The Life of Luis de Camões
The greatest Portuguese Epic Poet
By Afredo de Mello

Author of three books on the Portuguese Columbus
From Montevideo, Uruguay

E-mail ademello@adinet.com.uy

This article was taken from Alfredo de Mello's
Memoirs of Goa, where he was born and educated.

Memoirs of Goa
The Life of CAMOENS seen from the perspective of Goa, India
By Alfredo de Mello

Goa was the largest of the three districts that made up the Portuguese Province India for 451 years. The other two were Damão e Diu. India invaded these tiny territories in 1961 and seizzed control of Goa. Goa lies on the west cost of the Indian peninsula. The tomb of Saint Francis Xavier, who died in 1552, is in the city of Goa, near Panjim. Goa was for many years the headqueaters of the Portuguese Viceroys and was considered the Rome of the Orient because it had many churchers. It had also a Medical School.

In the heyday of Golden Goa, during the Vice-Royalty of Dom Afonso de Noronha, the sixteenth Governor General, and fifth Viceroy of the ESTADO DA INDIA, on the first of September 1553, just after the monsoon ended, allowing the caravels to ford the entrance of the river Mandovi, there arrived the sole carrack “São Bento” piloted by Diogo Garcia, a Castillian, having as shipmaster António Ledo, and next in command Francisco Pires, all men highly esteemed as worthy seamen.

The vessel carried the usual shipload of appointed fidalgo officers, sundry goods, and commissioned soldiers, black Kaffir slaves and a non-commissioned soldier called Luis de Camoens, who was obliged to serve as warrior for five years to commute a jail sentence.

The carrack São Bento was then considered the best sea-worthy vessel in the “Carreira das Indias”, that is the mailboat service, or rather the umbilical cord connecting the Metropolis with the seat of its far flung Asian Empire, plying between Lisbon and Goa. In fact, the fleet that sailed from Lisbon on March 24, consisted of four carracks, namely the Conceição, Loreto, Santa Maria da Barca and São Bento. Halfway down the Atlantic, the “Conceição” was obliged to return to Lisbon, the “Loreto” had to spend the winter in Mozambique for repairs, and the “Santa Maria da Barca” limped to Cochin at the end of November.

These disasters of the Armadas which sailed for India were almost exclusively due to the fact that they sailed too late from Lisbon. They should have sailed at the end of February in order to catch favourable winds on the leg down to the Cape of Good Hope. The fault lay in the bureaucratic bungling in Lisbon, which caused severe losses of vessels in the high seas and enormous sacrifice of lives. Moreover, the ministers for provisionment of food and drinking water were guilty of embezzlement: They had orders from the King to supply each vessel with enough supplies for seven months; instead, only five-month provisions were loaded. Thus if a voyage which in normal circumstances took six months, the sailors and passengers died of hunger; it was worse when the voyage took seven months. Besides, the provisions were of the worst possible quality

Luis de Camoens, who had lived a turbulent life, was twentynine years old when he landed in Goa. He was born in a poor fidalgo family in Lisbon in 1524. Due to the plague which ravaged Lisbon in 1527, his father, who had inherited the house of Luis’s grandfather João Vaz de Camoens, in Coimbra, moved the family up north to that city famous for its University. The family accompanied the King and the Court who also fled from bubonic-plagued Lisbon. Luis´s uncle Bento de Camoens had been appointed Chancellor of the University by King Joâo III,and when Luis was thirteen, due to the influence of his uncle, he received a scholarship as an honest poor student. It was obligatory to speak Latin in Coimbra. He studied Grammar and Rhetoric for two years, he studied the Arts, Logic, and natural Philosophy,then in 1542 he obtained the degree of Bachelor of Arts. The philosophical knowledge derived from reading the works of Diogenes Laertius, Plutarch, Cicero, Valerius Maximus, Aullus Gellius, Pliny the senior, and from the Anthologies, as well as from the writings by Homer, Aelian Xenophanes, Virgil, Lucanus Ovid, Horace, Plautus, Titus Livy, Eutropius, Justine and Claudius Ptolomy, the Greek scientist and mathematician. A characteristic of the time was the acquisition of knowledge, and encyclopaedic learning, which was the golden dream of the humanists. Therefore Camoens was a legitimate son of the Renaissance.

Camoens, with a reddish beard, had an impetuous, valiant character, sword-happy, and in Coimbra he made friends with the youth of the principal fidalgo families. At the age of eighteen, he returned with the Court to Lisbon. By then he was a true poet.

