Padre Oliveira's outburst.

Charles Boxer's Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415-1825, published in 1969, is regarded as the best one-volume work in English on the subject. To go no further back than Portuguese Studies Review for 1999, Francis Dutra styles it so and Douglas Wheeler calls it Boxer's magnum opus and his 'classic'. Boxer's reputation as scholar and friend is strong enough to stand some necessary rectifications. He devotes a couple of pages to Fernando Oliveira while dealing with Pombal, calling him 'one of the few critics of the slave-trade in Portugal (or in Europe for that matter) [...] a singularly outspoken cleric', who devoted an entire chapter to a violent denunciation of the slave-trade. (1) He stated flatly that there was no such thing as a just war against Muslims, Jews or heathens who had never been Christians and who were quite prepared to trade peacefully with the Portuguese.

To attack their lands and to enslave them was 'manifest tyranny': it was no excuse to say that they indulged in the slave trade with each other: if there were no European buyers there would be no African sellers. ' "We were the inventors of such a vile trade never previously used nor heard of among human beings", wrote the indignant padre in a passage which does more credit to his heart than to his head'. (2)

Oliveira did not use the words 'European' and 'African'. The comment shows that Boxer was aware of the incorrectness. The trade in slaves had existed since early times. Aristotle in his Politics had thought some of us natural slaves. Christians thought us all children of God, but allowed forced labour. Muslims resolved the problem by making us all slaves of God, rather than servants. Slavery was a convenient form of punishment, and Mediterranean navies could hardly exist without it. The discovery of America had raised the issue in acute form. Many of the conquistadores were not polite men and abused the natives in every way. At Christmas 1511 the Dominican Montesinos denounced their sins with vehemence: those who enslaved Indians could no more be saved than Muslims or Turks. He was disowned by his Order, but the King ruled that the Spaniards were encomenderos, or trustees, who might make Indians work but must protect and teach them. The Laws of Burgos of 1512 set out the rights and duties of both parties. The Indians were not obdurate infidels, but only ignorant. Since Moses had warned the Canaanites before Joshua made war on them and enslaved them, Indians should first be 'required' to listen: only if they did not heed was war against them just. Few would now regard this as an acceptable solution. Vast numbers of clergy and endless time would have been needed to reason native societies out of constant warfare, cannibalism and ritual bloodshed, considered outrageous by Christians. The great Dominican Fray Bartolome de las Casas believed that a model colony of selected European farmers could solve the problem by setting an example. It failed in 1521, when Indians killed some of his friars and the Spanish governor insisted on retaliation. Las Casas decided to rely on preaching alone without colonists, and tried again in Guatemala in 1537.

Though this was a Spanish problem, Fernando Oliveira was aware of it. He spent some twelve formative years at Evora with the Dominicans, who included such different figures as Montesinos, Cardinal Torquemada, the proponent of the Spanish Inquisition, and the tireless idealist, Bartolome de las Casas. If anything was different in Portugal, it was the transport of Africans to Brazil. African dealers did not traffic except for their own advantage, and Africa had produced no one since St Augustine with the ideas of Oliveira to limit their greed. In the sixteenth century it was supposed that to make Brazilian Indians work instead of eating one another was a vast and pressing problem. Africans received some benefit from a superficial baptism by a process the eighteenth century had learned to deride. Boxer places Oliveira's comment not in the sixteenth century, but in the eighteenth with reference to Pombal. Elsewhere he expresses his own view of the sixteenth century differently.

Something like 150,000 negro slaves were probably secured by the Portuguese between 1450 and 1500, and as these slaves were often obtained from the inter-tribal wars in the interior, the growth of the slave-trade presumably worsened the existing state of violence--or at any rate did nothing to help lessen it. The African chiefs and headmen were those who benefited most from trading with the Portuguese and (as mentioned above) most of them were always willing partners in the slave-trade.

He adds:

but armed conflicts were relatively few, and contacts in the whole remained friendly since the conduct of the slave-trade involved the active participation of the African chiefs and the co-operation of the lancados as intermediaries. (3)

Oliveira's observations were confined to the world he knew. He was probably born in 1507, and was alive in 1581. He left two published books, Grammatica da lingua portuguesa (1537), and the Arte da guerra do mar (1555). The Livro da fabrica das naus, left incomplete, was published only in 1898 from the autograph manuscript in the Biblioteca Nacional, Lisbon. He also wrote a Latin Ars Nautica, preserved in manuscript at Leiden; the Primeira parte do liuro da antiguedade, nobresa, liberdade e imunidade do reyno de Portugal, with his Histo ria de Portugal, recolhida ... pelo licenciado Fernam d'Oliveyra, capelao dos reis de Portugal do seu tempo; an incomplete translation of De re rustica of Columella; and a Viagem de Fernao de Magalhaes, published in 1937 and 1976. Both the Portuguese grammar and the book on shipbuilding are the first published works on their subject. If nothing else, Oliveira was a bold spirit and a combative and vehement pioneer.

Some Latin hexameters that preface the Ars nautica say that his parents begot him in 'Aviger': they were of equestrian rank, modest station and small means. In his Grammar, Chapter 31, he says Aviger was a terra, where there dwelt a bird-catcher, cacador de aves, nicknamed 'o Aveiro'. Perhaps Aveiro was the district. His first cries were heard at Gestosa, and he was baptized at Mosteiro in the church of Santa Comba. Gestosa is in the Vale de Cambra: the seat of the concelho was Macieira, on which King Manuel bestowed a foral in 1514. Luis de Matos confirms that the couto do Mosteiro had a parish church of St Columba. The couto belonged to the diocese of Coimbra. (4) At ten or eleven he was placed with the Dominicans at Evora, and remained there until the age of twenty-five in 1532. He mentions that he was teased because of his Beiran accent.

The Dominican College at Evora was not a university, but the great scholar Magister Andre Resende, taught the Infantes Henry and Duarte there and gave classes which Oliveira attended. He learned to write fluently in Latin and followed the master into the study of antiquities. (Later, he thought that the master's head had been turned to stone through reading so many Roman tablets.) He came to prefer more imaginative etymologies, getting Lisbon or Olissippo from Polyhippoi, 'many horses': did they not breed horses in the neighbouring villages? He does not say how or why he broke with the Dominicans. He later said that he had been given an apostolic letter making him a secular priest, but had lost it. He did not wear clerical garb while a prisoner in England under Henry VIII, whom he admired, but the Lisbon Inquisition accepted that he was one and sentenced him accordingly. He then served as a naval chaplain and called himself chaplain to the kings of Portugal of his time.

