Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 79–99
www.elsevier.com/locate/jmedhist
The state of research
Henry ‘the Navigator’
Ivana Elbl
*
Otonabee College, Trent University, 2151 East Bank Drive, Peterborough, Ontario, K9L 1Z8, Canada
Abstract
Infante Dom Henrique of Portugal, better known as Henry the Navigator, has enjoyed much
attention from historians and public alike. Past writers have elevated him to an icon of chivalry
and Portuguese national spirit, or, because of his impact on the early overseas expansion,
ascribed to him a Promethean role in the rise of modernity. The works of Sir Peter E. Russell,
including his new biography Henry ‘the Navigator’: a life (New Haven, 2000), have made a
great contribution to separating the historical Dom Henrique from his ‘culture hero’ counterpart, Henry the Navigator. They represent a key point of departure for new research, which
will need to focus on placing Dom Henrique in the context of his times and his contemporaries.
Thanks to the dramatic advances that have taken place over the last twenty years in the historiography of late medieval Portugal and of the early European overseas expansion, as well
as in the prosopography of the Iberian nobility, it is now possible to aspire to an in-depth
contextualization of Dom Henrique’s life and career. It is likewise possible to exploit much
more fully the existing primary sources, both published and unpublished. The foundation now
exists for an histoire totale approach to Dom Henrique, an undertaking called for by Vitorino
Magalhães Godinho in his comprehensive 1990 program of research on the Portuguese overseas expansion.  2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Henry, Infante of Portugal (1394–1460); Henry the Navigator; Dom Henrique; Overseas
expansion; Late medieval Portugal; Avis Dynasty
Dom Henrique, Infante of Portugal (1394–1460), better known as Prince Henry
the Navigator, is one of the most notorious figures of western history. Credited with
initiating the European overseas expansion, he has been seen alternately as a hero
of the Renaissance, an inventor and pioneer scientist, a paragon of medieval chivalry,
an ideal crusader and promoter of the Catholic faith, an embodiment of the Portug-
* Tel.: +1 705 748 1011; fax: +1 705 748 1335.
E-mail address: [email protected] (I. Elbl).
0304-4181/01/$ - see front matter  2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 3 0 4 - 4 1 8 1 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 0 2 - 1
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I. Elbl / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 79–99
uese national spirit, and a symbol of Portugal’s Golden Age.1 He has also been
vilified as a pirate, slaver, hypocrite, unprincipled opportunist,2 and usurper of his
brother Dom Pedro’s rightful place in history.3 He is the subject of hundreds of
publications, written over six centuries.4
It may therefore appear strange that in 1990 Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, the
great doyen of the history of Portuguese overseas expansion, identified a new biography of Dom Henrique as one of the most urgently needed components of the monumental research plan that he hoped historians would carry out in the 1990s and early
2000s. Magalhães Godinho expected that the outcome would blend a Braudelian
approach with the cultural perspective of Lucien Febvre, thus laying foundations for
an histoire totale (‘total history’) of the Portuguese expansion that would fulfil the
original ideals of the Annales school.5 From this point of view, the literature on Dom
Henrique must be found wanting even today, despite its volume and despite the most
recent contributions.
Ten years after Magalhães Godinho had issued his call, Sir Peter E. Russell’s
biography of Dom Henrique was finally published in September 2000 under the title
Prince Henry ‘the Navigator’: A life. The book not only represents a culmination
of the author’s lifelong work, but also offers a much needed in-depth review of the
life and career of Dom Henrique as an enigmatic, heavily mythologized, but undisputedly significant figure of world history.6 As David Abulafia pointed out in a recent
review, Sir Peter’s work ‘is one of those rare books which has had classic, or rather
legendary, status even before it was published.’7
Sir Peter’s great contribution lies in his long-standing effort to separate the histori1
For a review, see Maria Isabel João, O Infante D. Henrique na historiografia (Estudo inicial e
selecção de documentos) (Lisbon, 1995); Luı́s Felipe F.R. Thomaz, ‘O Infante Dom Henrique e a paternidade da Expansão: de Gomes Eanes de Azurara a Vitorino Nemésio’, in: Vitorino Nemésio, Vida e obra
do Infante Dom Henrique, 2nd ed. (Lisbon, 1991), xi–xxiii; Elbl, ‘Man of his times’; Peter R. Russell,
Prince Henry the Navigator: The rise and fall of a culture hero (Taylorian Special Lecture, 10 November
1983; Oxford, 1984); Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, A economia dos descobrimentos henriquinos (Lisbon,
1962), chapter 1.
2
As Peter Russell pointed out, this characterization goes back to Bartolomé de las Casas (Bartolomé
de las Casas, Historia de las Indias (México and Buenos Aires, 1951), 94–7, 137–9). For a recent
unflattering portrait of Dom Henrique, see Felipe Fernández Armesto, Before Columbus. Exploration
and colonization from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1229–1492 (Philadelphia, 1987), 185–199. For
comparison, see similarly critical perceptions of Christopher Columbus (William D. Phillips and Carla
Rahn Phillips, The worlds of Christopher Columbus (Cambridge, 1992), 6–8).
3
For the recent and extensive advocacy of this view, see Alfredo Pinheiro Marques, A maldição da
memória do Infante Dom Pedro e as origens dos descobrimentos portugueses (Figueira da Foz, 1994);
‘A maldição da memória e a criação do mito: o Infante D. Pedro e Infante D. Henrique nos descrobrimentos’, Vértice, 64 (1995), 63–74; and Vida e obra do Infante Dom Pedro (Figueireda da Foz, Mira, Lisbon, 1996).
4
See the note 1 and, for older works, Bibliografia henricina (Lisbon, 1960), 2 vols.
5
Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, Mito e mercadoria, utopia e prática de navegar. Séculos XIII–XVIII
(Lisbon, 1990), 33–55. For the importance ascribed to a revised biography of Dom Henrique, see p. 46.
6
Peter E. Russell, Prince Henry ‘the Navigator’. A life (New Haven and London, 2000).
7
David Abulafia, review of Peter E. Russell, Prince Henry ‘the Navigator’, Reviews in History
(www.history.ac.uk, October 2000).
I. Elbl / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 79–99
81
cal Dom Henrique from the myth of ‘Henry the Navigator’. His 1960 Canning House
lecture challenged the myth of Dom Henrique as a scientist and promoter of science.
His brilliant 1984 Taylorian lecture defined the research programme through which
we might recapture the essence of Dom Henrique as a historical figure. His earlier
essays, collected and published in 1995 under the title Portugal, Spain, and the
African Atlantic: Chivalry and crusade from John of Gaunt to Henry the Navigator,
addressed specific issues associated with Dom Henrique and the early expansion.8
The biography, finally, integrates these past writings with Sir Peter’s hitherto unpublished research in one cohesive manuscript that represents a landmark in Henricine
studies and in the history of the early overseas expansion. It represents both a grand
climax and a comment on the existing historiography, most of which has perceived
Dom Henrique as a key figure of the early overseas expansion, to a greater or lesser
degree removed from his contemporaries by the notable history-making role that
posterity has ascribed to him.9
Sir Peter and other historians of Dom Henrique and of the period in which he
lived face a challenging and at times ungrateful task. Dom Henrique, Infante of
Portugal, will probably never escape his alter ego, Henry the Navigator. For better
or for worse, the latter is a well-established icon of modern western civilization, one
of the first pioneers of modern science, modernity, and the rise of the West to global
dominance. Culture heroes are difficult to do away with, and as symbols of belief
and cultural identity are easily exempt from the rules of evidence. As in the case of
Christopher Columbus,10 school textbooks and popular histories usually win hands
down over historians trying to strip Henry the Navigator of his ‘culture hero’ status
and restore the Infante Dom Henrique as a historical figure: an ambitious, troubled,
and inventive member of the top level of an equally ambitious, troubled, and inventive late medieval nobility. According to the public opinion polls run both in Portugal
and North America in connection with the advent of the year 2000, Henry the Navigator appears to occupy a firm place among the twenty-five most important historical
8
Peter E. Russell, Prince Henry the Navigator (Canning House Seventh Annual Lecture, London,
1960); Prince Henry the Navigator: The rise and fall of a culture hero (Taylorian Special Lecture, 10
November 1983, Oxford, 1984); Portugal, Spain, and the African Atlantic: Chivalry and crusade from
John of Gaunt to Henry the Navigator (Aldershot and Brookfield, VT, 1995). See also his O Infante Dom
Henrique e as Ilhas Canarias: uma dimensão mal compreendida da biografia henriquina (Lisbon, 1979).
9
Much of the biography deals with Dom Henrique’s overseas involvement. It contains very little on
Portuguese society, politics or economy that would contextualize the protagonist as a high noble and a
member of the royal family in a kingdom beset by all the severe problems that marked the ‘crisis of the
late middle ages’. This problem is particularly strongly felt in the second half of the book, which deals
more with the progress of the early expansion rather than with Dom Henrique’s personal story. The
biography would have benefited from giving the dramatic developments of the last two decades of his
life precedence over the lengthy recounting of the voyages of explorations in chapters 8, 12 and 14.