Once in Lisbon he started frequenting the Court. He flirted with the ladies-in-waiting of Queen Catarina, by writing sonnets in their praise, and improvising verses on the spot, as was the fashion, and thus he earned the sobriquets of “Mermaid of the Court”, or “Swan of the Tagus”, but his genius provoked deep envy on the part of the other young fidalgos.

Young Camoens lost his time in writing verses, in roaming the streets and plazas of Lisbon, in having fun with friends at night, and getting into brawls, challenging and dueling. However he fell in love with a young blond girl, whose mother was Spanish and had come from Madrid as lady-in-waiting of Catarina of Austria, Queen of Portugal, sister of King Charles V the Habsburg king who inherited the Spanish Empire, and was also known as Carlos I of Spain., since 1516. The blond girl was thirteen years old, called Caterina de Athayde, daughter of a highly ranked fidalgo. Camoens wrote many poems dedicated to her, using the anagram Natercia, and although she reciprocated in her feelings, the match was impossible as Camoens was a poor fidalgo without means. Another impediment was the hostility of King João III towards Luis’s uncle Dom Bento de Camoens, and this was cleverly reminded by mediocre young men, envious of Camoens’ talent.

The hostility had arisen some years before when a treasure was found underneath the Monastery of Santa Cruz, which belonged to the University of Coimbra. D. Bento de Camoens claimed that the treasure belonged to the University , but the King usurped it.

Thus Camoens went to serve as soldier in the Portuguese city of Ceuta in North Africa, for two years, 1542-43, where he lost his right eye in a battle. He returned to Lisbon, in 1544, when once again he entered the royal Court and dazzled the Court ladies, who requested him to write poems, which were most impressive by the beauty of their form, and by the gallant touches cloaking a passionate vibration. His love for Caterina de Athayde remained unabated, and , according to Dr. Wilhelm Storck, this romance bloomed again around Easter 1544. However a year later, there began the sadnesses, dejections, misfortunes and dangers caused by the intriguing busybodies in the Palace.

Although people in Lisbon admired him and stopped in the streets when he walked by, this provoked latent envies of those who plotted his ruin and his social career. He was nicknamed “Face without eyes”, “Blustering bully” by his enemies. It seems that the Queen disapproved of this love affair, and had him banished from the Court.

In 1545 Camoens wrote a play “King Seleucus”, which was a comedy and satire of the sensational scandal, dealing with the loves of Antiochus, son of the old king Seleucus, towards his beautiful and young stepmother, Stratonice. This had occurred in the year 294 B.C., in Syria.. Seleucus, who founded the Seleucid empire, was the Greek son of the Governor appointed by Alexander the Great. Young Antiochus, having a guilty feeling, became sick, and deprived himself of food. The court doctor Erasistratus soon recognized what was ailing Antiochus, who, whenever he was near Stratonice, behaved strangely and became pale and speechless, sweating all over. Plutarch, who wrote about the passion of Antiochus, tells us of the stratagem of the doctor, and the reaction of the king. Plutarch, however, wrote that king Seleucus assembled his vassals and declared his decision to make his son King and to maintain his wife as Queen of his Empire, by having the couple married

The Court was not amused by this play as there was an analogy of the situation of King Joâo III and his love for his stepmother Eleanor of Austria, third wife and widow of his father King Manuel ( the king of Portugal when Vasco da Gama landed inIndia)

It is not my intention to stray away from the subject, but this is a juicy bit of historical fact, which portrays the era

The Spanish Ambassador had come with the proposition of marrying Prince João

( future João III) with the truly beautiful young Eleanor of Austria. However, old king Manuel I, on the pretext that his second wife was terminally ill, determined that the marriage should be postponed until after her démise. And when his second wife died, Manuel promptly married the beautiful Eleanor, on the pretext that prince João was an idiot or a fool. Thus King Manuel married the princess that had been originally destined for the future King João III, and Manuel died three years later, leaving Eleanor with a twentytwo month daughter. Eleanor had been married by proxy to King Manuel, without knowing him, and when she arrived in Lisbon and became acquainted with young prince João, asked her ladies-in-waiting, with bitterness and irony: “Is this the prince who is a fool ?”

