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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: HEG-HIG |
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HENRY OF PORTUGAL , surnamed the " Navigator " (1394-1460), duke of Viseu, governor of the Algarve, was born at Oporto on the 4th of March 1394. He was the third (or, counting children who died in infancy, the fifth) son of John (Joao) I., the founder of the Aviz dynasty, under whom Portugal, victorious against Castile and against the Moors of Morocco, began to take a prominent place among European nations; his mother was Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt. When Ceuta, the " African Gibraltar," was taken in 1415, Prince Henry performed the most distinguished service of any Portuguese leader, and received knighthood; he was now created duke of Viseu and lord of Covilham, and about the same time began his explorations, which, however, limited in their original
Senegal
Disregarding the traditions which assign 1412 or even 1410 as the commencement of these explorations, it appears that in 1415, the year of Ceuta, the prince sent out one John de Trasto on a voyage which brought the Portuguese to Grand Canary
Porto
chief
original
Porto
movement
In 1433 died King John, exhorting his son not to abandon those schemes which were now, in the long-continued failure to round Cape Bojador, ridiculed by many as costly absurdities;and in 1434 one of the prince's ships, commanded by Gil Eannes, at length doubled the cape. In 1435 Affonso Goncalvez Baldaya, the prince's cup-bearer, passed fifty leagues beyond; and before the close of 1436 the Portuguese had almost reached Cape Blanco. Plans of further conquest in Morocco, resulting in 1437 in the disastrous attack upon Tangier, and followed in 1438 by the death of King Edward (Duarte) and the domestic troubles of the earlier minority of Affonso V., now interrupted Atlantic and African exploration down to 1441, except only in the Azores. Here rediscovery and colonization both progressed, as is shown by the royal licence of the 2nd of July 1439, to people " the seven islands " of the group then known. In 1441 exploration began again in earnest with the venture of Antam Gongalvez, who brought to Portugal the first slaves and gold-dust from the Guinea coasts beyond Bojador; while Nuno Tristam in the same year pushed on to Cape Blanco. These successes produced a great effect; the cause of discovery, now connected with boundless hopes of profit, became popular; and many volunteers, especially merchants and seamen from Lisbon and Lagos, came forward. In 1442 Nuno Tristam reached the Bay or Bight of Arguim, where the infante erected a fort in 1448, and where for years the Portuguese carried on vigorous slave-raiding. Meantime the prince, who had now, in 1443, been created by Henry VI. a knight of the Garter of England, proceeded with his Sagres buildings, especially the palace, church and observatory (the first in Portugal) which formed the nucleus of the " Infante's Town," and which were certainly commenced soon after the Tangier fiasco (1437), if not earlier. In 1444-1446 there was an immense burst of maritime and exploring activity; more than 30 ships sailed with Henry's licence to Guinea; and several of their commanders achieved notable success. Thus Diniz Diaz, Nuno Tristam, and others reached the Senegal
to leagues beyond Cape Verde. This was perhaps the most distant point reached before 146r. In 1444, moreover, the island of St Michael in the Azores was sighted (May 8), and in 1445 its colonization was begun. During this latter year also John Fernandez (q.v.) spent seven months among the natives of the Arguim coast, and brought back the first trustworthy first-hand European account of the Sahara hinterland. Slave-raiding continued ceaselessly; by 1446 the Portuguese had carried off nearly a thousand captives from the newly surveyed coasts; but between this time and the voyages of Cadamosto (q.v.) in 1455-1456, the prince altered his policy, forbade the kidnapping of the natives (which had brought about fierce reprisals, causing the death of Nuno Tristam in 1446, and of other pioneers in 1445, 1448, &c.), and endeavoured to promote their peaceful inter-course with his men. In 1445-1446, again, Dom Henry renewed his earlier attempts (which had failed in 1424-1425) to purchase or seize the Canaries for Portugal; by these he brought his country to the verge of war with Castile; but the home government refused to support him, and the project was again abandoned. After 1446 our most voluminous authority, Azurara, records but little; his narrative ceases altogether in 1448; one of the latest expeditions noticed by him is that of a foreigner in the prince's service, " Vallarte the Dane," which ended in utter destruction near the Gambia, after passing Cape Verde in 1448. After this the chief
