SOURCE: Lappin, Anthony. “Introduction to the Auto da Barca do Inferno.” In Gil Vicente: Three Discovery Plays, edited and translated by Anthony Lappin, pp. 1-23. Warminster England: Aris & Phillips Ltd., 1997.

[In the following excerpt, Lappin discusses Auto da Barca do Inferno and explains its importance in any attempt to understand Vicente's early career.]

LIFE AND WORKS OF GIL VICENTE

Gil Vicente found remarkable professional success throughout his life. One might conceive of his career as that of a proficient social climber. Born to a goldsmith father, Martim Vicente, in Guimarães, most probably between 1465 and 1470, Gil reached the leading positions in his own trade through royal patronage and, after his death, left his children in advantageous positions at court.¹

Vicente, in his professional capacity as a goldsmith, was commissioned by Manuel I (r. 1495-1521) in 1503 to produce a monstrance for the monastery of the Jerónimos in Belém with the first gold that Vasco da Gama had brought back from India. The task would seem to have taken Vicente three years.² Before 1509, Vicente had entered the service of Queen Lianor, Manuel's sister and widow of John II, as her goldsmith. He continued in this post beyond 1513, although it is not known when he left her service. It was presumably during this period of service that Vicente lived in a house owned by Lianor on the rua de Jerusalém, opposite her own palace. At some point before 1526, he moved, probably into the paços velhos da Alcáçova, in which Manuel I had resided until 1511, and in which Vicente's children continued to live after their father's death which occurred, most probably, late in 1536.³

The early part of Vicente's professional life was not marked out solely by his being goldsmith to the queen. In 1509, Vicente was placed in control of all works carried out in gold or silver for the religious houses of Tomar, Madre de Deus in Xabregas and the hospital of Todolos Santos of Belém.⁴ On 21 December 1512, he was elected by the guild of gold and silversmiths as one of the Casa dos Vinte e Quatro, according to whose rule he must have been at least forty years old and married.

Following this professional recognition, he was elected as one of the four procuradores dos mesteres of Lisbon, an office which allowed him to act as representative in the Câmara of the gold, silver and gem masters, and with the right to vote on business concerning the craft guilds or the economic government of the city. A document of 6 October 1513 records Gil Vicente fulfilling his function as procurador. In February of the same year, he had been named as one of the two mestres de balança, an office in the treasury, which he was awarded during the infancy of the child of the post's former occupant. Fulfilling these varied charges led to his assiduous presence at the court. On 3 August 1517, Vicente sold his position as mestre de balança to Diogo Rodrigues, another goldsmith, but in the employ of the Infanta Dona Isabel.⁵

It is perhaps due to Vicente's rôle in administration that few works of ouriveseria are actually attributed to him. In her will, Lianor left two chalices upon which he had worked to the monastery of Madre de Deus. Manuel I may have left a large processional cross worked by Vicente to the Jerónimos of Belém.⁶

Vicente married Branca Bezerra around 1490, and had two sons by her: Gaspar and Baldasar. The first son served in Goa under Alfonso de Albuquerque, and was sent in 1512 as part of an embassy to Hidalcão. Gaspar returned from India in 1518, served as a moço da capela real, and was probably substituted on his death by his brother, who was still in the post in 1535.⁷

Vicente's second marriage to Melícia Rodrigues gave three children: Paula, Luís and Valéria, born in 1519, 1520 and 1530 respectively. Paula became a lady-in-waiting to the infanta Dona Maria, the daughter of Dom Manuel. Valéria married a nobleman, António de Meneses, and had numerous children. Luís had become a cavaleyro da casa del Rei by 1580, and was on sufficiently close terms with the cronista mor, Fernão de Pina, to be denounced (along with six others) for having homosexual relations with him to the Évora Inquisition in 1546. The accusation was never acted upon.⁸

Gil Vicente's dramatic career would seem to have begun in 1502 with the Auto da Visitação. The plays in this volume are all from the early period of his work, the reign of Dom Manuel. Of these three, only the Auto da Barca do Inferno survives in a version printed during Vicente's life-time; texts of the other two plays were only printed long after the playwright's death in the Copilaçam de todalas obras de Gil Vicente. The importance, then, of the Auto da Barca do Inferno for the edition of any texts from the Copilaçam is capital, and it is for this reason that it is the first text to be published in the present volume.

THE AUTO DE MORALIDADE: THE FIRST VERSION OF THE AUTO DA BARCA DO INFERNO

The earliest printed version of the play appeared as a ‘folha volante’ or chap-book. This small, eight-leaved pamphlet is generally dated, following Carolina de Michaëlis, to 1517 or 1518, since, in the introduction to the work, Vicente's patron, the rainha velha, Dona Lianor, is described as nossa senhora. Such a title that could only have been applied to her during the period of Dom Manuel's second widowerhood, which lasted from the death of Queen Maria on 17 February 1517 to the king's remarriage, the news of which reached Lisbon in the July of 1518.⁹

The summary of the plot of the play given on the first page of the chapbook sketches out the structure of the play: immediately after the death of their bodies, various souls come to the edge of a river which they have to cross. Those that are damned are taken to Hell on a boat crewed by a demon and his companion; those saved are taken to Heaven on a boat manned by an angel.

Three main strands of influence may be identified in this play. The first, and perhaps most important, is the mediæval tradition of visionary accounts of the judgement of the soul, a tradition which was particularly strong in the Iberian peninsula. In these narratives, a visionary would describe his or her own death, the soul's subsequent escape from the hands of demons thanks to the intervention of angels or saints, its appearance before the judgement-seat of Christ where it might witness the judgement of others, and its return to earth to reanimate the visionary's body. The Vita Theotonii, written in Portugal in the twelfth century, provides a good example.¹⁰

A second influence comes from classical texts rediscovered by the Renaissance, in particular Lucian of Samosata's satirical Dialogues of the Dead, in which an ironic Charon comments upon the various misdeeds of those he carries across the Styx to Hades.¹¹

A final element in the play was provided by the highly popular, moralistic literature which depicted a ship of fools (or sinners) which would carry those embarked upon it to hell, and the ship of penitence, or the Christian life, whose haven would be heaven. Reckert identified Johann Geiler's Navicula penitentiæ as a possible source of inspiration for Gil Vicente.¹² The Navicula describes the Christian life in terms of an extended allegory upon the figure of a boat.

