Medieval Leeches in 15th-Century French Manuscript - (The Morgan Library)
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Sources:
The Travels of Mendes Pinto, edited and translated by Rebecca D. Catz. University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Hart, Thomas R. “Style and Substance in the Peregrination.” Portuguese Studies 2 (1986): 49–55.
Hart, Thomas R. “True or False: Problems of the ‘Peregrination.’” Portuguese Studies 13 (1997): 35–42.
Rubiés, Joan-Pau. "The Oriental Voices of Mendes Pinto, or the Traveller as Ethnologist in Portuguese India." Portuguese Studies 10 (1994): 24–43.
Script:
When last we spoke, the Pinto narrative had turned down an aisle ostensibly stocking vengeance, but the products displayed on its shelves turned out mostly to be piracy.
When last we spoke, revenge had at last been achieved, the Portuguese pirates finally striking a decisive blow against those especially unconscionable pirates who had so set back their colleague’s personal finances, and, to be fair, killed a number of compatriots, sunk their ship, and plunged Pinto himself into yet another of his trademark near-death experiences.
The question which followed this success of theirs would have to be “Were they done?” Were they finished with this life, or at least this session and season of it. Would they take their winnings, their hard-won victory both military and, in their eyes, moral, and go home, or at least back to Malacca, where de Faria and Pinto could pay back those debts of theirs. Would they?
Of course they would not.
The story would now turn toward the Chinese mainland, in Pinto’s depiction a land of great abundance, in all things really, but especially food. Passing along one river, he writes of, quote:
"...so many sugar mills and presses for making wine and oil out of so many different kinds of fruits and vegetables that there are entire streets all along both sides of the river two and three leagues long that are lined with these food processing plants, which is certainly enough to stagger the imagination.”
There were, to continue:
“...warehouses stocked with an infinite supply of provisions and just as many other rather long buildings, like storehouses, where they slice, salt, cure, and smoke every kind of game and meat that is found in the land. And they are piled high with stocks of ham, pork, bacon, ducks, geese, cranes, bustards, ostrich, venison, beef, buffalo, tapir, yak, horse, tiger, dog, fox, and the meat of every other kind of animal on earth, which left us all gasping with amazement, as one would naturally expect, at such an unusual, astounding, and almost incredibly marvelous thing, and many a time, [Pinto wrote], we would say that all the people in the world could not possibly consume that much food in one lifetime.”
There was abundance, but Pinto and the others would not exactly be partaking of it. His past, his very recent past, would again be catching up with him. That theme of sin and punishment would reemerge, and it would send him across China, but in far from any circumstances that he would have chosen for himself.
Today, we talk about those circumstances.
Hello, and welcome. My name is Devon, and this is Human Circus: Journeys in the Medieval World, the history podcast that journeys that medieval world and sometimes stretches into the period just after it, following the stories of its travellers. And it is a podcast that is supported by a Patreon, one where you can come aboard for as little as a dollar a month or as much as makes sense for you, and whatever that number is, you can enjoy your podcast listening early and without advertising, and you can also hear extra mini episodes, recent examples of which have covered early Portuguese diplomatic engagement in China, the journey of a 16th-century celebrity elephant, and a certain fragrant wood, highly valued in Pinto’s time and still is in ours.
And now, back to the story, back to the Fernao Mendes Pinto story.
When last we left him, Pinto was coming away from a period of piracy, a lucrative one, if one characterized by some downs along with the ups, being marooned on an island and losing everything they had, that sort of thing. He was also coming away from a successful bit of vengeance, the killing of that treacherous pirate, not like their good selves, who had so badly set them back.
But all of that accomplished, what would they be doing next, Pinto, de Faria, and the rest. Would they be making their safe and secure return to Malacca, there to return to slightly more regular business? As I said a moment ago, and as you could surely have guessed, they would not.
They’d be recovering themselves for a time, dining and resupplying in port—there’d be five months of fishing, falconry, hunting, and sport for de Faria, and a banquet in his honour, all very pleasant—but then they’d get wind of another prospect, or more than one actually. There’d be talk first of certain mines—there’d already been a lot of talk in Pinto’s narrative of prosperous mining regions, always just a little out of reach or out of the way, always tantalizingly easy to be had by a few boats of armed men willing to apply themselves—but they’d pivot to another possibility. An island, one where members of Chinese royalty were entombed in golden chapels, and among golden idols. They were told “that the only trouble or difficulty they would encounter was no more than that of loading the ships.” They were told, quote, “many other things of such great majesty and splendour that,” Pinto said, “I will pass over for fear they may raise doubts in the mind of the reader.”