where Terceira was discovered before 1450, perhaps in 1445,and apparently by a Fleming, called " Jacques de Bruges "- in the prince's charter of the 2nd of March 1450 (by this charter Jacques receives the captaincy of this isle as its intending colonizer) ; secondly, the rapid progress of civilization in Madeira, evidenced by its timber trade to Portugal, by its sugar, corn and honey, and above all by its wine, produced from the Malvoisie or Malmsey grape, introduced from Crete; and thirdly, the explorations of Cadamosto and Diogo Gomez
before a considerable section of the African littoral beyond Cape Verde, and gave much new information on the trade-routes of north-west Africa and on the native races; while Gomez
The inf ante's share in home politics was considerable, especially in the years of Affonso V.'s minority (1438, &c.) when he helped to make his elder brother Pedro regent, reconciled him with the queen-mother, and worked together with them both in a council of regency. But when Dom Pedro rose in revolt (1447), Henry stood by the king and allowed his brother to be crushed. In the Morocco campaigns of his last years, especially at the capture of Alcazar the Little (1458), he restored the military fame which he had founded at Ceuta and compromised at Tangier, and which brought him invitations from the pope, the emperor and the kings of Castile and England, to take command of their armies. The prince was also grand master of the Order of Christ, the successor of the Templars in Portugal; and most of his Atlantic and African expeditions sailed under the flag of his order, whose revenues were at the service of his explorations, in whose name he asked and obtained the official recognition of Pope Eugenius IV. for his work, and on which he bestowed many privileges in the new-won landsthe tithes of St Michael in the Azores and one-half of its sugar revenues, the tithe of all merchandise from Guinea, the ecclesiastical dues of Madeira, &c. As " protector of Portuguese studies," Dom Henry is credited with having founded a professorship of theology, and perhaps also chairs of mathematics and medicine, in Lisbonwhere also, in 1431, he is said to have provided house-room for the university teachers and students. To instruct his captains, pilots and other pioneers more fully in the art of navigation and the making of maps and instruments he procured, says Barros, the aid of one Master Jacome from Majorca, together with that of certain Arab and Jewish mathematicians. We hear also of one Master Peter, who inscribed and illuminated maps for the infante; the mathematician Pedro Nunes declares that the prince's mariners were well taught and provided with instruments and rules of astronomy and geometry " which all map-makers should know "; Cadamosto tells us that the Portuguese caravels in his day were the best sailing ships afloat; while, from several matters recorded by Henry's biographers, it is clear that he devoted great attention to the study of earlier charts and of any available information he could gain upon the trade-routes of north-west Africa. Thus we find an Oran merchant corresponding with him about events happening in the negro-world of the Gambia basin in 1458. Even if there were never a formal " geographical school " at Sagres, or elsewhere in Portugal, founded by Prince Henry, it appears certain that his court was the centre of active and useful geographical study, as well as the source of the best practical exploration of the time. The prince died on the 13th of November 146o, in his town near Cape St Vincent, and was buried in the church of St Mary in Lagos, but a year later his body was removed to the superb monastery of Batalha. His great-nephew, King Dom Manuel, had a statue of him placed over the centre column of the side gate of the church of Belem. On the 24th of July 1840, a monument was erected to him at Sagres at the instance of the marquis de Sa da Bandeira. The glory
See Alguns documentos do archivo national da Torre do Tombo acerca das navega4aes . portuguezas (Lisbon, 1892); Alves, Dom Henrique o Infante (Oporto, 1894); Archivo dos Acores (Ponta Delgada, 187871894); Gomes Eannes de Azurara, Chronica do descobrimento e conquista de Guine, ed. Carreira and Santarem (Paris, 1841; Eng. trans. by Raymond Beazley and Edgar Prestage, Hakluyt Society, London, 18961899) ; Joao de Barros, Decades da Asia (Lisbon, 1652); Raymond Beazley, Prince Henry the Navigator (London, 1895), and introduction to Azurara, vol. ii., in Hakluyt Soc. trans. (see above) ; Antonio Cordeiro, Historia Insultana (Lisbon, 1717) ; Freire (Candido Lusitano), Vida do Infante D. Henrique (Lisbon, 1858) ; " Diogo Gomez," in Dr Schmeller's Uber Valentim Fernandez Alemo, vol. iv. pt. iii., in the publications of the 1st class of the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Munich, 1845); R. H. Major, The Life of Henry of Portugal, surnamed the Navigator (London, 1868); Jules Mees, Henri le Navigateur et l'academie . de Sagres (Brussels, 1901), and Histoire de la decouverte des Iles Acores ( Ghent
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