João Pinto Delgado: A Literary Disentanglement

Author(s): Cecil Roth

Source: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Jan., 1935), pp. 19-25
Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3715642
Accessed: 22-05-2016 21:37 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Modern Humanities Research Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to The Modern Language Review

This content downloaded from 186.19.68.254 on Sun, 22 May 2016 21:37:22 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 JOAO PINTO DELGADO-A LITERARY
DISENTANGLEMENT

Del Poema de Hester en sacro coro

Mosseh Delpado da esplendor sonoro,
Y corren con su voz en ricas plantas
De Jeremias las Endechas santas.
(Miguel de Barrios, Relacion de los Poetas, p. 54.)

PERHAPS the most gifted of that illustrious band of Spanish writers

who worked in exile during the heyday of the Inquisition was Juan (or
Joao) Pinto Delgado. He is remembered, indeed, only for one book: Poema
de la Reyna Ester, Lamentaciones del Propheta Jeremias, Historia de Rut, y
Varias Poesias, which appeared at Rouen in 1627. Notwithstanding the
slenderness of his output, he ranks high among the poets of his genera-
tion. Ticknor, Amador de los Rios, even Menendez y Pelayo (whose
literary judgments are so often biased by theological prejudices) vie with
one another in their praise of his genius: and there are not many of his
exiled contemporaries about whom so much has been written.
It was long imagined that the work by which this author is known must
have been a posthumous one: for the little known about his life referred
to the sixteenth century. According to the current works of referencel,
Joao Pinto Delgado had been born at Tavira, in Portugal, about 1530.
Going in his youth to Spain, he studied the humanities at Salamanca,
where he became friendly with the poet Luis de Le6n. He was famous not
only for his poetical gifts, but also for his prodigious memory. However,
owing to the persecutions of the Inquisition (for he was of New Christian
stock, and ipso facto suspect), he left his native country and made his
way first to Italy and then to France. It was here that he carried out the
greater part of his literary work, and here presumably that he died, in
1591.

Doubt was thrown upon this story for the first time by Sousa Viterbo,
in a separate study devoted to the subject2. In this, he proved from
1 Barbosa Machado, Biblioteca Lusitana, ii, pp. 393, 722, amplified by Kayserling,
Sephardim, p. 153sqq. Both of these writers, unfortunately, omit to quote authority for
their statements. Cf. also J. Amador de los Rios, Estudios sobre los Judios de Espana,
p. 500sqq., Men6ndez y Pelayo, Historia de los heterodoxos espaioles, ii, pp. 606-7, A. de
Castro, Historia de los Judios en Espana, p. 195, Ticknor, Spanish Literature, II, p. 46,
Maximiano Lemos, Zacuto Lusitano: a sua vida e a sua obra (Oporto, 1909), pp. 246-50.
Kayserling's article in the Jewish Encyclopcedia, Iv, p. 504, adds nothing fresh, though it
appears to state as facts certain details which appear in the same author's Sephardim as
hypotheses: that in the new Encyclopaedia Judaica, v, p. 910, as usual, ingenuously follows
the last-named compendium.
2 'Joao Pinto Delgado' in 0 Instituto, XLII (1896), p. 857 sqq.: also published separately,
Coimbra, 1897, 15 pp.

This content downloaded from 186.19.68.254 on Sun, 22 May 2016 21:37:22 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 20 Joao Pinto Delgado--A Literary Disentanglement
documentary sources that, while a certain Joao Pinto Delgado in-
dubitably died about the year mentioned, another person of the same
name was appointed almoxarife of Mazagao in 1602, in consideration of
his having been in the royal service as man-at-arms for seven years, and
was still holding the same appointment in 1607. The latter is very much
more likely to have been the author of the volume published at Rouen in
1627 than his homonym who died thirty-seven years previous to that
date. The question is further complicated by the fact that there existed
contemporaneously another Portuguese poet who bore the same sur-
name, and came from the same part of the country. This was Gongalo
Pinto Delgado, escrivao dos orfdos at Tavira, who in 1596 commemorated
the English raid on Faro in a characteristic effusion: Poema composto de
que era o argumento: A violenta irrupQao feita pelos Inglezes no anno do
1596, saqueando e abrazando a cidade de Farol. From the documents dis-
covered by Sousa Viterbo, it is all but certain (though he does not men-
tion the fact) that this poet was a son of the earlier Joao Pinto Delgado,
to whose official position he succeeded on his death.
From a contemporary record, hitherto unknown, it is now possible to
throw some new light upon Gon9alo's personality and activities.
On November 8, 1585, a youth named Balthazar da Costa, newly
returned from Flanders, appeared before the Inquisitional Tribunal at
Lisbon and gave detailed information with regard to those Portuguese of
suspected orthodoxy with whom he had intermingled while he was living
in Antwerp some time previous. In the course of his deposition, the
following passage occurs:
And he further saith that about three years ago or thereabouts, this confessant being
in Antwerp, as he has said before, he had a conversation with Gonealo Delgade, new
Christian, an unmarried youth, son of one JoamPinto of Algarve. He does not know for
certain in which town he resides, but he thinks it is Villa Nova, and confessant has
heard say that he has some office in the Custom House, and is a great troubadour, and
that because of his ability the King conferred one or two offices on him; the which
Gon9alo Delgade was in Antwerp living at his uncle's house, a merchant, whose name
he cannot remember; and during the course of a year confessant had conversations
with this Gon9alo Delgade who told him on various occasions that he was a Jew, and
confessant said the same of himself, and as such they knew one another2.