When Queen Eleanor became a widow, she expected that she would marry the new King (João III), who was still single, and followed him wherever he went. However, in those times the dynasties were a matter of political intrigue and alliances: King Carlos I of Spain, without any further ado, ordered Eleanor to marry King Francis I of France. Her little daugher the Infanta D. Maria was left behind in Lisbon forever. Carlos I also arranged that King João III, should marry Eleanor’s sister Catarina of Austria, another less endowed Habsburg princess.

The enacting of the play “King Seleucus” caused Camoens to be in the bad books of his King. Compounded by the disputes which the King had with his uncle D. Bento de Camoens regarding the treasure which rightfully belonged to the University of Coimbra

Camoens thought it best to volunteer again to serve in Ceuta, which pleased the family of Caterina de Athayde, who wanted him out of sight of their daughter.

In 1550 the old Captain of Ceuta, D. Afonso de Noronha was recalled, and appointed as a new Viceroy to India, and Camoens returned with him to Lisbon, with the idea to accompany the Viceroy as a valiant cavalier to India.But he did not embark, as his beloved was still single, and he felt himself loved. He tarried in Lisbon, living in the Mouraria, that is, the ancienty city quarter where the Moors lived before the conquest of Lisbon by the first King of Portugal in 1139.; he kept visiting the Court, and nourishing fond hopes, until during the Procession of Corpus Christi on June 16, 1552, there was a brawl, and Camoens wounded one Gonçalo Borges, who served the King, in charge of the royal cavalry. Camoens was sent to the jail of Tronco, where he spent eight months, and could have been condemned more severely because his action was interpreted as a case of “lèse-majesté”. It was a generous lady Dona Francisca de Aragão, an admirer of Camoens, by her influence in the Palace, who obtained the pardon of Gonçalo Borges who had recovered fully from the sword wounds, and thereby obtained the King´s pardon for Camoens. However, the King ordered Camoens to go to India for five years´military service, without granting the royal mercies generally given by the King to the fidalgos who went to India.

I have dwelt with the past of Camoens rather extensively, in order to put him in a proper perspective, as he spent the next sixteen years in Goa and in the Orient. It was during this time that he composed the greater part of his famous epopee, “The Lusiadas” glorifying the deeds of the Portuguese navigators and military leaders, against the background of the early history of Portugal. This work ranks among the most renowned narrative epic poems, such as the Illiad and the Odyssey, for Camoens had a profound classical education combined with perfect mastery of his instrument and a lifetime of varied experience in sonnets, eclogues, odes and elegies.

It was in Goa also that Camoens befriended two of the most famous Portuguese men in history, the old Dr. Garcia da Orta, a botanist, a scientist of renown, and the chronicler Diogo do Couto. The former had spent thirty years in India, many of them inthe Portuguese settlement of Bombay, in research of the simple medicines used in Asia, as described in his “COLOQUIES OF THE SIMPLES AND DRUGS,” after verifying by observation and experience what was positive in this part of Arab and Hindu science, which influenced immediately Europe at the end of the sixteenth century, and throughout the seventeenth century. The latter, Diogo do Couto, was author of “DIALOGUE OF THE EXPERIENCED SOLDIER”, which can rank as the noblest historical monument of the century. To omit these two names from the Memoirs of Goa would be a sacrilege, as Goa was the breeding ground of their masterpieces.

Let us refer to the non-commissioned soldiers and how they fared when they reached Goa after an arduous and dangerous voyage.

Francisco Rodrigues Silveira in his “MEMOIRS OF A SOLDIER IN INDIA” narrates how disdainfully the newly arrived soldiers were treated. The rejoicing and merriment of the arrival of a carrack from Lisbon, and the tolling of bells of the many churches and cathedrals, were just a superficial excitement, because these unfortunate soldiers who had escaped from the jaws of shipwreck, scurvy, and pestilent infections, received no welcome and were abandoned after disembarking in Goa.

“These poor soldiers arrive, mostly without a single silver coin which would buy them a meal on that first day. After disembarking and being greeted by a mighty salvo of yells and infamous insults, not only from the manservants and negroes, but also from the troops of their own nation and fatherland; those who did not carry any money or a letter of recommendation to some friend or relative, would spend that first night under the eaves of the churches, or inside some vessel, anchored on the riverside, with such misery and mishap, as if with great fortune the sea had thrown them in some port or land of enemies. Thus the soldiers spend the second and third day, pawning or selling a cape and the sword that they carry, until they get disillusioned with the way of life in this land. And they go, four together or six together, living in little hovels, where they wander, consumed by pure hunger, and thus many get sick and die. And those who are of robust nature, who are able to survive all these strifes with health, keep on going on and their miseries as best as they can, in the shade of the hopes which the experienced sailors give them about the Armada, that two or three months later ought to sail along the Malabar...”