The title of the play, Auto de Moralidade, informs us precisely in what genre we should consider the work. One would expect the Auto to have been published with a moralistic intention, its cheap, chap-book format making available to the masses a message which emphasized the importance of fairness and justice rather than hypocritical devotional practice. Gil Vicente presents a satire of Portuguese society through the characters he condemns to hell. A well-known fidalgo or nobleman is damned for his tyrannous and licentious behaviour; a shoemaker for swindling his customers; a Dominican friar for keeping a mistress; a judge and a lawyer for the usual sins of the legal profession; and a usurer, a bawd familiar to the court of Vicente's day, and a man hanged for theft, for their respective sins. A Jew, unaware of the difference between salvation and damnation, asks the devil to let him board without looking for the boat to heaven. He is instructed by the devil to swim behind the boat to hell. Only a fool and four crusading knights are welcomed by the angel.

Throughout the play, the dramatic interest of the characters one expects to be damned lies in how they comically seek to justify themselves: the usurer thinks money will solve his predicament; the friar considers the habit of his order sufficient protection; the bawd casts herself as a martyr through her profession. An exception is the Jew, who thinks he is being saved by going to Hell.

In a manner which has common aspects with Erasmianism, but which depended more substantially upon a broader mediæval tradition that emphasized the need for individual conversion,¹³ Vicente attacks the belief that the religious practices that accompanied death automatically assured salvation. The magistrate thought confession before death a sufficient act, despite its being incomplete. The noble relied upon his wife's prayers, and the appearances of a ‘good’ life, but is ridiculed for his tyranny toward the poor. The cobbler expected that the prayers of his confraternity would help him although he had spent the last thirty years committing thefts.¹⁴

The devotional practices which noble and cobbler espouse, however, were generally seen as efficacious only after the soul had been received into Purgatory, that state in which the soul was purged of the guilt which remained from sins of which it had repented, but for which the person before his or her death had not done penance. Something was, in other words, still due before the spotless soul could see and enjoy the vision of God, that is, the state called ‘Heaven’. Purgatory is only mentioned once in the play, and that in the black comedy of the scene of the Hanged Man. It is invoked only to be dismissed, identified with the convict's earthly prison and gallows. Indeed, when the souls arrive at the river, there are only two possibilities painted before them: Heaven or Hell. Purgatory does not feature in the allegorical landscape.¹⁵

Vicente's simplification of the other-world into a stark, binary opposition sought to increase those anxieties over salvation and damnation which the sacramental practice of confession, the purchase of indulgences and the communal piety of prayers and offerings for the dead strove to assuage. To awaken the fear of hell in its readership is clearly one of the aims of the Moralidade, for the knights sing, ‘remember, by God, remember, this fearful wharf’ (ll. 831-32).

Vicente's antidote to existential anxiety is poised at a psychologically and dramatically key moment. The devil has decided that it is time to set sail, and orders all the damned to push out the boat. The play seems to be coming to an end, and closing with a sombre message, but then the final climax is reached as four crusaders enter singing.

The last scene of the Moralidade offers propaganda for a crusade: an unusually lengthy stage-direction announces the arrival of the knights, who have died ‘em poder dos Mouros’, presumably in captivity in Africa. They are saved because, as this stage-direction informs us, they are ‘absolved from all guilt and punishments due for their sins thanks to privileges granted by all the popes of our Holy Mother the Church’. Rather than simply recording useful information on acting and staging, the stage-direction primarily fulfilled the literary aim of reminding the lay reader why those who died fighting the infidel were welcomed into heaven as ‘martyres da madre ygreja’, martyrs of Mother Church.

The propagandistic aspect to the Moralidade is confirmed by the treatment of the Dominican Friar who is summoned to judgement. Founded in the thirteenth-century, the friars were a potent force in the Portugal of Vicente's day, and in numerous plays the writer took the opportunity to criticize them, complaining that the number of vocations that they received drained men away from the important business of the struggle with the Moors. In the Frágoa de Amor a friar says, when asked by Cupid why he wants to be transformed into a layman,¹⁶

Porque meu saber nam erra
somos mais frades [n]a terra
sem conto na Christandade
sem servirmos nunca en guerra.
E aviam mister refundidos
ao menos tres partes delles
em leygos, & arneses nelles,
& muy bem aprecebidos;
entam a Mouros co'elles!
because my knowledge does not err
we are too many friars in the land,
uncountable in Christendom,
without ever serving in war.
And at least three quarters of them
need be recast
as laymen, and harness put on them,
and have them very well equipped;
and then, at the Moors with 'em.

In the Moralidade, the Dominican Friar dances onto the stage with his mistress. He informs the devil that he provided for this woman from the funds of the convent to which he belonged. The devil is surprised, and asks if he had been chastised by his fellows. The Friar's reply is damning, not only of himself, but of the order in general: ‘they all do the same thing’. Vicente's satire is not only aimed at the personal morality of the friars. Their disreputable involvement in politics is also alluded to, through Florença, Fray Babriel's mistress. Her name alludes to the city in which the Italian Dominican, Savonarola, had supported the establishment of a democracy, and in the main square of which he had been hanged in May 1498 on the orders of the Borgia pope, Alexander VI (1492-1503).¹⁷

Furthermore, the dramatic elements of the play reinforce the comparison between the Dominican and the crusaders: the friar comes onto the stage singing, and sings when he approaches the angel's boat. The crusading knights also enter singing, and sing as they go forward to the boat to Heaven. The friar comes armed with sword and buckler; the knights with swords and shields. Yet the friar sings only meaningless syllables, the knights a morally uplifting song; the friar's weapons are for the self-indulgent past-time of fencing, the knights have swords and shields of war.

The moral to be drawn from the contrast could not be clearer. If one were to join the Order of Friars Preachers to save one's soul, one would be in grave danger of losing it. Better, by far, to go on crusade. This certain route to Heaven is pointed out at the very end of the play. The moralist's criticism of over-reliance upon the pious activity of others for one's own spiritual well-being is turned into an apology for militaristic involvement. Communal concern over the welfare of benefactors, friends and relatives after death is replaced not by an individual, interior, religious conversion, but by an personal decision to join another communal activity, religious warfare beneath the national flag.

The enthusiasm for crusading that Gil Vicente displays in the Moralidade was not without royal approval. Dom Manuel, after a short period of mourning for his deceased wife, announced in the summer of 1517 that he would lead a crusade into Africa. The Fifth Lateran Council may have swayed his mind, for it ended on 16 March 1517 with a call from Pope Leo X (1513-1521) for a crusade against the Turk.¹⁸ Manuel's pious intention was never fulfilled, for thoughts of a dynastic alliance turned his mind to another Spanish marriage. However, even while secret negotiations had been entered into in order to secure the hand of Manuel's third wife, the ‘official line’ maintained until the end of February of 1518 was that the king would go on Crusade against the infidel.¹⁹ The play would then have been printed at some point between the summer of 1517 and March 1518. Furthermore, the attack on the Dominicans was in line with royal policy: Manuel had long striven to reform all orders of friars. Between 1501 and 1505, he had negotiated with the pope for the reform of the Poor Clares, the Enclosed Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Carmelites and the Trinitarians. Frei Hurtado de Mendoza came to Portugal in 1513 in order to reform the Dominican province, but his mission was a failure.²⁰ Vicente, dependent upon a network of patronage for his social position, was accustomed, both as a goldsmith and as a dramatist, to receive commissions and to please his patrons. The Auto de Santo Martinho, for example, is a short piece written expressly to order. It is therefore likely that the Moralidade subscribed, at least in part, to the political agenda of his masters.

