The Unexpected Role of a 16th-century Widow

In 1578, Diego Hernández underwent his pilot’s examination at the Casa de la Contratación in Seville. This otherwise mundane event deserves special attention because Hernández was originally from Tavira, Portugal. Within the context of a highly hierarchical and regulated institution, securing an examination for a foreigner aspiring to the position of pilot posed a formidable challenge. While it is important to note that this was not unprecedented, complications did arise due to the substantial responsibility associated with the role of a ship’s pilot.

Hernández requested to undergo a pilot examination at the Casa de la Contratación. In addition to meeting the standard requirements, he faced additional criteria due to his foreign status. He needed to substantiate, with witnesses, that he had been married to a Spanish woman for over fourteen years in a union recognized by the Church. Furthermore, he had to prove that they had resided in Spain throughout that period, thereby asserting his eligibility for the examination. Additionally, other witnesses were required to affirm their acquaintance with him since childhood, vouching for knowledge of his parents and grandparents. They were to confirm that these familial connections were legitimate, recognized by the Church as valid marriages, and that all involved were individuals of reputable conduct.

These were referred to as ”testimonios de naturaleza,” serving as evidence of the purity of the candidate’s lineage. Within the records and documents of these examinations, one can find the names of the witnesses, along with their occupations and places of origin. In this particular case, three testimonios de naturaleza were called:
The first was Juan López, seaman, from Tavira.
The second, Gómez Álvarez, sailor, from Tavira.
The third, Constança López, widow, from Tavira.

It’s intriguing to observe the inclusion of a woman among these witnesses, and particularly to note her occupation, which may appear unusual to those with a more anachronistic perspective. [Carmo Lacerda]

Have you ever thought about coconuts?

The work Asia written by the fifteenth-century chronist João de Barros can prove to be a mine of information. Not only does the reader come across stories about the Portuguese presence in the Indian Ocean there, but also comments and descriptions of places and objects that caught the attention of the author. We mentioned chess some months ago, for example.

There is a chapter in the third Decade of Asia where Captain João Gomes is sent to the Maldives by the Governor Diogo Lopes de Sequeira. The episode gives João de Barros the opportunity to describe the islands and, this time, it is the palm trees that fascinate him – “not the ones that give dates, but rather a round fruit the size of a men’s head, which consist of two layers before one gets to its kernel. Just like chestnuts”.

Now, coconuts did not grow in Portugal. It is in fact unlikely that Portuguese people in general had been acquainted with them before sailors started moving down the West coast of Africa and into the Indian Ocean. That was probably the reason that led the chronist to dedicate nearly four pages to this fruit and the ways in which its parts could be used.

The work stars with the first external layer, which the book describes as apparently smooth. Once one gets past this smooth part, the pulp of the coconut is so fibrous that all of India uses ropes made with it. “Especially in sailing ropes, for the ones made with this thread are much safer and long-lasting at sea than any sort of flax.” The author then reminds us how Indian Ocean ships were not nailed, but sewn with such ropes.

The second inner layer is very hard. “It is the peel through which the fruit receives its vegetable nutriment. It has a sharp end, which wants to resemble a nose put in the middle of two eyes.” The description was alluding to what nowadays are called the two plugged and the one functional pore. According to the author, the Portuguese term “coco” to designate coconuts derives from this shape:

“[for] it is a name given by women to anything with which they want to scare the children. A name that stuck to [the fruit] to such an extent that no one knows of another. The one that the Malabari give it is Tenga and the Canarijs, Narle.”

Inside this second layer is the kernel. It is said to be “oilier than that of hazelnuts, inside of which there is very sweet water.” When coconuts start to germinate, they form a mass which the work claims to be thick as cream, soft and tasty. The author then concludes, as he approaches the end of his description:

“This round fruit and the palm tree which provides it seem to be among the most profitable things that God has given man, for both his substance and necessary use. Because, besides serving for that which we have already mentioned, from coconut are also made honey, vinegar, oil and wine. Besides, it is a very substantial provision in itself, mixed with rice, and by other ways the Indians serve it in their meals.”

The value attributed to coconuts nowadays has only increased, especially due to its nutritional health benefits. People around the Indian Ocean have used these fruits and explored the ways in which it could be used for centuries. When the Portuguese started sailing there, they started being disseminated worldwide via Europe. [Inês Bénard]

The Birth Date of Camões and the Eclipse of Science and Literature

The Mother of many waters, the Moon, standing between the Sun and the Earth, hindered the way of the light to the place where a woman was about to give birth to the Portuguese Bard, Luís Vaz de Camões (1524-1580). In the lunar shadow of the 23rd of January 1524, these luminaries aligned, a solar eclipse drew an astonishing ring of fire in the dim heavens, and Camões took his first breath on the planet he came to sing so remarkably. Unaware of the crown of literary glory that History of Literature would place upon him, given his eventful and somewhat star-crossed life, Camões wrote a biographical sonnet where the solar corona of this eclipse cast a darkness over him since the day he was born:

“Let the day I was born die and be gone
Forever from all time that is or was.
Let it never return or, if it does,
Let an eclipse bear down upon the sun.

Let it black out and light go on the run,
The world show signs of being about to die,
And monsters spawn and blood rain from the sky,
And mother be a stranger to her son.

Then let the people, ignorant and dazed,
Face pale in tears, ghastliness in the heart,
Reckon the world already come apart.

O timid creatures, do not be amazed
That this day of all days beheld the birth
Of the most cursèd wretch upon the earth.”

This mysterious day of light and shadow was elusive until Luciano Pereira da Silva’s historiographical gesture of searching for Camões’ specific date of birth in scientific early modern artifacts. In A Astronomia d’ Os Lusíadas (1915), Silva used early modern astronomical tables – such as those in the Almanach Perpetuum (1496), by Abraham Zacuto, and Cosmographia (1524), by Petrus Apianus – to unravel this biographical mystery. By listing the apparent positions of celestial bodies in the heavens at regular intervals, and the dates corresponding to the calculated positions of these bodies, these texts allowed astronomers to track the movements of the Sun, Moon, and planets over time, and predict celestial events such as eclipses. By crossing the information in these texts with a hermeneutic analysis of the sonnet, these texts allow historians to answer old questions such as the date of birth of Camões.

Placing the gaze of historians of science on the flickering interstice between science and literature, the conjunct reading of scientific and literary texts gives access to ideas and ways of knowing the world of a given era. Five-hundred years after the birth of Camões, it is no mystery that his opus magnum, Os Lusíadas, displays a poetic image of the scientific idea of the “machine of the world”, the intricate celestial machinery that governs the movements of the heavenly bodies according to the Ptolemaic cosmology that was then accepted. An era when cosmology and poetry were equally good ways of making sense of the universe.

Five-hundred years after, it is time to celebrate the poet, the eclipse, and the historiographical light that shines when science and literature join forces. This longstanding relation between peers is sometimes overshadowed in History, and sometimes distorted by well-meaning but misguided attempts at restoring an essential connection. [Joana Lima]