In 1506, the year before his birth, the Lisbon mob had responded to the fiery preaching of the Dominicans by attacking the Jews. King Manuel had responded by declaring a period of grace during which there would be no enquiry into religious beliefs: it had been extended, and was to expire in 1534. Already in 1531 John III applied to Pope Clement III for permission to institute an Inquisition on the Spanish model. Clement III was unwilling to make concessions: the patronage of monasteries had been conceded, and the example of Henry VIII was there for all to see. In June 1532 'New Christians' were forbidden to leave Portugal, and in April 1533 Clement III issued a general pardon. The Spanish Jews who had been admitted a generation before were wealthy enough to buy entry permits. They had intermarried with the governing and merchant classes, and many New Christians now feared persecution as equivocators. The Jews were not, as such, directly affected.

Having dissociated himself from the Dominicans, Oliveira went to Spain. He does not say what he did, but he continued his linguistic studies. He knew the Castilian grammar of Antonio de Nebrija, which the author had presented to Queen Isabella in 1492, telling her that language was the handmaid of empire: he had died at Alcala in 1522, with a long list of publications to his credit. Oliveira possessed a manuscript of the Grammar, of which he made use. He does not say how long he stayed in Castile. In 1537 he was tutor to Dom Fernando de Almada, to whom he dedicated his first 'annotation' of the Portuguese language or Grammatica da lingoagem portuguesa. He calls Dom Fernando 'son of the most prudent and valiant Dom Antao, captain-general of Portugal' who had won the immortal glory and victory of Avranches. In fact, the count was the descendant of Alvaro Vaz de Almada, who had been made Count of Avranches in Normandy and Knight of the Garter in April 1445 by Henry VI of England, at the behest of Dom Pedro the Regent, with whom he died at Alfarrobeira in 1449. Oliveira also claims to have taught the families of the Baron of Alvito, probably Dom Rodrigo Lobo, treasurer to John III, and Joao de Barros, the historian, who as tutor to Prince Philip (1532-39), composed a Cartilha and also a Portuguese grammar, published in 1539.

There was no previous grammar of Portuguese. It was a single language, though with regional modulations. Portuguese had once been one with Galician, but Galicia had no separate court or parliament and since 1400 had been Castilianized into a popular dialect. Standard Portuguese was the language of the court and of the nobility, who were pensioners of the crown. Its spirit was preserved in verse. Its orthography in prose, letras, was awkward. Castilian, once the speech of a small area, had gradually replaced other Iberian languages, except Basque and Catalan. Spaniards tended to regard Portuguese as another potential dialect. That situation had worsened with the invention of printing, which led to a circulation of texts in Spanish which would have been uneconomic in Portuguese, and with the Castilian marriages of Manuel I and John III: Spanish queens did not learn Portuguese and brought with them their trains of servitors. The Cancioneiro geral of 1516 had few contributions in Castilian, but the plays of Gil Vicente (d. 1536) were bilingual, and occasionally entirely in Castilian.

If Nebrija's grammar was nationalistic, Oliveira's was no less so. His fifty short chapters begin by asserting that language is the figure of the understanding; the mouth says what the heart bids and nothing else. Portuguese is dignified and suited to good works. Portugal is the best of Hispania. History begins with the Flood, Noah's grandson Tubal founded Gibraltar: after him came Hercules and Luso, who founded Lusitania. The name Portugal is not from portus Cale, but from the Turduli and Gauls, two strong races (Chapter 1). Portugal was never subdued by the Moors: in times of continual war parts of Portugal were always free and always had a Christian captain until they made Afonso Henriques king. We had our own nobility and did not have recourse to foreign myths about the Goths, who ruined Spain (Chapter 3). Study was never so favoured as under John III. We should work in Portuguese and not in a foreign language (Chapter 5). Nebrija says Spain uses only the Roman letters. But languages evolve. Pronunciation changes, and we need thirty-three letters. We should not be like those Portuguese who go to Toledo and forget their country and what they owe it. In Chapter 5, he declares that it is better that we teach Guinea than that we learn from Rome, even if she still had all her prestige; 'we should not underestimate our language, for men make language and not language men'.

Oliveira, like Nebrija, follows Quintilian, but delights in an abundance of classical quotations to prove his point. He is rhetorical and dogmatic: his originality is shown in etymologies of unbridled linguistic fantasy. Portuguese is distinct, but has borrowed from Castilian. Forms in use in the days of Afonso Henriques have changed, as fashions have changed. Authority is moulded by need, and dogma is subject to changing conditions: melody is a proper test of appropriateness.

The fortunes of New Christians changed for the worse when Clement III died and was succeeded by Paul III in October 1534. The first Inquisition in Portugal was established at Evora in 1536. Two facts are striking about Oliveira's book. Only one copy is known to have survived, and though printed by Germain Galhard, with a fulsome dedication to the Count of Almada, it has no royal or ecclesiastical licence to publish. It ends with a long paragraph stating that while some writers use prologues to defend their works Oliveira has not done so, not wishing to complain before he is offended or attacked, as there will always be someone ready to speak ill of him and he is not prepared to give licence to anyone to be his judge if they have not read his books. If the sentence is to be to amend his errors, let them write better books and show they know more. Otherwise, they are merely carping, which is not proper with men of learning: he does not care what the ignorant say. If he had been too brief and had omitted good examples or not said things he should have said or had used some new terms not generally understood, his work was new and he had no example before him: this would serve as his excuse. If anything could be justly faulted, he had written without malice and would correct it: he would be glad to hear of errors but not mere carping. It is not difficult to see that Oliveira had been touched on a very raw spot.

Nothing more is heard of Oliveira's relations with his powerful patron. On 22 December 1539, Joao de Barros published his own Grammatica da lingua portuguesa, without any reference to his predecessor. In 1540 the long-deferred Inquisition began to function. On 20 September three persons did penance in the Ribeira square in the presence of John III, the Inquisitor-General and a large crowd: no 'relaxation' or bloodshed occurred.

