Zarco (João Gonçalves)

João Gonçalves Zarco was a Homeric figure at the dawn of our maritime ventures and voyages. He led the most important discovery made by Portuguese seamen in the first quarter of the 15th century, under the fruitful and glorious guidance of the Great Infante, Henry the Navigator. The discovery of Madeira is the great undying commemorative pillar (padrão) that truly marks the auspicious beginning of our odyssey as seafarers. It represents not only a notable territorial expansion of our dominions as a nation but, above all, our first great conquest as navigators and future masters of the seas.

The name of the illustrious navigator is inseparably bound up with this magnificent event in our history. The influence this great discovery had on the continuation of our maritime ventures has not been given due prominence, but there can be no doubt that it was exceptionally significant, and the discoverer and first coloniser of Madeira deserves a prominent place in the most brilliant pages of our maritime chronicles.

Gonçalo Velho Cabral, who discovered the islands of São Miguel and Santa Maria, won a more glorious name in history, because a distinguished biographer drew his portrait as a navigator in detail. He undertook extensive historical research with the meticulous care with which a descendant proud of his ancestral lineage extols the deeds of his forebears. João Gonçalves Zarco had no descendant to write his biography, nor has any research been done on him in the public archives, beyond the little that Dr Álvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo found among the documents kept in the municipal registry of this city. The result is a marked scarcity of news and information about the great navigator, and it is extremely difficult to make even a modest biographical attempt in which the most characteristic features of his figure as warrior, navigator and coloniser are at least sketched in broad outline (1921).

Zarco or Zargo? [TN: The two spellings differ only in one consonant; the discussion concerns which form of the surname is correct.] This question is answered by the learned commentator of Frutuoso, who was also a distinguished philologist. He says that the first form is the more genuine way of writing this surname and has the best authors on its side, but that it became antiquated and usage adopted the second. We have consulted the oldest chroniclers and writers who dealt, if only briefly, with the discoverer of our archipelago, such as Gomes Eanes de Zurara, João de Barros and Damião de Góis, and found that all of them wrote Zarco. The accounts of the voyages made by Diogo Gomes, a contemporary of Prince Henry, and by Alvise Cadamosto (1450) adopt the same spelling. In a royal letter (carta régia) of Afonso V of the year 1449 we find the very antiquated form Zarquo, which corresponds to Zarco, the form adopted by our early chroniclers. The celebrated historian of the islands, who composed his work in the last quarter of the 16th century, uses the already modernised form Zargo. The spelling Zarco, found in two or three places in the ‘Longing for the Homeland’ (Saudades da Terra), must be considered a copyist’s slip or a printing error, since Gaspar Frutuoso certainly writes Zargo many dozens and perhaps hundreds of times. This was also the spelling always adopted by the annotator of that work. Every reason suggests that the spelling to follow today should be the one used by the illustrious author of ‘Longing for the Homeland’ and by his learned commentator.

What is the origin of the surname Zarco or Zargo, used by the illustrious discoverer of Madeira? João de Barros and later Damião de Góis, followed by the chronicler of the islands Gaspar Frutuoso, said that Zarco or Zargo was a nickname arising from a heroic deed performed by the navigator, and not a surname taken from his noble ancestry. The learned annotator of the Saudades does not share the opinion of those chroniclers. He says that the versions given by Frutuoso cannot be held to be true and are merely one more example of the general method followed in the invention of legends: to personify a proper name of unknown origin and break it down into a more or less plausible fable. In proof of his assertion he cites several old books of nobility in which the discoverer’s ancestry is recorded with the surname Zarco or Zargo.