More doubts, I suppose, than were already thrown up by the proposed tomb raiding and the trouble it would most certainly bring them, or perhaps just different ones.
Now, quote:
“...since Antonio de Faria was by nature a very curious person, and not wholly devoid of greed either, [not that you needed telling at this stage], he immediately became so taken with the idea of this Chinese [island] that, on … word alone, without any other proof, he decided to throw all caution to the winds and undertake this voyage; and he was unwilling to seek anyone else’s advice on the matter, which scandalized a few of his friends somewhat, and not without reason.”
And you can see why, given that a number of those friends were presumably the same who had previously pushed to end the whole venture and head home, back during last episode when it seemed that achieving revenge was a vain hope. When you consider how likely all of this was to end in yet more disaster, in the Pinto narrative in particular, you can, again, see why.
But there was money to be made, and lost, ships to be sunk, treasures to be taken from those ever so tempting imperial tombs, so Pinto and the others were going to be headed off to that island.
Calempluy, it was called, though neither I nor anyone else, so far as I can tell, knows exactly where that was supposed to be. There are some who place it in Korea, then flowing from early to mid-Joseon period, so perhaps not China at all.
It was the spring of 1542 when they set sail in a pair of boats chosen in number and kind for being ocean worthy and unlikely to attract attention. We are not talking about Portuguese carracks here.
There was passage, on the way, through a heavily trafficked straight, busy enough with large ships that de Faria apparently had second thoughts about the entire venture and wished to turn back, but another man on board, who, Pinto says, was Chinese, talked him down. It was the same man who had told de Faria about the island in the first place.
“It's too late … for your lordship or anyone else in our company to talk about sins,” he told him. I warned you publicly before we set out that the risks would be enormous, and for me more than you. If we’re caught, they will only kill you once, but they won’t be satisfied with just that for me. He offered de Faria a safer but much longer course, which de Faria gratefully accepted, though there would be other outbursts of misgivings from him on the voyage.
Those grumblings aside, the trip saw stops near hostile residents who rushed down to the water where they anchored and made it very clear with menacing gesticulations that they should move along. It saw a stop with no residents at all, something de Faria found even more ominous, in his search for someone who could confirm where they were and where they were headed. It saw them reach a bay “teeming with fish and serpents” of which one who knew of the area told many incredible and apparently dreadful things, about the sea life and also “about what could be heard in the night, especially during the interlunar periods of November, December, and January, when the rain storms begin and darkness sets in.”
Pinto noted the “blanket fish,” likely a type of ray, the huge lizards with rows of spines and protruding teeth like a boar’s, and, quote, “some other dark black fish resembling the sea devil, but so monstrously large that the head alone was more than six hand spans across, and when swimming with their fins spread out, they measured more than a fathom around.” The nights were full of, quote, “such a weird chorus of howls, grunts, and snorts rising from the water, along with the barking noises of the sea horses coming from the beach,” that Pinto could not put it into words.
There were sightings of wildlife on the hunt, which delighted the Portuguese. There was an encounter with a cattle trading folk who particularly fascinated de Faria, though Pinto writes that their manner of speech was disconcerting. There was a long stretch of river during which they saw no sign of anyone at all, save for fires far inland on a few of the nights. There is a slightly unreal or fantastical feel about the entire passage.
Reaching the ocean again, the company was in rough shape, underfed and catastrophically undersupplied. They ran 13 days on meagre rations of daily rice and then helped themselves to what turned out to be the storehouse of a charitable venture, taking “rice and beans, many pots full of honey, smoked ducks, onions, garlic, and sugarcane,” and no doubt really endearing themselves to the locals, the ones whose attention they were still trying to avoid, shying away from ships whenever they saw them, particularly in numbers.
At some point, the man on whose guidance and expertise they had been relying on, the one whose mention of the island had launched this whole venture, became uncertain as to where exactly they were. Under de Faria’s threat that he better become certain quickly, and provide some reason for everyone else to also, the man opted instead to slip away in the night. And when de Faria left the boat to go searching for him, he returned to find that the majority of the Chinese sailors who had been along had also felt it better to abandon the mission and leave when they could. It was a little unsettling, and none who remained were happy about the situation, but it was decided that they would press on, with little else to be done, some 80 days in. They had not exactly been “around the world” in that time, but they had come a long way to have nothing to show for it.
