Valentim Fernandes manuscript

The Valentim Fernandes manuscript (Manuscrito Valentim Fernandes), also known as Relation of Diogo Gomes (Relação de Diogo Gomes) and Descripcam is a manuscript which makes up an essential link one the studies of the beginning of the Portuguese sea navigation. Written in Latin, it is divided into three parts:

"De prima inuentione Guinee"
"De insulis primo inventis in mare Occidentis"
"De inventione insularum de Açores" (now as Azuris in Latin)

History

The manuscript was written in around 1506 or 1507.

The codex was written by J. A. Schmeller in 1847 at the Munich National Library, it was also known as the Relation of Diogo Gomes, name of the explower which attributed the text and made up its first notes on the Henrican navigations.

The text was the object by humanists with the German Conrad Peutinger or the Portuguese Damião de Góis during the 16th century, and makes up an essential source in which it respected the history of its first explorations, of the west of Africa, which started the Portuguese navigations of the 15th century. It was notable which clearly described its objects deliberately scientific and commercials of Henry the Navigator on the exploration.

On the other hand, Henry the Navigator sent his caravels and headed to its new lands ("ad quaerendas terras"), its ships that headed more far in the western ocean and into what was "terra firma", outside the limits of Ptolemy ("ultra descriptionem Tolomei" (now as ultra descriptionem Ptolemaeus), on the other hand, its relative information on the naval commerce between Tunis and Timbuktu and the Gambia which help inspired its persistent exploration of the West African coast.[1] It used maps and quadrants that ebraged its services, including Diogo Gomes who discovered the Cape Verde Islands; the Navigator, in the time of the first voyage by Gomes, corresponded to a merchant from Oran that kept information about the exploration of the Gambia, in 1445, before the discovery of Senegal and Cape Verde, he had recollected information on the way to Timbuktu.

Gomes started to meet its first person, could be a person of Henry the Navigator, contacted discovered peoples, engaging with diplomatic relations and commerce in the same time brought them the Christian faith. After the disastrous expedition by the Danish noble Vallart (Adalbert) in 1949 which lead the command with three ships that coast the west of Africa alongside Jacob, an Indian interpreter which was used for its trade voyage to India. After reaching Rio Grande on the other side of Cape Verede, strong sea currents changed its route and its crew brought with fear that they reach the end of the ocean, and they chose to head for the Gambia. They headed up the river with a considerable length, up to the city of Kantor (or Cantor), where they did business in Kukia (the upper source of the Niger River), the center of gold trade in West Africa, about the visits by merchants and caravans from Tunis, Fez and Cairo and all the Saracen lands. It described how camel caravans carried Saharan salt from Oualata to Timbuktu, and then onto Djenne. There the salt was exchanged with the Soninke Wangara for gold.[2]

A final part which contains the only coeval account of the rediscovery of the Azores by the Portuguese under the service of Henry the Navigator.

Another African voyage, which was known in 1462, two years after the death of Henry the Navigator (some sources stated that he died in 1460), when the island of Cape Verde was discovered, previously visited by the Venetian Cadamosto. The island of Santiago, Gomes, like its predecessor claims to give its current name.[1] In its narrative is a reference on the final illness of Henry the Navigator, as well as on his life, realizations and objectives: only with this was recorded was seemed to be its first explorations, under the command of João de Trasto, reached the Grand Canary in 1415.[1]

The chronicle of Diogo Gomes has its only manuscript, namely the Codex Hisp. 27, na Hof- und Staatsbibliothek (now the Bavarian State Library in Munich the original Latin text was published by Johann Andreas Schmeller Uber Valentim Fernandez Alembico in Abhandlungen den philosoph.-philolog Kl. der bayerisch. Akademie der Wissenschaften, vol. IV., part III. (Munich, 1847);

References

Major, Richard Henry (1868). The life of Prince Henry of Portugal surnamed the navigator and its results: Comprising the discovery, within one century, of half the world. With new facts in the discovery of the Atlantic Islands. A refutation of French claims to priority in discovery. Portuguese Knowledge (subsequently lost) of the Nile lakes; and the history of the naming of America. London: A. Asher & Co. Retrieved 21 March 2015.
Wilks,Ivor. Wangara, Akan, and Portuguese in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (1997). Bakewell, Peter (ed.). Mines of Silver and Gold in the Americas. Aldershot: Variorum, Ashgate Publishing Limited. pp. 9–13.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Valentim Fernandes manuscript

History

References

Further reading