|
The
man chiefly responsible for Portugal's age of
exploration was Prince Henry the Navigator, the third
son of King Joao I (John) and his English wife, Queen
Philippa of Lancaster. Henry was born in 1394. As a
youth, he participated in the capture of Ceuta. In 1419,
his father made him governor of Portugal's southernmost
coasts. From 1419 until his death in [1460], Prince
Henry sent expedition after expedition down the west
coast of Africa to outflank the Muslim hold on trade
routes and to establish colonies. These expeditions
moved slowly due to the mariners' belief that waters at
the equator were at the boiling point, that human skin
turned black, and that sea monsters would engulf ships.
It
wasn't until 27 years after Henry's death that Bartolomeu
Dias braved these "dangers" and rounded
the Cape of Good Hope in [1487]. Henry was keenly
interested in and studied navigation and mapmaking. He
established a naval observatory for the teaching of
navigation, astronomy, and cartography about [1450].
Unfortunately, Portugal began slaving operations along
the west coast of Africa. Sailors could offer glass
beads and colored cloth in exchange for tribal captives.
In 1452, Pope Nicolas V
issued his papal bull allowing the enslavement of
"pagans and infidels." Prince Henry's interest
in the slaves was mainly to convert them to
Christianity.
Henry of Portugal, surnamed the
"Navigator", Duke of Viseu, governor of the
Algarve, was born at Oporto on the 4th of March 1394. He
was the third (or, counting children who died in
infancy, the fifth) son of João I, the founder of the
Aviz dynasty, under whom Portugal, victorious against
Castile and against the Moors of Morocco, began to take
a prominent place among European nations; his mother was
Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt. When Ceuta, the
"African Gibraltar", was taken, in 1413,
Prince Henry performed the most distinguished service of
any Portuguese leader, and received knighthood; he was
now created Duke of Viseu and lord of Covilham, and
about the same time began his explorations, which,
however, limited in their original conception, certainly
developed into a search for a better knowledge of the
western ocean and for a sea-way along the unknown coast
of Africa to the supposed western Nile (now Senegal), to
the rich negro lands beyond the Sahara desert, to the
half-true, half-fabled realm of Prester John, and so
ultimately to the Indies.
Disregarding the traditions which assign 1412 or even
1410 as the commencement of these explorations, it
appears that in 1415, the year of Ceuta, the prince sent
out one John de Trasto on a voyage which brought the
Portuguese to Grand Canary Island. There was no
discovery here, for the whole Canarian archipelago was
now pretty well known to French and Spanish mariners,
especially since the conquest of 1402-06 by French
adventurers under Castilian overlordship; but in 1418
Henry's captain, João Gonçalvez Zarco rediscovered
Porto Santo, and in 1420 Madeira, the chief members of
an island group which had originally been discovered
(probably by Genoese pioneers) before 1351 or perhaps
even before 1339, but had rather faded from Christian
knowledge since.
The story of the rediscovery of Madeira
by the Englishman Robert Machim or Machin, eloping from
Bristol with his lady-love, Anne d'Arfet, in the reign
of King
Edward III (about 1370), has been the subject of
much controversy; in any case it does not affect the
original Italian discovery, nor the first sighting of
Porto Santo by Zarco, who, while exploring the west
African mainland coast, was driven by storms to this
island. In 1424-25 Prince Henry attempted to purchase
the Canaries, and began the colonization of the Madeira
group, both in Madeira itself and in Porto Santo; to aid
this latter movement he procured the famous charters of
1430 and 1433 from the Portuguese crown. In 1427, again,
with the cooperation of his father King João, he seems
to have sent out the royal pilot Diogo de Sevill,
followed in 1431 by Gonçalo Velho Cabral, to explore
the Azores, first mentioned and depicted in a Spanish
treatise of 1345 (the Conosçimiento de todos los
Reynos) and in an Italian map of 1351 (the Laurentian
Portolano, also the first cartographical work to
give us the Madeiras with modern names), but probably
almost unvisited from that time to the advent of Sevill.
This rediscovery of the far western archipelago, and the
expeditions which, even within Prince Henry's life (as
in 1452) pushed still deeper into the Atlantic, seem to
show that the infante was not entirely forgetful of the
possibility of such a western route to Asia as Christopher
Columbus attempted in 1492, only to find America
across his path. Meantime, in 1418, Henry had gone in
person to relieve Ceuta from an attack of Morocco and
Granada Muslims; had accomplished his task, and had
planned, though he did not carry out, a seizure of
Gibraltar. About this time, moreover, it is probable
that he had begun to gather information from the Moors
with regard to the coast of Guinea and the interior of
Africa. In 1419, after his return to Portugal, he was
created governor of the kingdom of Algarve, the
southernmost province of Portugal; and his connection
now appears to have begun with what afterwards became
known as the "Infante's Town" (Villa do
Iffante) at Sagres, close to Cape St. Vincent; where,
before 1438, a Tercena Nobel or naval arsenal
grew up; where, from 1438, after the Tangier expedition,
the prince certainly resided for a great part of his
later life; and where he died in 1460.