So on they went.
It was on the 83rd day after departure that this somewhat diminished “they” reached their destination, and they were amazed by what they saw. Circling the island, they took in the walls, well worked in cut stone slabs shaped so that they seemed all of one piece, a jasper “rope” running along the wall’s midriff as if round a monk’s robe, “an infinite number of cast-iron monsters, holding hands like dancer,” exquisitely wrought arches that their eyes could hardly get enough of, groves of citrus, and the chapels, as the text has them, that they had come so very far for. Under cover of darkness, de Faria took a party ashore and into one of those chapels.
In the scene that follows, the Portuguese found what they were looking for, more or less. Coffins that, when broken open, yielded up great quantities of silver goods, and no one of note or strength sufficient to stop them or otherwise do anything about it. De Faria was confronted by a solitary caretaker, a hermit, and an infirm and elderly one at that. The man could hardly prevent them from going about their rather unpleasant business, but he did let them know what he thought of it, and of them, and Pinto again put words of criticism to paper through the mouths of non-Portuguese speakers.
The man referred to the looters as “a pack of hungry dogs … whom, it seem[ed] to [him], all the silver in the world could never satisfy.” He urged Pinto against the sin he was committing, urged him, at a minimum, to at least have his men pick up and respectfully handle the bones of saints that they were currently allowing to tumble about the floor in their haste to get at the treasure they craved. He decried their, quote “inborn wickedness and feigned virtue,” and spoke regretfully of the hell that would surely follow them in this life and take them in the next for what they did. They might as well also pillage all the other chapels, he exclaimed, for then they would at least sink to the bottom all the faster and have it done with.
Those other chapels would need to wait for another day though, as for now, the Portuguese were bundling back to the ships with what silver they had won. The old hermit, they left unharmed behind them, for he was hardly in any shape to do anything that would hinder them. The next day looked very much as though it was set to be a profitable one, which of course means that they would be enjoying no such thing.
The old hermit was indeed old and unwell, but not so much so that he could not crawl over to one of the other chapels after they’d left, not so much so that he couldn’t find someone to send word of what was happening, not so much so, that de Faria wasn’t shaken awake in the night to the sight of a signal fire spreading and confirmation from the Chinese aboard that it was indeed an alarm that had been rung, that their presence was known, and that they very much needed to go.
De Faria was not quick to accept this reality. He raged, beside himself, scaled the wall and rushed back and forth on the island, with no real purpose. Only when he’d happened upon someone who he could take captive and question did he accept that the alert had gone out. He began, quote, “tearing at his beard and beating his breast for having lost, through his own carelessness and ignorance, such a great thing as he had undertaken, if only he had carried it through to the end.” They could not now remain and merrily empty out those other buildings of silver. They had to leave, and eventually even de Faria knew this to be true.
You sense a bit of the panic in the scene, those on the boats itching to get going, de Faria running about in the dark having not listened to reason. Finally, they were all on the same page and aboard the ships, but punishment, of a kind, would find them. And it would not take long.
They went from that place, seven days at a sprint, morale exceedingly low and stopping only very briefly for provisions before they carried on. Having gone by estuary for a time, they were back out on the open waters when the typhoon struck them.
In their little ships, and left shorthanded, they soon knew that there was little hope. They opted to let themselves roll coastwards, quote, “taking it for the lesser of two evils to be dashed against the rocks than to drown at sea.” They jettisoned all they could, and “so great was the madness with which we went about this arduous task,” Pinto wrote, “that even the provisions and crates of silver went over the side. And after that, we cut away both masts, for by then the wind was on the quarter, and we ran that way under bare poles for the rest of the day.”
In the darkness of night they heard a cry of “Lord God, have mercy!” coming from de Faria’s vessel, as if it were sinking. They called out in answer, but got no further response, as if it had already gone down. Pinto, aboard the remaining ship, was there when the hull cracked open and began to flood, was still there, when they were dashed against a rocky point and the ship came apart.
Of the Portuguese who had been aboard the two ships, only 14 were left. Of de Faria, whose desires had driven them, first in regaining his lost loans and investment, then in revenge, and finally in this latest acquisitive venture, there was no sign.
As for what became of Pinto and the others, and for where his story took him next, we will see after this short break.
…
Pinto’s latest shipwreck forms a double-purpose in his narrative. It visits punishment upon him and his fellows for their latest sins, those aboard that island, and it sets up their adventures, their trials, in mainland China.
