12
In the Bull of Nicholas V., Jan. 8, 1454, we find an his- torical statement so similar to those cited from Azurara and the documents quoted above that the conclusion is unavoid- able that it must have been supplied by Prince Henry in his petition to the Pope. It reads : " When long ago it had come to the knowledge of the Infant that never, or at least, not within the memory of man, had it been customary to sail the Ocean Sea in this manner toward the Southern and East- ern Shores, and that it was to that degree unknown to us of the West that we had no certain knowledge of the people of those parts, believing that he would do very great service to God, if by his efforts and activity the Sea itself should be opened to ships even to the Indians who are said to worship Christ^ and he might thus be able to come into relation with them and arouse them to help the Christians against the Saracens and other such enemies of the faith and to subdue continuously some heathen or pagan peoples living between slightly [deeply 2] corrupted with the teachings of the un- speakable Mahomet and to preach to them and to have preached to them the unknown name of the most sacred Christ, always armed however^ with royal authority since twenty-five years [of age *] he had never ceased to send al- most yearly a force from the peoples of these kingdoms with the greatest toils, dangers and expense in very swift ships, called caravels, to explore the Sea and the maritime provinces toward the Southern regions and the Antarctic Pole ; and so
1 The subjects of Prester John.
2 The text of the Alguns Documentos reads minime, while that in the BuLlarum CoUectio, Lisbon, 1707, reads ni'mium.
3 Tamen. This particle is omitted in Sixtns the Fourth's transcript of this document. This most involved sentence according to the punctuation in the Bullarum CoUectio contains 47 lines !
- "Regia tamen semper auctoritate munitus, a viginti qninque annis {,) citra
exercitum," etc. The reading in Alguns Documentos inserts a comma after annis, which is evidently a mistake. Citra goes with annis. In Sixtus Fourth's transcript [Bull. Coll. 32) ex tunc is found in place of citra. A viginti quinque annis probably refers to Prince Henry's age. Santarem, Recherches sur la Priority de la D€couverte de la Cote occidental d^Afrique, 204, translates it " depuis I'age de vingt-cinque ans," i. e., from 1419.