The details given in this denunciation leave little room for doubt that
the accused person is identical with the litterateur from Tavira, in Algarve,
who has been mentioned above. His father was plainly a poet of some
1 s.l.n.d. Barbosa Machado, Biblioteca Lusitana, II, p. 393. This work is dedicated to
Ruy Lourenzo de Tavora.
2 Arquivo da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon: Inquisiaco de Lisboa, proc. 5341. A precis of this
deposition is given in Baiao, A Inquisifio em Portugal e no Brasil, p. 213. This, however,
gives the impression that the phrase 'a great troubadour,' etc., refers to the son, not the
father.

This content downloaded from 186.19.68.254 on Sun, 22 May 2016 21:37:22 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 CECIL ROTH 21

attainments, to judge from the phrase grande trovador. None of his work,
indeed, is known. His reputation, on the other hand, seems to have
survived him. This fact is presumably responsible for the blunder made
by Barbosa Machado, who, having heard of his literary ability, imagined
that he was the author of the volume of poems published a generation
after his deathl. The 'one or two offices' referred to in the text seem to
allude to his nomination as Purveyor of building materials at Mazagao in
1578, some four or five years previous2.
A couple of years after this denunciation, Gongalo Pinto Delgado was
back in Portugal, where he succeeded to his father's position in 1590-
the year of the latter's death. He was still resident at Tavira, as escrivao
dos orfiios, in 1596, when he wrote his poem in celebration of the English
raid on Faro. The famous Joao Pinto Delgado (as will be shown below)
was not his father, but his son. It is possible, though not quite certain,
that the latter was identical with the person appointed almoxarife of
Mazagao in 1602, in which case he must have begun his active life at a
very early age. In 1616, he was still in Portugal, contributing an intro-
ductory sonnet to Joao Baptista de Este's Consolacio christaa e Luz para
o povo Hebreo sobre os Psalmos do Real Profeta David...declarado no
sentido litteral3-his only known publication in Portuguese, though that
was presumably his native tongue.
Not long after this, the family finally left the Peninsula. A decade later,
the Poema de la Reyna Ester was published at Rouen: and within a year
or two we find both Gongalo and Joao Pinto Delgado figuring prominently
in a glamorous episode in the same city, the records concerning which
permit a final solution of the literary mystery with which we are here
concerned.

There was at this time settled at Rouen a considerable colony of

merchants from Spain and Portugal. A very large proportion of it-as of
all other settlements of the sort-was composed of Marranos, or New
Christians: descendants, that is, of those Jews who had been forcibly
converted to Christianity in Spain and Portugal many generations before,
but still maintained in the privacy of their homes their fidelity to the
faith of their fathers4. The nucleus at Rouen was at this time one of the
most important in France, second only to those at Bordeaux and Bayonne.
1 Possibly Joao Pinto Delgado I was the author of the Portuguese translation of Petrarch
to which Barbosa Machado refers.
2 Sousa Viterbo, ubi supra.
3 Lisbon, Pedro Craesbeek, 1616. The fact of contributing commendatory verses to a
work of this description is not necessarily a proof of orthodoxy: it may have been sheer
camouflage.
4Cf. my History of the Marranos (London and Philadelphia, 1932).