In 1540 or 1541 Oliveira found his way to Spain and embarked at Barcelona for Genoa, the great ship-building centre for Italy. His ship was captured by the French and he was taken to Marseille. He took service with the French as a pilot. In 1541 there were two more autos in Lisbon: again, no blood was shed, and in 1542 and 1543 there were no autos at all. Oliveira returned to Portugal in March 1543 in the train of the papal nuncio Lippomano, who was to try to moderate the outbreak of regalism when King John appointed his younger brother, Cardinal Henry, to head the Holy OBce. But October 1544 saw the first burnings in Lisbon, when twenty persons were handed over to the secular authorities for execution.

In 1544 French ships were summoned from the Mediterranean to participate in war in the Channel against Henry VIII. The galley of Bernard d'Ormesson, Baron of Saint Blancard, put in at Cadiz in May and at Lisbon in June for supplies. Oliveira, taking the name Martin, and a companion, Frey Miguel Lobo, escaped on board.

Saint Blancard was well-known to the Portuguese court. In 1531 he had sent the armed corsair 'La Pelerine' to attack the small fort of Pernambuco, one of the dozen captaincies into which the Brazilian coast had just been divided. The French had attacked six Portuguese and a crowd of Indians, and taken the fort and held it until driven off. The ship, with a valuable cargo, had been seized by the Portuguese off Malaga, and the French had coolly demanded a vast sum in 'reparations'. The question dragged on for years. Admiral Chabot took his bribes and for a time Francis I prohibited his adventurers from going to Brazil, only to rescind the order in November 1540.

Oliveira spent the winter in French service. He may have seen the burning of the French flagship, the Carraquon, in the Seine on 6 July 1545, and the sinking of the Mary Rose, which foundered on 19 July while manoeuvring in sight of the French fleet. He later told the Inquisition that he had said mass in Rouen at Lent 1546. On 21 May the English captured Saint Blancard's galley off Ambleteuse, between the English enclaves of Calais and Boulogne. Saint Blancard was wounded in the leg, and on 4 July Odet de Selve arrived in London to negotiate. Oliveira was probably among sixteen persons from the captured galley who were brought to London: an expense account for this was presented at Hampton Court on 4 August. The rowers were mainly Neapolitans but included some Portuguese. Henry VIII undertook not to return them to the French. Oliveira played some part in the negotiations. He was erudite and did not wear priestly garb. Portuguese pilots were in demand abroad. There were other Oliveiras, but references to Oliverius, Olivetanus, le sieur Olivarius are almost certainly to him: so also 'the Portuguese pilot'. On 26 November Olivarius is mentioned by Selve in connection with Greek books wanted for the French king, and in January 1547 the 'Portuguese pilot' is referred to in negotiations for the release of the French galley. King Henry VIII had died on 28 January 1547, when his son Edward VI was ten. His brother-in-law Edward Seymour took over as Protector. The new regime wished to settle the matter of the French galley, for on 10 February an order was issued to prepare it for return. On 9 March 1547 Fernando Olivetan was paid ten pounds 'in reward' on behalf of Edward VI. The reason is not stated. It was generous, but not lavish. Seven months passed. On 9 October 1547 Oliveira received another reward, this time of a hundred pounds, for bringing a letter from the King of Portugal. This was a very substantial sum; many years later, William Shakespeare paid sixty pounds for the second largest house in Stratford-upon-Avon. What the letter contained is not stated. (5)

Oliveira was again in Lisbon on 18 November, and living in the seamen's quarter of Cata-que-faras (now the Rua do Alecrim), when he was arrested by the Inquisition. He had been in a bookshop in the Rua Nova when Andre Resende drew his presence to the attention of another bookseller named Joao de Borgonha, who approached him, asking where he had been. Oliveira told him and praised Henry VIII. Borgonha argued with him and called him a heretic: he called Borgonha a Jew. One Manuel Pires, a familiar of the Inquisition, was passing. Borgonha denounced Oliveira as a heretic. Quirino da Fonseca supposes that Oliveira had fallen into a prepared trap. He was called on 21 November and subjected to a searching examination. He replied in Latin. Asked why he did not wear clerical dress in England, he replied that he was a servitor of the king and ate his bread. Asked if he had done anything that required the pardon of God and the church, he replied nothing to require pardon, but he disapproved of the vices of prelates of the church, who did not practise what they preached. It was only on 4 August 1548 that he was found guilty of upholding heretical doctrines which were scandalous: he must abjure them and remain in prison as a penance. On 9 September, in hospital, he recanted, but was kept under arrest until 3 November 1550, when he was sent to the monastery of Belem, and required to wear clerical garb and a tonsure. He was released on 22 August 1551 by order of Cardinal Henry, but was not to leave Portugal without permission and was to devote himself to virtuous works. Perhaps the Inquisitors were in some doubt whether he was a priest or not. In his Grammar he did not claim to be a priest, but boldly denied the right of anyone to judge his work. In his second book, the Arte da guerra do mar, he says that he was a priest and declares that priests were needful in the navy.

In 1552 he did leave Portugal, with permission and as a naval chaplain, accompanying an expedition to North Africa to support Bu Hassun, the 'king of Belez' or Penon deVelez. He recounts his adventures in Chapter 12 of Book Two of the Arte da guerra do mar. Since their conquest of Ceuta in 1514, the Portuguese had possessed themselves of a chain of ports in the Magrib, and the Papacy had recognized their monopoly of trade in the South Atlantic. But with the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Roman Empire of the East became Muslim and 'Turkish', and had a large fleet manned by Turks and 'renegades'. The much-acclaimed conquest of Tunis by the Emperor Charles V, with Portuguese participation, in 1535, had the effect of drawing Muslim corsairs into the western Mediterranean. This in turn affected the Magrib, where the Wattasids had not succeeded in recovering the Portuguese footholds. In the Sus there had arisen a new movement, that of the Sharifs or Sa'adians, who took the southernmost and weakest of the Portuguese outposts at Agadir after a long siege from September 1540 to March 1541. In view of his oriental commitments, King John had thought of relinquishing some of his African forts as early as 1529; his advisers voted by ten to five in favour of retention. The danger now was that the Turks in Algeria might link up with the Sharifs, who took Fez in 1549. He decided to keep Ceuta and Tangier in the north, and the great stronghold of Mazagao, but to abandon al-Qasr as-saghir and Arzila. The last of the Wattasids, Bu Hassu n, went to Melilla and appealed to Charles V. The 'king of Velez' offered to hold Arzila, and reached an agreement at Malaga with Pedro de Magalhaes to occupy it if given five hundred men and some pieces of ordnance. But the Emperor, alarmed at the corsair activity at Oran, refused to help. Arzila was evacuated in June 1550. Here the Portuguese chroniclers fall silent. But the papal nuncio tells us that Bu Hassun, weary of waiting on the Emperor, came to Lisbon, was well received and given four thousand ducats and four galleys with which to recover Velez. Oliveira says that they were commanded by Inacio Nunes, with himself as priest. They left Ceuta on 30 August 1552 with a caravel for Bu Hassun's horses and a supply-ship.