It will not be entirely out of place to mention here, if only very briefly, the versions put forward by Gaspar Frutuoso that we noted above. In one of our encounters in Morocco, a Moor, a bold and skilful horseman, challenged one of the Portuguese warriors to a fierce combat. The Portuguese was defeated in the fight, paying heroically with his life for his extreme valour. Another Portuguese knight, and it seems several more, followed in the stubborn contest, all meeting the same unhappy fate, until the captain of our stronghold would not allow further lives to be sacrificed to the savage fury of the fiendish Moor. Then a knight who had not yet distinguished himself for his valour came forward, pleading and insisting with the utmost earnestness that he be allowed to charge the victorious Moor. Let us now hear the author of the Saudades in his naive and picturesque style: ‘And straightway the Soldier asked for the horse of a knight whom he chose for the purpose; and, mounting it with his shield on his arm and a piece of wood in his other hand, he advanced towards the Moor, who, seeing him skirmishing, came at him very haughtily. And every time he sought to strike the Christian, the latter did nothing but turn the Moor’s lance aside, which he did until, as soon as he saw the time and occasion, spurring his horse swiftly at the Moor, he dealt him so great a blow on an unguarded spot that, the Moor being stunned, he seized him by the hair and delivered him prisoner to the Captain; for which deed he was thenceforth known to the King. From this valiant Soldier, they say, João Gonçalves the Zargo descended, being his son or grandson; and others say that this feat of arms was performed by João Gonçalves himself; and because the Moor whom he, or his father, or grandfather killed was called Zargo, the same surname and name remained with them, or with him.’

Since our first African conquest took place in 1415 and Madeira was discovered four or five years later, it is hard to believe that the discoverer’s grandfather, who by then must certainly have been well on in years, could have been the hero of that exploit. It would be more credible to attribute it to his father, and far more credible still to the navigator himself. Yet it seems that not even the chronicler gave it much credence, for after recounting the episode he adds these words: ‘the information I have from the island of Madeira tells this beginning in another way:...’. Immediately afterwards he tells us that at the siege of Tangier ‘Zargo showed himself so knightly that he gave proof of his great valour, fighting bravely before the Infantes, who for this reason held him in high esteem. And in this place and combat he received a wound in one of his eyes from a crossbow bolt that the enemy shot at him, by which they destroyed one eye. And since in that time they called zargo anyone who had only one eye, the name remained with him as a badge and honour of his knighthood; for in it he gave such proofs and distinguished himself as so knightly that his valour and skill in war were of no small help in enabling Prince Henry the Navigator to escape and withdraw to the sea, at a time when Infante Ferdinand was already being left captive through treachery and cunning, as is related at length in the Chronica d’El-Rey D. Duarte’.

Friar Francisco Brandão says, in the Monarchia Lusitana: ‘There is no accepting the explanation that Doctor Gaspar Fructuoso gives in the history of the Islands, saying that he was called.... Zarco as a nickname because he was blind in one eye or because he had killed in Africa a Moor named Zarco....’.

Still on the origin of the discoverer’s surname, one of the notes to the ‘Longing for the Homeland’ transcribes the following passage from a genealogical work by José Freire Monterroio Mascarenhas: ‘The Zarco family is almost as old as the Kingdom (reino, i.e. mainland Portugal), for since the twelfth century records of it are found in its archives. Although we know that there is a lugar (settlement ranking between a town and a parish) in the province of Alentejo, near the town (vila) of Viana, with the name of Zarco, it has always seemed to us that the family did not take its surname from it, and that this derived not from a manor house but from a nickname; for this word Zarco, in the Castilian tongue as in the Portuguese, means a man who has greenish eyes, which Antonio de Nebrixa, in his Dictionary, explains in the Latin tongue with the word glaucus, and the same is said by Jeronymo Cardoso in his Vocabulary and by Ambrosio Calepino in his Dictionary; and so it was given as a nickname to one person, from whom it passed as a cognomen to his descendants’.

The name of João Gonçalves Zargo’s birthplace has remained unknown to us. Dr Álvaro de Azevedo says ‘that the authors are in doubt as to the place of his birth: some would have him a native of Tomar, because the Zarco family had an estate there, as the chronicler Brandão says; others of Lisbon; and some of Matosinhos or Porto, where Lousada says the Zarcos had a chapel.