10
William D. Phillips and Carla Rahn Phillips, The worlds of Christopher Columbus (Cambridge,
1992), 3–8.
82
I. Elbl / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 79–99
figures of the millennium.11 The legend of his great naval academy in the solitude
of the Cape Sagres, and his status as the inventor of the caravel and a far-sighted
initiator of oceanic explorations endures despite more than a century of scholarly
attempts, by Sir Peter and many others, to correct the record.
Sir Peter’s argument that Dom Henrique, and his ambitions and actions, should
all be seen as characteristically late medieval phenomena may not be easily adopted
by scholars, and even less so by the general public. The fifteenth century is still very
often perceived as a period of transition to modernity, a battleground between the
middle ages and the Renaissance. Earlier historians have correspondingly tried to
tag Dom Henrique as a representative of one side or the other: the persona of a
medieval noble, steeped in chivalry, religion, and crusading zeal, is pitched here
against the image of a man of learning and science, acting primarily out of intellectual curiosity.12 Implicitly, Johann Huizinga’s haunting image of the autumn of the
middle ages is pitted in such representations against Jacob Burkhardt’s enduring
concept of the Renaissance as ‘the discovery of man and his world’; the legacy of
the barbarity and blind faith of the ‘Dark Ages’ is contrasted with the modernity
and progress embodied in the Renaissance, despite the problematic nature of the idea
of progress in history.
In his 1984 Taylorian Lecture, Sir Peter argued that any such dichotomy was false:
depending on circumstances, Dom Henrique unavoidably displayed the characteristics of both a hard pressed noble driven by traditional values, and a renaissance
entrepreneur and seeker. The lecture effectively debunked the notion that Dom Henrique was a learned scientist in the modern sense. Sir Peter attempted to present him
merely as a curious layman seeking to understand the world and his place in it
through the prism of spiritual, metaphysical, and practical knowledge deeply
grounded in contemporary values and canons.13
In the biography, Sir Peter portrays Dom Henrique as a ‘Janus figure’, a deeply
divided, obsessive personality, whose practical, rational and often callous behaviour
alternated with a chivalric or crusading ‘mode’ that accounted for much of his recklessness, and whose private and public personas dramatically differed.14 The issue
of ‘modes’ of motivating behaviour helps to structure the argument in a number of
chapters, bringing Sir Peter close to John Ure, whose 1977 biography of Dom Henrique was heavily articulated around such a dichotomy. The Henricine attempts at
conquest in Morocco would thus represent a step back, a reflection of Dom Henrique
as a creature of the middle ages; the Atlantic explorations a step forward, a reflection
of the new and the modern.15
11
See, for example, the mass-media television programme A&E Top 100 (Arts and Entertainment,
(www.aande.com) and the result of the 1988 study on ‘Nationalism and patriotism in contemporary Portuguese society’, carried out by the Instituto de Ciências Sociais, cited in Maria Isabel João, ‘O regresso
do Infante’, Público (Special supplement, March 4, 1994), 26.
12
See note 1.
13
Russell, Prince Henry the Navigator: The rise and fall of a culture hero, 24–26 and passim.
14
Russell, Prince Henry, for example,107, 156, 271 and Introduction, chapters 6, 7, 13.
15
John Ure, Prince Henry the Navigator (London, 1977).
I. Elbl / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 79–99
83
Sir Peter’s main goal in the biography is unabashedly ‘to reclaim Prince Henry
for the Middle Ages’.16 Although I have previously made the same argument,17 it
seems now that the most productive path towards understanding Dom Henrique and
his place in history would be to abandon, at least for the moment, the ‘medieval vs.
Renaissance’ issue, and thus avoid the long-standing problem of reaching a consensus as to what characterized these broad periods. It would be far better to concentrate
on reconstructing Dom Henrique’s life and actions in the context of the times and
in comparison with his peers. As Sir Peter himself put it: ‘The historical Prince, in
so far as we can get near him, was plainly a far more interesting if also far more
perplexing figure than the uncomplicated culture hero of the mythmakers.’18
The phrase ‘in so far as we can get near him’ captures the key obstacle that Sir
Peter faced: the problem of sources. Most modern writings on Dom Henrique rely on
original information derived from a very limited range of narratives: the chronicles of
the realm; the chronicles of Gomes Eanes de Azurara; and travel accounts, in particular that of Alvise Cà da Mosto.19 The structure of these sources has channelled
Dom Henrique’s story into several defining episodes: the conquest of Ceuta in 1415,
the 1437 attack on Tangier; the voyages of exploration undertaken by his vassals in
the 1430s and 1440s; the regency of his brother Dom Pedro and the battle of Alfarrobeira; the establishment of trade with Western Africa; and the taking of Alcáçer
Seguer in 1458, shortly before Dom Henrique’s death in 1460. The structure of
16
Russell, Prince Henry, 12.
Elbl, ‘Man of his time’, 73.
18
Russell, Prince Henry, 3.
19
The principal narrative sources include Fernão Lopes, Crónica de D. João I, ed. A. Braacamp Freire
and William Entwistle, vol. 1 and 2 (Lisbon, 1963–68); Gomes Eanes de Zurara, Crónica da tomada de
Ceuta por El-Rei D. João I, ed. Francisco Maria Esteves Pereira (Lisbon, 1915); Ruy de Pina, Chronica
d’El Rei D. Duarte, ed. Alfredo Coelho Magalhães (Porto, 1915), and Chronica do Senhor Rey D. Affonso
V, in Crónicas de Rui de Pina, ed. Manuel Lopes de Almeida (Porto, 1977), 577–881; Damião de Góis,
Crónica do Prı́ncipe D. João, ed. Graça Almeida Rodrigues (Lisbon, 1977); Gomes Eanes de Zurara,
Crónica dos feitos notáveis que se passaram na conquista da Guiné por mandado do Infante D. Henrique,
ed. Torquato de Sousa Soares, vol. 1 (Lisbon, 1978); Gomes Eanes de Zurara, Crónica do Conde D.
Duarte de Meneses, ed. Larry King (Lisbon, 1978) and Chronica do Conde D. Pedro de Meneses (Lisbon,
1792); Chronica do Condestabre de Portugal Dom Nuno Alvares Pereira. ed. Mendes dos Remédios
(Coimbra, 1911); Frei João Alvares, Trautado da vida e feitos do muito vertuoso Sor. Infante D. Fernando
([Coimbra], 1960); João de Barros, Ásia. Décadas I and II, ed. António Baião (Lisbon, 1988); Viagens
de Luı́s de Cadamosto e de Pedro de Sintra (Lisbon, 1948); As viagens dos descobrimentos, ed. J.M.
Garcı́a (Lisbon, 1983); D. Duarte, O leal conselheiro (Lisbon, 1982). Many of these sources are available
in other editions and a few have been translated into English. These include Gomes Eanes de Azurara,
The chronicle of the discovery and conquest of Guinea, ed. C.R. Beazley and E. Prestage, 2 vols. (London,
1896–9); The voyages of Cadamosto and other documents on Western Africa in the second half of the
fifteenth century, ed. G.R. Crone (London, 1937); and J.W. Blake, Europeans in West Africa, 1450–1560,
2 vols. (London, 1942). Gomes Eanes de Zurara (or Azurara) is the chronicler most frequently associated
with the figure of Dom Henrique. His works present a number of problems. For discussion, see A. J.
Dinis Dias, Vida e obras de Gomes Eanes de Zurara (Lisbon, 1949); Joaquim de Carvalho, Estudos sobre
a cultura portuguesa no século XV, vol. 1 (Coimbra, 1949); Luı́s de Albuquerque, ‘Un prince et son
chronicleur’, Arquivos do Centro Cultural Português, 23 (1989); and Luı́s Felipe Barreto, ‘Gomes Eanes
de Zurara e o problema da Crónica da Guiné’, Studia, 47 (1989), 311–369.