Velez was a small place no bigger than Cezimbra in Portugal. They went beyond it and landed the King and his horses at an open beach, where four or five hundred supporters welcomed him. All would have been well if they had returned, but Nunes had orders to help the King, and the Peno n, which jutted out into the sea, was in the hands of supporters of the Sharifs. The King made the Portuguese a gift of grapes and figs, no small thing for so poor a place. Oliveira had warned Nunes that the bay was not safe: it was always best to keep to seaward so that an enemy had shallow water to contend with. While they were eating, twenty-five Turkish ships hove into sight at two leagues distance. There were twelve big galleys with three rowers to the bench, a bastard with four, and the rest galliots with two. They had the usual artillery and two soldiers to the bench, armed with bolts and large arquebusses. Nunes was below strength with barely four men who could load an arquebuss, the seamen were farm-lads from the Minho, and the soldiers the scum of Lisbon who had enlisted for their first pay; the captain's servant was a negro earning emancipation. When the Turks attacked, they rushed about like ants, some on land making for the ships, some on board taking to the boats. Nunes ordered them to gather in the name of the king: they refused to recognise the king, but blamed each other like weak women. They were all captured and taken of to Algier, where they were assessed for ransom, the better sort at 150 cruzados apiece. Oliveira and one Fernandes Tassalho were picked to go and negotiate. (6)

They arrived at Ceuta on 24 November. The captain, Pedro de Meneses, was not impressed by Oliveira, 'a priest, a most restless man, more likely to do harm than good'. In Lisbon, some thought it unwise to agree at once. In his book Oliveira says that he left out many distressing details, and wrote only to refute those who said it was not the right time. Some of them ought to be in the place of the innocent wretches who were in Algier: these were the ones who asked the king for places for men who caused this result. They despised work and preferred to fight at home: there was no tower or wall they could not butt down, and their walking-sticks were stouter than Goliath's spear. They could swallow up the sea and the wind and defeat the whole navy of the Grand Turk with a couple of caravels. And they would not be told anything, because they were senhores. Not surprisingly, someone else was appointed to continue the negotiations. The unlucky Bu Hassun was treacherously murdered in 1554, and Oliveira composed his Arte da guerra do mar.

The book consists of a prologue and two parts, each of fifteen chapters. It is 'written by Fernando Oliveyra, and dedicated to the very magnificent senhor, Dom Nuno da Cunha, captain of the galleys of the very powerful king of Portugal, John III, seen and admitted by the deputies of the Holy Inquisition, in Coimbra, MDLV'. Although the prologue is dated 28 October 1554, the colophon states that printing was finished only on 4 July 1555, at Coimbra by Johao Aluerez, printer to our lord the king. Joao Alvarez was indeed a printer to the king and also to the university of Coimbra. He produced a hundred books between 1536 and 1587(?). Many were printed in Coimbra, but the misspelling of Alverez appears to be unique. The Cunhas were an ancient and extensive family, which had acquired the office of admiral by marriage with the daughter of the Genoese Pezzagna, the first admiral of Portugal. The most illustrious recent member, also Dom Nuno, was viceroy of India from 1529 to 1539, dying on the return voyage. (7) Dom Antonio, the father of the present Dom Nuno, had married the daughter of a chamberlain of John III. Quirino da Fonseca states that Oliveira was appointed corrector of the university press on 18 December 1554: that is, between the dedication of the book and its printing. It is therefore strange that the printer's own name should not have been corrected. The decree appointing him corrector calls him 'licenciado', a style he had not previously claimed. Evora, where he had studied with the Dominicans, did not have a university. Andre Resende, who had taught the infantes there, would like to have founded a university, but John III had favoured Coimbra in 1537. It was not until 1553 that the Jesuits founded a college at Evora, which became a university, amid much celebration, in November 1559. The humanist Jeronimo Cardoso in his Familiar Letters, printed at Lisbon in 1556 as Epistolarum familiarium libellus Olisipone: Apud Joannem Barrerum, says that Oliveira had taught at Coimbra, explaining Quintilian. (8)

The Arte da guerra do mar does indeed open with a quotation from Quintilian to the effect that the purpose of rhetoric is to win the minds of listeners. The speaker or writer should understand his subject and make it clear for his public: rustics do not understand the subtleties of 'speculative letrados', and lovers do not want to hear of chastity nor cowards of arms. To live quietly at home is useless. Oliveira recalled an old Castilian at Aranda on the Douro who had never heard of Portugal and did not know what the sea was. If travel and work were unquiet, then St Paul was unquiet. Oliveira enlarges on the need for useful activity, as if he himself had been called 'inquieto'. Nothing was more glorious than to fight to defend one's land; it was much better to talk of deeds than of gallantry to women. War brought advantage and honour, especially to the Portuguese who had won greater honour in shorter time than any others, and had sought and found new lands not previously known to exist. No author he knew had written on war at sea, except Vegetius, and he very little. He would write concisely and clearly, for busy cavaleiros had not time for long preambles. Some thought he should write in Latin, but not all understood Latin. It should not be surprising that he, a priest, should write on the subject. Priests were needed at war, to fight with prayers and tears, according to St Ambrose. They were also to advise and encourage, like Moses and Joshua. Popes Gregory, Leo and Hadrian had recommended wars. Friends of peace and defence would not be surprised, nor would the recipient, to whom the author hoped it would bring victory.