A specific instance of the reflection in the play of the contemporary blend of religion and politics appears also in the problematic figure of the Jew. When he appears at judgement, the Jew is presented as blind to the reality of condemnation and salvation. He offers to pay the devil to take him to Hell. He insists on being accompanied by the goat he carries upon his back. He is accused by the fool, in one of the more scatological passages of the play, of urinating upon graves in a church. Almost all of the common mediæval anti-Jewish stereotypes are gathered together. Yet the play was written at a time when, officially, no Jews were present in Portugal, since they had all been forced to convert nearly twenty years earlier.²¹

Although their conversion had been obtained, the Jewish community had not been forced to adopt any Christian practices. The cristãos novos were free from any inquisition into their beliefs or behaviour during the reign of Manuel I. The spiritual blindness of the Jew in the Moralidade would seem to be an intellectual justification of this split policy of having Jews baptised without enforcing Christian observances. The Judeu is simply incapable of recognising the truth, even after death, underpinning the pointlessness of attempting any real conversion, since Jews were predestined to damnation. Vicente expressed an identical view in a rhymed sermon in Spanish preached before Queen Lianor in 1506. The question of whether the Jews should have been forcibly baptised was prudently avoided, but, as to the rest,²²

Es por demás pedir al Judio
que sea Christiano en su coraçon:
es por demás buscar perfección
adonde el amor de dios está frio,
también está llano
que es por demás al que es mal Christiano
doctrina de Christo por fuerça ni ruego,
es por demás la candela al ciego,
y consejo al loco, y don al villano.
It is too much to ask the Jew
to be a Christian in his heart;
it is too much to seek perfection
where the love of God runs cold;
it is also plain,
for it is too much for the bad Christian
the doctrine of Christ by force or entreaty,
it is too much for the blindman a candle
and advice for the madman, and ‘sir’ for the villein.

Neither preaching nor compelling Jews towards Christian observance could have any result, any more than providing a blind man with a candle.

Whilst the figure of the Jew may owe a certain amount to popular stereotypes, the figure of the fool has, as Paul Teyssier rightly suspected,²³ been taken from popular drama, since although his name is given in the stage-direction, it is never mentioned in dialogue on stage. Joane o Parvo was evidently some kind of folk hero, originating in that mediæval symbiosis of popular and ecclesiastial theatre whose growth had become rank, if one judges from the strictures set out for the liturgical celebration of Christmas by the Bishop of Oporto in 1475:²⁴

Não cantem chanceletas nem outras cantigas algumas, nem façam jogos no coro da igreja, salvo se for alguma boa e devota representação como é a do Presépio ou dos reis magos, ou outras semelhantes a elas, as quais façam com toda a honestidade e devoção e sem riso nem outra turvação.

Neither ditties nor other songs of any kind may be sung, nor may there be any plays performed in the choir of the church, unless it be some good and devout representation such as that of the Crib or of the Three Kings, or others of their kind, which should be performed with all honesty and devotion, and without any laughter or any other type of distractions.

It is to express the popular origin of the character that I have translated his name as ‘Simple Simon’ in my Englishing of the text.

In profiting from the popular appeal of the character, Gil Vicente is able to exploit the contrast of the fool who is saved with the ship of fools (the navicula stultorum of Geiler) who are damned. However, it is only through his idiocy that Joane is saved; those who are less imbecile have to be concerned more with their own malitia, or evil inclinations.

The fool plays an important dramatic rôle, according to Reckert, by breaking the monotony of the processional form of the drama by his interjections.²⁵ His scatological speech has often been characterized as ‘carnavelesque’ by critics, in the manner identical to that used by Bahktin to describe Rabelais' characters. Such an equation needs a certain nuance. The fool, as a character from that mediæval, popular theatre which left no written trace in Portugal, was probably a carnavelesque figure, providing a topsy-turvying influence, a critique of arrogance and ill-use of authority. In the Auto de Moralidade, however, the fool's blend of the gross and the vulgar, his concentration on the excremental and the sexual, is directed either at the devil or at characters who are clearly damned. The scatological and phallic imagery which, on this side of the grave, may be said to possess powers of regeneration,²⁶ is, in the Auto de Moralidade, hurled at those who cannot hope to be regenerated, who are bound for the place of despair. The fool's humiliating insults are a verbal expression or prefiguration of the characters' damnation and torture in Hell. Far from being the voice of unorthodoxy, the fool can speak for the angel, and hand out God's judgement upon both Jew and friar, who are allowed no communication with the angelic boatmen. The equation of the friar with the Jew would seem to be another means by which Vicente sought to do down the Order of Preachers. In any case, both Hebrew and Dominican are shown to be furthest away from salvation, for even the usurer could share a joke with the angel. The ‘subversive’ popular character of the fool is exploited in the Moralidade to support the political aims of the hierarchy.

The Auto de Moralidade is presented in the chap-book as a play which was seen by the king. This is expressly stated in its introduction and implied by the numerous preterite tenses found throughout the text in the stage directions. The presence in the plot of characters known to the court is of a piece with the aura of court drama surrounding the Moralidade, and must have been part of the play's appeal, even to an wider audience. The first character to appear on stage, Dom Anrique, was identified by Diogo do Couto in his fifth Década as an important nobleman:²⁷

Dom Anrrique de Meneses, irmão do marques de Villa Real—aquelle do Auto da Barca de Gil Vicente que dizia ‘o poderoso dom Anrrique que he Vossa Senhoria’, porque hera hu[m] fidalgo muy vão e mandava aos criados que lhe falassem por ‘Senhoria’; p[e]lo que se conta del Rey Dom João aquella galantaria que, estando falando com o marques, lhe perguantava: ‘Como está a Senhoria de vosso irmão?’

Lord Henry of Meneses, brother of the Marquis of Vila Real, he of the Auto da Barca of Gil Vicente that said, ‘oh powerful Lord Henry, what is your lordship doing here?’ because he was a very vain nobleman and ordered servants to call him ‘your Lordship’, because of which the witticism of King João is told: while speaking to the Marquis, the king asked him, ‘How is the Lordship, your brother?’

The king in question was presumably João II († 1495). Dom Anrique, in spite of his illustrious brother, was obviously something of a whipping-boy. The ‘misquotation’ of two lines of the play by Diogo do Couto (‘o poderoso dom Anrrique / que he vossa Senhoria’, now lines 23 and 241 respectively) may well represent an earlier performance of the play which was subsequently reworked into the form that we have it in the Auto de Moralidade.