17
84
I. Elbl / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 79–99
most biographies of Dom Henrique has been largely dictated by these topics, in a
conventional setting of the general history of geography and maritime explorations.20
Given the relatively small and homogenous body of original sources, it is not
surprising that so much of the early debate was built on speculation and concentrated
on Dom Henrique’s character, personality and historical mission.21 Magalhães Godinho bitterly characterized the traditional historiography of the Henricine expansion
in the following words: ‘Tramping in its own footsteps, without ever leaving the
closed circle, the ox turns the waterwheel…so with the history of the discoveries,
the same problems are posed and reposed, the same theses re-examined from the
same point of view.’22
Yet, since the turn of the twentieth century, a large volume of relevant documentary evidence has gradually been made available thanks to such monumental editorial
projects as those of José Ramos Coelho (Alguns documentos do Archivo Nacional
da Torre do Tombo acerca das navegações a conquistas portuguezas); Pedro de
Azevedo (Documentos das Chancelarias Reais anteriores a 1531 relativos a
Marrocos); Vitorino Magalhães Godinho (Documentos sobre a expansão
portuguesa); António Brásio (Monumenta missionaria Africana: África Occidental);
A. da Silva Rego (As ‘Gavetas’ da Torre do Tombo); A. J. Dinis Dias (Monumenta
Henricina), António Domingues de Sousa Costa (Monumenta Portugaliae Vaticana);
J.M. de Silva Marques (Descobrimentos portugueses: documentos para a sua
história); Luı́s de Albuquerque and Emilia Madeira Santos (Portugaliae monumenta
Africana and História geral de Cabo Verde. Corpo documental); and José Manuel
Garcia (Documentação henriquina).23
20
This is true even of the most recent biographies. Matos’ brief book was meant as a popular work
for the Portuguese and English-speaking public, and is limited both by its length and bilingualism (Artur
Teodoro de Matos, Henrique O Navegador (Lisbon, 1994)). Michel Vergé-Franceschi’s biography, of the
same year, is likewise conventional, although valuable as a history of the early expansion (Michel VergéFranceschi, Henri le Navigateur (Paris, 1994), republished last year in abridged form under the title Un
prince portugais (Paris, 2000)). For a more contextualizing approach, see António Borges Coelho, ‘Henrique, o Navegador’, in his Clérigos, mercadores, ‘judeus’ e fidalgos (Lisbon, 1994), 57–102. For some
older biographies of Dom Henrique, see R.H. Major, Life of Prince Henry surnamed the Navigator
(London, 1868); Fortunato de Almeida, O infante de Sagres (Porto, 1894); C.R. Beazley, Prince Henry
the Navigator, the hero of Portugal and of modern discovery (London, 1895 and reprints); J.P. Oliveira
Martins, Os filhos de D. João I (Lisbon, 1894 and reprints); M. Gonçalves Viana, Infante D. Henrique
(Porto, 1937); E. Prestage, The Portuguese pioneers (London, 1937 and reprints); E. Sanceau, Henry the
Navigator (London, 1946 and reprints); J.I.F. Brochado da Costa, Infante D. Henrique (Lisbon, [1942]);
J. Moreira Campos, O Infante D. Henrique e os descobrimentos dos portugueses (Lisbon, 1957); F. F.
Lopes, A figura e a obra do Infante D. Henrique (Lisbon, 1960); E. Bradford, Southward the caravels
(London, 1961); Vitorino Nemésio, Vida y obra do Infante D. Henrique (Lisbon, 1960 and reprints); and
John Ure, Prince Henry the Navigator (London, 1977).
21
See note 1.
22
Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, A economia dos descobrimentos henriquinos (Lisbon, 1962), 1; the
quotation transl. by Malyn Newitt, ‘Prince Henry and the origins of the Portuguese Expansion’, in: The
first Portuguese colonial empire, ed. Malyn Newitt (Exeter, 1986), 9.
23
Alguns documentos do Archivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo acerca das navegações a conquistas
portuguezas, ed. José Ramos Coelho (Lisbon, 1892); Documentos das Chancelarias Reais anteriores a
1531 relativos a Marrocos, ed. Pedro de Azevedo, vol. 1 and 2 (Lisbon, 1915–1934); Documentos sôbre
I. Elbl / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 79–99
85
Sir Peter fully appreciated the value of this material which, as he put it: ‘…has
radically altered earlier perceptions of the Prince’s biography by opening up whole
tracts of his life about which little was previously known.’24 He was able to add
several major themes to the biography: he explored Dom Henrique’s ambitions and
policies in the Atlantic Islands, including military actions in the Canaries; offered
an excellent analysis of the pareceres (written opinions) submitted in the early 1430s
by members of the royal family concerning the renewal of war in Morocco; tackled
Dom Henrique’s role in initiating the Atlantic slave trade and promoting the caravel;
and examined his testamentary instruments and estate information.
It may therefore seem paradoxical that Sir Peter’s overall view of new material
on Dom Henrique was pessimistic: he was disappointed by the relative scarcity of
new information on the African enterprise and by how little one apparently could
add to the story of Dom Henrique in general. After all, as he pointed out, neither
Dom Henrique’s ducal chancery registers nor his personal correspondence with other
members of his family have survived, and notarial documents and customs registers
that would shed further light on the African expeditions are available in mere fragments.25 The disappearance of the personal correspondence of both Dom Henrique
and the other members of the Avis family certainly is particularly disappointing. The
few surviving items of such correspondence tantalizingly suggest that its original
volume must have been considerable.26
Sir Peter believed that most of the material relevant to Dom Henrique’s life has
already been published: this explains the minimal role that unpublished archival
material plays in supporting the recent biography.27 And it is of course true that the
Monumenta Henricina alone indeed concentrate most of the documents directly relating to Dom Henrique. However, the Portuguese archives hold a relative abundance
of indirect evidence that can be made to go far in fleshing out and contextualizing
a expansão portuguesa, ed. Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, 3 vols. (Lisbon, 1943–1956); Descobrimentos
portugueses: documentos para a sua história, ed. J. M. de Silva Marques, 3 vols. (Lisbon, 1944–1971);
Monumenta Missionaria Africana: África Occidental, ed. António Brásio, 1a sér., vols. 1–2 (Lisbon,
1952–1953), 2a sér., vols. 1–3(Lisbon, 1958); Portugaliae monumenta cartographica, ed. Armando Cortesão and Avelino Teixeira da Mota, 6 vols. (Coimbra, 1958–1963); As ‘Gavetas’ da Torre do Tombo, ed.
A. da Silva Rego, 12 vols. (Lisbon, 1960–1977); Monumenta Henricina, ed. António Joaquim Dinis Dias,
15 vols. (Coimbra, 1960–1974); Monumenta Portugaliae Vaticana, ed. António Domingues de Sousa
Costa (Braga, 1970); História geral de Cabo Verde. Corpo documental, ed. Luı́s de Albuquerque and
Emilia Madeira Santos, 2 vols. (Lisbon, 1988); Portugaliae Monumenta Africana, ed. Luı́s de Albuquerque
and Emilia Madeira Santos (Lisbon, 1993–); Documentação henriquina, ed. José Manuel Garcia (Maia,
1995).
24
Russell, Prince Henry, 9. See also P.E. Russell, ‘Fontes documentais para a história de expansão
portuguesa na Guiné nos últimos annos de D. Afonso V’, Do Tempo e da História, 4 (1971), 5–33.
25
Russell, Prince Henry, 9–10. He suggests the 1755 earthquake as the ultimate culprit, but the
archiving practices of the time are much more to blame.
26
See, for example, the correspondence between King Dom Duarte, Queen Leonor and Abbott Gomes;
the letter from Duchess Isabel of Burgundy to Dom Duarte; the famous letter of Dom Pedro from Bruges;
the gift of a preserved elephant’s foot from Dom Henrique to the Duchess; and the close links between
Dom Henrique’s crusading effort and that of Phillip and Isabel of Burgundy.
27
Russell, Prince Henry, 411.
86
I. Elbl / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 79–99
Dom Henrique’s story. These are not included in the existing editions of sources.
The key collections are concentrated in the Arquivos Nacionais/Torre do Tombo
(AN/TT), and include the royal chancery registers and their digests (Leitura Nova),
late medieval legislation, and the invaluable capitulations of the Portuguese Cortes,
which provide an eloquent testimony concerning the state of the kingdom and the
overwhelming fiscal, economic and social challenges that faced it.28
The problem is that until relatively recently the state of the secondary literature
made it difficult to exploit fully both the published and unpublished documentary
sources, and the information contained in the key narratives. Most of the literature
focused in the main on the Portuguese overseas expansion and its geographical and
economic aspects, rather than on the political, social, and economic realities of late
medieval Portugal. The emphasis on the expansion was dictated on the one hand by
a nationalist nostalgia for the ‘heroic age of the discoveries’, and on the other hand
by external historiographic agendas focusing on global history-making processes.
Portugal’s domestic history was neglected or locked away in historical dictionaries
and inaccessible journal articles.29
During the years when Sir Peter wrote much of the earlier material that finally
found its place or came to be reflected in the Prince Henry manuscript,30 it was A.