Some of the old Madeiran books of nobility give Zargo as born in Matosinhos, and the writer Francisco Manuel de Melo, a descendant of the discoverer, also states that he was a native of that place. The third captain-donatary (capitão-donatário) of Funchal, Simão Gonçalves da Câmara, the discoverer’s grandson, left his captaincy and settled in Matosinhos, where he died in 1530 (volume I, page 207). It is conjectured that his retirement to that part of the mainland may have been prompted by his family perhaps having originated there, by family traditions or by property the family owned in that place. None of these reasons constitutes conclusive proof that the great navigator was born in Matosinhos, but they are certainly presumptions worthy of the fullest consideration. It should be added that we were assured only recently that a tradition exists in that place that the discoverer of this archipelago was born there.

What was the precise date of his birth? One of the annotations to Frutuoso’s work reads: ‘it is not known for certain in what years João Gonçalves Zarco lived. From his being a young man in 1419, and from his eldest son, João Gonçalves da Câmara, having died aged eighty-seven in . . . March 1501, and therefore having been born in 1414, we infer that Zargo was born around 1395’. It seems to us that Zargo’s birth should be placed a little after 1390, so that he would have been between 25 and 30 years old at the time of the discovery. Some chroniclers regard him at that time as a young man, still of few years; yet we must not forget that he had already distinguished himself as a navigator and had conducted himself heroically at the second siege of Ceuta.

If we are to believe the genealogist Freire Mascarenhas, already cited, João Gonçalves Zarco was the son of Gonçalo Esteves Zarco and of Dona Brites, daughter of João Afonso of Santarém, overseer of the household of King John I. Gonçalo Esteves, who lived in the reigns of Afonso IV, Peter I and Ferdinand, was the son of Estêvão Pires Zarco, who was styled advocate in the King’s household and held important offices in the magistracy.

The name of the navigator Gonçalves Zargo gains no greater halo of glory from his having illustrious forebears and belonging to a family of noble traditions, though this was of capital importance at the time. Truth nevertheless requires us to say that the discoverer of the archipelago came of noble stock, and in that capacity frequented the household of Prince Henry the Navigator as a familiar (a member of his household). The old chroniclers Eanes de Azurara and João de Barros say so, the historian of the islands affirms it, and the same is found in the oldest and most reputable Madeiran genealogies. A book of nobility by José Freire Monterroio de Mascarenhas, cited above, whose manuscript is in the Public Library of Lisbon, contains a genealogy of Zargo tracing the illustrious navigator’s known ancestors back to the 12th century. In our view, one of the most conclusive proofs of his noble origin is his marriage to Dona Constança Rodrigues de Sá, daughter of Rodrigo Aires de Sá, who was Portugal’s representative in Rome and married there Dona Cecília Colonna, daughter of the marquis and prince of Colonna, one of the oldest, noblest and most esteemed families of the Roman patriciate. This has just been confirmed to us by a distinguished researcher on the mainland, after various searches in old and authoritative documents (1921). It should be noted that a marriage contracted at that time on such terms, when Zargo had not yet won fame as a celebrated discoverer and was not yet the wealthy captain-donatary of Funchal, could only have taken place if the spouse was a person of rank and proven noble ancestry. Aires de Sá, who misses no opportunity to extol hyperbolically the merits of the discoverer of the Azores, and who at times refers with manifest injustice to the discoverer of Madeira, says that João Gonçalves Zargo ‘was a man of modest origin . . . who managed to rise in the Household of Prince Henry and evolves into a settler’. The truth, however, is that he adduces no proof whatever for his assertion, which is moreover in flat contradiction with what the chroniclers, the books of nobility and the customs of the period tell us.

The genealogist Freire Monterroio, already cited, says that Gonçalves Zargo began ‘to serve Prince Henry the Navigator from a very young age’, and so served a long apprenticeship in the school of that illustrious and meritorious prince. Zargo distinguished himself as a navigator, making several voyages along the African coast, which was then the proven training ground, the arduous and well-tried course of our daring seafarers. Some writers, among them Francisco Manuel de Melo, assert that the illustrious navigator was the first to introduce firearms aboard his vessels, so that this improvement in the art of war waged on the ocean was owed to his inventive genius and martial ardour. He held the post of captain of the sea coasts of the Algarve and had several encounters at sea with Moors and Castilians, always giving proof of outstanding valour.