The first part of the treatise deals with the intention and preparation for war. Chapter 1 shows that war is necessary, and Chapter 2 asserts that only princes can make it. Chapter 3 shows why war at sea is equally necessary, and Chapter 4 defines when a war is just. It is here that the passage on slavery quoted by Boxer occurs. War should be just and what is best for Christians. Soldiers should not accept pay unless for a just war. There follow chapters on the need for an admiral at sea, shipyards, wood, when to cut, stores, victualling, seamen, captains and their authority, soldiers and how to choose and drill them. Part Two deals with sea warfare, fleets, battles and tactics. Chapter 1 discusses fleets, which must consist of appropriate ships. For long voyages they must be big and strong sailing craft, not oared; but oars are better where there are shallows or frequent calms as in India and the Guinea coast. Where the sea is rough and there are high winds, galleys are useless, as in the war of Boulogne, when the French king brought his galleys from Marseille to the Channel. Oliveira saw eighteen of them unable to cope with ten English sailing ships, losing two, including Saint Blancard's. It was a clear day with no storm, but a fresh north-easterly favourable to sail. Julius Caesar had lost his fleet in the same place. The seamen did not understand the tides. The King of England had had some galleys built, simply to show his men what they were like, and knowing they would be of no use. This had encouraged the English, who had no respect for the French galleys. Oliveira goes on to discuss different forms of ships, oared and sailing, and their use. He reckons the number of men necessary for galleys of various sizes, and works out the number of ships needed to carry a Roman legion of six thousand men, concluding that ancient fleets were vastly larger than modern ones. In the much cited chapter on just and unjust war, he denounces the enslavement of innocent people who are willing to trade peaceably--Muslims, Jews or whoever else, and those who benefit by wars in Africa and the traffic. However, war against Islam is generally licit, though he warmly praises the Conde de Redondo, Governor of Arzila, and Mulay Ibrahim of Tetuan, who having fought, one for the freedom of his land and the other for the praise and glory of God, withdrew and exchanged gifts of quince jelly, fruit and other things, and became good friends, like the brave gentlemen they were.

Nor does Oliveira condemn slavery, even though he prefers freedom. Galleys are necessary, though for a time the Portuguese thought them 'monsters' and preferred sail. In Chapter 12 of Part One, Oliveira refers to the danger of ignorance and neglect at sea: in the war of Boulogne Saint Blancard and his galley were captured by the English because they failed to manoeuvre properly. Rowers are near-seamen and should know seamanly tasks. Comitres, bo'suns or mates, want forced men rather than free, because they can be lashed at will. Some comitres are no better than hangmen, the Genoese being the worst. The work of rowing is so intolerable that nobody does it save by force, that is the lash, or from sheer necessity. The return to galleys in the Mediterranean was necessitated by the corsairs of Algier, which on a calm day could move much faster than sail and swoop on sailing ships or insufficiently defended coasts almost without fear.

Much of the value of Oliveira's book lies in the glimpses of reality that shine through a welter of classical and Biblical allusions. He had been living in the house of Dom Nuno's father, Dom Antonio da Cunha. Quirino da Fonseca, in his Preamble to the edition of 1937, supposes that Dom Antonio 'hastened treacherously to transmit the dangerous outpourings of his guest to the husband of his sister-in-law Manuel de Sampaio, the chamberlain to the King', and that he was shut up in the dungeons of the Inquisition, on no better evidence than that someone else was appointed corrector to the university press two years later. It is not known whether this decision was ever carried out, but high and powerful influences must have been applied on behalf of Oliveira, since on 18 December 1554 he was appointed corrector to the university press.

The dates given suggest a rather different interpretation. Oliveira returned from North Africa at the end of 1552, blaming Inacio Nunes for the disaster. When Nunes was released is unknown, but the order for Oliveira's arrest came from John III rather than from the Inquisition. He was then given protection by Dom Nuno da Cunha, son of Dom Antonio. He dedicated the manuscript of the Arte da guerra do mar to Dom Nuno in Lisbon on 28 October 1554. On 18 December he was appointed corrector to the university press in Coimbra, where his book was printed by 4 July 1555. He calls himself graduate, licenciado. Cardoso, whose Familiar Letters were printed at Coimbra in 1555, says that Oliveira taught humanities there. On 26 October 1555 he was arrested by the Inquisition at Lisbon. He was in the house of Dom Antonio da Cunha, who apparently reported his remarks to Manuel Sampaio. There are several ways in which Oliveira may have given offence. He had not spared Inacio Nunes, nor those who sat at home in their palaces and thought they could win battles from their armchairs, as senhores. Oliveira makes no reference to his former patron Dom Fernando de Almada, but does mention his ancestor Alvaro Vaz de Almada as captain-major in the time of Afonso V. The office of admiral was then called captain-general of the sea. Now its functions had been divided between the armador-mor, the provedor das armazens, the veedor da fazenda and the king himself who decided things that belonged to the office. Oliveira saw no advantage to the treasury in creating new offices, though those who held them would say otherwise. They divided resources and took longer to reach decisions which required to be made quickly, especially in time of war. (9)

No more is heard of Oliveira until 1565 when, according to a document found by Lopes de Mendonca, King Sebastian appointed him priest of the mass licensed to handle cases of conscience at Palmela with a tencao of 20,000 reis a year. In 1565 Sebastian was aged eleven, and until he came of age at fourteen in January 1568, the regency was held by his great-uncle Cardinal Henry. In his later works, Oliveira refers to himself as 'chaplain to the kings of Portugal of his time'. The pension was a fair one for a priest: Camo es received only 15,000 in respect of his work, and his widowed mother the same when Philip II renewed the grant for the services of both her husband and her son. What the services to Cardinal Henry were is not stated. Palmela was the seat of the Order of Santiago and within reach of the naval dockyards on the Tagus. Oliveira may already have begun his Latin Ars nautica, which contains the internal date 'from then until this present, ie 1570'.