The scene of the Hanged Man was a puzzle to all critics of the play until Américo da Costa Ramalho provided the means to explain the references made to Garcia Moniz.²⁸ The Hanged Man enters the stage, and the devil immediately asks him, ‘What does Garcia Moniz say there?’ Garcia Moniz was Gil Vicente's superior whilst the latter was employed in the treasury. Moniz was also, however, a member of the confraternity da Misericórdia. One of the obligations which this organisation laid upon its members was that of accompanying condemned criminals to their execution.²⁹ The Hanged Man reproduces a burlesque version of the ‘consolations’ preached to him by Garcia Moniz. The confraternity had been established by Vicente's patron, Queen Lianor, in 1498. It is likely that this scene is again designed for the consumption of Vicente's patrons and protectors, ‘in jokes’ for his own faction in court. The only other reference to Garcia Moniz in Vicente's plays comes from the Velho da Horta of 1512, produced shortly before Vicente was appointed to the treasury on 4 February, 1513:³⁰

Ò sam Gracia
Moniz, tu que oje em dia
fazes milagres dobrados,
dá-lhe esforço e alegria
pois que es da companhia
dos penados.
Oh, saint Garcia
Moniz, you who nowadays
perform redoubled miracles,
give him strength and joy
since you're of the company
of the suffering.

The verses honour him ironically. Yet his pious accompaniment of the condemned is recognized in his being patron saint of the ‘penados’, both those punished by the law and those who pain with love. The devil's admonishment to the Hanged Man in the Moralidade, ‘If you'd believed what he said / it's certain that you'd be saved’ (ll. 819-20), show that there was no harsh criticism of Moniz intended. Vicente saw fit to sell his position of mestre da balança on 3 August 1517, less than a month and a half after Moniz had been replaced as head of the Treasury by Rui Leite on 22 June 1517.³¹

We might summarize the Moralidade by saying that it is an instrument of propaganda for a royal policy that sought soldiers for expansion into Africa. The Moralidade's cheap, small, chap-book format destined it for easy distribution among the literate classes, and thence, by reading to small groups of listeners, to the population at large. The Auto da Barca do Inferno was next brought to light as part of the collected works of the playwright in 1562. I shall make some general considerations about this collection before turning to the specific text of the Auto which is printed therein.

THE COPILAçAM DE TODALAS OBRAS DE GIL VICENTE

Before his death, Gil Vicente would seem to have attempted a collection of his works on the orders of João III (r. 1521-1557). As early as 1530, Vicente may have set about collecting together those works which had been published as chap-books and begun copying unpublished plays in a manuscript form ready to be sent to the printers.³² He had reached an advanced stage in this work for he managed to write a prologue dedicated to João III, and according to Luis, his son, ‘as it was his [i.e., Gil Vicente's] intention that his works should be printed, he wrote out and brought together a large part of them in a big book, and would have brought all together had not death consumed him.’³³

Vicente's plays had to wait for many years before they were brought to light as a corpus, when Paula and Luis Vicente published the Copilaçam in 1562, to take advantage of the favour which the plays had found with the young king, Sebastião (†1578), then only eight years old and in his minority. Paula Vicente gained the usual licence to print from the Regent Queen in 1561.

The ordering of the Copilaçam into its five books of devotional works, comedies, tragicomedies, farces and minor works may well have originated with Gil Vicente himself. The playwright, in the letter of dedication to João III that prefaced the Auto de Dom Duardos wrote,³⁴

Como quiera, excellente Principe y Rey muy poderoso, que las Comedias, farças y moralidades que he compuesto en seruicio dela Reyna vuestra tia, quanto en caso de amores, fueron figuras baxas, en las quales no auia co[n]ueniente rethorica, que pudiesse satisfazer al delicado spiritu de V[uestra] A[lteza].

Although, excellent Prince and very powerful King, the Comedies, farces and moralities that I composed in the service of the Queen, your aunt, as regards the depiction of love, contained only low characters, in whom there was no fitting speech which might satisfy Your Highness's delicate spirit.

This enumeration of genres led Révah to claim that Vicente only ever wrote comedies, farces and moralities. The subsequent five-fold division was, according to the same critic, a later accretion.³⁵ However, in the passage cited, Vicente was attempting to stress that he was writing something quite different for João III. The Auto de Dom Duardos is termed a Tragicomedy, a title in vogue since the second edition of the Celestina, properly called the Tragicomedia de Calixto y Melibea. A Spanish translation of the Auto de Moralidade appeared in Burgos in 1532 under the title, Tragicomedia del paraíso y del infierno. Of the ten tragicomédias included in the relevant book of the Copilação, only two were composed before João's reign (the Exortação da Guerra and the Côrtes de Júpiter), and in both of these, Lianor is not mentioned, ceding her place as patron of the play to Dom Manuel.

In a similar vein, the stitching together of the three Autos das Barcas may well be the initiative of a Gil Vicente seeking to make his moralidades appear more ‘classical’ to his new patron, João III, by presenting the three works as three scenes of the same play. That the Comédia de Rubena is divided into three scenes indicates that the concept was not foreign to Vicente. Indeed, the ‘vendaval cósmico’ which Reckert attributes to Vicente's later years³⁶ may have less to do with internal spiritual renewal and rather more connection to the end of his favour due to the death of the rather dour Manuel I, who had little interest in Italian humanism. Vicente was then obliged to jockey for position under João III, around whom the refreshing zephyrs of the Renaissance had nemorously begun to breathe.

Whilst Gil Vicente's shadow was clearly cast over the composition of the Copilaçam, and filial involvement is indubitable, the interference of another body has been hotly debated: the Portuguese Inquisition.

THE RôLE OF THE INQUISITION IN THE EDITION OF THE COPILAçAM

The Portuguese Inquisition had been created by the pope at the request of João III in 1531.³⁷ Although its first concern was the welfare of the cristãos novos, those Jews or their descendants who had been forcibly baptised by Manuel I in the early years of his reign, its activity soon spread to all areas of national life.

Although the Inquisition's first Index, or list of prohibited books, published in 1547, did not mention Gil Vicente's works, the Index of 1551, four years later, had noticed him, and instructed seven works to be banned:³⁸

• O auto de dom Duardos que nom tiver ce[n]sura como foy emendado.
• O auto de Lusitania com os diabos, sem elles poderse ha emprimir.
• O auto de pedreanes, por causa das matinas.
• O auto do Jubileu damores.
• O auto da aderencia do paço.
• O auto da vida do paço.
• O auto dos phisicos.