J. Dinis Dias, Alberto Iria, Avelino Teixeira da Mota, and Luı́s de Albuquerque who
epitomized the scholarship devoted to the history of exploration, cartographic and
nautical questions, and the identification and dating of maritime voyages. These scholars built on the solid pioneering work of an earlier generation represented by Damião
Peres, Gago Coutinho, Armando Cortesão, Jaime Cortesão, and the great positivist
critic, Duarte Leite. The conclusions of both cohorts are aptly captured in Bailey
Diffie and George Winius’s excellent and still relevant synthesis, Foundations of the
28
Locating medieval archival sources has become much easier with the publication of the PhiloBiblon
project. Its BITAGAP component (Bibliografia de textos antigos galegos e portugueses) provides outstanding access to most original documents in Portuguese archives and libraries, with the exception of
notarial materials and individual chancery documents. Complete BITAGAP is available on CD-ROM
(Berkeley, 1999) or, with some limitations, on-line at http://sunsite.berkeley.edit/PhiloBiblon. Unfortunately, only a few of the chancery registers of Dom João I and Dom Duarte have survived. The registers
of Dom Afonso V are much more complete. The high attrition rate among the earlier chancery registers
can be at least partially blamed on the sixteenth-century Leitura Nova project, which involved the creation
of regionally and topically organized excerpts from the original registers. The Leitura Nova consists of
61 exquisitely produced and illuminated volumes, and includes documents up to the reign of Dom João
III. For discussion of some of the issues, see Armando Luı́s de Carvalho Homem, ‘Prosopographie et
histoire de l’état. La bureaucratie des rois portugais aux XIVe et XVe siècles: Recherches faites,
recherches à faire’, in: L’état moderne et les élites. XIIIe–XVIIIe siècles. Apport et limites de la méthode
prosopographique, ed. Jean–Philippe Genet and Günther Lottes (Paris, 1996). See also Chancelarias
Portuguesas. D. Duarte, ed. João José Alves Dias, vol. 1, t. 1 (1433–1435) (Lisbon, 1998). For a detailed
listing of archival holdings of cortes-related documents see Armindo de Sousa, As cortes medievais portuguesas (1385–1490), vol. 2 (Porto, 1990), 225–499.
29
In the 1960s, the energy of many scholars was absorbed by the monumental Dicionário de história
de Portugal, dir. Joel Serrão, 4 vols. (Lisbon, 1965–1971); for an extensive bibliographical coverage, see
A.H. de Oliveira Marques, Portugal na crise dos séculos XIV e XV (Lisbon, 1987), 571–593.
30
It appears that Sir Peter was working on the manuscript already in the early 1940s. Russell, Prince
Henry, xv.
I. Elbl / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 79–99
87
Portuguese Empire, 1415–1580, published in 1977.31 The foundations laid during
this era were indispensable and solid, despite the fact that serious scholarship in
Portugal had to grapple with the challenge of pressures emanating from the political
establishment, embodied in some of the less salubrious policies of the Comisão
Executiva das Commemorações do V Centenário da Morte do Infante Dom Henrique
[Executive Commission on the Commemorations of the 5th Centenary of Infante
Dom Henrique’s Death].32 Dom Henrique’s idealization as a Portuguese Christian
hero did indeed go so far that a serious suggestion was made that he be canonized
as a saint.33
Almost simultaneously, however, the knowledge of the economic aspects of the
early Portuguese expansion advanced greatly thanks to the works of Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, Manuel Nunes Dias, Charles Verlinden, and others.34 It is to them
that historians owe a great deal of what is known about the commodities, exchange
patterns, and mercantile institutions of the early expansion. The much debated bullion
famine and the ‘great depression’ of the late middle ages provided a broad historiographic backdrop for these contributions, in conjunction with the familiar periodization landmarks of the ‘commercial revolution of the middle ages’ and the ‘general
crisis of the seventeenth century’. This era in the historiography of the expansion
coincided with the heyday of economic history and also of the Annales school, from
the 1930s to the late 1970s. Aspects and concepts of the resulting debates were then
incorporated into the world-system theory as formulated by Immanuel Wallerstein
and his followers.35 With the exception of certain works by Magalhães Godinho,
however, this trend neglected the importance of ideology, culture, and value systems.36
The powerful intellect of Magalhães Godinho, Sir Peter’s contemporary, virtually
defined the agenda for the study of the early Portuguese expansion in the second
half of the twentieth century, and left a profound imprint on the current generation
of scholars. Working under extremely difficult political conditions for most of his
earlier career, either in exile or with very limited access to the archives, Magalhães
Godinho wrote some of most enduring works on the subject, including A economia
dos descobrimentos henriquinos, Descobrimentos portugueses e a economia mundial, Ensaios sobre a história de Portugal, and Mito e mercadoria, utopia e pratica
31
Bailey W. Diffie and George D. Winius, Foundations of the Portuguese empire, 1415–1580
(Minneapolis, 1977). See their bibliography for a listing of the above mentioned authors.
32
It cannot be denied, however, that the ‘Commemorations’ had substantial positive impact in some
areas, if only by sponsoring the invaluable Monumenta Henricina.
33
António Leite, ‘Poderá o Infante D. Henrique ser canonizado?’ Brotéria, 71 (1960), 486.
34
For a listing of works by Magalhães Godinho, see 36, 37 below; Manuel Nunes Dias, O capitalismo
monárquico português, 2 vols (Coimbra, 1963–4); Charles Verlinden’s work took the form of articles. See,
for example, Charles Verlinden, ‘Navigateurs, marchands et colons italiens au service de la découverte et
colonisation portugaise sous Henri le Navigateur’, Le moyen âge (1958): 467–97.
35
Immanuel Wallerstein, The modern world system, vol. 1 (New York, 1974), 21–51.
36
These include Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, A economia dos descobrimentos henriquinos; and
Ensaios II sobre história de Portugal (Lisbon, 1978).
88
I. Elbl / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 79–99
de navegar (séculos XIII–XVIII).37 Godinho sought to outline the broader socioeconomic circumstances that spurred on Dom Henrique and his contemporaries, and
paid explicit attention to the transformations occurring in traditional social roles
under the pressure of circumstances, especially to the two-way blending of the merchant and the noble into a hybrid mercador–fidalgo and cavaleiro/fidalgo–mercador.
However, despite the calibre of his scholarship, Magalhães Godinho remained relatively unknown outside of Portuguese and French scholarly circles, to the point that
Malyn Newitt considered it necessary to summarize his findings to make them available to English-speaking historians.38 Although familiar with the work of Magalhães
Godinho, Sir Peter was not much influenced by his thought: his own leanings were
cultural and literary, removed from Magalhães Godinho’s historical sociology
immersed in the French Annales tradition.
Although many Portuguese historians made considerable contributions to the study
of the late middle ages in the 1960s and 1970s,39 it is A. H. de Oliveira Marques
who stands out as Magalhães Godinho’s key counterpart with respect to the general
history of Portugal during this period. His History of Portugal, first published in
1971 and subsequently revised and reprinted a number of times in both English and
Portuguese, has proved remarkably enduring, and has been an accurate source of
initial orientation for many students. His Guia do estudante da história medieval
portuguesa provided an essential introduction to the study of Portuguese medieval
history, and his Sociedade medieval portuguesa, translated into English under the
title Daily life in Portugal in the middle ages, was only superseded by the author’s
sweeping synopsis of Portuguese late medieval history, Portugal na crise dos séculos
XIV e XV, published in 1987.40
Portugal na crise dos séculos XIV e XV was one of the first published volumes
of a large-scale twelve-volume history of Portugal, very appropriately titled Nova
história de Portugal. The Nova história marked a coming-of-age for what had been
a virtual revolution in Portuguese historical scholarship covering the pre-modern
period. The process began in the early 1980s, continued into the 1990s, and by now
has reached the critical mass necessary to permit a much more thorough exploitation
of the sources available for the study of Dom Henrique and his times than had ever
37
Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, A expansão quatrocentista portuguesa; problemas das origens e da
linha de evolução (Lisbon, 1944); História económica e social da expansão portuguesa. (Lisbon, 1947);
O ‘Mediterráneo’ saariano e as caravanas do ouro; geografia económica e social do Sáara ocidental e
central do XI ao XVI século (São Paulo, 1956); A economia dos descobrimentos henriquinos. Os descobrimentos e a economia mundial (Lisbon, 1963–1971, 2 vols; 2nd revised and enlarged edition, 1981–1984,
4 vols); Économie de l’empire portugais aux XVe et XVIe siècles, (Paris, 1969); Mito e mercadoria,
utopia e pratica de navegar (séculos XIII–XVIII).
38
Malyn Newitt, ‘Prince Henry’, 14.
39
See the bibliography in A.H. de Oliveira Marques, Portugal na crise dos séculos XIV e XV (Lisbon,
1987), 571–93.
40
A.H. de Oliveira Marques, História de Portugal (Lisbon,1972 and subsequent revised editions); History of Portugal (New York, 1972; 2nd ed. 1976); Guia do estudante da história medieval portuguesa
(Lisbon, 1964; 2nd ed. 1979); Sociedade medieval portuguesa, 2nd ed. (Lisbon, 1971); Daily life in
Portugal in the late Middle Ages (Madison, 1971); Portugal na crise.
I. Elbl / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 79–99
89
been possible before. The impact of the last two decades in Portuguese medieval
historiography becomes obvious as soon as one begins to browse through the topical
index of the 750-page-long Repertório bibliográfico da historiografia Portuguesa,
1974–1994, through the footnotes and bibliographies of the relevant volumes of the
Nova história de Portugal, and through the pages of its counterpart, the História de
Portugal edited by José Mattoso.41 In the area of the early overseas expansion, these
new survey works are complemented by Volume 1 of the História da expansão
portuguesa, edited by Francisco Bethencourt and Kirti Chaudhuri; the Nova história
da expansão portuguesa, coordinated by A.H. de Oliveira Marques and Joel Serrão;
and by the compact Portugal: the pathfinder, edited by George Winius.42 In combination, they constitute a basic point of departure for any new work on Dom Henrique
and the early overseas expansion.43
The effort to place the early expansion and Dom Henrique’s life in the context
of Portuguese domestic history, as well as the history of the Iberian Peninsula and
western Europe, has been part and parcel of this remarkable historiographic trend.