This content downloaded from 186.19.68.254 on Sun, 22 May 2016 21:37:22 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
22 Joao Pinto Delgado-A Literary Disentanglement
A contemporary document gives a minute description of its life and of the
persons who omposed it: and among these the family which concerns us
here takes a prominent part. It is as well to allow the deponent (Pierre
d'Acarie, Judge of the Ecclesiastical Court) to use his own words':
I have diligently enquired concerning the life, practices, and religion of Gonsalvus
del Gado, and of John Pinto del Gado, his son. The following is the evidence which
I have received from persons worthy of trust, true Christians and Catholics, both
Spanish and Portuguese:
'Gonsalvus del Gado and his son, John Pinto del Gado, never lived in the parish of
St. Stephen des Tonneliers of this city, but for many years in the parish of St. Vincent,
and afterwards in that of St. Egidius... .John Pinto has another brother at Hamburg,
who is there publicly circumcised and is a Rabbi or a Doctor of the Jewish Law. He
also lived in this city for some years, under the name Diego Pinto. At this time, he
informed a trustworthy person that he had been educated in the Jewish religion by his
father, Gonsalvo. This same John Pinto, by reason of his Jewish perfidy, has disputed
with certain Spanish and Portuguese Catholics. He used to assert that our Lord Jesus
Christ could not be both God and man, to deny the Trinity, and to practise the cere-
monies of the Law. He studied the Hebrew language here diligently with two Rabbis,
and used to communicate by letter with the Rabbis of Venice and other synagogues.
Catholics living here, both Spanish and Portuguese, all considered him to be a Rabbi
and Minister of the Jewish religion. Indeed he endeavoured to persuade the Portuguese
who came to this city to become converted from the faith of Christ to the Jewish
perfidy. By reason of his arts and pestilential teaching, certain of them denied Christ,
and through his work some fled to the synagogues of Holland and of Hamburg, where
they might profess Judaism more freely and completely. More especially, there was a
certain Elizabeth Pereira, whom he sent, with her three elder children, to Hamburg
'to serve God purely' as he put it....The Catholics here suspected him to be circum-
cised, because the Judaisers always invited him to their marriages and funerals. When
Mantua was stormed [in 1630], he collected much money on behalf of the Jewish
fugitives. The sums collected he gave to those from Holland, Leghorn, Venice, and
other synagogues who passed through this place....'
On the basis of this testimony, it is possible to disentangle finally the
confusion which has hitherto ruled concerning the Pinto Delgado family,
and more particularly the career of its most famous member, Joao. There
seem to have been two persons in the family who bore the name, grand-
father and grandson respectively. The former is apparently identical
with the worthy from Tavira who flourished between 1530 and 1591, and
whose career is outlined in the standard works of reference. His son,
Gongalo Pinto Delgado (the relationship is made plain by the deposition
of Balthazar da Costa), must have been born about 1560. He left Portugal
in his youth, and lived for some time in Antwerp. Subsequently, he
returned to Portugal, where he was to be found from 1588 onwards.
Early in the following century he settled in Rouen, where he professed
Judaism semi-overtly.
His son, Joao Pinto Delgado II (born after 1582), was the famous man
of letters. In view of the fact that he spent so large a proportion of his life
1 Royal Archives at Brussels, Office Fiscal de Brabant, liasse 924 bis. The original is in
dog-latin.

This content downloaded from 186.19.68.254 on Sun, 22 May 2016 21:37:22 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 CECIL ROTH 23

outside the Peninsula, it is a little surprising that his command of Spanish

was so perfect. It is, however, out of the question that the Poema de la
Reyna Ester was in fact a posthumous work of his grandfather and
homonym: for another source provides us with definite proof of the fact
that the poet flourished in the seventeenth and not the sixteenth century.
Among the commendatory verses prefixed to the first volume of the
medical works of Zacutus Lusitanus, the famous Portuguese physician
(alias Manoel Alvares), which appeared between 1636 and 1638, there is a
poem by the author's friend, Joao Pinto Delgado (In observantiae et amoris
gratiam scribebat amicissimus et perdoctus Joannes Pintus Delgado-). The
poet and the physician were therefore contemporaries, and the former
must be identical with the doughty religious propagandist, who was living
about this time at Rouen-the same city at which the poems were pub-
lished. The dedication of the work to the Cardinal Richelieu is thus
plainly from the hand of the author and not, as had previously been the
inevitable conclusion, from that of the editor. Under these circumstances
it is no longer necessary to imagine (as is hinted by some earlier authorities2)
that the work in question must have been a re-issue of an earlier edition-
issued presumably some thirty or forty years before.
With regard to the poet's life at Rouen, a good deal that is new may
now be added. Notwithstanding their suspected orthodoxy (concerning
which we have seen such intimate details above), he and his father played
a prominent part in the municipal life of the city, occupying important
places in the judicature and the civic administration3. In the foreign
mercantile colony, they were figures of first importance. Outwardly, they
were careful to preserve the mask of orthodoxy, being well known to the
cures of the parishes of St Vincent and St glgide and punctilious in their
religious observances. In 1632, however, a fierce quarrel broke out in the
Spanish and Portuguese colony of Rouen. The details do not concern us
here4. The upshot of it was, however, that one section was denounced to
the authorities as Judaisers by the other (whose own orthodoxy was, as a
matter of fact, by no means above question). Joao Pinto Delgado and
his father of course belonged to the former group, being specifically
mentioned as their head in all the official depositions.
1 Maximiano Lemos, Zacuto Lusitano: a sua vida e a sua obra (Oporto, 1909), pp. 246-50.
2 J. Amador de los Rios, ubi supra; A. de Castro, Historia de los Judios en Espaia,
p. 195.
3 Brussels, Royal Archives, Office Fiscal de Brabant, 924 bis.
4 I have described the story in detail in a fully documented study based on the Archives
of Brussels and of Lisbon: 'Les Marranes a Rouen: un chapitre ignor6 de l'histoire des
Juifs de France,' conveniently buried in the Revue des Etudes Juives, 1929, pp. 114-55.
Reference may be had to this for original text of many of the documents upon which the
present study is based.