• The Auto de Dom Duardos which has not been censored as it was emended
• The Auto de Lusitâniawith the devils; it may be printed without them.
• The Auto de Pedreanes, because of the mattins.
• The Auto, Jubiléu d'Amores
• The Auto, Aderência do Paço.
• The Auto, Vida do Paço.
• The Auto dos Físicos.

The subsequent Index published in Portugal, in 1561, when the Copilaçam was already projected if not already in press, made the following proviso concerning the playwright's works:³⁹

Gil Vicente—suas obras correrão da maneira que neste anno de 1561 se Imprimem & nas Impressas ate este anno, guardarse a ho regimento do rol passado.

Gil Vicente: his works will circulate in the manner in which they are printed this year, 1561; and for those printed before this year, the ruling of the previous Index is to be followed.

Révah, in his edition of the Auto da Barca do Inferno, inferred from this statement that⁴⁰

au mois de mars, 1561, l'Inquisition maintient ses sept prohibitions et n'a pas perdu l'espoir de faire appliquer ces interdictions dans la Copilaçam qui est déjà à l'impression. En effet, il est impossible d'admettre que l'Inquisition ait édicté des règles différentes selon que les autos étaient reproduits en Copilaçam ou en feuilles volantes.

However, as was later pointed out by Reckert, the comments in the 1561 Index need not be taken in quite the way that Révah understood them. The Inquisitors intended that some chap-books be either ‘emended’ or banned, whilst establishing that the text of the Copilaçam was to be the ‘official’ text, to which they gave their seal of approval: ‘foy visto pelos deputados da sancta Inquisiçam’ (seen by the representatives of the Holy Inquisition) was printed on the title page of the Copilaçam when it was eventually published a year and a half later.⁴¹

Révah insisted that the regent Queen, Caterina, had forced the Inquisitors to abandon their attempt to censure Gil Vicente's works;⁴² yet such a hypothesis would seem to ignore her favouring of the Jesuits and her insistence that the Inquisition be established in Goa, which came about in 1560, only a year before the ‘privilegio’ was granted to Paula Vicente to publish the Copilaçam. One might also observe that, since the published edition was expressly addressed to the young Sebastião (and as his tutors were all Jesuits at the insistence of the same Caterina), it is most unlikely that the publication would not attract the concerned regard of at least some members of the ecclesiastical and educational establishment.⁴³

The rather fantastic explanation of Catarina's ‘coup de force’ against the Inquisition was motivated by Révah's desire to exculpate its officers for any initial bowlderization of Vicente's work and his wish to show how the destruction worked upon the plays was ‘due à l'incurie, à la stupidité et au mauvais goût’ of Luis Vicente.⁴⁴ This is not the case, as an analysis of the changes made to the two texts of the Auto da Barca do Inferno will show below.

THE SECOND VERSION OF THE AUTO DA BARCA DO INFERNO: THE COPILAçAM

The Copilaçam, which was published posthumously by the playwright's children, is a de luxe production, designed for a much more sophisticated and aristocratic readership. Much has been changed in the text, alterations that were clearly carried out by various hands, which I propose to identify below as those of Gil Vicente, Luis Vicente, and the Inquisitors. Révah, in his edition of the Auto da Barca do Inferno, showed that the source of the Copilaçam's text was the chap-book Auto de Moralidade.⁴⁵ It is on this basis that a comparison will be made.

CHANGES CARRIED OUT BY GIL VICENTE.

It is certainly possible to divide the changes that can be attributed to Vicente into two phases: a relatively early one, where his alterations would seem to have been motivated by another performance (perhaps with the Auto da Barca do Purgatório) in the reign of Manuel I; and a later phase, most probably to be attributed to the period when Vicente, at the behest of João III, was compiling the collection of his own works which he never completed.

In the stage direction which announces the arrival of the knights in the Copilaçam there is an altered description of the ‘quatro cavaleros’ of the Moralidade; they have become ‘quatro fidalgos cavaleyros’ from a Portuguese military order, whose emblem was the cross of the crusader. This was not due, I think, to Luis Vicente's social snobbery, as Révah would have it, the son forgetful of the plebeian origins of his father.⁴⁶ The characterization of the knights as members of the Order of Christ would seem to imply that the change may have come at the instigation of Vicente himself, perhaps annotating his copy of the chap-book with a view to a later production of the piece, or perhaps to return the text to his original conception before raisons d'état determined that a wider significance be given to the warriors for the faith. Gil Vicente had been named, as noted earlier, as overseer of all works carried out in gold and silver at the mother-house of the Order of Christ, Tomar, in 1509.⁴⁷ That the knights belonged to this order would seem to be an attempt to improve their public relations, to advertise them at court. The change could only have been made during Manuel's reign, for one of the early acts of João III's reign was to reduce the military order to a monastic one, forcing the warrior monks who fought on horseback to be enclosed within their monastery walls.⁴⁸ This change, then, is indubitably from the early period of Vicente's life.

Two other changes may also come from the need to bring the play up to date for a subsequent performance. In the scene of the Hanged Man, lines 797-99, the Moralidade depicts the convict enumerating various ‘consolations’ proffered him by Garcia Moniz: ‘He told me that I'd eat bread and honey with Saint Michael as soon as I'd been hanged.’ In the Copilaçam, however, a change is made which allows the Hanged Man to reproduce Moniz's speech directly: ‘He said, “You'll go eat bread and honey with Saint Michael since you've been hanged.”’ Such a change, involving the mimicry or impersonation of Garcia Moniz, produces an effect explicable as an attempt to increase the comedy of the scene when played before an audience who were familiar with the mannerisms of the individual concerned.

The following addition to the text is more doubtfully attributable to this earlier period, but the balance of probability lies towards it being an inclusion for the sake of performance. In the Moralidade, the devil sings a short ditty, ‘You'll come by my hand, by my hand you'll come’ (ll. 110-11), to which the Copilaçam has added, ‘and you'll see / fish in the nets’. The success of the addition leads one to think that its author was Vicente himself: the fish stand for souls caught in the devil's toils, an image which provides an inversion of a story from the Gospel of John. Jesus, after his resurrection, appeared to the disciples on the side of the Lake of Galilee and instructed them where they should cast their nets. The fish that they brought into the boat were symbolic of the whole of humanity that would be brought into the Church. The significance of the devil's boat then serves to contrast it with that given to the boat to Paradise in the Auto da Barca do Purgatório. The effectiveness of the addition is not limited to its religious significance. The image of fish caught in nets would seem to have had a proverbial force, used to express how the beauty of a woman would ‘catch’ men,⁴⁹ an image particularly suitable to the noble whose life had been based upon the pursuit of sensual pleasure.