Some Spanish documents published by Leon Bourdon throw some light on Oliveira. (10) One D'Albagno, an Italian venturer trading with West Africa from the French port of La Rochelle, visited Lisbon, where he had an agent, in 1565. He met the cosmographer Bartolomeu Velho, who had produced a map in 1561, and was told of a third world, or second New World, rich in gold and silver, which might be discovered for the King of France without contravening the Treaty of Tordesillas. Australia was still unknown, but the Portuguese had visited Timor in 1515, and Magellan was there in 1520. In 1556 the evangelization of the Lesser Sunda Islands had begun when a Dominican Frey Antonio da Cruz arrived in Solor. Malacca then became a diocese, and its first bishop, Jorge de Santa Luzia, also a Dominican, sent four missionaries in 1562. Velho hesitated before responding to D'Albagno, but went to France in 1567 and died at Nantes on 28 February 1568. He was not an experienced navigator, as Oliveira claimed to be, and had suggested that the French engage him. In August 1567 the Spanish ambassador in Lisbon, Hernando Carrillo, had wind of the project and reported it to Philip II's secretary, Gabriel Zayas. Hearing that 'Dr Hernando de Oliveira, natural de este reyno', had been invited to France, he had sent for him and had been shown the letter of D'Albagno. He had asked Oliveira to delay going in order to see if Philip II would make him an offer, 'being such a good cosmographer and so expert in the navigation of the Indies, as he said, and others have told me'. He wrote separately to Philip II giving the same information. D'Albagno's invitation was dated 24 June 1567: it pressed Oliveira, if he had not left already, to go by land or sea: this would be greatly to his advantage, and the expedition would leave in the following March. On 19 September 1567 Carrillo wrote again to Philip II: 'Dr' Oliveira explained that he had not left from illness and for other reasons, though he 'had had his foot in the stirrup to go'. The ambassador had obeyed Philip II, who had instructed him to inform Cardinal Henry and the Queen out of courtesy. They had not seemed to take much account of Oliveira, but he would not now go to Spain. Philip II instructed Carrillo to remain vigilant. Oliveira was now a pensioner of the Portuguese crown, and it seems doubtful whether he would really have joined Bartolomeu Velho, whose death assured that there should be no French discovery of Australia in 1568.

The incident occurred at a moment when Portuguese relations with France were soured by the sack of Madeira. In October 1566 a French fleet of three large ships and eight smaller ones with a thousand men attacked Porto Santo and Funchal, which was entered and sacked. Although piratical incursions were not infrequent, this was unusually severe. Gaspar Fructuoso devotes several chapters of his Saudades da Terra to it and says that three hundred were killed and the whole place looted, including churches and convents. Cardinal Henry duly protested to Charles IX. (11)

Oliveira's Ars nautica was written in Latin and remained unpublished. The autograph found its way to Holland, where it is in the library of Leiden. It came from the humanist Isaac Vossius (1618-81), who himself wrote on ships. How it reached this collection is unknown. It was briefly analysed by Luis de Matos in 1960. (12) An internal reference shows that it was being composed in 1570; Oliveira says that he writes in Latin for the benefit of those who do not know Portuguese, and claims it as the first complete treatise on the subject. Its first part deals with nautical instruments, charts, quadrants, astrolabes and needles, and discusses winds, stars and tides, with a short appendix on warfare that evokes his previous work. Part Two deals with officers and crew and pilots, who should be 'timid and persistent', and not erudite, or they would become headstrong and unmanageable. The supplies should be one and a half pounds of wheaten bread, the same of meat or fish and three quartilhos of wine a day, with vegetables and cheese if available, and yams or manioc only in emergency. The chief qualities required are competence and good manners. What distinguishes Oliveira's work from cosmographers such as the famous Pedro Nunes is that he claimed actual maritime experience, whereas the theorists, 'sleeping tortoises', could not.

The Liuro da fabrica das naus was written later, since it cites the Ars nautica. It was left unfinished and came to the Biblioteca Nacional in Lisbon from Alcobaca. It remained unpublished until Henrique Lopes de Mendonca's edition of 1898, with the first full study of Oliveira. It was given a new edition with English translation by the Naval Academy in 1991 and was republished with a Chinese translation at Macau in 1995. The short prologue declares that nobody had written on the subject before, either in his language or Greek or Latin or other that he knows of, and there is no previous text save his own Ars nautica, 'which I wrote in Latin'. He has visited many seaports of Spain and France, Italy, England and some in Moorish lands, and hopes that those who know more may correct what is lacking. His order is to be: woods and their qualities, when they should be cut, other needful materials, the dimensions and symmetry of ships, gear, devices and shipyards, and finally devices for hauling and launching ships. The manuscript contains 164 pages and twelve of supplement, or about fifty-five pages of print. It ends in mid-sentence in a section on rudders, 'O outro inconveniente' being the last words on page 164. It appears therefore that more was written but has been lost.

Others had indeed attempted the subject in Italy and elsewhere, but their work is either only partial or lost. What Oliveira was attempting was to cover the whole field and to write so that carpenters could understand. He begins by asserting that the building of ships goes back to the earliest times, beyond the Greeks or even the Egyptians, for ships were used in Guinea and Brazil, where the Greeks were unheard of. He is not writing a history of shipbuilding, nor is he himself a shipbuilder. He seeks to collect detailed information about what shipbuilders do, and to mould it into a science, much as Columella had done for agriculture, Oliveira was the author of an incomplete translation of Columella, which remained in manuscript and found its way to Paris, where it was published by Portuguese exiles in 1818. The implication is that the craft was handed down orally among shipbuilders who jealously guarded their mystery, but that if it were recorded in literate fashion the result could be improved by reference to theory. This can be seen in his lines on proportion: the length, beam and draught of a vessel ought in theory to be in the proportion of 3:2:1. He names the types of ships, but shows himself most particularly interested in their etymology. Galley is from an Armenian term pronounced Galim, meaning a flood: as all ships are useful when there are floods, 'the Armenians call all their vessels galleys per antophrasim, which is a figure of speech, and means the contrary of what it sounds'. Cork-oak is the best timber, better than the northern oak because more resistant to tropical worm. In newly-found lands there are strange trees, and it is best to consult local builders, bearing in mind that nature follows the humours; the red humour is blood and makes the skin and hair red, and the cholera makes the hair fair and choleric, while melancholy makes the hair dark, thick and frizzy: so it is with trees. For nails, iron is usual: copper is better but more expensive: wooden pegs will serve, being of the same material as the hull, but require larger holes and may let in water. All this is well observed, but of more use to officials than to ships' carpenters, who will presumably have learned by other means. For whatever reason, the work is now incomplete.