The single most important contribution was undoubtedly made by Luı́s Felipe F.R.
Thomaz. Thomaz has successfully broken the barrier between the material and ideological aspects of the topic, overcoming the tendency of the preceding generation of
scholars to concentrate largely on the history of explorations, technology, and economy. The one work most relevant to the study of Dom Henrique is Thomaz’s 1989
long essay ‘Le Portugal et l’Afrique au XVe siècle’, republished in Portuguese in
1994 in his book De Ceuta a Timor under the title ‘A evolução da polı́tica expansionista portuguesa na primeira metade de quatrocentos’.44 The other directly relevant
works are ‘Da cruzada ao Quinto Império’, written in co-authorship with Jorge
Santos Alves, and Thomaz’s critique of Henricine historiography, ‘O Infante D. Henrique e a paternidade da Expansão: de Gomes Eanes de Azurara a Vitorino Nemésio’.
41
Repertório biobliográfico da historiografia portuguesa (1974–1994) (Coimbra, 1995); Oliveira Marques, Portugal na crise, 571–93; Portugal. Do renascimento à crise dinástica, coord. João José Alves
Dias (Lisbon, 1998), 777–822; A monarquia feudal (1086–1480), vol. 2 of História de Portugal, dir.
José Mattoso (Lisbon, 1993); and Do alvorecer da modernidade (1480–1620), coord. Joaquim Romero
Magalhães, vol. 3 of História de Portugal, dir. José Mattoso (Lisbon, 1993). See also Armando Castro,
História económica de Portugal, vol. 2 (Séculos XII a XV) and vol. 3 (Séculos XV e XVI) (Lisbon,
1978–1985).
42
A expansão quatrocentista, coord. A.H. de Oliveira Marques, vol. 2 of Nova história da expansão
portuguesa, dir. Joel Serrão and A. H. de Oliveira Marques (Lisbon, 1998); A formação do Império
(1415–1570), vol 1 of História da expansão portuguesa, ed. Francisco Bethencourt and Kirti Chaudhuri
([Lisbon], 1998); Portugal, the pathfinder. Journeys from the medieval towards the modern world, 1300–
ca. 1600, ed. George Winius (Madison, 1995).
43
See also Vinte anos de historiografia ultramarina portuguesa: 1972–1992, dir. Artur Teodoro de
Matos and Luı́s Felipe F. R. Thomaz (Lisbon, 1993); and the works of Alfredo Pinheiro Marques on the
same subject. For a listing see Repertório, 356–8.
44
Luı́s Felipe F.R. Thomaz, ‘Le Portugal et l’Afrique au XVe siècle’, Arquivos do Centro Cultural
Português, 26 (1989), 161–260; and ‘A evolução da polı́tica expansionista portuguesa na primeira metade
de quatrocentos’, in: Luı́s Felipe Thomaz, De Ceuta a Timor (Lisbon, 1994), essay 2, 43–147.
90
I. Elbl / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 79–99
His other key works include ‘O projecto imperial joanino: tentativa da polı́tica ultramarina de D. João II’, and ‘L’idée impériale manueline’.45
Thomaz’s strict attention to historical context and his sensitivity to the values and
priorities of the period have laid reliable foundations for recapturing, in comparative
terms, the self-image, motives, and objectives of the key groups and individuals
involved in the early overseas expansion, among them Dom Henrique, King Dom
João II, and King Dom Manuel. The notions around which a good deal of his work
was structured, in particular the concept of messianic imperialism, continue to stimulate his contemporaries, whether as co-thinkers or as critics. The related focus on
issues of national and social identity that has marked some of the works of the new
cohort of Portuguese historians is reflected in Descobrimentos, expansão, e a identidade nacional, edited by Amadeu Carvalho Homem, and in A memória da nação,
edited by Francisco Bethencourt and Diogo Ramada Curto.46 These volumes exemplify the published proceedings of a series of stimulating conferences on late medieval
and renaissance history, held in the 1980s and 1990s, which included for example
the congress ‘Bartolomeu Dias e a sua época’, the colloquium ‘La découverte, le
Portugal et l’Europe’, and ‘The evolution of the Portuguese Atlantic, 1498–1998’.47
These notable developments in Portuguese historiography have been fortunately
matched by progress in the other fields needed to reconstruct Dom Henrique’s world
and present his life in the context of the events and institutions that shaped it. These
include the study of late medieval mentalities and attitudes, the history of North and
West Africa and of the Atlantic islands in the fifteenth century, as well as the history
of shipbuilding, cartography, the later crusades, and warfare.48 Of particular impor45
Luı́s Felipe F.R. Thomaz and Jorge Santos Alves, ‘Da cruzada ao Quinto Império’, in: A memória
da nação, ed. Francisco Bethencourt and Diogo Ramada Curto (Lisbon, 1991), 81–165. Luı́s Felipe F.R.
Thomaz, ‘O Infante D. Henrique’. Luı́s Felipe F.R. Thomaz, ‘O projecto imperial joanino: tentativa da
polı́tica ultramarina de D. João II’, in: Congresso internacional Bartolomeu Dias e a sua época, Porto,
1988 (Porto, 1989), vol. 1, 81–87, repr. in: Luı́s Felipe Thomáz, De Ceuta a Timor, essay 3, 149–167.
Luı́s Felipe F.R. Thomaz. ‘L’idée impériale manueline’, in: Colloque la découverte, le Portugal, et l’Europe, Paris, 1988 (Paris, 1991), 35–103.
46
Descobrimentos, expansão, e identidade nacional, ed. Amadeu Carvalho Homem (Coimbra, 1992);
A memória da nação. Colóquio do Gabinete de Estudos de Simbologia realizado na Fundação Calouste
Gulbenkian, 7–9 Outubro, 1987, ed. Francisco Bethencourt and Diogo Ramada Curto (Lisbon, 1991).
47
Congresso internacional Bartolomeu Dias e a sua época, 5 vols (Porto, 1989); La découverte, le
Portugal et l’Europe; The evolution of the Portuguese Atlantic, 1498–1998 (Charleston, forthcoming).
48
For synopses, see the various chapters in vols. 6 and 7 of The new Cambridge medieval history
(Cambridge, 1998); Handbook of European history, 1400–1600. Late middle ages, Renaissance and Reformation, ed. T. A. Brady, H.A. Oberman, J.D Tracy, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids, 1995), and David Abulafia,
The Western Mediterranean kingdoms, 1200–1500. The struggle for dominion (London, 1997). The following are only a few examples of some recent works, not a representative bibliography in any sense.
On late medieval mentality, see Hervé Martin, Mentalités médievales. XIe – XVe siècle, 2nd ed. (Paris,
1998); and Fifteenth–century attitudes. Peceptions of society in late medieval England, ed. Rosemary
Horrox (Cambridge, 1994, repr. 1996). On the history of North and West Africa, see Weston F. Cook,
The hundred years war in Morocco. Gunpowder and the military revolution in the early modern Muslim
world (Boulder, 1994); J.K. Thornton, Africa and Africans in the making of the Atlantic world, 1400–
1800 (Cambridge, 1992; 2nd enlarged ed. 1998); George Brooks, Landlords and strangers. Ecology,
society, and trade in Western Africa, 1000–1630 (Boulder, 1993); Ivana Elbl, ‘The volume of the early
I. Elbl / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 79–99
91
tance in this context is the large and growing literature devoted to the late medieval
nobility,49 which covers a range of factual and theoretical topics of key importance
for the study of Dom Henrique’s life.
