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The Franciscans and Portuguese Colonization in Africa and the Atlantic Islands, 1415–1499

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

George C. A. Boehrer
George C. A. Boehrer*
Affiliation:
Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
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Extract

When the portuguese began their great expansion in the fifteenth century, it was not surprising that the Franciscan friars would enter into the work. They had in the past evidenced a more than cursory interest in North Africa and the lands beyond. Indeed their first martyrdoms occurred in Morocco in the second decade of the thirteenth century. In the following years, they had regular establishments there. That their activity in North Africa was not entirely concentrated on the Mediterranean coast is shown by the treatise Libro del conoscimiento de todos los regnos y tierras by an anonymous fourteenth-century Castilian Franciscan. In the work the Atlantic coast to Sierra Leone is adequately described as perhaps also are the Azores. Although the friars working in North Africa before 1415 were Spanish or at least attached to Spanish provinces, it is not unlikely that Portuguese friars also labored there when the former union and the still close relationship of the Franciscans on the peninsula is considered.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , October 1955 , pp. 389 - 403
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1955

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References

1 Huber, Raphael M. O.F.M. Conv., A Documented History of the Franciscan Order (1182–1511) (Milwaukee, 1944), pp. 769–770 Google Scholar. Here I should like to thank Ruth Lapham Butler and Dorothy McKinley of the Ayer-Greenlee Collections, Newberry Library, for their aid and kindness in the preparation of this paper.

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8 Manso, Paiva, Historia ecclesiástica, p. 25 Google Scholar, gives Conceição as the name of the convent; Fernando de Soledade, III, 336. There was also a project for the creation of another convent in Ceuta but this fell through. Manoel de Esperança, II, 591; Fernando da Soledade, III, 334.

9 To avoid the controversies which are not within the scope of this paper, the word “discovered” shall be used in the sense of that finding (not necessarily the first) which was followed by effective colonization.

10 Manoel de Esperança, II, 594.

11 Fernando da Soledade, III, 33. Usually 1420 is given as the date of the beginning of Madeira’s colonization. However Franco Machado, João, “Descobrimento e colonização do arquipélago da Madeira.—A questão das Canárias,” in Baião, op. cit., I, 280 Google Scholar, would set the dates of discovery and colonization as late as 1425 and 1426.

12 Esperança, Manoel de, II, 594; Fructuoso, Gaspar, Saudades da terra. Historia das ilhas do Porto-Sancto, Madeira, Desertas e Selvagens. Manuscripto de seculo XVI annotado por Alvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo (Funchal, 1873), p. 43 Google Scholar.

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14 Manoel de Esperança, II, 675–676; Fernando da Soledade, III, 346.

15 Fructuoso, p. 66. Alvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo, his editor, places the date of the moving in 1473. Ibid., pp. 577–578. Although the suicide of the friar may have been local tradition, the convent evidently went through difficult days. Manoel de Esperança, II, 672–673, writes about the temptations of the devil and about the self-mortification of the superior Frei Pedro de Covarrubias. Fernando da Soledade, III, 35, mentions “huma lastimosa desgraça.”

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17 Fructuoso, p. 579. Manoel de Esperança, II, 675, tells of another convent founded by Frei Pedro de Monção and four other friars. This also was destroyed under similar circumstances by a raging river, and the friars and the buildings were swept into the sea. This took place in 1467. The destruction of two Franciscan convents on the same island under similar circumstances within a few years would lead one to suspect a confusion here. Fernando da Soledade does not mention Monção’s establishment.

18 Fernando da Soledade, III, 172; Fructuoso, p. 579, places the date of the rebuilding by Jorge de Sousa in 1533.

19 Femando da Soledade, III, 347ff.; Almeida, II, 229.

20 Wadding, Luke, Annales minorum seu trium ordinum a S. Francisco institutorum (3rd ed. by Fonseca, Joseph Maria; Florence, 1933), XIV, 192 Google Scholar; Fernando da Soledade, III, 349–351; Azevedo places the foundation in 1492, Fructuoso, p. 579.

21 Manoel de Esperança, II, 695–696.

22 Soledade, Fernando da, III, 35, 71. Francisco Ferreira Drummond, Annaes da Ilba Terceira (Angra do Heroismo, 1850), I, 59–60 Google Scholar, cogently argues that the foundation must have been after 1452.

