sincere regret, widely shared, that the work of Dr Álvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo was not now reproduced in full, that is, that Frutuoso’s work was not published with the annotations that accompanied it in the 1873 edition. In that way the service rendered to our land would have been of the very greatest value (1921).

Many years ago the illustrious Azorean Dr Ernesto do Canto pointed out that the manuscript used by Dr Rodrigues de Azevedo for the publication of the Saudades regrettably contained many errors and gaps, for which the distinguished commentator of Gaspar Frutuoso bears no blame whatsoever. As stated above, Dr Ernesto do Canto undertook the patient and conscientious task of collating the 1873 edition with the original, authentic text and of noting, in a copy held in the Public Library of Ponta Delgada, the omissions and deficiencies he found. He thus gave us the true historical narrative as it came from the pen of the illustrious Azorean chronicler. The printed part runs to 310 pages; Dr Canto collated it with the autograph up to page 239, so that only 71 pages remained to complete the comparison of the two texts.

It is clear that, despite the shortcoming mentioned, the text chosen for the present (1925) edition of the Saudades ought to have been the one in the Ponta Delgada library, with the corrections recorded in it by Dr Ernesto do Canto.

Instead, use was made of the codex in the Ajuda Library, which we had occasion to consult some years ago. Its age commends it, but since it has not been collated with the autograph, it leaves in our mind the doubt that it may be tainted by the errors that afflict so many other copies of the vast work of Father Gaspar Frutuoso.

The observations we make here in passing, without the slightest intention of any disparagement that might be misconstrued, do not seek to belittle the value of the recent edition of the Saudades, which we acknowledge to be great, and we take this opportunity to pay its illustrious author of the preface and annotator the sincere tribute of our heartfelt admiration (1925). As 1922 marked the fifth centenary of the birth of Doctor Gaspar Frutuoso, a committee was formed in the city of Ponta Delgada to commemorate the date fittingly, taking the opportunity to give due prominence to the eminent qualities as prose writer, historian and humanist that brought renown to that illustrious native of São Miguel. To the warmest applause of all, the committee organising the centenary decided that the greatest tribute that could be paid to the author of ‘Longing for the Homeland’ would be the publication of his vast work in full, thereby strengthening his memory and making it endure through the ages, while at the same time giving his contemporaries and future generations knowledge of the history of the eastern group of the Azores in the 15th and 16th centuries. For weighty reasons, the committee did not carry out its original plan, but it succeeded in publishing the third and fourth books of the Saudades, which contain 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 perhaps judge and assess him. The learned ‘Noticia Bibliográfica das Saudades da Terra’ by Mr João Simas, and most especially 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 setting and the other special circumstances in which the work was produced. From Mr R. Rodrigues’s masterly study, chapter III deserves particular mention. Entitled ‘O Humanista, o Historiador, e o Valor da sua Obra’ (pages XXXIX–LV), it can, without any exaggeration, be placed on the same level as comparable works by Dona Carolina Michaelis, Teófilo Braga, Mendes dos Remédios and Fidelino de Figueiredo, the most authoritative masters of literary historiography in our country (1932).

In March 1937 Dr João Franco Machado gave a paper on ‘Longing for the Homeland’ at a session of the Portuguese Institute of Archaeology, History and Ethnography (Instituto Português de Arqueologia, História e Etnografia). Although we do not accept it in its entirety, we shall give a brief account of it, taken from a Lisbon newspaper, merely as information for those scholars who may perhaps find it of some interest.

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…Dr João Franco Machado spoke on Gaspar Frutuoso and Jerónimo Dias Leite’, a subject of the greatest interest for the history of the island of Madeira. He stated that Gaspar Frutuoso, in book 2 of the ‘Saudades da Terra’, fell into many errors and shortcomings, and he reported on copies, almost all of them imperfect, of the manuscript that Frutuoso himself says he compiled from Jerónimo Dias Leite. One copy, however, made with great care, shows us that the strictly historical chapters of the ‘Saudades’ are a literal copy (today one would say plagiarism) of what Dias Leite (a canon of Funchal Cathedral) had written with such accuracy about the so-called account of Alcoforado and many documents in the Funchal archives.

Frutuoso performed a service by copying it, but in his work as copyist he made many slips, mangled names and dates and altered the logical sequence of facts established by Dias Leite. To the detriment of the truth, he transferred to the year in which he was writing (1590) statements that were accurate only for 1579, the date when Dias Leite’s manuscript was written.

The Institute decided to publish the whole of Jerónimo Dias Leite’s manuscript in volume II of the journal Ethnos, accompanied by the study by Dr Franco Machado’.

In 1939 it published ‘Book I’ of the Saudades, which deals with the archipelagos of the Canary Islands and Cape Verde, preceded by a long and expert study of the personality of Doctor Gaspar Frutuoso by the distinguished São Miguel writer Dr Manuel Monteiro Velho Arruda.

On all these editions, which comprise seven volumes, we published a series of articles in O Jornal in October and November 1943.

In appraising the value of Gaspar Frutuoso’s vast work, Dr João Cabral do Nascimento devoted several chapters of his interesting book Apontamentos de Historia Insular, which deserve to be read and appreciated, even though one may disagree with certain of the author’s assertions.