In 1433 died King João, exhorting his son not to
abandon those schemes which were now, in the
long-continued failure to round Cape Bojador, ridiculed
by many as costly absurdities and in 1434 one of the
prince's ships, commanded by Gil Eannes, at lengh
doubled the cape. In 1435 Affonso Gonçalvez Baldaya,
the prince's cup-bearer, passed fifty leagues beyond;
and before the close of 1436 the Portuguese had almost
reached Cape Blanco. Plans of further conquest in
Morocco, resulting in 1437 in the disastrous attack upon
Tangier, and followed in 1438 by the death of King
Edward (Duarte) and the domestic troubles of the earlier
minority of Affonso V, now interrupted Atlantic and
African exploration down to 1441, except only in the
Azores. Here rediscovery and colonization both
progressed, as is shown by the royal license of the 2nd
of July 1439, to people "the seven islands" of
the group then known. In 1441 exploration began again in
earnest with the venture of Antam Gonçalvez, who
brought to Portugal the first slaves and gold dust from
the Guinea coasts beyond Bojador; while Nuno Tristam in
the same year pushed on to Cape Blanco.
These successes
produced a great effect; the cause of discovery, now
connected with boundless hopes of profit, became
popular; and many volunteers, especially merchants and
seamen from Lisbon and Lagos, came forward. In 1442 Nuno
Tristam reached the Bay or Bight of Arguim, where the
infante erected a fort in 1448, and where for years the
Portuguese carried on vigorous slave-raiding. Meantime
the prince, who had now, in 1443, been created by King
Henry VI a Knight of the Garter of England,
proceeded with his Sagres buildings, especially the
palace, church and observatory (the first in Portugal)
which formed the nucleus of the "Infante's
Town", and which were certainly commenced soon
after the Tangier fiasco (1437), if not earlier. In
1444-46 there was an immense burst of maritime and
exploring activity; more than 30 ships sailed with
Henry's license to Guinea; and several of their
commanders achieved notable success. Thus Diniz Diaz,
Nuno Tristam, and others reached the Senegal in 1445;
Diaz rounded Cape Verde in the same year; and in 1446
Alvaro Fernandez pushed on almost to the present-day
Sierra Leone, to a point 110 leagues beyond Cape Verde.
This was perhaps the most distant point reached before
1461. In 1444, moreover, the island of St. Michael in
the Azores was sighted (May 8), and in 1445 its
colonization was begun. During this latter year also
John Fernandez spent seven months among the natives of
the Arguim coast, and brought back the first trustworthy
first-hand European account of the Sahara hinterland.
Slave-raiding continued ceaselessly; by 1446 the
Portuguese had carried off nearly a thousand captives
from the newly surveyed coasts; but between this time
and the voyages of Alvise
Cadamosto in 1455-56, the prince altered his policy,
forbade the kidnapping of the natives (which had brought
about fierce reprisals, causing the death of Nuno
Tristam in 1446, and of other pioneers in 1445, 1448,
etc.), and endeavored to promote their peaceful
intercourse with his men. In 1445-46, again, Dom Henry
renewed his earlier attempts (which had failed in
1424-25) to purchase or seize the Canaries for Portugal;
by these he brought his country to the verge of war with
Castile; but the home government refused to support him,
and the project was again abandoned. After 1446 our most
voluminous authority, Azurara, records but little; his
narrative ceases altogether in 1448; one of the latest
expeditions noticed by him is that of a foreigner in the
prince's service, "Vallarte the Dane", which
ended in utter destruction near the Gambia, after
passing Cape Verde in 1448.
After this the chief matters
worth notice in Dom Henry's life are, first, the
progress of discovery and colonization in the Azores -
where Terceira was discovered before 1450, perhaps in
1445, and apparently by a Fleming, called "Jacques
de Bruges" in the prince's charter of the 2nd of
March 1450 (by this charter Jacques receives the
captaincy of this isle as its intending colonizer);
secondly, the rapid progress of civilization in Madeira,
evidenced by its timber trade to Portugal, by its sugar,
corn and honey, and above all by its wine, produced from
the Malvoisie or Malmsey grape, introduced from Crete;
and thirdly, the explorations of Cadamosto and Diogo
Gomez. Of thes the former, in his two voyages of 1455
and 1456, explored part of the courses of the Senegal
and the Gambia, discovered the Cape Verde Islands
(1456), named and mapped more carefully than before a
considerable section of the African littoral beyond Cape
Verde, and gave much new information on the trade routes
of northwest Africa and on the native races; while
Gomez, in his first important venture (after 1448 and
before 1458), though not accomplishing the full Indian
purpose of his voyage (he took a native interpreter with
him for use "in the event of reaching India"),
explored and observed in the Gambia valley and along the
adjacent coasts with fully as much care and profit. As a
result of these expeditions the infante seems to have
sent out in 1458 a mission to convert the Gambia negroes.