23 Soledade, Fernando da, III, 71–74, 394; Alfredo da Silva Sampaio, Memoria sobre a Ilba Terceira (Angra do Heroismo, 1904), p. 430; Drummond, pp. 67–68 Google Scholar, states that he had searched the conventual archives but could not find any evidences of a grant by Afonso Gonçalves. He also places the date of the foundation in 1480.

24 Soledade, Fernando da, III, 259ff.; Almeida, II, 680; Cardozo, Jorge, Agiologio lusitano dos sonctos e varones illustres em virtude do reino de Portugal, e suas conquistas. Consagrado aos gloriosos S. Vicente e S. Antonio, insignes Patronos, desta inclyta cidade Lisboa, e a seu illustre cabido sede vacante (3 vols.; Lisbon, 1652–1666), I, 281–282 Google Scholar, says that Rogério was seventy years of age at the time of his death on January 28. He also says that the breviary contained an account of his death which had been written by some one on the islands, perhaps by Frei Jaime.

25 Carta dos habitantes de S. Tomé a El Rei—27-7-1499, Arquivo da Torre do Tombo, CC-I-2-127, and Testamento de Alvaro de Caminha, Arquivo da Torre do Tombo, CC-III-1-34, reprinted in Brásio, Antonio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana. Africa Ocidental (1471–1531) (Lisbon, 1952–1953), I, 165, 159 Google Scholar.

26 Fernando da Soledade, III, 337. There is great confusion about Bolano. Almeida, II, 680, states that Afonso de Bolano arrived in Guiné in 1473 while Fernando da Soledade seems to place his death in that year. Wadding, XIII, pp. 147–148, 409, says that he was appointed in 1462 and succeeded in 1464 by Diego de Belmano. Since the Portuguese had been in Guiné as early as 1458, it is possible that he had visited the area before his appointment. For great doubt cast on the whole affair, see J. Alves Correia, “A acção missionária na penetração e cristianização das Ilhas Atlanticas e do Continente Africano,” in Baião, op. cit., II, 260.

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33 Reprinted in Brásio, op. cit., I, 91–97.

34 Dom Henrique, the son of Afonso I, had been sent to Lisbon to be educated. Placed in the Loios convent, he later went to Rome where he was consecrated bishop.

35 In Brásio, op. cit., I, 98–102.

36 Cardozo, I, 33.

37 In Brásio, op. cit., I, 102f.

38 Cardozo, III, 149.

39 The Lisbon convent did become in the sixteenth century at least a school for the conversion and the training of the more important natives. It is interesting to note that not only were Africans trained there but also Indians. See Manoel Severim de Faria, Discursos varios politicos (Evora, 1614), p. 32v.

40 Paiva Manso, Visconde de, Historia do Congo. Obra Posthuma (Documentos) (Lisbon, 1877), pp. 1–2 Google Scholar.

41 Pina, p. 175; Resende, III, 13; Barros, I, 113.

42 In Brásio, op. cit., I, 96–97; Cardozo, III, 159. No one denies that a Father João de Santa Maria of the Blue Canons went to the Congo on the 1508 voyage. Indeed King Afonso I of the Congo refers to him in a letter of October 5, 1514. Paiva Manso. Historia do Congo, p. 17.

43 Brásio, Antonio, “Os Proto-Missionários do Congo,” in Portugal em Africa, I (Lisbon, 1944), 108–111 Google Scholar. My thanks are due to Mr. Costa Brochado of the Assembleia Nacional, Lisbon, for arranging and to Father Brásio for kindly sending me the author’s only copy of this article.

44 Sousa, III, 454, 461, 464.

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48 Albuquerque Felner, Alfredo de, Angola. Apontamentos sobre a ocupação e inicio do estabelecimento dos Portugueses no Congo, Angola e Benguela extraidos de documentos históricos (Coimbra, 1933), pp. 20–21 Google Scholar.

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55 Wadding, XIV, 566.

56 Brásio, loc. cit., I, 99–112.

57 Pigafetta, p. [iii].

58 Ibid., p. 44.