The discoverer of Madeira also distinguished himself as a brave and daring soldier, and the chronicles have left us highly laudatory references to his heroic conduct at Ceuta and at Tangier. In the first of these strongholds he was knighted, and in the disastrous action at Tangier he did much to ensure that Prince Henry could embark sheltered from the Moors’ assaults. Frutuoso says on this subject: ‘through the skill and effort of this knight João Gonçalves o Zargo, Prince Henry withdrew and embarked on the ships that were at sea for that purpose, Zarco remaining all the while on land, gathering in what men he could and valiantly withstanding the onslaught and weight of the Moors, who were coming upon him to get at the Prince. And after they had withdrawn, with the loss of many Portuguese, João Gonçalves withdrew badly wounded, with toil and danger, the Moors being countless. For this great service that this magnanimous João Gonçalves o Zargo did the Prince, and for others he had done the King, they held him in great esteem, and the King gave him offices of substance, in which he always showed himself a true knight’. His descendants continued their forefather’s glorious traditions, for many of them, and especially his successors in the captaincy, distinguished themselves valiantly in the strongholds of Africa, as we have already related in the articles we devoted to them in the first volume of this work (1921).

Shortly after the discovery of this archipelago and the division of the captaincies, Gonçalves Zargo settled in Funchal with his wife and children and began the work of peopling and colonising his donatary captaincy (donataria). ‘Captain João Gonçalves Zargo, say the Saudades. .. ., sheltering his ships by the islets that lie at the cape of this place, since there is a fine cove there, resolved to build on land his dwelling of wood, which he promptly built right by the sea on a high spot, where the captain’s wife (capitoa, wife of the captain-donatary) Constança Rodrigues later founded a church of Santa Catharina.’ It was beside this small church that Zargo had his first residence. It must without doubt have been a more than modest and uncomfortable dwelling built of wood, of a single storey and devoid of any architectural display, as were all the earliest houses built here in Madeira.

We have already said elsewhere that it was in the solitary retreat of Santa Catarina (‘St Catherine’) that Zargo directed the initial work of colonisation and laid the foundations of the future town, which progressed rapidly and reached a remarkable development within his lifetime. There, perhaps, he dreamed of the progress of the captaincy of which he was donatary (donatário) and of the aggrandisement of the house he had founded, glimpsing in the near future the honours and privileges that would be heaped upon his descendants and successors. Perhaps he had guessed that the monarch would reward him with the marks of nobility and the use of a coat of arms, already seeing his grandsons’ patents of nobility emblazoned with the coronet of count and of grandees of the Kingdom, in homage to the services rendered by their grandfather...

Some years later the discoverer moved his residence to the left bank of the stream, at the foot of the hill later called Pico dos Frias, near the chantry (capela) he had built there with the dedication to St Paul. It is said that this was the first residence built of stone to be raised in Funchal.

His definitive home, where he spent most of his life, was in the immediate vicinity of the site where he had the church of Conceição de Cima built. An old manuscript says: ‘he also resolved to build a dwelling for himself, as he did, on a height above the valley of Funchal, right opposite a church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição, as a family vault for himself and his kin’. This is the present church of the Convent of St Clare, and his residence is the old manor house of the Lomelino entailed estates, known today as the Quinta das Cruzes, as can be seen at greater length in the article Moradias de Zargo, on page 395 of volume II of this work, to which we refer the reader.