In the Portuguese grammar of 1537 Oliveira has no doubt that Portugal is the best part of the Iberian Peninsula and that Portuguese is superior to Castilian. In the Arte da guerra do mar of 1555 he declares that the Portuguese have gained more honour in a little time than others have in a long period, and had discovered lands hitherto undreamed of. It is here that he first names one of the Portuguese pioneers: it is Magellan, who in 1520 sailed as far as forty or fifty degrees south and wintered at 'the river of St Julian' amidst great cold and storms, proving that the seasons in the southern hemisphere are the reverse of ours. There is nothing extraordinary about this: the Portuguese had reason to be proud of their achievements. The Livro da fabrica das naus forms the greater part of a manuscript which it shares with another work, the Relato da Viagem de Fernao de Magalhaes. This remained unpublished until 1937: the edition of M. de Jongh has been improved by that of P. Valiere (1976), which contains a facsimile and study of the work. It consists of a prologue, by Oliveira, in three pages, and the account itself, by the anonymous companion of Magellan in the first circumnavigation of the world, 1519-22. Oliveira has translated a deposition in Spanish by Gonzalo Gomez de Espinosa, who captained the flagship Trinidad (otherwise known as the Buenaventura) when it returned to Seville. The expedition was a Spanish one sent by Charles V to discover the nearest way to the Spice Islands, annexed by Portugal but claimed by Spain, since the Treaty of Tordesillas had not demarcated the Pacific Ocean. In 1526 Espinosa was captured by the Portuguese and held for several months until the marriage between the Emperor and Princess Isabel brought about his release. His account of the voyage was seen by Joao de Barros, who in his Terceira Decada da Asia, published in 1563, says: 'I have some of his (Gonzalo Gomez de Espinosa's) papers, including a book in his hand on the voyage'. Oliveira says in his grammar that he had been tutor to Barros' children, but he did not use Barros' book and his translation differs from Barros'. He therefore had access to the original in a Portuguese archive, probably the Torre do Tombo. The prologue gives the purpose and composition of the expedition, and the narrative begins with the sailing from Seville, giving some details not recorded elsewhere. The fact that Oliveira is translating is evident from numerous corrections in the text. That it is from a Spaniard is clear from the reference to Antonio de Brito as the Portuguese Governor of Ternate in the Moluccas and from the statement that 'Magellan was only authorized to buy food, not to trade, in Brazil'. The line of Tordesillas is described as an amicable arrangement between brothers, and the line is said to lie sixty leagues west of the Azores (whereas in fact it was 370 leagues west), as if to diminish the size of the trespass. (13) Thus Fernando Oliveira had the same access to what was an official document as Joao de Barros, who was an 'official' historian.

Nothing is known of Oliveira's life from the time when King Sebastian reached his maturity in 1568 until his death in the disastrous Battle of the Three Kings at al-Qasr al-kabir in August 1578. Oliveira was strongly opposed to the Castilian succession and expressed himself vehemently in his last known writings, which must have been begun after 1578: both were unfinished and are unpublished, having found their way to the Bibliotheque National in Paris, through the legacy of Cardinal Mazarin. The book of Portuguese rights, Livro da antiguidade, nobresa, liberdade e immunidade do reyno de Portugal, came first. It was apparently abandoned and replaced by the Histo ria de Portugal. Both have been summarized by P. Teyssier, who has examined the sources of some of Oliveira's statements. (14)

The object of the book on the antiquity of Portugal was to demonstrate how 'the kingdom of Portugal is ancient and was always free and never the vassal of any other nation'. The first seven chapters are lost, and what remains is Chapters 8-12 (fols 157-75). It begins with the assertion that the Portuguese did not lose their liberty and kingdom to the Leonese, who did not dominate Portugal. Chapter 9 shows that Portugal owed nothing to Castile, but had long been a kingdom while the first king of Castile was Sancho the Great of Navarre, c. 1110. The kings of Castile from Fernando I to Alfonso VI were tyrants, to use the term of Aristotle, and Afonso Henriques was proclaimed king because the Portuguese people wished it so. The loss of the early chapters is repaired at the end by a conclusion, which claims to have proved that Portugal was first peopled by Gallos and Galleses, progenitors of Hispania, whence Gallaecia and Gallecia and Portugallia. The successors of Cargores and his grandson Habis reigned and were free until the Romans came: the conventus of Braccara was free from Brutus, and Lisbon was a free municipium. The Leonese and Castilians have never shown how they acquired legal rights to Portugal. The Portuguese have never paid tribute to anyone. 'Here ends the first part of the book of the antiquity, nobility, liberty and immunity of Portugal'.

The Historia de Portugal goes beyond the purely polemical intention of the book of rights: 'Here begins the Histo ria de Portugal, collected from approved authors and chronicles by the Licenciado Fernando Oliveyra, chaplain of the kings of Portugal of his time'. It consists of three books covering ancient times until the reign of Afonso Henriques and three chapters on his son Sancho I. The work breaks off in mid-sentence. There is nothing to show whether or not Oliveira survived any longer. Book Three of the Histo ria says: 'Here ends the history of the life and heroic feats of King Afonso Henriques drawn from the cartularies of the kingdom by the licenciado Fernando Oliveyra, chaplain to the kings of Portugal who reigned in his time, Dom Joao the Third, Dom Sebastian the First, Dom Anrique the First and Dom'. As Teyssier notes, the sentence ends without naming King Philip. But in Book Two, Chapter 5 Oliveira has written that Count Henry left Portugal to his son, who defended its liberty and left it to his son, and so it passed from father to son 'without help or favour from Leonese or Castilians, who never favoured the liberty of Portugal, but rather imposed [on] it. And so God preserved it and shall preserve it!' Here the word 'amen' is struck out and replaced by 'as in our days King Philip has confirmed it, may he live many years, amen'. As Teyssier remarks, this is a clear reference to the cortes of Tomar of April 1581, and to the guarantees given by King Philip to respect Portuguese autonomy. Quirino da Fonseca conjectured that as the autograph is in Paris, Oliveira might have been an adherent of the Prior of Crato whom he followed into exile. Teyssier points out that there is no reason to suppose that Oliveira's last known works were composed anywhere but in Portugal. He tells us that he found the Bull of Alexander III 'in the Torre do Tombo of this kingdom in the gaveta of rescripts and apostolic briefs' and that 'in the said Tombo I found no brief of Eugene III to King Afonso'. His history of Afonso Henriques was 'drawn from the cartularies of this kingdom'. In Oliveira's day the Torre do Tombo was not open to any casual reader, much less to a victim of the Inquisition. As a royal chaplain Oliveira would certainly have had access to the records, even though he was not writing a thesis in the modern fashion. For his general outline, he abided by the Cronica General of Alfonso X, the Livro de linhagens of Dom Pedro, and his own fertile imagination. He used the version of the Cronica general by Florian Ocampo, but disdains the author who 'made bold under the name of cronista to make and publish fabulous origins and antiquities'. (15) Oliveira selects the fables he wants, and devises his own etymologies. He knows that Castile was once called Bardulia, and that bardus is 'ignorant': therefore all Castilians are stupid. Oliveira, strongly Portuguese in 1555, has become outspokenly anti-Castilian by 1580. The Histo ria de Portugal describes him as 'licenciado' and 'chaplain to the kings of Portugal of his time'. At the end of Book III the kings are specified: John III, Sebastian I, Henry I, and Dom. Teyssier points to the amendment, 'and now King Philip, may he live many years, Amen'. (16)