The secondary literature and the primary sources provide now at long last the
necessary foundation to attempt that which Magalhães Godinho deemed so necessary: a new biography of Dom Henrique written with the ideals of histoire totale in
mind. If successful, such a biography would overcome the limitations and artificial
dichotomies (ideology versus economy, idealism versus materialism, medieval versus
Renaissance, individuals versus broad historical processes) with which past Henricine
historiography had clouded the story. As Lucien Febvre wrote long ago: ‘Man cannot
be carved into slices. He is whole. One must not divide all of history – here the
events, there the beliefs.’50 A skilfully articulated histoire totale could transcend the
divisions that separate various specialized fields and diverse approaches to history,
in particular bridging the gap that now exists between economic and institutional
history on the one hand, and the history of ideology and culture on the other.51
Atlantic slave trade’, and ‘Cross-cultural trade and diplomacy: Portuguese negotiations in West Africa,
1440–1521’, Journal of World History, 3, 2 (1992): 165–204. Jean Boulègue, L’impact économique et
politique des navigations portugaises sur les peuples côtiers: les cas de la Guinée du Cap Vert (Lisbon,
1988) and Le Grand Jolof, XIIIe e XIVe siècle (Paris, 1987). On cartography, see The history of cartography, edited by J.B. Harley and David Woodward, vol. 1 and 2 (Chicago, 1987–1994), and the numerous
works of Pinheiro Marques on this subject (for a listing see Repertório, 356–8). On shipbuilding, see
Cogs, caravels and galeons. The sailing ship, 1000–1650 (London, 1994); Martin M. Elbl, The Portuguese
caravel and European shipbuilding: phases of development and diversity (Lisbon, 1985) and ‘Caravel,’
in: Cogs, caravels and galeons, 91–98. Among the vast recent literature on the Atlantic islands, see João
Marinho dos Santos, Os Açores nos sécs. XV e XVI, 2 vols. (Maia, 1989); Fernando Jasmin Pereira,
Estudos sobre história da Madeira (Funchal, 1991); Maria de Lourdes de Freitas Ferraz, A Ilha da Madeira sob o domı́nio da casa senhorial do Infante D. Henrique e seus descendentes (Funchal, 1986); Alberto
Vieira, O comércio inter-insular nos séculos XV–XVI. Madeira, Açores, e Canárias (Funchal, 1987) and
his numerous other works. On late medieval crusades, see Norman Housley, The later crusades. From
Lyons to Alcazar, 1274–1580 (Oxford, 1992, repr. 1995). On the history of medieval warfare, see Kelly
De Vries, Medieval military technology (Peterborough and Lewiston, 1992); João Gouveia Monteiro, A
guerra em Portugal nos finais da idade média (Lisbon, 1998).
49
For a synopsis, see Philippe Contamine, ‘The European Nobility’, in vol. 7 of New Cambridge
medieval history, 89–105. For some specific studies on nobility outside Portugal see Marie–Claude Gerbert, Les noblesses espagnoles au moyen âge (Paris, 1994), La noblesse dans le royaume de Castille.
Étude sur ses structures sociales en Estrémadure (1454–1516) (Paris, 1979); Isabel Beceiro Pita and
Ricardo Córdoba de la Llave, Parentesco, poder y mentalidad. La nobleza castellana. Siglos XII–XV
(Madrid, 1990); M.L. Bush, Rich noble, poor noble (Manchester and New York, 1988); Chris GivenWilson, The English nobility in the Late Middle Ages (London and New York, 1987).
50
Lucien Febvre, Pour une histoire à part entière (Paris, 1962), 852, quoted by Ernst Breisach in
Historiography. Ancient, medieval, and modern (Chicago and London, 1983), 371.
51
The problem is that historians of the Annales school have found this task very difficult to accomplish.
More recently, the very idea of interdisciplinarity has come to be seen as a Trojan horse holding out
multiple dangers for history as a discipline, instead of elevating it to the status of a ‘queen of human
sciences’, as Lucien Febvre had hoped. For an excellent discussion see Ignacio Olábarri, ‘“New” new
history: A longue durée structure’, History and Theory, 34 (1995), 1–29, in particular 14–15. Jacques Le
Goff’s biography of Saint Louis represents the most recent major and impressive effort in this direction
(Jacques Le Goff, Saint Louis (Paris, 1996). The applied sciences have experienced a similar problem.
In his discussion of ‘integrated assessment models’ (a climatological counterpart of histoire totale), Jeroen
92
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This is of course a daunting project, both in theory and in practice. Histoire totale
is a concept shot through with problems that have to do both with technical execution
and with the state of history as a discipline.52 In terms of execution, the fragmented
nature of evidence and the uneven progress that characterizes various fields of
research make it often difficult to establish an unexceptionable factual base. Our
ability to encompass evidence and assess it in a manner that would embrace its many
dimensions is usually limited as well, if only by our interests, assumptions, and
biases. Post-modernist scholars have argued extensively over the last two decades
that problems of communication and perspective can easily reduce history-writing
to fiction, with the narrator’s vision ultimately perhaps more authentic than any
attempt at reconstructing historical reality, an unattainable goal in any case.53 Biography, in this context, presents such added conceptual challenges as balance between
background and subject, or the problems attendant on reconstructing personality profiles and establishing motivation in different situations and at different stages of life.54
The prerequisites for truly understanding the past and the human beings populating
it is of course one of the unresolved issues in the theory of history in general and
of biography in particular.55 Matters would be a little easier if we could safely argue
that the deep psychological make-up of humanity does not fundamentally change
within the space of years, centuries, or even millennia,56 and that basic emotions,
motivations, and modes of reasoning apply across time and space, even though forms
van der Sluijs stressed the great difficulty involved in factoring in ‘variables such as risk perception,
attribution of responsibility, life-attitudes (...), ethical attitude (...), driving value (growth, equity, stability),
myth of nature (...), laws and legislation, valuation of consequences for future generations’. (Jeroen van
der Sluijs ‘Integrated Assessment Models and the Management of Uncertainties’, unpublished, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria, Working Papers Series, no. WP-96119 (October 1996), 14).
52
For an excellent summary, see Olábarri, ‘“New” new history’, 17–19 (section ‘Present and future of
“total history”’).
53
For discussion, see Lawrence Stone, ‘History and post-modernism’, Past and Present, 131 (1991),
217–8; and P. Novick, That noble dream: the ‘objectivity question’ and the American historical profession
(Cambridge, Mass., 1987).
54
For a very interesting discussion and a survey of literature, see Giovanni Levi, ‘Les usages de la
biographie’, Annales ESC, 44 (1989), 1325–36.
55
See Olábarri, ‘“New” new history’, passim; K. J. MacHardy, ‘Crises in history, or: Hermes
unbounded’, Storia della Storiografia, 17 (1990), 5–27; P. Novick, That noble dream; R.J. Evans, In
defense of history (London, 1997). Biography by its very nature represents at the same time an exercise
in microhistory and in synthesis, a task that the ‘new history’ finds increasingly difficult (Novick, That
noble dream, 577–92).
56
‘Evidence is amassing from various sources (palaeontology, neuropsychology. biogenetics, anthropology etc.) that the modern life of humans rests on much more ancient genetically founded dispositions
which evolved to equip us for a world we no longer inhabit: the Pleistocene culture of hunter-gatherer
clans in a savannah environment.... Features of human existence replicated over all known cultures, past
and present, derive from this shared human nature.’ Nigel Nicholson, ‘Personality and entrepreneurial
leadership,’ European Management Journal, 16 (1999), 3, summing up the conclusions of J. Tooby and
L. Cosmides, ‘The psychological foundations of culture’, in: The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology
and the generation of culture, ed. J. H. Harkow, L. Cosmides, and J. Tooby (Oxford, 1992). See also
Arthur H. Niehoff, On becoming human: A journey of 5,000,000 years (Bonsall, 1994); and Jared M.
Diamond, The third chimpanzee: The evolution and future of the human animal (New York, 1993).
I. Elbl / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 79–99
93
of expression, social norms, and value systems may change dramatically.57 If this
were the case, the social sciences could be called upon without much contention to
help us resolve some of the key conceptual and methodological issues, in particular
those sciences that employ life histories and collective biographies as a standard
tool.58 However, the notion of a very slowly evolving deep psychology, shared not
only by humans but possibly other primates as well, is far from universally accepted.
While the general issues of human nature continue to preoccupy palaeoanthropologists, moral philosophers, and students of divinity, historians tend to perceive individual and collective psychology as shaped by specific documentable historical circumstances. General principles are suspect.59
However, it is only if we accept the notion that we share certain fundamental
elements of psychological make-up with the people of the past that we can discard
the artificial dichotomies which have held back our understanding of Dom Henrique,
his ambitions, and his actions. He was undeniably, like ourselves, an individual with
an evolving personality and priorities, and his actions and desires were shaped and
constrained by norms, role-models, institutions, and past events, as well as by his
own striving. As Thomaz put it, he was ‘a man who, like others, lived, thought, and
changed; a man of his times, who achieved greatness because he knew how to adapt
gradually to the pressure of circumstances.’60
Although psychology has yet to provide a comprehensive and uncontroversial
account of personality and motivation,61 it is clear that the need for achievement,
fame, and a place in history, is a legitimate and in some personalities potentially
dominant motivator.62 According to Maslow, relatively few people are driven to
achieve self-actualization, and only a small percentage reaches this goal, often at the
cost of appearing to others as strange, introverted, and prone to play by special rules.
People with self-actualizing personalities often disregard or twist the moral precepts
of their society in the pursuit of their goals, and spurn norms involving the conven-
57
For a synopsis and critical discussion of the vast literature on behavioural theory, rational choice,
and the relationship between individuality and societal influences on life strategies, in the context of
decision model, see Hiroaki Hayakawa, ‘Bounded rationality, social and cultural norms, and interdependence via reference groups,’ Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organization, 43 (2000), 1–34.
58
See, for example, Biography and society: the life history approach in the social sciences, ed. Daniel
Bertaux, (Beverly Hills, Ca., 1983); and Lives: an anthropological approach to biography, ed. L. L.
Langless and Gelya Frank (Novato, Ca, 1981).