By one assessment, that of Hélder Macedo, Pinto’s “prodigiously imagined reconstruction of the China he actually observed is used as a critical Utopian mirror of his own world and its values.” Others are less sure about the “actually observed” part.
By Joan-Pau Rubiés reading, for example, Pinto’s knowledge of China, particularly its interior, could only have been very superficial and in sharp contrast to his actual experience of the coast and especially that of Sumatra and the Southeast Asian mainland. To the interior of China, he added little new to the contemporary Portuguese image, relying instead on a mix of oral reports and written records such as those of the Dominican Gaspar da Cruz and Melchior Nunes Barreto, a Jesuit. He added little new, but that was not to say that he had little to say.
His story went on, but now with Antonio de Faria now removed from it, a character who some readers have seen as inseparable from Pinto’s own, a kind of avatar for particular urges and characteristics within himself, and perhaps not the ones he was proudest of.
His story featured the grisly sight of the dead washed up on the shoreline, grisly work, to bury them in the sand against the coming of predators. It featured their start north and an attempted swim across an estuary which killed three more, two of them brothers, all from the same northern Portuguese town. Those that remained, 11 Portuguese and three enslaved of unspecified origins, wept of exhaustion, grief, and despair. Then they went on.
Their wanderings were guided next by the sight of fire in the pre-dawn light. It brought them to some charcoal makers who kindly gave them a little rice and pointed them on their way to a nearby village. There, they were aided and clothed in one rest house of the poor and sent on to another, with more resources, in a larger town.
Everywhere they went, there were helpful folk who gave what they could and gathered resources that they themselves didn’t have to provide. One spoke of the nature of the world, “a poor and miserable place, no good can be expected of it, whereas God is infinitely rich and a friend to the poor.” Everywhere, they lied about their identity, understandably not owning up to having been sunk after a bit of grave robbing and desecration, instead once more claiming the kingdom of Siam as their origin, shipwreck the disaster that had struck them, Nanking their goal, where they desired to sign on as oarsmen.
They were generally treated with great generosity, if also sometimes gently mocked for eating with their hands rather than with, quote, “two little sticks that look like spindles.” But at one location they were taken for thieves, chased, beaten, bound, and thrown in a cistern swarming with leeches. By the time a traveller from a village they’d already visited happened by and spoke on their behalf, seeing them set free, they dripped as much with blood as water from two days spent among those leeches, really bringing the Stand by Me memories rushing back for those of a certain generation. At another, they were again shouted at as thieves, and they made themselves scarce very quickly for fear of again seeing the leeches.
They plodded on, the overall tone here one of bleak gloom and depression.
There was a night that they spent on a dunghill, and another, in rather better circumstances, in a building where the image of a man, vaguely tortoise-like, was displayed upside-down on the wall. “Everything about me is like this” was written nearby, apparently a reference to the illusory and deceptive nature of this world. They went frequently astray, having no one to guide them more directly as they zigzagged about the land. They went village to village, avoiding the larger cities and towns for fear of authorities who might trouble them, but they stumbled into view of those authorities anyways, and despite all their efforts to avoid it.
They had gone on for around two months, asking here and there for the assistance of others in order to live, when they had the misfortune to be spotted in doing so by a kind of travelling judge, who just happened to see them and wave them over to his window where he demanded that they explain themselves. A nearby law clerk who intervened to characterize them as “idlers and vagrants who spent [their] lives loafing about in people’s doorways” did not do them any favours.
What followed this chance encounter most immediately was shackles, whips, and starvation for 26 hard days, 26,000 days Pinto said it felt like. What followed in a longer sense, was a sprawling story of legal entanglement and misfortune, only ending in the most unlikely of fashions, and with the intervention of an old friend of the podcast. Not an individual, I should say, but a set of figures, a group, often an overwhelming military threat. It’s an aspect of Pinto’s Chinese section of the work that is often pointed out, that they would appear here far removed from their usual context, as if having moved through time to again storm through this land. I feel like I’ve already given too much away.
We’ll cut this episode a little short here, and I’ll be back again soon so that we can reacquaint ourselves with those old friends, see where Pinto and the others’ legal troubles were heading, and meet another somewhat unlikely figure, this one, like Pinto, Portuguese, though not someone we have met in the series so far.
All of that and more next time. For now, thank you for listening. I’ll talk to you then.