It is known that João Gonçalves Zarco devoted himself zealously to the colonisation of his captaincy, whose seat quickly grew in importance. A quarter of a century after settlement began, and while the discoverer was still alive, it was raised to the rank of town (vila), and roughly fifty years later it was granted the status of city by royal decree (alvará régio) of 21 August 1508. Little is known in any detail about the government of the first donatary, but nothing whatever is known to the discredit of the public administration of his captaincy. One accusation has been levelled against him: that he started the devouring fire which destroyed a considerable part of the original, luxuriant forest that covered this island from the edge of the ocean to the mountain crests. This event, narrated at some length on page 140 of the 2nd volume of the Elucidário, was certainly a risky act of daring, whose dire consequences the first settlers were perhaps unable to foresee. Yet it is equally certain that rapid and extensive colonisation made it imperative to destroy part of those dense and impenetrable thickets, which only a fire could reduce to the necessary proportions and so allow immediate agricultural use. According to João de Barros, it seems that this fire, because of the wide area over which it spread, caused serious losses and hindrances to the early colonisation; it is also beyond doubt that Madeira was quickly restocked with forest species and was soon covered with vast and abundant vegetation. The letter of grant (carta de doação) by which Henry the Navigator granted the captaincy of Funchal to João Gonçalves Zarco, to pass by the same letter to his direct successors, is dated 1 November 1450. This letter of the Infante was confirmed by royal letters of 25 November 1451 and 16 August 1461. The privileges and prerogatives conferred by these documents were essentially the same as those set out in the letters of grant made to the donataries Tristão Vaz Teixeira and Bartolomeu Perestrelo. The powers of the donataries were excessively broad and even extremely discretionary, for all civil and criminal jurisdiction lay with them, except for the imposition of the death penalty or the cutting off of a limb. They were lords of water and wind, that is, they alone could own mills or watermills, and they also held the rights to bake bread and to sell salt. In addition, they received a tenth of the revenues due to the Infante, together with the important prerogative of distributing uncultivated land. All this gave the captain-donataries of Funchal a very large annual income, making the house of the donataries of this captaincy one of the wealthiest in the country. Zarco’s 4th great-grandson and 5th donatary was made Count of Calheta and a grandee of the realm. The donataries of Funchal built a palace as their residence in Lisbon and lived in great splendour in the capital. We have no knowledge that Gonçalves Zarco reserved on this island, for himself or for his successors in the donatary captaincy, any land or real estate, but it is known that he granted vast territories to his other children and sons-in-law, such as the lombada (long ridge between valleys) at Ponta do Sol (volume II, page 277), and others besides.

Of the first donataries of Madeira, Zarco enjoyed the greatest prestige and influence. This was certainly owing to his personal qualities, and not merely to his being a person of higher rank than Tristão Vaz Teixeira, as Barros says in his first Década. The choice of captaincy itself seems to point to the superiority of the donatary of Funchal. The seat of his donatary captaincy enjoyed special advantages: its admirable situation, the ample space of the locality (sítio) for the growth of a populous settlement, the breadth of the harbour, the fertility of the soil, the picturesqueness of the place and the mildness of the climate. Set against the glaring inferiority of the other captaincy of Madeira in terms of soil, climate, lack of beaches and landing places, difficulty of communications, etc., these leave no doubt about the preference given to Gonçalves Zarco when the land found by the two navigators was divided. Later, with the rapid and remarkable growth of Funchal, the influence of the donataries of this captaincy kept increasing. At times they abused it, extending their jurisdiction over the other donatary captaincies and plainly encroaching on others’ powers, something to which the disastrous administration of the captain-donataries of Machico and Porto Santo contributed in large part. This was to some extent sanctioned by the governments of mainland Portugal, which did not curb these abuses and in official documents called the donatary of Funchal ‘the captain of the island’, as if the captaincy of Machico did not exist.