Some of these hungry, abandoned soldiers, were fed by a rich settler, but in exchange, they became this man’s private army, which in several cases, numbered twenty soldiers, until they were mustered by the Viceroy to embark on a punitive expedition against the pirates and marauders in the sea lanes controlled by Portugal. Before sailing, they received a quarter of their pay, money known as “quartel”, which was generally ten xerafins, with which they could buy a shotgun.

Camoens did not meet this fate because he had relatives in Goa; yet, when he joined in a battle campaign, he confirmed what Silveira condemned so vehemently, for the authorities would send the soldiers to war “without even resting five or six days after such a long and hazardous voyage”. Camoens had as relatives the Severim family, descendants of Vasco Pires de Camoens, one João Camoens, and also Gonçalo Vaz de Camoens, son of Simão de Camoens da Camara who was Captain of Daman. Likewise one Manuel Pegado , married to Inez de Camoens, sister of the aforementioned, and Duarte Frade de Faria, likewise married within the Severim family.

The Viceroy Afonso de Noronha, who knew very well the courage of the poet, when they were together in Ceuta, took him along at the end of November 1553 in an expedition against the king of Chembé or of Pepper, who had taken certain islands of the king of Porca, whose reign consisted of several villages of fishermen and pirates. The king conspired with the Zamorin of Calicut, along with other Malabar princes, and tried to intercept the cargo of pepper, which was destined to sail from Cochin on the fleet´s annual return voyage to Portugal.

Soon, Camoens took part in another cruise against the piracy of the Arabs, be it in the Persian Gulf or in the straits of the Red Sea. He accompanied the son of the Viceroy Afonso de Noronha and wrote verses extolling his feats, but these eulogies instead of flattering the Viceroy, wounded Noronha unconsciously, because the poet ignored what a fraudulent administration he had practised. Camoens revealed later his deception when he learnt what was going around him.

Indeed, the Viceroys who were appointed for a three-year period indulged in the most outrageous frenzy of acquiring riches, and with such an example from the top, the whole administration thrived in extorsions and embezzlements.

Silveira writes in his “MEMOIRS OF A SOLDIER IN INDIA”: “it seems a shameful thing, and scandalous to see what many Viceroys profit from their three-year term; it is not known nor understood, the amount of money which they pocket. if it weren’t for persons who with secret curiosity knowingly observe - the fivehundred or sixhundred thousand cruzados, which in exchange of so much discredit of the royal authority, blood and lives of their fellowmen, they pocket.”

Fairly soon Camoens had no illusions about the administration of the Viceroys in India, while the Portuguese oriental Empire dissolved itself by a governing depradation, just forty odd years after it had begun gloriously under Afonso de Albuquerque

This tremendous crisis is described by Camoens’ friend and contemporary, Diogo do Couto: “The rents of India are not sufficient to cover ordinary expenses”. And contrasting the two epochs, he adds: “in India, where there were not more than two thousand men (from Portugal); who spent their time in winter and in summer, in the Armadas monitoring the coast of India, and the Straits (of Malacca) and had no other life, than being satisfied with their pay; but now, that there are fifteen or sixteen thousand men distributed in the fortresses, cities, towns and castles of His Majesty, and other places in which they themselves settled, that is, in places of enemies, which are populated by sons and grandsons, and many live with the natives with real estate, and great rents, live negotiating their profits as bees, and for the Armadas of His Majesty there are many men to receive (salaries) and few to serve”... Diogo do Couto points out some of these depthless pools, where the riches of India disappeared: “This poverty is caused by the many ordained Archbishops, Bishops, Inquisitors and other officials, maintenance fees of the Monasteries that exist now...”.

“Advance payment of 5000 pardaus to the Captains of Chaul, Bassein and Diu... it was organized robbery within the administration”... “All the posts of Scribes, Commissioners, Judges and other officers of the Indies, are distributed for a period of three years, and must be exercised personally, it being a great favour to transfer these posts to a son-in-law as dowry of the wife”.

