Gabriel painted on the poop, fell on their knees in
token of their Christianity, which had been preached to them in the
primitive times, though now corrupted.
token of their Christianity, which had been preached to them in the
primitive times, though now corrupted.
Camoes - Lusiades
[117] "There were," says Osorius, "ten men in the fleet under sentence
of death, whose lives had been spared on condition that, wherever they
might be landed, they should explore the country and make themselves
acquainted with the manners and laws of the people. "
During the reign of Emmanuel, and his predecessor John II. , few
criminals were executed in Portugal. These great and political princes
employed the lives which were forfeited to the public in the most
dangerous undertakings of public utility. In their foreign expeditions
the condemned criminals were sent upon the most hazardous undertakings.
If death was their fate, it was the punishment they had merited: if
successful in what was required, their crimes were expiated; and often
they rendered their country the greatest atonement for their guilt which
men in their circumstances could possibly make. What multitudes every
year, in the prime of their life, end their days in Great Britain by the
hands of the executioner! That the legislature _might_ devise means to
make the greatest part of these lives useful to society is a fact, which
surely cannot be disputed; though, perhaps, the remedy of an evil so
shocking to humanity may be at some distance.
[118] Semele was the mother of Bacchus, but, as he was prematurely born,
Jupiter, his father, sewed him up in his thigh until he came to
maturity. --_Ed. _
[119]
_On it, the picture of that shape he placed,
In which the Holy Spirit did alight,
The picture of the dove, so white, so chaste,
On the blest Virgin's head, so chaste, so white. _
In these lines, the best of all Fanshaw's, the happy repetition "so
chaste, so white," is a beauty which, though not contained in the
original, the present translator was unwilling to lose.
[120] See the Preface.
[121] When GAMA lay at anchor among the islands of St. George, near
Mozambique, "there came three Ethiopians on board (says Faria y Sousa)
who, seeing St.
Gabriel painted on the poop, fell on their knees in
token of their Christianity, which had been preached to them in the
primitive times, though now corrupted. " Barros, c. 4, and Castaneda, l.
i. c. 9, report, that the Portuguese found two or three Abyssinian
Christians in the city of Mombas, who had an oratory in their house. The
following short account of the Christians of the East may perhaps be
acceptable. In the south parts of Malabar, about 200,000 of the
inhabitants professed Christianity before the arrival of the Portuguese.
They use the Syriac language in their services, and read the Scriptures
in that tongue, and call themselves Christians of St. Thomas, by which
apostle their ancestors had been converted. For 1300 years they had been
under the Patriarch of Babylon, who appointed their _Mutran_, or
archbishop. Dr. Geddes, in his History of the Church of Malabar, relates
that Francisco Roz, a Jesuit missionary, complained to Menezes, the
Portuguese archbishop of Goa, that when he showed these people an image
of the Virgin Mary, they cried out, "Away with that filthiness, we are
Christians, and do not adore idols. "
Dom Frey Aleixo de Menezes, archbishop of Goa, "endeavoured to thrust
upon the church of Malabar the whole mass of popery, which they were
before unacquainted with. "--Millar's History of the Propag. of
Christianity.