As mentioned above, João Gonçalves Zargo married Constança Rodrigues de Sá, or de Almeida, who according to the most authoritative genealogists was the daughter of Rodrigo Aires de Sá, Portugal’s ambassador in Rome, and of Cecília Colona, of the most noble Roman family of the marquises of Colona. A genealogical article says of this family: ‘A Roman patrician family whose origin goes back to Pietro de Colona, lord of a castle near Rome, who lived around 1100. His 3rd grandson, Seiarra de Colona, was raised to marquis in 1289, and his descendants were later made princes of Colona and of Palestrina and grandees of Spain; it is one of the Italian families of the loftiest lineage....’ In all likelihood, and according to the genealogies we have been able to consult, when the discoverer of our archipelago came to begin the work of colonisation he brought with him his wife Constança Rodrigues de Sá, his eldest son João Gonçalves da Câmara and his daughter Helena Gonçalves da Câmara. The third son, Luís Gonçalves da Câmara, 3rd captain-donatary (capitão-donatário) of the island of São Miguel, was very probably born in Madeira. In the article Sons and Sons-in-Law of Zargo (volume II, page 31) we have already dealt, if briefly, with the discoverer’s first descendants, and we refer our readers there. We need only correct here the information about Garcia Gonçalves da Câmara, who was the legitimate son of João Gonçalves Zargo and Constança Rodrigues, and not the natural son of the illustrious navigator, as stated there; that information came from a less authoritative source which we then held to be reliable. In the article Donataries we gave an account of the immediate succession of the captains-donatary of Funchal, descendants in the direct line of the discoverer down to the Philippine domination, and to each of them we devoted a fairly detailed special article on pages 201 ff. of the 1st volume of this work.

Zargo left a large and brilliant line of descendants, who spread through Madeira, the Azores, Brazil and mainland Portugal, and some of whom founded illustrious titled houses. One of his descendants, the great writer Francisco Manuel de Melo, says:

‘.... João Gonsalves Zarco, a man famous among us, for, not counting the more ancient houses, which are not recorded because they are uncertain, few men have we had in Portugal with such opulent lines of descent; three counts of this surname, Calheta, Vila Franca and Atouguia, owe him their male lineage..... And through marriages 21 titles of this kingdom descend from João Gonsalves.’ By a diploma of 4 July 1460, Afonso V granted the illustrious discoverer the use of a coat of arms, described in the same diploma as follows: ‘a black shield, and at its foot a green mountain upon which stands, firmly set, a silver tower between two golden wolves...’. In this royal letter (carta régia) the discoverer is named João Gonçalves de Câmara de Lobos, and his successors ought to have used that name, which in fact seems not to have happened, not even with Zargo himself. Of his coat of arms, of the historical error noticeable in it, of the surname Câmara used by his descendants, etc., we have already said enough in the article Câmara, on page 198 of volume I of this Elucidário.

Gonçalves Zargo died at a very advanced age. An old manuscript puts it picturesquely: ‘He reached such an old age that he had himself carried in men’s arms to sit in the sun, which greatly strengthened him. From there he ordered the affairs of his jurisdiction, governing and administering justice with his understanding wholly intact, never suffering the feebleness of a decrepit man.’ Some old books of genealogy give the navigator’s death as 1451, others as 1461, and yet another as 1471. Nothing definite is known on the matter. The year 1451 cannot be accepted, because the royal letter (carta régia) of 4 July 1460 shows that Zargo was still alive in that year. The date of 1461, held to be the most probable, is the one that best fits the 40 years of administration of the captaincy that the historian of the islands attributed to him. On the other hand, if we accept that he was born between 1390 and 1395, as we state above, we would have to suppose that he was between 66 and 71 years old at the time of his death. This certainly does not match the advanced age of which the chroniclers speak, especially for that period. If we accept 1471 as the year of his death and 1390 as that of his birth, he would have reached the age of 81, and the chroniclers’ unanimous statement about his decrepitude would then be fully justified. It may also be argued that he was perhaps born before 1390, in which case the dates of 1451 and 1461 would also have some possible justification. These are mere conjectures: there is at present no evidence that would allow us to fix precisely the year of the great discoverer’s death.

