Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 12.djvu/357

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PORTUGAL


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PORTUGAL


in Portugal, but a marriage could be declared null for reasons allowed by the Church. The canonical im- pediments were recognized by the Code. Civil mar- riage and interment were permitted, but made small headway, and the parish registers continued to be almost "universally used, though there was a civil register of births, marriages, and deaths. The courts could decree separation of persons and goods (1) in case of adultery by the wife, (2) in case of adultery and desertion by the husband, or pubUc scandal; (.3) when one of the parties was condemned to a life penalty, or (4) when one of the parties had been guilty of outrageous cruelty to the other. Children born out of wedlock were legitimated by the subse- quent marriage of their parents, when the latter formally recognized them, or when the children them- selves obtained a judicial sentence in their favour.

Cemeteries were provided and controlled by the municipalities in the chief places of each district. Outside of these, they were established at the ex- pense of the parishioners by the parish council, to which they belonged. The death penalty has long been abolished in Portugal, which may account in part for the large number of murders. Criminals sentenced to long terms of imprisonment were sent to the Penitenciaria in Lisbon and there are casas dc correcQao, or reformatories, for small boys and girls. Good Shepherd homes for fallen women ex- isted at Lisbon and Oporto, but were suppressed by the Provisional Government at the time of the Revo- lution. Charitable institutions abounded, and Por- tugal had, under the Monarchy, some 370 Miaeri- cordias and hospitals. In the various districts of Lis- bon, the cozinhas cconomicas, an institution founded and largely supported by the late Duchess of Pal- mella, provided cheap meals for the poor, and Queen Amelia's crusade against tuberculosis led to the estab- lishment of free consulting hospitals and sanatoria in different parts of the country.

As a result of the encyclicals of Leo XIII on Chris- tian d(>mocracy, the movement for the establishment of Catholic circles for workingraen was inaugurated in Portugal, and these mutual-aid societies existed in the principal centres of population, furnished education to the workmen and their children, and kept them together by conferences, concerts, and excursions. The associations of Catholic youth in Lisbon and Oporto also deserve mention. But the sweeping measures inaugurated by the Republican Government effected a complete rupture of the former relations between Church and State, and the status of the various Catholic organizations, aside from the religious congregations (which w-ere im- mediately dissolved), has become very uncertain.

Chawfubd, Portugal, Old and New (London, 1S80); Idem, Round the Calendar in Portugal (London, 1890); Stephens, Portugal (London, 1908): Oliveira Martins, lUstoria de Portugal, 4th ed. (Lisbon, 1894); Idem, Portugal Contemporaneo (Lisbon, 1881): Herculano, Historia de Portugal (Lisbon); De SouzA. Hi.^tnria Genealogica da Casa Real Portugueza (Lisbon, 1735-48); De Almeida, Historia da Igreja em Portugal I (Coim- bra, 1910); De Andrade. Portugal Economico (Lisbon. 1902); Da Costa and De Castko, Le Portugal an point de vue agricole (Lisbon, 1900); Notaa aobre Portugal (published bv the Rio de Janeiro National Exposition of 1908, Lisbon, 1908); Codigo Civil; Codigo Administrati'DO,

Edgar Prestage.

Portuguese Literature. — The Portuguese lan- guage was developed gradually from the lingua ruslica spoken in the countries which formed part of the Roman Empire and, both in morphology and syntax, it represents an organic transformation of Latin without the direct intervention of any foreign tongue. The sounds, grammatical forms, and syn- tactical tyi)es, with a few exceptions, are derived from Latin, but the vocabulary has absorbed a num- ber (if Germanic and Arabic words, and a few have Celtic or Iberian origin. Before the close of the mid- dle ages the language threatened to become almost as


abbreviated as PVench, but learned writers, in their passion for antiquity, re-approximated the vocabulary to Latin. The Renaissance commenced a separation between literary men and the people, between the written and spoken tongue, which with seme excep- tions lasted until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Then the Romanticists went back to tradi- tion and drew on the poetry and every day speech of the people, and, thanks to the writings of such men as Almeida-Garrett and Camillo Castello Branco, the literary language became national once again.

I. Early Verse. — An indigenous popular poetry existed at the beginning of Portuguese history, but the first literary activity came from Provence. It was quickened by the accession of King Alfonso III, who had been educated in France, and the productions of his time are preserved in the "Cancioneiro de Ajuda", the oldest collection of peninsular verse. But the most brilliant period of Court poetry, represented in the "Cancioneiro da Vaticana", coincided w'ith the reign of King Denis, a cultivated man, who welcomed singers from all parts and himself wrote a large num- ber of erotic songs, charming ballads, and pastorals. This thirteenth century Court poetry, which deals mainly with love and satire, is usually copied from Provencal models and conventional, but, where it has a popular form and origin, it gains in sincerity what it loses in culture. By the middle of the fourteenth cen- tury troubadour verse was practically dead, but the names of some few bards have survived, among them Vasco Peres de Camoens, ancestor of the great epic poet, and Macias "the enamoured". Meanwhile the people were elaborating a ballad poetry of their own, the body of which is known as the Romanceiro. It consists of lyrico-narrative poems treating of war, chivalry, adventure, religious legends, and the sea, many of which have great beauty and contain traces of the varied civilizations which have existed in the peninsula. When the Court poets had exhausted the artifices of Provencal lyricism, they imitated the poetry of the people, giving it a cert;iin A-ogue which lasted until the Classical Renaissance. It was then thrust into the background, and though cultivated by a few, it remained unknown to men of letters until the nineteenth century, when Almeida-Ciarrett began his literary revival and collected folk poems from the mouths of the peasantry.

II. Early Prose. — Prose developed later than verse and first appeared in the fourteenth century in the shape of short chronicles, lives of saints, and gen- ealogical treatises called "Livros de Linhagens". Portugal did not elaborate her own chansones de gestes, but gave prose form to foreign medieval poems of romantic adventure; for example, the "History of the Holy Grail" and "Amadis of Gaul". The first three books of the latter probably received their present shape from Joao Lobeira, a troubadour of the end of the thirteenth century, though this original has been lost and only the Spanish version remains. The "Book of iEsop" also belongs to this period. Though the cultivated taste of the Renaissance affected to despise the medieval stories, it adopted thcni with alterations as a homage to classical anti(|uit y. Hence came the cycle of the "Palmerins" and the "Chronica do Emperador Clarimundo " of Joao de Barros. The medieval romance of chivalry gave place to the pas- toral novel, the first example of which is the "Sau- dades" of Bernardim Ribeiro, followed by the "Diana" of Jorge de Montemor, which had a nu- merous progeny. Later in the sixteenth century Gongalo Fernandes Trancoso, a fascinating story- teller, produced his "Historias de Proveito e Exemplo".

III. Fifteenth Century. — A. Prose. — A new epoch in literature dates from the Revolution of 138.3-5. King John wrote a book of the chase, his sons. King Duarte and D. Pedro, composed moral