The Flemish Linschotten mentions : “Each public official tried to make the most money possible during this term of three years. And the worst is what occurred with the government of the Viceroys, always willful and with no plan”. And Diogo do Couto noticed this facet: “... so much so that every three years you can see India changed, that one doesn’t know, as a man who enters in power by many figures with different costumes; because there is not a single Viceroy who wishes to conserve, and sustain what was achieved by the former”

As far as Camoens was concerned there is the following mention from Pedro de Mariz, a chronicler of his time:” But in (India) he was always much esteemed, be it by the valour of his person in wars, as well as his excellent genius”. Indeed, Teofilo Braga, a distinguished writer of the nineteenth century, in his book about the life of the poet, mentions that Camoens displayed an ascendent moral among the gentlemen of the expedition, but hurt unconsciously the government of India, which drowned itself in the raving exploitation and the frauds of the entire bureaucracy. For this, he had to suffer, as will be seen later.

The life of Camoens in Goa was described by the Frenchman François Pyrard de Laval, who lived in Goa for some time and described the soldiers in Goa picturesquely: “They live together many times ten or twelve together, in the same house, having one servant in common, or two to brush their clothes. Among the furniture of their lodging they have five or six chairs, one table, and one bed for each, according to their number. Their food consists of rice cooked in water, salted fish and other things of small value, without bread; their drink is spring water. They have two or three suits in common for clothing, which they wear when they go out, while those who remain at home, have no choice than to wear a shirt and underwear because of the heat of the day. Mostly,these soldiers mostly live stingily, at least those who have no means at all. The whole day long they spend in their living room, or seated beside the door in the shade, and in the fresh air, wearing a shirt and underwear, and there they sing and play the guitar or another instrument. They are very courteous with those who pass by the street, and sit down, to chat and exchange jokes with them. They never walk all together around the city, but only in two’s and three’s, because often they do not have enough clothing to serve ten or twelve”

This is the aspect of poverty in which Camoens lived in India, in contrast with the opulence of the young privileged fidalgos

It is interesting to note what Camoens had to say about life in Goa. In a letter of January 1555, he wrote: “Of this land I can tell you that it is the mother of despicable villains, and stepmother of honest men. Because those who are here to get rich, always float on water as bladders”.

Regarding the ladies of the land, he considered almost all rather old, and who spoke Portuguese mixed with asiatic words. In his letter to a friend in Lisbon, Camoens wrote:

“If you wish to hear news about the dames of this land, which would be obligatory in a letter, just as sailors are obliged to go to the feast of St. Freio Pero Gonçalves, may you be informed that the Portuguese ladies all fall as ripe fruit, and that there is no rope which may withhold them, if one were to throw them a chance. Inasmuch as those women which this land offers, apart from being lowclass, have mercy if you talk to them about some loves of Petrarch or of the poet Boscan; they reply to you in a pidgin language, which chokes you in the throat of understanding, which is like cold water thrown on someone on heat, however randy you may be in the world”.

It seems that Camoens was rather unfair in his statements about the women of Goa, inasmuch as he was comparing them with the ladies-in-waiting at the Court in Lisbon, which was the company that enthralled him most, as they were the most educated ladies in Portugal, though I doubt that they could discuss meaningfully about European poets.

Camoens could not have had the company of high caste women because the Brahmin families avoided any contact with the “polluted Firangana”, as the Portuguese were called, and the Brahmins, if they had no choice, would prefer their daughter to marry a Sudra than a white man. Camoens himself affirms that the local women he met were of low class, or maybe some Devadassis (temple prostitutes) , who in any case could speak some words in Portuguese, but could not be expected to know about Francesco Petrarca, an Italian poet of the fourteenth century, nor Juan Boscan, a Catalan poet who had died in1542. They could, however, acquaint Camoens with the loves of Rama andSita, described in the Ramayana, or tales of the epic poem Mahabharata, the longest poem in the world, about which Camoens was totally ignorant.

It is fitting to explain why the Portuguese were called Firangana. The natives asked about the Portuguese when they arrived inIndia: “To what caste do you belong?”. The Indians watched their behaviour, how many times they washed daily, how they treated women, and in particular, what and how they ate. The Indians soon concluded that the Portuguese observed no caste rules, and so belonged beneath the lowest Sudras, with outcastes and untouchables. To the beef-eating outcastes in foreign dress the Indians gave the name of Firangana. This word reached India in the times of the Crusades, when the Arabs called the crusaders as “Franj”, as most of them came from France, whereas those from Constantinople ( Byzantine Empire) were known as Rumes. By the time this nickname reached India, it was transformed ito Faranjis, or Firangana.