‘It pleased God to take him,’ says the manuscript already cited, ‘having governed the island.... not as its lord, but as father and companion to all its inhabitants.’ The mortal remains of the discoverer were buried in the church of Conceição de Cima, today the Convent of St Clare, which he had had built as a family vault for himself and his descendants. Zargo’s tomb lay in the chancel, as was indeed the general custom for the founders and patrons of churches. One reads somewhere ‘that the work was so arranged that the grave.... lay in the middle of the chancel, with a stone tomb above it so tall that it makes it singularly venerable and worthy of respect’. It is said that many years later the nuns succeeded in having the showy mausoleum removed, since it blocked their view of the altar. It was perhaps on that occasion that the ashes of the discoverer of Madeira were transferred to the family vault of his son-in-law Martins Mendes de Vasconcelos.

We are inclined to believe that this outrage – the removal of the mausoleum and the transfer of the discoverer’s remains, if it really took place – must have happened during the Philippine rule. At that time the donataries of Funchal no longer lived on this island and their role in government had become merely honorary, for it is hard to believe that they would have permitted such a profanation of the grave of their illustrious ancestor, the founder of the wealthy house they enjoyed. Frutuoso’s commentator says that the sarcophagus of Martim Mendes de Vasconcelos bears an inscription in Gothic capitals, illegible through wear, and that in the adjacent floor there is a large marble slab bearing the following epitaph:

Grave of Captain Gaspar Mendes de Vasconcelos, who had it made for himself and his heirs, the first slab laid here having been removed, as a descendant of the first Martim Mendes de Vasconcelos, who lies here and came to this island to marry Elena Gonçalves da Câmara, daughter of João Gonçalves Zarco, its discoverer. Made in the year 1710

This epitaph makes no reference to the discoverer’s ashes, and, according to what we heard from the person who tried to decipher it, the Gothic inscription does not seem to concern him either. Does it refer to Martim Mendes de Vasconcelos? Some have even supposed that the slab came from Portugal, where it covered the grave of an ancestor of Zargo’s son-in-law. When the floorboards of the chancel of the Convent of St Clare were lifted in March 1919, two tombstones were discovered there with epitaphs referring to the 2nd, 3rd and 5th captain-donataries of Funchal, as already related on p. 217 ff. of volume II of this work. Nothing relating to the discoverer was found there.

The chapel of St Catherine, the chapel of St Paul, the Quinta das Cruzes and above all the Convent of St Clare are modest but memorable monuments that eloquently recall the discoverer and the discovery of Madeira. These buildings deserve from the public authorities, and especially from the administrative bodies based in Funchal, the respect and veneration that are everywhere paid to objects and things closely bound up with the lives of illustrious men. They have the very grave duty of maintaining these buildings and of protecting them, as far as possible, from the ravages of time. And, as we have already said elsewhere in this book, this is a fitting occasion to make special mention of the two-handed sword (montante) of João Gonçalves Zargo. It was always kept in the house at Cruzes, and a constant tradition, handed down from generation to generation within the family that owned it, attributes it beyond doubt to the illustrious discoverer. It was always regarded as such, and the deep veneration paid to that relic there at all times confirms the truth of its origin still further. It is an old weapon, made to be wielded with both hands, and it is not distinguished by fine workmanship. It certainly has no intrinsic or artistic value, but it is worth a great deal for its five hundred and more years of existence and, above all, for having belonged to the great navigator who discovered this archipelago. It is perhaps the sword that Gonçalves Zargo wielded in Morocco in his charges against the Moors, winning fame as a brave and daring knight. This venerable relic is now in this city in the hands of a foreigner, who keeps it with the esteem it truly deserves. It ought, however, to be in the possession of the Municipal Council (Câmara Municipal) of this city. It is the duty of this administrative body to arrange its acquisition and to keep it religiously in its archives, until it can take its rightful place in the museum of art and antiquities that must one day be founded in this city (1921).

The idea of raising a monument in this city to the illustrious discoverer of Madeira is an old one, but no serious attempt was ever even sketched out to turn that idea into reality and so settle the outstanding debt to his glorious memory. It was in 1918 that the District General Council (Junta Geral) commissioned the maquette of the statue of Zargo, which is to stand on the Avenida do Dr. Manuel de Arriaga, as a continuation of the Entrada da Cidade. The maquette, the work of the distinguished Madeiran sculptor Francisco Franco, was exhibited at the Municipal Theatre (Teatro Municipal) on 2 March 1919. During the celebrations of the Fifth Centenary of Madeira the foundation stone of the monument was laid on that avenue, a ceremony of exceptional grandeur, as already described on page 163 of this volume (1921).

