The Santas Casas da Misericórdia in Asia, Africa and Brazil

Abstract

Portuguese chroniclers went to great lengths to stress the divine nature of the expansion. But even they became confused by the increasing presence of Mammon. The crusading zeal, not to say obsession, which had led to the capture of Ceuta in 1415, became blended with the realisation of the profits in gold and slaves to be gained from the regions of the Niger and Senegal rivers. Although the sixteenth-century chronicler, Joao de Barros, affirmed that the fort of S. Jorge da Mina (started in 1482) was the ‘foundation stone of the Church in the Orient’, in reality it was never more than a trading post.1 Exploratory probings along the west African coast and the psychological as well as physical passage beyond Cape Nun, culminated in the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope by Bartholomeu Dias in 1488. This maritime achievement had its terrestrial counterpart. Pero de Covilha left Lisbon in 1487 and travelled overland to the coast of Malabar, returning via the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the east coast of Africa where he was possibly the first European to visit Sofala. While in Cairo he managed to send to Dom Joao II a report containing details of the spice trade. He then went on to Abyssinia where he was held by the legendary Prester John. It is not certain if Dom Joao II ever saw this report; if he did the details of the spice trade must have weighed as heavily on the mind of the king, if not more so, as the physical achievement of the rounding of the Cape.