59
For discussion, see James William Anderson, ‘The methodology of psychological biography’, Journal
of Interdisciplinary History, 11 (1981), 455–475; Frank E. Manuel, ‘The use and abuse of psychology
in history’, Daedalus, 117 (1988), 199–225. Although both authors warned about the methodological
dangers involved, they both argued that the benefits of psycho-historical research outweighed its caveats.
60
‘... um homem que, como os demais, viveu, pensou, e mudou:... um homem que, sujeito ao tempo,
foi movido pelas circunstâncias e gradualmente se adaptou, e por ter sabido fazê-lo foi grande.’ Thomaz,
‘O Infante D. Henrique’, xxiii.
61
For introduction and summary, see Robert B. Ewan, An introduction to theories of personality, 4th
ed. (Hillsdale, 1993); Richard M. Ryckman, Theories of personality, 6th ed. (Toronto, 1997); and C.
N. Cofer and M.H. Appley, Motivation: Theory and research (New York, London and Sydney, 1967;
repr. 1967).
62
Coger and Appley, Motivation, chapters 13 and 14; Ewan, An Introduction, 168–172.
94
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tional stages of life, thus appearing obsessive and enigmatic to their peers.63 It could
be argued that the language and ideological constructs that garb and justify their
behaviour may differ greatly depending on historical context, but not so the fundamental patterns of their behaviour.
In practical terms, reconstructing Dom Henrique’s life and setting it in the proper
context is bound to prove an overwhelming task, despite the recent advances in
historiography.64 Given the nature of the surviving sources, to capture Dom Henrique
in the context of his times and peers might mean nothing short of constructing a
multifaceted picture of his world. His life, ambitions, and strategies can only be
assessed with some confidence by comparing them to those of his peers in Portugal.
Ultimately, the comparison will need to be extended to the Iberian, Atlantic, and
Mediterranean scenes, in order to capture the transregional and transdynastic realities
of the elite stratum that was Dom Henrique’s reference group. Finally, to derive
maximum benefit from the primary sources, the available information must be fitted
into a detailed chronological framework, reconstructing Dom Henrique’s life almost
day by day whenever possible.65
Such an approach has some recent precedents, in both biography and the prosopography of Iberian royalty, nobility, and the key figures of the early European overseas
expansion. Alan Ryder’s Alfonso the Magnanimous and Peggy Liss’ Isabel the
Queen, for example, both demonstrated that it is possible to contextualize complex
Iberian historical figures without creating unwieldy works that would be difficult to
follow. Sanjay Subrahmanyam in his Life and career of Vasco da Gama and William
Phillips and Carla Rahn Phillips in their Worlds of Christopher Columbus followed a
similar approach in the treatment of key non-royal figures surrounded by a historical
mystique matching that of Dom Henrique.66
The existing literature has by now opened up and explored research avenues that
make this kind of approach to Dom Henrique feasible. João Silva da Sousa’s excellently researched A casa senhorial do Infante D. Henrique offers a wealth of information on the chronology of Dom Henrique’s life, as well as on his household and
his economic enterprises. It also furnishes biographical sketches of his household
members, followers, and retainers.67 The book is suitably complemented by M. C.
63
For detailed discussion, see Dean Simonton, Greatness: Who makes history and why? (New York,
1994).
64
My 1991 article ‘Man of His Times (and Peers): A New Look at Henry the Navigator’ was intended
as a pilot publication, to be followed within a year by a full-scale biography that would accomplish the
task. In fact it was to take ten more years before the project would come anywhere near completion.
65
This process was already begun by João Silva de Sousa (João Silva de Sousa, A casa senhorial do
Infante Dom Henrique (Lisbon,1991), 17–84), and was facilitated by Humberto Baquero Moreno’s work
on the itineraries of Dom João I and Dom Duarte (Humberto Baquero Moreno, Os itinerários de el-Rei
D. João I (1384–1433) (Lisbon, 1988) and Itinerários de el-Rei D. Duarte (1433–1438) (Lisbon, 1976).
66
Alan Ryder, Alfonso the Magnanimous. King of Aragon, Naples and Sicily, 1396–1458
(Oxford,1990); Peggy Liss, Isabel the Queen. Life and times (New York and Oxford, 1992); Sanjay
Subrahmanyam, The career and legend of Vasco da Gama (Cambridge, 1997); Phillips and Phillips, The
worlds of Christopher Columbus.
67
João Silva de Sousa, A casa senhorial.
I. Elbl / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 79–99
95
Almeida e Cunha and M.C. Gomes Pimenta’s ‘A Casa Senhorial do Infante D. Henrique’.68 Baquero Moreno’s Infante D. Pedro, Duque de Coimbra. Itinerários e
Ensaios Históricos, lays the foundations for a similar treatment of Dom Pedro, Dom
Henrique’s brother, providing a counterpart to the works on the same subject by
Alfredo Pinheiro Marques.69 Monique Sommé has recently published an extensive
study of Dom Henrique’s sister, Isabel, Duchess of Burgundy, and Paulo Drummond
Braga has moved us closer to a possible biography of Dom Fernando.70
In terms of prosopography, Baquero Moreno’s monumental work A Batalha da
Alfarrobeira offers nucleic biographies of hundreds of Henry’s contemporaries, both
male and female, complementing Braacamp Freire’s enduring Brasões da Sala de
Sintra.71 Mafalda Soares da Cunha’s Linhagem, parentesco, e poder. A Casa de
Bragança (1482–1483) offers an excellent analysis of the fortunes of the House of
Bragança, the illegitimate branch of the Avis dynasty that eventually would restore
Portuguese independence in 1640.72 Rita Costa Gomes in her A corte dos reis de
Portugal nos final da idade média pioneered the study of the late medieval Portuguese royal court and the noble families associated with it. Pedro de Brito’s Patriciado
urbano quinhentista explores the fortunes of those patrician families that made their
mark in royal service and local government. Finally, António Dias Farinha and Abel
dos Santos Cruz have dealt with noble participation in the North African military
campaigns.73
Magalhães Godinho quite rightly considered the study of Portugal’s nobility to be
one of the cornerstones of the ambitious research programme he proposed in 1990.74
Understanding better the linkages between nobility, state, economy, and social
mobility in the fifteenth century remains crucial for gaining insight into the interplay
68
Maria Cristina Almeida e Cunha and Maria Cristina Gomes Pimenta, ‘A casa senhorial do Infante
D. Henrique: organização social e distribução regional’, Revista da Faculdade de Letras/História da
Universidade do Porto, 2a série, 1 (1984), 221–284.
69
Humberto Baquero Moreno, O Infante D. Pedro, Duque de Coimbra. Itinerários e ensaios históricos
(Porto, 1997). He also published several articles towards a biography of Dom Henrique. See, for example,
his ‘O Infante D. Henrique e Alfarrobeira’, Arquivos do Centro Cultural Português, 1 (1969), 53–69; ‘O
infante D. Henrique em torno da regência de infante D. Pedro’, Mare Liberum, 7 (1994), 23–30. For the
work of Pinheiro Marques on Dom Pedro see his A maldição da memória do Infante Dom Pedro; ‘A
maldição da memória e a criação do mito’; and Vida e obra do Infante Dom Pedro.
70
Monique Sommé, Isabelle de Portugal, Duchesse de Bourgogne. Une femme au pouvoir au XVe
siècle (Lille, 1998). Paulo Drummond Braga, ‘Um grande senhor da primeira metade do século XV. D.
Fernando, filho de D. João I’, História, 10, no. 106 (1988), 80–9; ‘Portugal e o cativeiro do infante D.
Fernando (1437–1443)’, Al-Qantara, 13 (1992), 47–61; and ‘O mito do “Infante Santo” ’, Ler História,
no. 25 (1994), 3–10.
71
Anselmo Braacamp Freire, Brasões da Sala de Sintra, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Coimbra, 1921–1930).
72
Mafalda Soares da Cunha, Linhagem, parentesco e poder. A Casa de Bragança (1384–1483)
(Lisbon, 1994).
73
Rita Costa Gomes, A corte dos reis de Portugal no final da Idade Média (Lisbon, 1995); Pedro de
Brito, Patriciado urbano quinhentista: As famı́lias dominantes do Porto (1500–1580) (Porto, 1997);
António Dias Farinha, Portugal e Marrocos no século XV, dissertação do doutoramento, 3 vols. (Lisbon,
1990); Abel dos Santos Cruz, A nobreza portuguesa em Marrocos no século XV (1415–1464), dissertação
de mestrado, Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Porto, 1995.
74
Magalhães Godinho, Mito e mercadoria, 45.
96
I. Elbl / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 79–99
of material and ideological factors as motivators behind the actions and decisions
involved in the early overseas expansion. The idea that intricate feedbacks tied
together the domestic situation in Portugal, noble participation in the overseas expansion, and the social perception of mobility, is certainly nothing new. The literature
on the ‘crisis of feudalism’ and the ‘Great Depression’ of the late middle ages has
extensively discussed the difficulties that confronted seigneurial groups as a result
of shrinking internal frontiers in Europe, the decline in noble revenues sparked off by
relative depopulation and currency debasements, and the rise of central government.