Outside the city, high in the mountains and overlooking the whole of Funchal, a bronze statue of João Gonçalves Zargo stands on the Terreiro da Luta. It shows the illustrious discoverer at the moment when the caravel under his command was approaching this then unknown island. This monument, from the chisel of the sculptor Francisco Franco, is due entirely to the initiative of the former merchant and distinguished Madeiran, Commander Manuel Gonçalves.

The Madeiran poet Francisco de Paula Medina e Vasconcelos published in Lisbon in 1806 a poem he called ‘The Zarco Epic’, of which, and of the Georgeida, Inocêncio Francisco da Silva says: ‘He sought to sound the epic trumpet, but one sees 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 each of them, episodes that do no discredit to his muse and that can be read with pleasure’. Of Medina e Vasconcelos’s compositions, ‘The Zarco Epic’ 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 Zargo, taking the discoverer’s surname for the poem’s title. It contains a series of interesting episodes with some happy poetic digressions, among which the legend of Robert Machin stands out. Only in Canto X is the discovery of this island described. The poem is preceded by a sonnet dedicated to Bocage, to which that eminent poet replies with another sonnet, undoubtedly the finest composition in the volume (1921).

The preceding passages on Gonçalves Zargo, transcribed word for word from the first edition of this work, should be compared with what is set out on pages 354 ff. of vol. I of the 1st edition, as a fuller clarification of the subject and also as a correction of some statements made at that time, especially the notes on the precise date of the discovery and on the names of those who carried out this chance or intentional undertaking (see I-355). Further new information, which we present below, is also of particular interest on this matter.

The article ‘Alguns Documentos do Mosteiro de Santa Clara do Funchal’, published on pages 171 ff. of volume IV of the Arquivo Histórico da Madeira, seeks to establish the true ‘spelling’ of the surname of the captain-donatary of Funchal, asserting that it should be written Zargo and not Zarco, as it is spelt in many places. It includes a document from the year 1447 in which that surname is reproduced, in facsimile, in the spelling Zargo. A question naturally arises: in the twenty-two years that passed between the start of settlement and the year 1447, would João Gonçalves always have written his surname with a g and never with a c? Such variations in names, surnames, family names and nicknames are not rare today, and they were even more frequent in past times. The document cited points to a presumption that should not be wholly rejected, but it does not establish an incontestable assertion that no one may legitimately doubt.

It should be noted that Gaspar Frutuoso, author of the ‘Longing for the Homeland’, Dr Álvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo, its illustrious commentator, and almost all the writers who have dealt with it used the spelling Zarco and not Zargo.

The conjectures about the probable year of João Gonçalves Zargo’s death were fully resolved by the information in the valuable piece published in the Funchal Diário de Notícias of 23 April 1927 by the distinguished writer João Cabral do Nascimento, which proves beyond doubt that he died in 1467. This is a significant contribution to Madeiran history.

The same Arquivo Histórico, in its volume for 1939, published a detailed article on the ‘two-handed sword’ of João Gonçalves Zargo discussed above. It sought to overturn the current opinion that the sword had belonged to the man to whom it has been attributed for centuries, but this was not proved incontestably. As is well known, this ‘two-handed sword’ was acquired by the public-spirited industrialist Henrique Hinton, who presented it to the Funchal Municipal Museum, where it is kept. Of particular interest on this subject is the article published in the Diário da Madeira of 16 November 1939, which readers wishing to learn more about the matter should consult.

The fitting tribute to the memory of João Gonçalves Zargo mentioned earlier was fully realised on 28 May 1934 with the solemn unveiling of the statue erected on Avenida Arriaga, as already described on page 394 of volume II of this Elucidário.