The early history of Portuguese expansion reflected in individual fates: The atlantic islands and the African coast in supplications to the pope (ca. 1440-1510)

Abstract

This article makes use of the supplication registers in the archives of the Penitenzieria Apostolica –for a long time strictly locked away and inaccessible to research– in which people from the whole of Christendom turned to Rome for absolution or dispensations that were reserved to the pope. Many supplications, which had to start by relating the personal case in detail, contain allusions to historical events. Whoever had taken part in fighting as a cleric –forbidden of course– might perhaps describe episodes from the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the siege of Rhodes in 1480 or the battle of Pavia in 1525. Whoever had defied the papal embargo, which forbade supplying Muslims with materials essential to war, describes the goods and the circumstances of his Mediterranean trade. From the lowly perspective of personal experience, this article focuses on places and events of the early Portuguese expansion during the 15th century: the Azores, the Cape Verde Islands, the Guinea Islands etc., banishment to islands that were unpopulated and only just discovered; the sentencing of clerics to fight for Ceuta against the Muslims (they all used the pope as he were as an appellate body, this is the only reason why we know of them); husbands missing at sea; the role of the Order of Christ, and many other cases. Besides, from a source also long overlooked for the most part, the Roman customs registers, one finds references to the first arrivals in Rome of slaves, animals and goods from areas south of the Sahara, thus from Portuguese enterprises heading to the African west coast before reaching the Cape.