Pêro Vaz de Caminha - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Pêro Vaz de Caminha was a Portuguese

Kingdom of Portugal

The Kingdom of Portugal was Portugal's general designation under the monarchy. The kingdom was located in the west of the Iberian Peninsula, Europe and existed from 1139 to 1910...

knight that accompanied Pedro Álvares Cabral

Pedro Álvares Cabral

Pedro Álvares Cabral was a Portuguese noble, military commander, navigator and explorer regarded as the discoverer of Brazil. Cabral conducted the first substantial exploration of the northeast coast of South America and claimed it for Portugal. While details of Cabral's early life are sketchy, it...

to India in 1500, as a secretary to the royal factory. Caminha wrote the detailed official report of the April 1500 discovery of Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

by Cabral's fleet

2nd Portuguese India Armada (Cabral, 1500)

The Second Portuguese India Armada was assembled in 1500 on the order of King Manuel I of Portugal and placed under the command of Pedro Álvares Cabral. Cabral's armada famously discovered Brazil for the Portuguese crown along the way...

(Carta de Pêro Vaz de Caminha
Carta de Pero Vaz de Caminha
In his letter to Manuel I of Portugal, Pêro Vaz de Caminha gives what is considered by many today as being one of the most accurate accounts of what Brazil used to look like in 1500...

, dated May 1, 1500). He died in a riot in Calicut, India, at the end of that year.

Biography

Pêro Vaz de Caminha was the son of Vasco Fernandes de Caminha, a knight of the household of the Duke of Guimarães (later Braganza). His ancestors were among the first settlers of Neiva during the reign of Ferdinand I

Ferdinand I of Portugal

Ferdinand I , sometimes referred to as the Handsome or rarely as the Inconstant , was the ninth King of Portugal and the Algarve, the second son of Peter I and his wife, Constance of Castile...

(r.1367-83). On March 8, 1476, Pêro Vaz de Caminha was appointed mestre da balança (master of the scale) of the royal mint

MiNT

MiNT is a free software alternative operating system kernel for the Atari ST and its successors. Together with the free system components fVDI , XaAES , and TeraDesk , MiNT provides a free TOS compatible replacement OS that is capable of multitasking.MiNT was originally released by Eric Smith as...

of Porto

Porto

Porto , also known as Oporto in English, is the second largest city in Portugal and one of the major urban areas in the Iberian Peninsula. Its administrative limits include a population of 237,559 inhabitants distributed within 15 civil parishes...

, one of the many positions held by his father at the time. The appointment letter, which characterized Pêro Vaz as a knight

Knight

A knight was a member of a class of lower nobility in the High Middle Ages.By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior....

of the royal household, was written from Toro

Toro, Zamora

Toro is a town and municipality in the province of Zamora, part of the autonomous community of Castile and León, Spain. It is located on a fertile high plain, northwest of Madrid at an elevation of 740 meters....

, suggesting that Pêro Vaz had accompanied King Afonso V of Portugal

Afonso V of Portugal

Afonso V KG , called the African , was the twelfth King of Portugal and the Algarves. His sobriquet refers to his conquests in Northern Africa.-Early life:...

on campaign against Castile

Crown of Castile

The Crown of Castile was a medieval and modern state in the Iberian Peninsula that formed in 1230 as a result of the third and definitive union of the crowns and parliaments of the kingdoms of Castile and León upon the accession of the then King Ferdinand III of Castile to the vacant Leonese throne...

, and probably participated in the Battle of Toro

Battle of Toro

The Battle of Toro was a Royal battle from the War of the Castilian Succession, fought on 1 March 1476, near the city of Toro, between the Castilian troops of the Catholic Monarchs and the Portuguese-Castilian forces of Afonso V and Prince John....

(March 2, 1476). In 1497, he was chosen to write, as Alderman, the Chapters of the Porto City Council, to be presented to the Cortes

Portuguese Cortes

In the Medieval Kingdom of Portugal, the Cortes was an assembly of representatives of the estates of the realm - the nobility, clergy and bourgeoisie. It was called and dismissed by the King of Portugal at will, at a place of his choosing...

of Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...

.

In 1500, Pêro Vaz de Caminha, already at advanced age, was appointed as secretary of the factory

Factory (trading post)

Factory was the English term for the trading posts system originally established by Europeans in foreign territories, first within different states of medieval Europe, and later in their colonial possessions...

projected to be built in Calicut, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, under the designated royal factor Aires Correia. Correia and Caminha sailed aboard the flagship of the 2nd India armada

2nd Portuguese India Armada (Cabral, 1500)

under Pedro Álvares Cabral

Pedro Álvares Cabral

that set out from Lisbon in March 1500. Charting a wide arc in the south Atlantic, the armada stumbled on the landmass of Brazil

Brazil

on April 22, 1500, and anchored near Porto Seguro

Porto Seguro

Porto Seguro is a municipality in the Brazilian state of Bahia. It is the site where the Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral first set foot on Brazilian soil on April 22, 1500...

, Bahia

Bahia

Bahia is one of the 26 states of Brazil, and is located in the northeastern part of the country on the Atlantic coast. It is the fourth most populous Brazilian state after São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, and the fifth-largest in size...