Magalhães Godinho and Marian Malowist argued this issue in relation to the onset
of the overseas expansion75 and their arguments were widely accepted. Immanuel
Wallerstein summed them up:
Europe needed a larger land base to support the expansion of its economy, one
which would compensate for the critical decline in seigneurial revenues and which
could cut short the nascent and potentially very violent class war which the crisis
of feudalism implied… In the case of Portugal, there seemed to be advantage in
the ‘discovery business’ for many groups: for the nobility, for the commercial
bourgeoisie (…), even for the semiproletariat of the towns… Expansion was the
most likely route to the expansion of revenue and the accumulation of glory… It
was precisely this stability which created the impulse for the nobility. Faced with
the same financial squeeze as European nobles elsewhere, they were deprived of
the soporific and financial potential (if they won) of internecine warfare. Nor could
they hope to recoup their financial position by internal colonization. Portugal
lacked the land. So they were sympathetic to the concept of oceanic expansion
and they offered their ‘younger sons’ to provide the necessary leadership of the
expeditions.76
In principle, these conclusions were valid, even though overgeneralized and somewhat schematic. The problem is that in their time they were based more on a leap
of intuitive reasoning based on extrapolation from the general theory of a ‘crisis of
feudalism’, rather than on a careful analysis of the internal situation in late medieval
Portugal. The distribution of noble families, their demographic dynamics, their revenue base, and the evolving relations among various layers of the Portuguese nobility
and the Crown: all these are topics on which even basic information was not available
then. As argued above, this changed only in the course of the 1980s and 1990s,
75
For Magalhães Godinho, see 36 and 37 above; Marian Malowist, ‘Les aspects sociaux de la première
phase de l’expansion coloniale’, Africana Bulletin, 1 (1964), 11–33, and Konkwistadorzy portugalscy
(Warsaw, 1976).
76
Immanuel Wallerstein, 51. For a summary of the arguments about the ‘crisis of feudalism’, see 21–51.
I. Elbl / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 79–99
97
thanks to the work of an entire cohort of scholars, but in particular of Humberto
Baquero Moreno, Rita Costa Gomes, and João Silva de Sousa.77
In the early 1990s, both Silva de Sousa and I have argued that the relations
between the Portuguese nobility and the Crown, as well as the dynamics of this
group’s fortunes in the later middle ages, are key to understanding Dom Henrique.78
His story epitomizes, in concrete and human terms, the processes that Wallerstein
had intuitively condensed in the language of Marxian analysis. Dom Henrique’s
goals, ambitions, and social and political situation did not greatly differ from those
of his peers, except in the intensity and persistence with which he attempted to
control his environment. At some point in their lives, most members of the nobility
and those hoping to be ennobled strove to make their mark by participating in successful military ventures in pursuit of some sanctioned goal, such as fighting against
the Infidel. Such activities offered fame and prestige, and helped to build social
networks and political alliances for the future. Dom Henrique’s peers endeavoured
to take part in them whether or not they sincerely subscribed to the underlying ideological constructs.
Dom Henrique differed from his contemporaries in that his self-image remained
rooted in such constructs more or less consistently throughout his life span. He continued to strive for self-realization in terms of the ideology of his social group when
most others abandoned it as their youth waned away. They settled down and came
to focus on their estates, offices, court politics, and families, while paying only lip
service to their professed values, or allocating to them very limited amounts of time
that did not interfere with other activities. For Dom Henrique, fame and honour
remained the foremost objective throughout his lifetime. His other pursuits were
subordinate to it. Wealth, economic privilege, and domestic power were important
tools, and he accumulated them as avidly, if not more rapaciously, than his peers.
Yet all of it was hardly enough. Throughout most of his adult life, Dom Henrique
suffered from a deep frustration caused by the disparity between his self-actualization
needs and the means available to realize them. It is true, however, that much of this
frustration was shared by the members of his own generation and the following one.
The attempts made by three of his brothers and his adoptive son to leave the kingdom
and seek glory and wealth elsewhere are indicative of the limitations that conditions
within Portugal and the size of the country imposed on its elite in the first half of
the fifteenth century.79
Both prosopographical studies and the records of the royal chancery are invaluable
in illustrating this process. The existing works, particularly those of Baquero Moreno,
77
For the numerous works of Baquero Moreno on this subject, see Repertório, 419–26, in particular
‘La noblesse portugaise pendant le regne d’Alphonse V’, Arquivos do Centro Cultural Português, 26
(1989), 399–415. Costa Gomes, A corte; João Silva de Sousa, A casa senhorial; and ‘Casas senhoriais
no Portugal quatrocentista’, Revista de ciências históricas, 9 (1994), 95–104. For a synopsis of studies
on late medieval nobility, see Oliveira Marques, Portugal na crise. 236–61.
78
Silva de Sousa, A casa senhorial, 5–7; Elbl, ‘Man of his times’, 73.
79
The interpretations in the last two paragraphs are based on Ivana Elbl, ‘Alias “Henry The Navigator”:
The life and career of Infante Dom Henrique of Portugal’, manuscript in progress.
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I. Elbl / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 79–99
Costa Gomes, Soares da Cunha, and Pinheiro Marques, have prepared the ground
for a comprehensive prosopographical database of fifteenth-century Portuguese
nobility, a massive project that is technologically feasible but will require an appreciable investment of scholarly effort and institutional support to be completed. The
obvious first stage in such a comprehensive coverage is a database of the Crown
grants to members of established noble families, contained in the royal chancery
registers. Even this preliminary undertaking, however, took me and my team almost
five years to bring close to completion.80 Yet the results were very gratifying: among
others, it became clear that the pattern of grants received by Dom Henrique from
the three monarchs who ruled Portugal in his lifetime was distinct from that characterizing his immediate relatives and the members of non-royal high nobility, in a
manner consistent with the profile suggested in the previous paragraphs.
The study of Dom Henrique has made great strides in the last fifty years. In terms
of preparatory work, the progress involved editions of sources, prosopographical
work, and much new research on the history of Portugal in the later middle ages.
In terms of analysis, the works of Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, A. J. Dinis Dias,
Sir Peter Russell, Humberto Baquero Moreno, Luı́s Felipe F. R. Thomaz, and João
Silva da Sousa have advanced our knowledge of Dom Henrique’s life and career far
beyond the point of departure marked by the controversial 1960 commemorations
of the 500th anniversary of his death. The door is now open, as already suggested,
to answering Magalhães Godinho’s call with an attempt at a contextualized biography
of Dom Henrique that would bridge the gap between the inspired generalizations of
the ‘crisis of feudalism’ theory and the concrete human reality of a person who
epitomizes it: Infante Dom Henrique.
Such a biography must track his life as it unfolded, focusing on him and his
environment rather than on what the rear-view mirror of history reveals as his
accomplishments. The problem with any project following the principles of histoire
totale is that it may be too full of information, difficult to organize, and difficult to
read. It is not coincidental that the most read works on Dom Henrique are those that
entertain, and appeal to the heart as well as to the mind. The vintage writings of
such authors as Oliveira Martins, Jaime Cortesão, or Elaine Sanceau enjoy re-editions
and continued success, and thus perpetuate the culture-hero myths that Sir Peter
Russell struggled so hard against. The challenge that Magalhães Godinho and Sir
Peter present to their successors is thus twofold: to write a biography of Dom Henrique that would be not only readable, but also theoretically informed and broadly
80
Ivana Elbl, The Relations between the Portuguese Crown and the nobility in the age of the overseas
expansion: Evidence from chancery registers. Vol. 1: 1385–1495. (Design and display engine by Martin
M. Elbl). An electronic database of grants, offices and other favours granted to individual members of
the approximately three hundred noble families by the Portuguese Crown. The first volume, covering the
reigns of the first four kings of the Avis dynasty (D. João I, D. Duarte, D. Afonso V, and D. João II)
contains some 30,000 records and 150,000 field entries. The database will be available in September 2001
both on-line and on CD ROM. For publications based on this material, see Ivana Elbl. ‘The overseas
expansion’, and Susannah Humble, ‘Prestige, ideology and social politics: The place of the Portuguese
overseas expansion in the policies of D. Manuel (1495 – 1521)’, Itinerario, 25 (2000), 21–43.
I. Elbl / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 79–99
99
contextualized. It is a challenge that matches Dom Henrique’s device ‘Talent de
bien faire’.
Ivana Elbl is an Associate Professor of History at Trent University, Canada, and Editor of the Bulletin of the
Society of Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies. Her publications include ‘The overseas expansion and
social mobility in the age of Vasco de Gama’, Portuguese Studies Review 6, 2 (1998), 53–80; ‘The volume
of the early Atlantic slave trade, 1450–1521’, Journal of African History 38 (1997), 31–76; and ‘Man of his
time (and peers): A new look at Henry the Navigator’, Luso-Brazilian Review, 28, 2 (1991), 73–89.