It is surely time to modify the picture of Oliveira as being permanently the victim of persecution by the Inquisition, as drawn by Lopes de Mendonca and Quirino da Fonseca. Fernando Oliveira was born in 1507, and the Cardinal-King in January 1512. Both had sat at the feet of Andre Resende in Evora. An order was issued for Oliveira's arrest in 1554, but there is no evidence that it was pursued. Instead, he was appointed corrector to the University of Coimbra, which implies intervention on his behalf from high quarters, presumably clerical. If he was appointed chaplain to the kings of Portugal, he must have served them. In the Historia de Portugal he says he had access to papal documents in the Torre do Tombo: it was not then the open and welcoming institution it has since become. It is very unlikely, to say the least, that a person who was not grata to the court would have been admitted. When the Cardinal became king, Oliveira undertook the task of proving that Portugal had been an independent state since the beginning of recorded history. He was not a professional researcher in the modern sense, but a seeker for documents to prove a case he had already decided. I do not think there is any evidence that he lent his support to the Prior of Crato, of whom the Cardinal-King disapproved, or that he became an embittered exile in France or England. Valiere gives 1582 as the year of his death: I do not know on what grounds. But I suppose that he did not long survive, leaving his last work unfinished after the cortes of Tomar of 1581. It seems likely that Padre Oliveira, far from being a passive victim of the Holy Office, received the protection of his fellow-student the Cardinal-King, that the book of Portuguese rights was undertaken soon after his accession to the throne, and that Oliveira abandoned what must have become a hopeless task in favour of rewriting the history of Portugal as he wished it to be. The fault of Boxer and those who have followed him is in attributing a quotation of the sixteenth century to the eighteenth. It is difficult to disagree with Teyssier who ends his study

l'Historia de Portugal exprime avec une fougueuse ardeur les dechirements et les esperances d'un humaniste patriote au debut de l'ere 'des Philippe'. A ce titre, la lecture en est encore interessante, et souvent meme emouvante. (17)

If we look at Oliveira as a whole, we discover, however imperfectly, no pacifist or abolitionist, born out of his time, and certainly no enemy of his country, but rather a passionate character which had imbibed a strain of Dominican zeal like that of Las Casas, and combined it with a rhetorician's love of words and a marked taste for erudition: these he applied to the meticulous study of seamanship. Far from being imbued with disapproval of the Portuguese and what they had achieved, he professed a vehement admiration for his country.

Twickenham

(1) C. R. Boxer, Portuguese Seaborne Empire (London: Hutchinson, 1969), p. 263.

(2) Boxer, p. 264.

(3) Boxer, pp. 31 and 32.

(4) Boletim Internacional de bibliografia luso-brasileira, 1 (1960), 240; M. L. Carvalhao Buesco, Gramaticos portugueses do sec. XVI, Biblioteca Breve, 18 (Instituto de Cultura portuguesa, 1978), p. 51, says that his father was Heitor de Oliveira, 'juiz de orfaos at Pedrogao'. He was a man of some substance, morgado de Oliveira, and by marriage of Miranda. She also calls him de Oliveira, a form he rarely uses in his printed books or his autograph. It occurs (if read correctly) in the MS Histo ria de Portugal. Portugal did not have parish registers until the second half of the sixteenth century, and I cannot judge the value of the statements, which appear to clash with Oliveira's own verse.

(5) For Oliveira's stay in England, see Richard Barker, Fernando Oliveira: The English Episode, 1545-47 (Lisbon: Academia de Masrinha, 1992), p. 23.

(6) Oliveira's account is in Arte da guerra do mar (1937; repr. 1983), II, Chapters 11 and 12. The nuncio Zambeccari's in C. de Witte, Correspondence des premiers nonces permanents au Portugal (1980), no. 318. The Muslim fleet in 1558 had 35 galleys, 25 brigantines and other smaller ships, manned by a minority of Turks and a majority of Europeans. Compare C. A. Julien, L'Afrique du nord (Paris: Rene Julliard, 1972), p. 26.

(7) Anselmo, Bibliografia sec. XVI, no. 140, Epistolarum familiarium libellus. The appointment is cited by Quirino da Fonseca in his Comentario preliminar to the Arte da guerra, p. xx, ci.

(8) Given Oliveira's expressed rejection of censorship, it seems that some irregularity had occurred.

(9) Oliveira, Part One, Chapter 6.

(10) Revista portuguesa de historia, v (1951), 439-53. Lacking this volume, I am indebted to Professor L Ferrand de Ameida for kindly sending me a copy.

(11) 'Elucidario madeirense' in Saudades da Terra, 2nd edn (1940), ii, 284-88. Carrillos's note says that fifteen or sixteen years before Oliveira had gone to Rome and sailed from Barcelona for Genoa when he was captured by the French and taken to Marseille, as he had some knowledge of navigation, he was freed and spent three or four years in France, where he was known as a seaman. This can only refer to Oliveira's first exile, which was then twenty-five years before. Oliveira had also informed him that a French galleon had in Lisbon offered him 3,000 ducats a year to serve the French, and that Cardinal Henry was aware of the fact. The ambassador added that 'Dr Oliveira' was a 'clerigo de misa' of over fifty-five: he was dissatisfied in Portugal because of poor treatment, poca merced and estrecheza.

(12) Boletim internacional de bibliografia luso-brasileira, I (1960), 239-51.

(13) Valiere does not bring out these points, which appear to me essential. In the Arte da guerra, Oliveira supposed that the river of St Julian was 40 or 50 degrees south: the Spanish captain is more precise, giving 45 to 50. In the Arte da guerra, Oliveira thought the southern winter held Magellan there in April, May, June, July and August. The eyewitness says they did not leave until late September.

(14) Actas do III coloquio internacional de estudos luso-brasileiros, 1957 (Lisbon: 1959), I, 359-79.

(15) Florian Ocampo (Medina del Campo: 1533).

(16) L'Historia de Portugal de Fernando Oliveira, p. 370.

(17) Teyssier, I, 359-79.