. After about a week of idling on the beach, interacting with the local Tupiniquim

Tupiniquim

Tupiniquim is the name of an Amerindian tribe who now only live in three reservations . All three are located in the municipality of Aracruz in northern Espírito Santo state, southeastern Brazil. As of 1997 their population was 1,386...

natives, the fleet prepared to resume their journey to India.

Before departing, Cabral instructed Pêro Vaz de Caminha to write a letter to King Manuel I of Portugal

Manuel I of Portugal

Manuel I , the Fortunate , 14th king of Portugal and the Algarves was the son of Infante Ferdinand, Duke of Viseu, , by his wife, Infanta Beatrice of Portugal...

, officially reporting the discovery of this new land - or island, as they initially believed. Caminha's letter (Carta de Pêro Vaz de Caminha
Carta de Pero Vaz de Caminha
In his letter to Manuel I of Portugal, Pêro Vaz de Caminha gives what is considered by many today as being one of the most accurate accounts of what Brazil used to look like in 1500...

) gives a detailed report of the expedition up to that point, and of the new land and people they had discovered. Caminha's letter is dated May 1 and signed from the location of "deste Porto Seguro da vossa ilha da Vera Cruz" ("this Safe Harbor of your island of the True Cross

True Cross

The True Cross is the name for physical remnants which, by a Christian tradition, are believed to be from the cross upon which Jesus was crucified.According to post-Nicene historians, Socrates Scholasticus and others, the Empress Helena The True Cross is the name for physical remnants which, by a...

"), the name Cabral bestowed in honor of Feast of the Cross

Feast of the Cross

In the Christian liturgical calendar, there are several different Feasts of the Cross, all of which commemorate the cross used in the crucifixion of Jesus....

(May 3 in the liturgical calendar).

Caminha's official report and an additional separate letter by the astronomer-physician Mestre João Faras

João Faras

Mestre João Faras, better known simply as Mestre João , was an astrologer, astronomer, physician and surgeon of King Manuel I of Portugal who accompanied Pedro Álvares Cabral in the discovery of Brazil in 1500, and wrote a famous letter identifying the Southern Cross constellation.- Background :The...

, were given to one of Cabral's captains (either Gaspar de Lemos

Gaspar de Lemos

Gaspar de Lemos , Portuguese explorer and captain of the supply ship of Pedro Álvares Cabral's fleet that discovered Brazil. Sent back to Portugal with news of their discovery, he was credited by the Viscount of Santarém as having discovered the Fernando de Noronha archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean....

or André Gonçalves

André Gonçalves

André Gonçalves , Portuguese explorer that accompanied Pedro Álvares Cabral in the discovery of Brazil. Gonçalves was one of Cabral's captains of the fleet. According to some sources he was sent back to Lisbon with important news and not Gaspar de Lemos ....

, sources conflict). who set sail back to Portugal on a supply ship they had brought along. The rest of the fleet left Brazil on May 3, 1500, in the direction of the Cape of Good Hope

Cape of Good Hope

The Cape of Good Hope is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula, South Africa.There is a misconception that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Africa, because it was once believed to be the dividing point between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In fact, the...

and then onto India.

Pêro Vaz de Caminha's letter is often celebrated as the "birth certificate" of Brazil

Brazil

, although given the secrecy with which Kingdom of Portugal

Kingdom of Portugal

The Kingdom of Portugal was Portugal's general designation under the monarchy. The kingdom was located in the west of the Iberian Peninsula, Europe and existed from 1139 to 1910...

has always involved reports of its discoveries, it was only published in the nineteenth century by Father Manuel Aires de Casal in his Corografia Brasílica.

The 2nd Armada arrived on the Malabar

Malabar

Malabar and puram derived or westernised into bar. This part of India was a part of the British East India Company-controlled Madras State, when it was designated as Malabar District. It included the northern half of the state of Kerala and some coastal regions of present day Karnataka...

coast of India in September 1500, and the factory was promptly set up in Calicut (Calecute, Kozhikode). Caminha, the factory's secretary, assumed his duties there. However, a conflict soon arose between the Portuguese traders and the established Arab merchant guilds in the city. Finding little vent for their trade goods, the Portuguese suspected the Arabs were colluding to shut them out of the city's spice markets by organizing a boycott. The ruling Zamorin of Calicut refused to intervene, prompting the frustrated factor Aires Correia to take matters into his own hands. In late December, 1500, after the Portuguese set about seizing the spice cargoes of Arab boats in the harbor, a riot erupted on the piers. Calicut mobs overran the Portuguese factory, killing every Portuguese they could get their hands on. Some fifty to seventy Portuguese perished in the riot - including the factor Aires Correia and, it is commonly supposed, the factory's secretary Pêro Vaz de Caminha.

In a royal letter dated December 3, 1501, King Manuel I of Portugal appointed Caminha's grandson, Rodrigo d'Osouro, to his grandfather's post at the Porto mint, noting explicitly that Pêro Vaz de Caminha had "died in India".

Biography

See also