On the 26^th September 1554, a caravel arrived in Goa bringing the new Viceroy D. Pedro de Mascarenhas, a very rich man, and an old ambassador of Portugal in the court of Carlos I of Spain. News had reached the King of Portugal about the rotten and corrupt governments of the Viceroys since MartimAfonso de Sousa (1542-45) and the present government of Afonso de Noronha. The King judged it more advisable to send an austere man to straighten things out in India and to cleanse the den of iniquity. Together with him arrived Joâo Lopes Leitâo, a very close friend of Camoens, also a poet, who acquainted Luis de Camoens about the death of his beloved Caterina de Athayde, who pined away and died at the age of twentyfive.

Camoens was grief stricken and composed a sonnet which can only be appreciated in Portuguese on account of its rhyme metre, and sublime feelings; I shall give the Portuguese version, and try to translate it into English:

As a soldier, Camoens went again to patrol the Arabian Sea, against the Arab pirates, who since 1510 had lost the monopoly of commerce with India, and when he returned in October 1555, he found that Viceroy Mascarenhas had already died four months before, which meant that he ruled only for nine months, and was substituted by Francisco Barreto, who had been Governor of Bassein, and knew very well the ropes on how to run the Government for the benefit of those in power.

Meanwhile Camoens had written SATIRA DO TORNEIO (Satire of theTournament) a roguish and inoffensive narrative, whose publication caused him to be imprisoned in the Tronco jail in Goa, quite near the Viceroy’s palace, and with a view to the river Mandovi. Out of the poet’s three oil paintings, made in Goa, there is a portrait of Camoens behind bars in the Tronco jail inGoa, and there he composed ten-line stanzas called DISPARATES DA INDIA ( Blunders of India) where he jokingly exposed the vices and defects of the Portuguese administration and the Jesuits, but really inoffensive. But the printing of these verses was frowned upon by the powers that be.

Vioceroy Barreto banished him to the Southern Armada, which went to China, as Camoens had to spend another three years’ service. However, this time Barreto judged that he should have some remuneration, not a Captaincy which was then the privilege of the fidalgos, but at least to allow him to rise from the poverty level into which he was plunged ever since he was banished from Portugal. He could afford to give him a mercy of a voyage, because the Goa-China leg was very profitable, on account of the spices of the Moluccas and the silks obtained in Macau. Camoens departed in April 1556 to the Moluccas and then to Macau, where living in a grotto, he finished writing “The Lusiads”. Due to intrigues of his enemies, Camoens was recalled toGoa in 1561; he had the misfortune to experience a shipwreck on the river Mekong in Cambodja, but he managed to save his manuscript with one hand, and swim with the other. He was able to survive thanks to the piety of the Buddhist population. He could only get to Malacca by offering his services as a soldier. Reaching Malacca, he found the old chronicler Gaspar Correia, busily correcting his manuscript of the LEGENDS OF INDIA,which Camoens read. Once again Camoens had to enlist as a soldier in order to pay for his trip back to Goa. In fact, he was recalled to Goa by the Viceroy Constantino de Bragança, as a prisoner of the State, and interned once again in the Tronco jail. His appeals to the Viceroy in the shape of sonnets, were ignored, and it was only in September 1561, when the new Viceroy D. Francisco Coutinho, Count of Redondo, arrived, that some friends of Camoens informed the Viceroy about his predicament. Viceroy Coutinho who remembered very well Camoens’ poems, some of them addressed to Maria de Gusmão, who later became Coutinho’s wife, had him released immediately.

There lived inGoa a rich man called Miguel Rodrigues Coutinho, nicknamed “Fios seccos” ( Dry threads) who was a money lender,and since he had loaned Camoens some money, now he pounced on him and had him jailed until the debt was paid back.

Miguel Rodrigues Coutinho was one of the richest and well known citizens of Goa. As a rich man he became an usurer, lending money with high interests. Likewise several military men who had served their term and remained in Goa becoming money-lenders were called chatins. They charged up to 25% interest rates.

However, he had to let Camoens go because it was proven that he had lost all his goods, when the shipwreck occurred, and in fact he had to enlist as a soldier in order to pay his voyage from Malacca to Goa. It was clearly a case of force majeure.