The insults hurled at the Jew are softened. He is still damned, but no longer is he accused of urinating upon graves. This may reflect a revision by the author to his play in the light of his later Jewish sympathies, represented, for example, by his depiction of the Jewish family as loyal supporters of the crown at the beginning of the Auto de Lusitânia, first performed in 1532.

The ‘powerful Lord Henry’ of the Moralidade becomes ‘precious Lord Henry’ (l. 23). Another figure from the court was given the ‘precious’ epithet in the Velho da Horta, Dom Henrique de Noronha, grand-master of the Order of Santiago.⁵⁰ Vicente's loyalties may well have shifted, necessitating the alteration. Lord Henry's sins are also ameliorated: no longer accused of being a tyrant, he is condemned for his desire to be tyrannous.

The characterization of the fool would seem to have been altered by Gil Vicente himself. In the Moralidade, the fool, when asked by the angel who he is, replies, ‘’Appen, someone’ (l. 298). In the Copilaçam's version, the reply has become, ‘I be nobody’, a shift which allows a character originally from popular theatre to be transformed into an allegorical figure. In the Auto da Lusitânia, an allegorical figure is indeed called ‘Ninguém’, Nobody.⁵¹ This new-found religious significance given to the fool may well explain why his insults are toned down in a rather haphazard way.

The devil's final words to the hanged man are radically altered. Rather than informing the thief that, had he believed what Moniz had said, he would have been saved, the Copilaçam's devil orders him not to wait for his father but to board. The latter concurs, and the devil expresses his pleasure. The dramatic force of the alteration again makes it likely that Gil Vicente was the author of the change. The mention of the Hanged Man's father points back to the first character on stage, the noble, who is told that his father had preceded him to Hell. In the Moralidade, the thief had been the only character to express no acceptance of the need to go on board; in the Copilaçam he agrees to embark on the boat to Hell. Reckert has claimed that the characters' recognition of their damnation gives the drama the shape of a classical tragedy, with its characteristic moment of máthema.⁵² Indeed, the version of the Copilaçam, where this feature is made complete, probably corresponded to that period when Gil Vicente was consciously striving to be more ‘classical’.

ALTERATIONS CARRIED OUT BY LUIS VICENTE.

The same impulse towards making the text conform more to classical paradigms led Luis Vicente to make other changes to the Auto da Barca do Inferno, as he himself admits in his prologue to the Copilaçam, comparing himself to the early editor of Homer's text who ‘cleaned and purified’ it.

In general terms, the spellings and vocabulary of the Moralidade are modernized in the Copilaçam, although occasionally more modern forms in the former are turned back into archaic forms in the latter. The earlier text, clearly designed for performance, is transformed into a text for reading by the judicious addition of ‘ca’, ‘cá’, ‘lá’, ‘que’ and ‘&’, conjunctions which make the connections between lines or statements more logical, or which conceptually express place, more usually done by gesture and tone in speech.

Whilst the numerous hispanisms due to the printer of the Moralidade are corrected, so too is the macaronic speech of Magistrate and Advocate, whose garbled Latin is made slightly (but only slightly) more correct. Thus ‘nom som pecatus meus’, distinguishable from the Portuguese by only one letter (‘t’), becomes ‘non sunt peccatus meus’. Generally, however, the Latin is so ‘corrupt’ that it is impossible to translate it. In my translation therefore, the Latin is not rendered into English (unless a ‘Latin’ word is really a Portuguese word ‘in disguise’),⁵³ and an explanation is attempted in the notes.

As we have seen, Gil Vicente altered one stage direction. It is likely that his son continued this process, suppressing or shortening stage directions, and including any information they contained in the dialogue. For example, when the magistrate arrives at the devil's boat, the Moralidade has the stage-direction, ‘A magistrate enters loaded with judicial processes and, arriving at the boat of Hell with his rod in his hand, says …’. Four lines later, the devil exclaims ‘you bring a noble load!’ (l. 609); the Copilaçam's devil is less ironic but much more explicit, ‘how many processes you've brought!’, for the Copilaçam had substituted the earlier text's descriptive stage directions with the terse, ‘A magistrate enters, and says, reaching the boat of Hell, …’. This type of change seems to be an attempt to make the play fit more easily into the canons of the classical literature which was then so much in vogue. Luis Vicente's changes are, however, in the same trajectory as that which his father had already embarked upon.

The Copilaçam states that the setting for the first performance of the Auto da Barca do Inferno was before ‘Queen Dona Maria, while she was sick with the illness from which she died, the year of our Lord, 1517’. I am in complete accord with Révah, who thought that Luis Vicente, having learnt that the Auto de Moralidade was printed in 1517, linked the date, thanks to the otherworldly subject matter, with the death of Maria that had occurred that same year.⁵⁴

CHANGES WROUGHT BY THE INQUISITION.

The two editions of the Copilaçam in the sixteenth century bear witness to a difference in Inquisitorial method. The first Copilaçam, that of 1562, displays a care over theological statements, whereas the second edition is just as concerned with what we might term ‘taste and decency’. In the second edition, the scenes of the friar and the Hanged Man are wholly excised, and significant changes made to Brísida Vaz's enumeration of her brothel-madam's wares. In the first edition, the changes are much more subtle and are clearly the product of a keen intelligence.

The Dominican friar in the Copilaçam's version of the Auto da Barca do Inferno is no longer presented as the representative of a completely corrupt religious order, as in the Moralidade. The transformation worked on the scene makes it likely that the inquisitor was a Dominican, since mention of the friar's maintaining his mistress with monastery funds is omitted. Furthermore, the revelation that ‘they all do the same thing’ (l. 383) with their mistresses is subtly changed. Instead of this line from the Moralidade, the Copilaçam has something quite different. The friar, when asked about the reaction of his confrères in the priory, replies, ‘I was well whipped’. The image presented is no longer that of an order which fails to live by any of its ideals. It is of an order which punished ‘black sheep’, which was in no need of reform and which functioned as a religious organization should, despite the weakness of some of its members.

Other changes made to the friar's scene display a stricter moralistic intention. The devil's approbation of the friar's actions because of Florença's beauty (l. 380) is omitted by the Copilaçam, which stresses that the punishment of Hell is to be meted out to the friar's concubine as well by the devil's instruction, ‘that lady is to board here’ (l. 375).

Towards the end of the play, the friar is not identified as Frey Babriel (a combination of Gabriel, the name of a Dominican, and Babel, an ironic comment on the friar's vocation of preaching) and told to help push the boat out; rather, that honour is given to the noble and the magistrate.