Gomez' second voyage, resulting in another
"discovery" of the Cape Verde Islands, was
probably in 1462, after the death of Prince Henry; it is
likely that among the infante's last occupations were
the necessary measures for the equipment and despatch of
this venture, as well as of Pedro de Sintra's important
expedition of 1461.
The infante's share in home politics was
considerable, especially in the years of Affonso V's
minority (1438, etc.) when he helped to make his elder
brother Pedro regent, reconciled him with the
queen-mother, and worked together with them both in a
council of regency. But when Dom Pedro rose in revolt
(1447), Henry stood by the king and allowed his brother
to be crushed. In the Morocco campaigns of his last
years, especially at the capture of Alcazar the Little
(1458), he restored the military fame which he had
founded at Ceuta and compromised at Tangier, and which
brought him invitations from the pope, the emperor and
the kings of Castile and England, to take command of
their armies. The prince was also grand master of the
Order of Christ, the successor of the Templars in
Portugal; and most of his Atlantic and African
expeditions sailed under the flag of his order, whose
revenues were at the service of his explorations, in
whose name he asked and obtained the official
recognition of Pope Eugenius IV for his work, and on
which he bestowed many privileges in the newly-won lands
-- the tithes of St. Michael in the Azores and one-half
of its sugar revenues, the tithe of all merchandise from
Guinea, the ecclesiastical dues of Madeira, etc. As
"protector of Portuguese studies", Dom Henry
is credited with having founded a professorship of
theology, and perhaps also chairs of mathematics and
medicine, in Lisbon -- where also, in 1431, he is said
to have provided house-room for the university teachers
and students.
To instruct his captains, pilots and other
pioneers more fully in the art of navigation and the
making of maps and instruments he procured, says Barros,
the aid of one Master Jacome from Majorca, together with
that of certain Arab and Jewish mathematicians. We hear
also of one Master Peter, who inscribed and illuminated
maps for the infante; the mathematician Pedro Nunes
declares that the prince's mariners were well taught and
provided with instruments and rules of astronomy and
geometry "which all mapmakers should know";
Cadamosto tells us that the Portuguese caravels in his
day were the best sailing ships afloat; while, from
several matters recorded by Henry's biographers, it is
clear that he devoted great attention to the study of
earlier charts and of any available information he could
gain upon the trade routes of northwest Africa. Thus we
find an Oran merchant corresponding with him about
events happening in the negro-world of the Gambia basin
in 1458. Even if there were never a formal
"geographical school" at Sagres, or elsewhere
in Portugal, founded by Prince Henry, it appears certain
that his court was the center of active and useful
geographical study, as well as the source of the best
practical exploration of the time.
The prince died on the 13th of November 1460, in his
town near Cape St. Vincent, and was buried in the church
of St. Mary in Lagos, but a year later his body was
removed to the superb monastery of Batalha. His
great-nephew, King Dom Manuel had a statue of him placed
over the center column of the side gate of the church of
Belem. On the 24th of July 1840, a monument was erected
to him at Sagres at the instance of the Marquis de Sá
da Bandeira.
The glory attaching to the name of Prince Henry does
not rest merely on the achievements effected during his
own lifetime, but on the subsequent results to which his
genius and perseverance had lent the primary
inspiration. To him the human race is indebted, in large
measure, for the maritime exploration, within one
century (1420-1522), of more than half the globe, and
especially of the great waterways from Europe to Asia
both by east and by west. His own life only sufficed for
the accomplishment of a small portion of his task. The
complete opening out of the African or southeast route
to the Indies needed nearly forty years of somewhat
intermittent labor after his death (1460-98), and the
prince's share has often been forgotten in that of
pioneers who were really his executors -- Diogo Cam,
Bartholomew Diaz or Vasco
da Gama. Less directly, other sides of his activity
may be considered as fulfilled by the Portuguese
penetration of inland Africa, especially of Abyssinia,
the land of the "Prester John" for whom Dom
Henry sought, and even by the finding of a western route
to Asia through the discoveries of Columbus, Vasco
Nuñez de Balboa and Ferdinand
Magellan.
Born:
4-Mar-1394
Birthplace: Oporto, Portugal
Died: 13-Nov-1460
Location of death: Vila do Infante, Portugal
Cause of death: unspecified
Gender: Male
Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Royalty
Nationality: Portugal
Executive summary: Spurred European global
exploration
Father: João I (King of Portugal)
Mother: Philippa of Lancaster (dau. of John
of Gaunt)
Solar
Cola sponsor this website
|