It was at this time that Camoens, who was fortytwo, became an intimate friend of Dr. Garcia da Orta, of Jewish origin, who was seventy years old.

François de Pyrard, who visited Goa in 1603, described the slave market, on the main street, called Rua Direita: “Among the slaves one can find very beautiful girls and women of all the countries, who in the majority know how to play musical instruments, sew very delicately, and do all sorts of jobs, sweets, conserves and other things. All these slaves can be had for a very small price, and the most expensive do not cost more than twenty or thirty pardaus, a currency which equivalent to thirtytwo salaries and six denaries each. The young damsels are sold as such, and they are checked by a woman, and on this score, nobody dares to cheat. Among the girls there are some very beautiful, white and gentle, other olive-skinned, swarthy and dark, and of all colours. But the ones that are preferred are the Kaffir girls fromMozambique who have black skins, woolly hair and are very tall.”

“The greatest profit and riches of the people of Goa proceeds from the work of their slaves, the proceeds of which are delivered at the end of each day, or each week, to which they are obliged, and this besides the slaves that the lords retain at home for their house chores. In said market one can also see a great number of other slaves, who are not for sale, but who offer their produce, which they sell, such as fruit preserves, and other things; others go there to earn money to carry and transport all sorts of objects. The girls adorn themselves in order to please the customers more and enable them to sell their wares better...The girls are sometimes called to the houses, and if they receive amorous propositions, under no circumstance are they elusive, and gladly accept the deal in exchange for something tangible given...”

Pyrard wrote that “these slave girls do not dress in the fashion of Portugal, and use long pieces of silk cloth, which serve as skirts, and they have also very fine silk uper clothing which they call baju. among these slaves one can find the most beautiful girls of all the nations of India”.

Pyrard informs that the slaves are obliged to bring to their lords all the licit and illicit gains, just as the Flemish merchant-traveller Johan Huighens van Lynschotten also reports, in his “Navigatio ac itinerarium” during his sojourn in 1583. This repugnant practice is also confirmed by Father Francisco de Sousa in his book “ORIENTE CONQUISTADO” ( part 6, chapters 21-22).

Camoens became infatuated with a slave called Luisa Barbara. How could Camoens resist a woman who sang to him stanzas of the passionate Indian popular poetry ? One pad like the following: “I woke up thinking of you, without you there is no happiness and joy”.

Teófilo Braga , in his “History of Portuguese Literature: Camoens, his Life and Work” describes beautifully the magic spell of Barbara:

“The poet could not remain impassive before the voluptuous flexuosity of those curves which make alive the movements that wrapped him up; neither from the languid looks of a morbidity which magnetizes and breaks the will by desire. Barbara was the type of a native girl, dark skinned; arms and neck such as a bronze sculpture of a complete correction, lewd hips by the habit of hieratical dances. which bestow all movements a feline flexuosity, wholly wrapping, completing the seduction by the maddening brilliancy of black almond shaped eyes which provoke an infinite desire, which illuminate the smile of a small mouth, bordered by extremely white teeth with which she chewed aromatic plants; a light way of walking such as a free gazelle; a primitive grace such as of a submissive animal, which offers itself at the first caress”.

Camoens was crazy about “this slave which has me enslaved”; Barbara had ensorcelled him. He wrote a poem called ENDECHA TO A SLAVE, WITH WHOM I HAD LOVE AFFAIRS IN INDIA, CALLED BARBARA”. Endecha is a “sad melopoeia”:

A magistrate of Goa, Alberto Osorio de Castro, gives us his vivid impression on these melopoeias of Camoens: “ the most enchanting poem of an European to the grace of the woman of India. An Indian woman who inspired him, undoubtedly was some graceful calumbina (Kundbi) slave, or a Calavant as the dancing girls are known in Konkani, or a Devadassi, that is slaves of the gods”

Other Viceroys followed after Constantino de Bragança (1558-61), namely Francisco Coutinho (1561-64) who died in Goa and was substituted temporarily (from 29^th February 1564 until September 3, 1564) by Joâo de Mendonça, who had been commander of the fortress of Chaul; then the next viceroy was Antao de Noronha (1564-68), followed by Luis de Ataide ( 1568-71). Meanwhile poor Camoens eked out a living in Goa, by being a scribe, writing letters on behalf of illiterate persons, and giving the final touches to his epic poem “OS LUSIADAS”.