As we have seen above, the stage direction which announces the arrival of the knights killed in Africa is adopted from the Moralidade, but, together with changes worked by Vicente himself, the Copilaçam text also omits the theologically suspect proclamation of the knights' being free from all guilt and punishment. The changes wrought are indicative of a change of attitude, a care in theological statements. Ernst Kantorowicz expressed the following view concerning the spiritual status of crusaders in the thirteenth century.⁵⁵

A crusader who battled against the infidels for the Christian faith and died for the cause of the Holy Land in the service of Christ the King was entitled, according to common belief, to expect immediate entry into the celestial Paradise and, as a reward for his self-sacrifice, the crown of martyrdom hereafter. … Whether this confidence in other-worldly reward was dogmatically sound or rather a misunderstanding of papal decrees (which granted crusaders no remission of sins, but remission of such punishments as the discipline of the church might have imposed) made little difference then.

By the mid-sixteenth century, however, there was a difference: in the Copilaçam, the knights are ‘saints’, not ‘martyrs’, surely saved, but not at the highest level of honour.

The same theological care is witnessed in the noble's scene. In the Moralidade, the devil informs the illustrious ‘senhoria’ that, ‘before you died, you gave me a sign’ that he would embark upon the devil's boat. The Copilaçam adjusts the line to a hypermetric one, ‘when you died …’, being precise that the moment that the soul is damned or saved is at the moment of death, not before.

CONCLUSION.

It would be too laborious to consider each of the minor changes to the text in turn. They will be dealt with in the notes to the relevant lines. The changes to the text of the Auto in the Copilaçam betray several interests. On a first level of alteration, Gil Vicente's own hand has adjusted certain aspects of the play relatively soon after the printing of the Auto de Moralidade. On a second level, alterations were again carried out by Vicente to allow for a change in his interests and his patrons, to make a more devotional reading of the play possible through the allegorical figure of the fool who is ‘Nobody’, and to present the material in a more classical form to suit the tastes of João III. On a third level, this conformity to classical paradigms was continued by Luis Vicente, and, on the fourth, the Inquisition provided changes that witness to theological constraints being placed upon the text of the play. These ‘levels’ of composition reflect various moments in the history of the play: an initial adaptation of the work for a performance during the life of Manuel I; a second adaptation by Vicente as he sought to prepare a collection of his own works; and a third series of adaptations, by Luis Vicente and the Inquisition to provide an ‘official text’ of which the Inquisition approved and which could be printed in the Copilaçam. These four types of changes came together in that text, published in 1562.

In view of the different hands at work in the re-elaboration of the Auto for the Copilaçam, an edition of a definitive text appears impossible. Whilst the Moralidade can claim to be the authentic production of the playwright, elements of the text in the Copilaçam would also seem to come from Gil Vicente's quill. Yet these alterations change the focus of the play and leave us with two clearly distinct versions of the same work. It is for these reasons that I have chosen the Moralidade as my base text, yet also provide, when variants warrant it, the reading of the Copilaçam's text in parallel. The reader may then see clearly the major differences between the versions of the play. This edition does not seek to reconstruct an archetype of the text, the perfect creation of the artist's mind; rather, it aims to present the history of the text within the evidence that we possess.

Notes

1. Guimarães was identified by the genealogist, António de Lima, in his Nobiliário as the place of Vicente's birth. This information is likely to be correct, for Vicente's daughter-in-law, Guyomar Tavares, stood as godmother to de Lima's daughter, Maria: Anselmo Braamcamp Freire, Vida e obras de Gil Vicente, ‘trovador, mestre da balança’ (2nd. edn., Lisboa: Novas Edições ‘Ocidente’, 1944), 46 at n. 74.

2. Ibid., 67-68. Vicente's being both goldsmith and playwright was established by Braamcamp Freire, at 35. The arguments against such an identification have been summarized and satisfactorily dismissed by Gilberto Moura, ed., Teatro de Gil Vicente: Auto da Índia, Auto da Barca do Inferno, Auto da Barca do Purgatório, Farsa de Inês Pereira, Biblioteca Ulisséia de autores portugueses, 10 (Lisbon: Ulisséia, s.d.), 10-15.

3. Braamcamp Freire, 77, 121, 48.

4. Ibid., 76-77.

5. Ibid., 101-102, 122.

6. Ibid., 23 at n. 18, 70 at n. 152. Care must be taken with such an assertion, however, for in a manuscript held at Lisbon, Biblioteca Nacional, cod. 11352, ‘Relação dos bens legados pela Rainha D. Leonor, mulher de D. João II, ao Convento da Madre de Deus em Xabregas’, copied around 1537, no mention is made of Vicente with regard to the silver or gold donated to the convent (at f. 2r-2v).

7. Ibid., 99-100.

8. Ibid., 318, 329, 121 at n. 288.

9. See I. S. Révah, Recherches sur les œuvres de Gil Vicente, I: Édition critique du premier ‘Auto das Barcas’ (Lisbonne: Bibliothèque du Centre d'Histoire du Théâtre Portugais, 1951), 22. Unfortunately, I have been unable to consult Martin Angele, Gil Vicente: Os Autos das Barcas. I. Einleitung und Kommentar (Kassel: Edition Reichenberger 1995).

10. Vita Theotonii, ed. A. Herculano, Portugaliæ Monumenta Historica: Scriptores I (Lisbon, 1856), 79-88.

11. E. Asensio, ‘Las fuentes de las Barcas de Gil Vicente: lógica intelectual e imaginación dramática’, Estudios portugueses (Paris: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian-Centro Cultural Português, 1974), 59-77 [reprinted from Bulletin d'Histoire du Théâtre Portugais, 4 (1953), 207-37], 60-64.

12. Stephen Reckert, Gil Vicente: espíritu y letra, Biblioteca Románica Hispánica, IV, 10 (Madrid: Gredos, 1976), 175-78. Iohannes Geiler, Navicula Penitentie, per excellentissimum sacre pagine doctorem, Joannem Keyserspergium Argentinensium Concionatorem predicata. A Jacobo Otthero collecta (1511?). For the possible influence of the Danza de la Muerte upon the Auto, see Asensio, 65-68, and Celso Lafer, ‘O judeu em Gil Vicente’, Gil Vicente e Camões (Dois estudos sobre a cultura portuguesa do século XVI), Ensaios, 50 (São Paulo: Ática, 1978), 19-101, at 42.

13. See Paul Teyssier, ‘L'humanisme portugais et l'Europe’, in his Études de littérature et de linguistique (Paris: Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian, 1990), 1-26, at 10.

14. The cobbler relies upon ‘oras dos finados’, which would be said not by his family but by a confraternity or other religious order. There were two confraternities of cobblers in Lisbon: São Vicente and Nossa Senhora da Mercê. The latter ran two hospitals. See Maria José Pimenta Ferro Tavares, Pobreza e morte em Portugal na Idade média (Lisboa: Presença, 1989), 111, 118. The primary function of confraternities was to pray for their deceased members and benefactors: Ibid., 102.

