GÓIS, DAMIÃO DE

Portuguese humanist, musician, composer; b. Alenquer, 1502; d. Alenquer, 1574. While still a page at the court of King Manuel I, Góis found his interest in Eastern Christianity stimulated by Matthew, the Ambassador from Ethiopia (1514). This interest was further stirred in 1523, when, after his appointment to the Portuguese commercial headquarters at Antwerp, he became more directly familiar with the Eastern and Portuguese deeds therein. In 1529 he journeyed briefly through Eastern Europe and obtained information about the Lapps from John Magnus Gothus, Archbishop of Uppsala, then in exile in Danzig. This information inspired him to call attention to the missionary opportunities among the Lapps at a time when the Reformation was imminent. He also made information about the Ethiopians available in a Latin treatise, published without his knowledge in 1532 in Antwerp (printed in London the following year in an English translation by St. Thomas More's son, John).

After visiting Denmark and Poland, Góis registered (1531) at the University of Louvain. In 1533 he visited Erasmus in Freiburg im Breisgau, returning to Lisbon in expectation of his appointment as treasurer of India House. He became dissatisfied, however, and returned to Flanders the following year, spent several months with Erasmus in Freiburg, and proceeded to Padua, where he stayed until 1538. He returned to Flanders, married, and studied again at Louvain, where his definitive work, Fides, Religio, Moresque Aethiopum, was published in 1540 (English translation in Joannes Boemus, comp., The Manners, Lawes, and Customes of All Nations, tr. Edward Aston, London 1611). In it he incorporated material gathered in Lisbon from Ethiopia's second ambassador, Zagazabo, who had arrived in 1527 with Francisco Álvares.

Although the great book was reprinted several times in Northern Europe, its charity toward non-Latin Christianity displeased the Inquisition in Portugal, and it was condemned (1541). Moreover, Góis, who had been recalled to Lisbon from Belgium in 1543, returned only in 1545, an object of suspicion because of allegations concerning his Protestant associations abroad. In the meantime, however, a number of his brief works on Portugal and Portuguese deeds in the East were being published in Louvain: Commentarii Rerum Gestarum in India citra Gangem a Lusitanis Anno 1538 (1539); Hispania (1542); and De Bello Cambaico Ultimo Commentarii Tres (1549).

Góis's greatest work, Chrónica do Felicíssimo Rei Dom Emanuel, a long history of the reign of King Manuel (4 v. 1566–67), was followed in 1567 by his one-volume chronicle of Prince João (later King João II), Chronica do Principe Dom Ioam. Disparaging references in these works to the royal family and various nobles brought about his arrest by the Inquisition in 1571; the charges went back to his friendships with Protestants. He repented after a year and a half in prison, was released as a penitent, and died shortly afterward.

Bibliography: g. j. c. henriques, ed., Ineditos Goesianos, 2v. (Lisbon 1896–98). m. bataillon, O cosmopolitismo de Damião de Góis, tr. c. b. chaves (Lisbon 1938); this originally appeared as "Le Cosmopolitisme de Damião de Góis," in Revue de littérature comparée 18 (1938) 23–58, and was reprinted in his Études sur le Portugal au temps de l'humanisme (Coimbra 1952). f. m. rogers, The Quest For Eastern Christians: Travels and Rumor in the Age of Discovery (Minneapolis 1962).

[f. m. rogers]