Camoens who was critical of the behaviour of the Portuguese, thought that it was unsafe for him to remain in Goa, and sailed en route to Portugal in 1569, but was stranded in the island of Mozambique for some months, because he had no money to pay for the fare up to Lisbon.

Diogo do Couto, the 16^th century historian, on another voyage back to Lisbon, found “that great poet and old friend of mine” and he together with other friends, chipped in to help Camoens to return to Lisbon in their carrack.

His manuscript passed the censorship of the Inquisition, and finally King Sebastian issued a decree to have the LUSIADAS printed in 1572, and quickly this mighty opus reached Spain and Italy, where ar first it was more appreciated than in Portugal itself. The King gave Camoens a miserly pension of 15$000 yearly, and Camoens lived in a little house, adjoining the church of St.Anne.

Somehow Barbara followed him to Lisbon, and she was ever “the gentle slave who serves and adores”. in the words of Camoens. In the Book of Visitations of the church of St. Anne one can read the inventory taken in 1572 of the house of the poet, and making reference to the concubine, there appears the following sentence: “Barbara who lives together with a person, who, for just causes, one does not mention”.

Faria e Sousa points out a tradition of an ambulant female seller, who was brokenhearted about the poverty of the poet: “ a black woman called Barbara, knowing about his misery, gave him sometimes a dish of food, with the money that she earned from her sales and sometimes the money that she got from her sales”.

In the year 1859, a French writer, Guy de la Chandelle, wrote a novel called “LA VIEILLESSE DU POÈTE” ( The old age of the Poet) and in this novel, Barbara appears as the owner of a pub called BACCHO ESCARRANCHADO, which actually existed in Lisbon, and that she and the faithful Malayan servant António, took care of Luis de Camoens. António was a beggar, and with the proceeds of his alms, he took care of Camoens, buying charcoal during the winter, until António died of the plague in 1579. Camoens died on the 10^th of June 1580, when Portugal was annexed to Spain, having Philip II as King

Portugal’s King Sebastião had died in a reckless war campaign in North Africa, against the King of Fez , where the Moors allowed the Portuguese Army to advance inland, and finally surrounded and massacred the invaders at Alcacer Kibir in 1578. Sebastião was single, and his uncle Cardinal Henrique became regent until his death in 1580, when Spain’s King Philip II became the sole heir to the throne. For sixty years Portugal was under the Spanish yoke, and during this period Portugal´s empire in Asia,Africa and Brazil suffered severe losses from the Dutch. Lynschotten was really a spy of the Dutch, and four years after his book was published, with accurate details of the “Estado da India”, the Dutch realising the moral and physical decay of the Portuguese nation, attacked and occupied the Portuguese settlements, followed later by the English. It is fitting to point out that the Jesuit Thomas Stephens ( Padre Estevão) , who was responsible to convert to catholicism the people of Salcete, turned out to be a spy: his letters to friends in England depicted the riches of India, and these accounts whetted the appetite of the English merchants and adventurers who established the first factory in Surat.

Faria e Sousa wrote that “King Philip II could appreciate liteerature, and having read Camoens’ heroic Poem, had him in great esteem... When he entered Lisbon on the 26^th June 1581, desiring to see him, ordered that he be brought before him, and was greatly bereaved to hear that he had died a few months before”.

Torquato Tasso, a contemporary of Camoens, and the greatest Italian poet of the late Renaissance wrote: “It may be that the Empire of the Indies be lost from the hands of the successors of Manuel, and the superb Lisbon may not see arriving in its port the treasures of Africa and Asia; but the first glory of its immense conquests will live forever shining in the Poem of Camoens; the most remote nations will admire in the LUSIADAS the incredible valour of a handful of men, who facing terrible dangers, enormous and never seen before, and subduing populous nations, took to the extremities of the universe their virtues and the religion of their fathers”.

The Life of Luis de Camões The greatest Portuguese Epic Poet By Afredo de Mello

This article was taken from Alfredo de Mello's Memoirs of Goa, where he was born and educated.

Memoirs of Goa The Life of CAMOENS seen from the perspective of Goa, India By Alfredo de Mello

The Life of Luis de Camões
The greatest Portuguese Epic Poet
By Afredo de Mello

This article was taken from Alfredo de Mello's
Memoirs of Goa, where he was born and educated.

Memoirs of Goa
The Life of CAMOENS seen from the perspective of Goa, India
By Alfredo de Mello