15. The idea that the river-bank is to be equated with Purgatory is found only in Vicente's later re-working of the overall allegorical scheme in the Barca do Purgatório. It is not present in the Moralidade, for the introduction on the first page of the chapbook informs the reader that the souls must the cross the river in one of the two boats. A sojourn by the banks of Lethe is not envisaged. Gil Vicente was certainly not being an orthodox Catholic in his omission. The Ecumenical Council of Ferrara-Florence in 1445 had issued a dogmatic teaching on the existence of Purgatory, a statement which revived that of the Council of Lyons in 1275 (see Robert Ombres, OP, ‘Images of Healing: the making of the traditions concerning purgatory’, Eastern Churches Review, 8 (1976), 128-38). Luciana Stegagno Picchio, ‘Per una semiologia dell'aldilà: l'idea di purgatorio in Gil Vicente’, in Homenaje a Eugenio Asensio (Madrid: Gredos, 1988), 447-58, at 457, compares Vicente to Luther because of this omission of Purgatory.

16. Copilaçam, f. 155v A.

17. For an account of Savonarola's involvement in Florence and the political forces which led to his execution, see Ferdinand Schevill, Medieval and Renaissance Florence, vol. II: The coming of Humanism and the Age of the Medici (New York: Harper & Row, 1961), 439-55.

18. The Oxford Dictionary of Popes, ed. J. N. D. Kelly (Oxford: O. U. P., 1986), 258a.

19. Braamcamp Freire, 125-131.

20. See the excellent article by Claude-Henri Frèches, ‘L'économie du salut dans la trilogie des “Barques”’, in Mélanges à la mémoire d'André Joucla-Ruau (2 vols.; Aix-en-Provence: Éditions de l'Université de Provence, 1977), II, 723-736, at 727.

21. See John Edwards, ‘Expulsion or indoctrination? The fate of Portugal's Jews in and after 1497’, in Portuguese, Brazilian and African Studies: studies presented to Clive Willis on his Retirement, ed. T. F. Earle and Nigel Griffin (Warminster, England: Aris & Phillips, 1995), 87-96.

22. Copilaçam, f. 253v A.

23. Paul Teyssier, La langue de Gil Vicente (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1959), 78, 172.

24. Luiz Franciso Rebello, O Primitivo Teatro Português (Lisbon: Biblioteca Breve, 1977), 35, quoted by José I. Suárez, Vicentine Comedy within the Serio-Comic Mode (Mississauga, Ontario: Associated University Presses, 1993), 40-41.

25. Reckert, 75-6.

26. Maria José Palla, ‘O parvo e o mundo às avessas em Gil Vicente—algumas reflexões’, in Temas Vicentinos. Actas do colóquio em torno da obra de Gil Vicente; Teatro da Cornucópia, 1988 (Lisboa: Ministério da Educação, Instituto de Cultura e Língua Portuguesa, 1992), 87-99, at 91.

27. Quoted by Révah, Recherches, 106. ‘Senhoria’ was a title only applied to the Marquis himself.

28. Américo da Costa Ramalho, ‘A “feia acção” de Gil Vicente’, Estudos sobre a época do Renascimento (Coimbra: Instituto de Alta Cultura, 1969), 124-129.

29. See Pimenta Ferro Tavares, 103-4.

30. Costa Ramalho, ‘A “feia acção”’, 124.

31. Ibid., 125, note 2, at 174.

32. For the date of 1530, see the introduction to the Exortação da Guerra in this volume.

33. From Luis' prologue to the Copilaçam, f. 3v: ‘porque sua tençam era que se empremissem suas obras, escreveo per sua mão & ajuntou em hum livro muyto grande parte dellas, & ajuntara todas se a morte o nam cõsumira.’ Vicente's own prologue to João III is on f. 4r.

34. Braamcamp Freire, 535. This letter was omitted from the Copilaçam of 1562 but included in its second edition of 1585, at folio 105v.

35. Révah, Recherches, 16-18. Gil Vicente, in his prologue to João III included in the Copilaçam, makes reference to ‘obras de devaçam’, which may be taken as implying that the first book of his collected works was then called by the same name as it was in his children's edition of 1562.

36. Reckert, 36

37. Moura, Teatro, 16.

38. Révah, Recherches, 5; Reckert, 238-39. The Spanish Index of 1559 reproduced these condemnations and added the Auto de Amadís de Gaula (Révah, Recherches, 8).

39. Révah, Recherches, 7; Reckert, 240.

40. Révah, Recherces, 7. It is not necessarily true that the Copilaçam was in press when the Inquisition published its Index: publication need only have been planned, since, in the phrase, ‘que neste anno se imprimem’, the verb may be understood as referring to a future printing rather than a contemporaneous one.

41. Reckert, 240.

42. Révah, Recherches, 9.

43. For Caterina's preference of the Jesuits, see the GEPB, 28, 13a.

44. Révah, Recherches, 9, 10.

45. On the basis of line 270; see Révah, Recherches, 121.

46. Révah, Recherches, 27, 82-3.

47. Braamcamp Freire, 76-77.

48. Ibid., 180.

49. Cp. ‘A pescar salió la niña / tendiendo redes / y en lugar de peces / las almas prende’, Tirso de Molina, Don Juan Tenorio o El burlador de Sevilla, Jornada Primera. ll. 981-984. [The girl went to fish, / hanging out nets / and in place of fish / she catches souls], in Antonio Prieto, ed., Tirso de Molina: Marta la piedosa—El burlador de Sevilla (Madrid: Editorial Magisterio Español, 1974), at 226.

50. Révah, Recherches, 107.

51. See João Nuno Alçada, ‘Para um novo significado da presença de Todo o Mundo e Ninguém no Auto da Lusitânia’, Arquivos do Centro Cultural Português, 21 (1985), 199-271, and José I. Suárez, Vicentine Comdey within the Serio-Comic Mode (Mississauga, Ontario: Associated University Presses, 1993), 111.

52. Reckert, 70.

53. ‘At a time when the use of Latin had certainly achieved an air of snobbery, … “Portuguesifying” Latin in the mouths of popular characters probably had a comic air for those who knew its correct use, and these were then numerous enough’: Américo da Costa Ramalho, ‘Uma bucólica grega em Gil Vicente’, in Estudos sobre a época do Renascimento (Coimbra: Instituto de Alta Cultura, 1969), 130-149, at 130-31 [my translation; to assist non-Portuguese speakers, critics writing in Portuguese will henceforward be rendered into English in my own translation].

54. Révah, Recherches, 74-6.

55. Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies: a study in mediæval political theology (Princeton, 1987), 238-9. Bonaventure, in the thirteenth century, ‘was concerned lest the crusade indulgence be taken as a flat guarantee of eternal salvation … crusaders who failed to live righteously would risk eternal damnation’, James A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law and the Crusader (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), 151.