Diogo Gomes - Memoirs

Memoirs

Already in advanced age, Diogo Gomes orally dictated his memoirs to the German cartographer Martin Behaim during the latter's sojourn in Portugal. The exact date of the relation is uncertain, and could be anytime between 1484 (Behaim's arrival) to 1502 (when we have confirmation of Gomes's death). Historian Peter Russell tentatively dates the interview around 1499, as the account refers to the death of António de Noli, which occurred around that time. It is likely Gomes dictated in Portuguese, probably through an interpreter, and Behaim wrote it down in Latin (or alternatively in German, and only later transcribed to Latin).

The resulting memoirs, under the title De prima inuentione Guineae ("Of the first discovery of Guinea"), are the only surviving contemporary manuscript, outside of the official chronicle of Gomes Eanes de Zurara, that attempts give a chronological account of all the Henrican discoveries. The manuscript has also two other parts, De insulis primo inventis in mare Occidentis (an account of Canary Islands and the Madeira group) and De inventione insularum de Acores (containing the only detailed record of the Portuguese discovery of the Azores islands - which Zurara skimps on his chronicle).

Historians generally treat Diogo Gomes's account with caution - his penchant for self-promotion, his advanced old age, his attempt to recollect events more than two decades past, misunderstandings by Behaim's interpreter, the haste of the transcription (the Latin is quite poor, suggesting it was hurriedly written) and possibly even some supplementary massaging of the material by editor Valentim Fernandes, have conspired to make it an imperfect document, with numerous little errors and inconsistencies. Nonetheless, it is an enormously valuable document, containing details that are not found elsewhere.

Among other novelties, Gomes's memoirs are the sole record of what appears to have been the earliest Portuguese expedition, a 1415 expedition to Gran Canaria by João de Trasto (although this is probably just an erroroneous reference of the 1424 expedition of Fernando de Castro). Gomes also gives the first detailed account of the rediscovery of the Azores by the Portuguese in Prince Henry's service.

The memoirs are notworthy for illuminating the character and purpose of Prince Henry the Navigator, ascribing to the prince a deliberate scientific and commercial purpose in exploration. Gomes notes Henry sent out his caravels to search for new lands (ad quaerendas terras) from his wish to know the more distant parts of the western ocean, and in the hope of finding islands or terra firma beyond the limits laid down by Ptolemy (ultra descriptionem Tolomei); on the other hand, his information as to the native trade from Tunis to Timbuktu and the Gambia helped to inspire his persistent exploration of the West African coast to seek those lands by way of the sea. Chart and quadrant were used on the prince's vessels (as by Diogo Gomes himself on reaching the Cape Verde Islands). Henry, at the time of Diogo Gomes's first voyage, was in correspondence with an Oran merchant who kept him informed upon events even in Gambian hinterland; and, before the discovery of the Senegal and Cape Verde in 1445, Gomes claims the royal prince had already gained reliable information of the route to Timbuktu. Diogo Gomes gives a touching account of the last illness and death of Prince Henry.

There is only one manuscript of Diogo Gomes's memoirs, part of a collection of miscellaneous accounts of Portuguese expeditions originally compiled in 1508 by Lisbon-based German printer known as Valentinus Moravus or (in Portuguese, as "Valentim Fernandes"). This collection remained unpublished and unknown until a copy was discovered in 1845 by J.A. Schmeller in the Hof- und Staats-Bibliothek in Munich (Codex Hisp. 27). The original Latin text was printed in 1847 by Schmeller in the proceedings of the Bavarian Academy of Science. It has been translated and reprinted several times since. A partial English translation was published in 1937, a full French translation in 1959.

Some editions:

• "De prima inventione Guineae, qualiter fuit inventa Aethiopia australis quae Libya inferior nuncupatur ultra descriptionen Potlemaei, qaeu Agizimba nominabatur, nunc vero Guinea ab inventoribis Portugalensibus nuncupata est usque hodiernum diem, quam inventionem retulit Dioguo Gomez Almoxeriff palatii Sinterii Martino da Bohemia inclito militi Alemano" p.18, "De insulis primo inventis in mari oceano occidentis, et primo de Insulis fortunatis, quae nunc de Canaria vocantur" p.34 and "De inventione insularum de Açores" p.40, in J.A. Schmeller (1847) "Ueber Valentim Fernandez Alemão und seine Sammlung von Nachrichten über die Entdeckungen und Besitzungen der Portugiesen in Afrika und Asien bis zum Jahre 1508, enthalten in einer gleichseitigen portugiesischen Handschrift der köngl. Hof-und Staats-Bibliothek zu München.", Abhandlungen der Philosophisch-Philologischen Classe der Königlich Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Munich, Vol. 4, Part 3. online

• Portuguese translation by Gabriel Pereira (1898–99) as "As Relações do Descobrimento da Guiné e das ilhas dos Açores, Madeira e Cabo Verde" in Boletim da Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa, no. 5 online

• Partial English translation as "The Voyages of Diogo Gomes" in Gerald Roe Crone, editor, (1937) The voyages of Cadamosto and other documents on Western Africa in the second half of the fifteenth century. London: Hakluyt Society.

• António Baião (1940) O Manuscrito 'Valentim Fernandes', Lisbon: Academia Portuguesa da Historia

• French translation in T. Monod, R. Mauny and G. Duval (1959) De la première découverte de la Guinée: récit par Diogo Gomes (fin XVe. siècle), Bissau: Centro de Estudos da Guiné Portugesa.

• Jose Pereira da Costa (1997) Códice Valentim Fernandes, Lisbon: Academia Portugues da Historia.

• Revised Portuguese translation in Aires Augusto Nascimento (2002) Descobrimento primeiro da Guiné. Lisbon: Colibri.