This content downloaded from 186.19.68.254 on Sun, 22 May 2016 21:37:22 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 24 Joao Pinto Delgado-A Literary Disentanglement
Under the circumstances, the authorities had no alternative but to
commence proceedings. The colony was thrown into consternation: for
the penalty for apostasy from Christianity, even in France, might well
be death. The family which had notoriously taken the lead in all heretical
activities plainly stood in the greatest danger. Joao Pinto Delgado paid
a flying visit to Paris, with his wife, to see whether anything could be
done. Failing in this, they made their way to Antwerp. Here they were
joined by the rest of the family. Not long after, a junior member returned
secretly to Rouen, where he destroyed a number of letters and papers
which might have provided dangerous evidence. He did not perform his
task very thoroughly, however, for, during the course of the subsequent
perquisitions, a scroll of the Law, in Hebrew, was actually discovered in
the house.

Meanwhile, half of the Rouen suspects had sought safety in flight: the
others were transferred under arrest to Paris. Here they brought counter-
charges against their enemies to precisely the same effect as those levelled
against themselves-viz. of dubious orthodoxy and secret fidelity to
Judaism. This was backed up by ecclesiastical certificates testifying to
their own impeccability, fortified no doubt by gifts of money. Finally, as
the result of the payment of an enormous bribe to the authorities, they
were released, and the Marrano colony at Rouen knew another brief
period of prosperity1.
A number of the fugitives returned and re-established themselves-
among them Gon9alo Pinto Delgado, who continued resident there for a
few years. His more distinguished son, however, preferred to remain in
his new home in Antwerp-still under the disguise of Catholicism. As a
matter of course, he and other members of the family sent to Rouen
asking the cure of their former parish, St fRtienne des Tonneliers, for a
certificate of orthodoxy and good behaviour from the religious point of
view. This he had little difficulty in obtaining2. The Vicar-General of the
diocese, however, was not satisfied, and wrote to Pierre d'Acarie, Judge
of the Ecclesiastical Court of Rouen, for further details. We have already
seen to what effect the latter replied. To his letter, he added copies of all
the principal documents in the case: and it is to this accident that the

1 Among its most important members in the following period was Antonio Enriquez
Gomez [Enrique Enriquez de Paz], the famous playwright, and his son Diego Basurto, and
above all Manuel Fernandes Villareal, Portuguese Consul-General in France, a prolific
writer, and one of the most eminent of all victims of the Inquisition. Cf. Ramos Coelho,
'Manuel Fernandes Villarreal e o seu processo,' in O Occidente, 1894 (also published
separately), and Ribeiro Guimaries in his Summario de varia historia, vol. v.
2 The actual document, as yet unpublished, is in the Royal Archives at Brussels, Office
Fiscal de Brabant, liasse 924 bis.

This content downloaded from 186.19.68.254 on Sun, 22 May 2016 21:37:22 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 CECIL ROTH 25

story of this whole astounding episode, forgotten for three centuries, is

now able to be reconstructed. It seems that Joao Pinto Delgado sub-
sequently became known publicly as a Jew, for he is referred to by
Miguel de Barrios by his Jewish name of Moses', and the surname of
Delgado has since been a common one in the communities of London and
of Amsterdam. Yet his writings, though so deeply coloured by the Old
Testament, are by no means limited in their interest. The circumstances
of their publication, in a land in which Judaism was still a proscribed
faith, and with a dedication to a Prince of the Church, saved them, of
course, from too obvious a bias. But, in any case, Joao Pinto Delgado
was too great a poet to be narrowly sectarian. His intense sincerity, his
depth of feeling, his rich imagery, his grace, his versatility, his perfect
command of language, rank him high among the writers of his age. His
source of inspiration, on the other hand, introduces into Spanish literature
a touch reminiscent of the English poets of the period-of George Herbert
or of John Donne-who found in the Bible a fount, not only of religious
comfort, but also of poetic inspiration.
CECIL ROTH.
LONDON.

1 Relacion de los Poetas, etc. (Amsterdam, 1683), p. 54.

This content downloaded from 186.19.68.254 on Sun, 22 May 2016 21:37:22 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms