This article was downloaded by: [University of Birmingham]On: 15 November 2014, At: 00:35Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Journal of Medieval Iberian StudiesPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ribs20

Concepts of time in medieval Portugal:temporalities and simultaneities in theConto de AmaroHilário Franco Júnior aa Departamento de História , Universidade de São Paulo , BrazilPublished online: 18 Mar 2010.

To cite this article: Hilário Franco Júnior (2010) Concepts of time in medieval Portugal:temporalities and simultaneities in the Conto de Amaro , Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 2:1,51-76, DOI: 10.1080/17546551003619555

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17546551003619555

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to orarising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Journal of Medieval Iberian StudiesVol. 2, No. 1, January 2010, 51–76

ISSN 1754-6559 print/ISSN 1754-6567 online© 2010 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/17546551003619555http://www.informaworld.com

Concepts of time in medieval Portugal: temporalities and simultaneities in the Conto de Amaro

Hilário Franco Júnior*

Departamento de História, Universidade de São Paulo, BrazilTaylor and FrancisRIBS_A_462464.sgm10.1080/17546551003619555Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies1754-6559 (print)/1754-6567 (online)Original Article2010Taylor & Francis21000000January 2010HilárioFranco Júniorhilario.franco-jr@wanadoo.fr

The concept of time reveals a great deal about deep-rooted sentiments in society,and is therefore fundamental for any historical understanding that aspires to reachbeyond the superficial. A short and anonymous Portuguese tale of the fourteenthcentury – the Conto de Amaro – allows us to address the confluence of the mental,the religious, the cultural, and the social in its concepts of time. The Contoregisters the coexistence of various synchronicities, but an almost immobile formof time predominates, contrasting – not by chance – with the acceleratedtransformations of its time: the affirmation of the Portuguese monarchy, thedevelopment of the national language, a demographic crisis, territorial expansionoverseas, and criticism of traditional formalist spirituality.

Keywords: Amaro; Alcobaça; fourteenth century; time; synchronicities;immobility

The rich scriptorium at the former Cistercian Monastery of Alcobaça, whose hold-ings are now housed in the National Library in Lisbon, once contained a small textentitled Conto de Amaro, which, despite its availability in a number of moderneditions, has so far attracted very little attention.1 This lack of attention may be theresult of the fact that it seems a somewhat minor work in comparison with otherscontained in the same codex. It shares the company of several well-known hagio-graphic and devotional works – Barlaão e Josafá, Vida de Santo Aleixo, Morte deSão Jerônimo, Contemplação de São Bernardo, Visão de Túndalo – cited and retoldin other manuscripts, while the text in question stands entirely alone. It is also possi-ble that the lack of study devoted to the Conto de Amaro may stem from the fact thatit was long and mistakenly viewed as simply an abridged and adapted version of theNavigatio Sancti Brendani, of which there are two known Latin manuscripts inPortugal, one of which also comes from Alcobaça.2 Another factor posing obstaclesto the study of the Conto is its somewhat problematic dating. There has never beenunanimity from a palaeographical perspective, though the current tendency is to datethe manuscript to the fifteenth century, probably during the tenure of Abbot Estevão

*Email: hilario.franco-jr@wanadoo.fr1The text survives in a single manuscript (Ms. Alc. 462/CCLXVI), which has been publishedin four separate modern editions by Klob, Heinen, Zacherl, and Silva respectively (allquotations of Conto de Amaro in the present study are from Silva’s edition), and twounpublished theses by Pinto and Vasconcelos.2The dependence of the Conto upon the Navigatio is “highly untenable” according to Heinen,Die altportugiesische Amaro-Legende, 5. The Portuguese manuscripts of the Navigatio havebeen transcribed and translated by Nascimento, Navegação de S. Brandão, 80–209.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14

52 H. Franco Junior

de Aguiar (1431–46).3 Linguistically speaking, it is generally – though not unani-mously – agreed that the text is stylistically of an earlier date.4

Nevertheless, the text provides a range of elements for several interestingthemes, among them the conception of time. While the Portuguese manuscripts ofthe Navigatio Sancti Brendani reveal a temporal circularity derived from liturgicalpractice, as Aires Nascimento has shown, the Conto de Amaro would appear toreflect new concerns, attempting to capture time quantitatively.5 Indeed, this wouldbe very much in line with the contemporary progress of Aristotelian thought, forwhich time is “the numerical aspect of movement,”6 reflected in Portugal’s adoptionof the mechanical clock for the Cathedral of Lisbon in 1377 and of the designationusing the Christian era in 1422. Aristotelianism was still present in the work ofchroniclers like Fernão Lopes (c. 1378–1459) and Gomes Eanes de Zurara (1410–74), and at Alcobaça the library contained works by Thomas Aquinas, Aristotlehimself, and his commentators.7

The temporalities

When Amaro (the fictitious protagonist of the text) encounters a number of deadanimals on a small desert island during the first leg of his journey, a hermit explainsthat the slaughter had occurred eight days earlier, on the feast of Saint John. As SaintJohn’s Day falls on 27 December, we learn that the dialogue with the hermit takesplace on 3 January, and since we are told shortly before this episode that Amaro hadbeen traveling for eleven weeks before reaching the island, we can deduce that he hasbeen at sea since late October. At “midnight,” we are told, Amaro sets sail and arrivesat Five Castles Island, where he remains for the next seven weeks, that is, until 21

3Among those who have suggested the fourteenth century are Cornu, “Études de grammaireportugaise,” 334; Heinen, Die altportugiesische Amaro-Legende, 34 and 41; Vega, The SaintAmaro Legend, 2. Those opting for the fifteenth century include Esteves Pereira, “Visão deTúndalo,” 100; Martins, Estudos de literatura medieval, 278; Vasconcelos, “Conto deAmaro,” 128. The dating to Abbot Estêvão Aguiar’s tenure was suggested by Castro, “Vidasde santos,” 5–6, and accepted by Cepeda, Vidas e paixões dos apóstolos, LV, and by Silva,Conto de Amaro, 261.4For Martins, Estudos de literatura medieval, 29, the Conto belongs linguistically to the thirteenthcentury, while Klob, “A vida de sancto Amaro,” 504, and Silva, Conto de Amaro, 261, opt forthe fifteenth century. Leite de Vasconcelos, “Fabulário português,” 105, places the text in thesecond half of the fourteenth century, while Heinen, Die altportugiesische Amaro-Legende, 49,narrows it down to the last quarter of the fourteenth century. Dulles Allen, Two Old PortugueseVersions, 5, prefers the turn of the fourteenth to the fifteenth century.5Nascimento, “Navigatio Brandani: aventura e circularidade,” 215–23.6Aristotle, Physics, II, 277, and also I, 387. In the twelfth century, William of Conches wasstill defining time as “the movement of transitory things” (Glosae super Platonem, 170 and180). In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas insisted that “number is movement accordingto the previous and the subsequent” [“numerus motus secundum prius et posterius”] (In octolibros Physicorum Aristotelis, 283).7Gomes, Dicionário de Filosofia, 29. Though a little late in comparison with the rest ofEurope, Aristotelian thought also took a deep hold in Portugal, as can be seen from works likeLeal Conselheiro, written in 1437–38 by King Duarte, which cites the philosopher thirteentimes, on a par with Christ, Saint Paul and Saint Augustine. The weight which Aristotelianismcarried in Portugal can be gleaned from the fantastical genealogy given by Lucas de Tuy(1190?–1249), for whom Aristotle came from Hispania (Chronicon Mundi, 65), though it waslater changed to Portugal in the General Estoria commissioned by Alfonso X and begun in1271 (cited by Rico, Alfonso el Sabio, 206).

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 53

February. He then sails for Fonte Clara Island, arriving after “navigating veryquickly” [“singrar muito fortem te”] for an unspecified time.8 He spends seven weekson the island before setting sail once again “for a very long time” [“per muy grandestempos”].9

He arrives at the Desert Island one day after the feast day of Saint John the Baptist(on 24 June), when the lions and serpents have annihilated each other, and is advisedby the hermit to depart “this very night” [“esta noyte”] to escape the stench of therotting carcasses.10 We can gather from this that the dead animals are already at anadvanced stage of decomposition and that a number of days have passed since thecarnage. We can therefore assume that he leaves the island sometime in mid-July.Amaro arrives at the Val de Flores monastery the following morning, where he staysfor a period of forty days, which would take us up to late August, and therefore afterthe feast of the Assumption (15 August), which would certainly fit with the text’soverriding Marianism. From the monastery, Amaro proceeds to the Port of the FourHouses, where he follows the advice of Friar Leomites and stays for another month.By the time he leaves the monastery, after a sixteen-day stay, and arrives at Flor deDonas monastery, it is roughly early October. He arrives at the Earthly Paradise on thesame day as he leaves the monastery, so, all told, his voyage has taken about a year,give or take a few days.

At first glance, the impression we have is that the narrative is greatly concernedwith the chronological accuracy of the narrated events. However, this impression issoon dispelled when it comes to the encounter between Amaro and Valides, a saintlywoman who visits the Flor de Donas monastery three times a year, at Christmas,Easter (always somewhere between 22 March and 25 April) and the Pentecost (a feastday that falls between 10 May and 13 June). However, none of these dates matchesthe information previously given in the text. Therefore, little stress should be placedon these arbitrary details, a fact reinforced by the discrepancies with the Spanishversion. In the Spanish, Amaro passes six months at the Island of the Five Castles, andnot seven weeks as in the Portuguese text; and after his return from Paradise, Amarorests two months in a great city, a period reduced in the Spanish version to somedays.11 Therefore, contrary to initial appearances, chronological precision is not theprincipal focus of the narrator’s sense of time.

This becomes even clearer when we consider that Amaro’s voyage unfolds at differ-ent rhythms, the briefest of which corresponds to the day’s traveling (and its multiplesin weeks and months, and its submultiples in hours) in linear time, measured primarilyby the solar and lunar phases. On this small scale, the text quantifies time on variousoccasions, albeit in a form more symbolic than concrete. If the first leg of the voyage(to the small desert island strewn with slain wild beasts) took eleven weeks, it is becausethe number bears a negative connotation, being indicative of transgression, accordingto one source highly esteemed in the medieval world, especially so by the Iberians,

8Silva, Conto de Amaro, 266.9Silva, Conto de Amaro, 267.10Silva, Conto de Amaro, 267.11Klob, “A vida de sancto Amaro,” 505–6, raises these points, which become more importantif we consider the probable chronological proximity of the two texts; despite being printed in1552, the Spanish version “is written in a language much older than that of the time.” For thedifferences between the two texts, see Vega, The Saint Amaro Legend, 19–28, who alsotranscribes some versions of the Spanish tale, 206–88.

e

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14

54 H. Franco Junior

and well represented in Alcobaça, Isidore of Seville.12 On the other hand, the journeyto a positive destination, Fonte Clara Island (whose inhabitants live 300 years), tookseven weeks and was followed by a seven-week stay, seven being the number of theLaw, the Holy Spirit and the ages of the earth.13 At Val de Flores monastery, Amaro’sstay lasted forty days, for obvious penitential reasons (forty days was the duration ofthe Great Flood and the fasting of Moses, Elijah and Jesus), on his route to Paradise.14

Lastly, before reaching his final destination, Amaro spent thirty days at the Port of theFour Houses, thirty being a reference to the Commandments as passed down by theTrinity (three times ten) and to Christ’s age at the beginning of his mission.15

The Conto de Amaro also adheres to the moyenne durée (medium term) of thehuman lifetime and history. On the one hand, this temporal course is linear, explainedby the ages of man and based on the Biblical text of Daniel and on the writings ofAugustine and Isidore.16 It is this linear progression of time that features mostevidently throughout the tale, as Amaro and his crew leave their homeland and passthrough various other lands until he is brought to the gates of Paradise, only to bedenied entry and settle definitively near the great city founded by his crew. In otherwords, it is the opposite process to that of Brendan, who spent seven years coming andgoing between the same four islands before finally reaching the frontiers of theBeyond, and then returning to his original point of departure. The spatiotemporallinearity of Amaro’s voyage also differs from that narrated in another text from themid-thirteenth century, Viagem de Trezenzónio, present at Alcobaça (in two manu-scripts), and whose protagonist sails to the island of Paradise, where he remains forseven years before returning home.17

However, human and historical temporality is also cyclical, and this emerges in thenarrative in the form of repeated events. On two different islands, on the feast days ofthe two Saint Johns, the same occurrence takes place, as wild beasts arrange a “tour-nament” [“torneo”] among themselves and “many perish” [“pereciã muitas dellas”].18

These are circular events that slip into a wider temporal circularity, as there is near-perfect symmetry between the feast day of the Evangelist, near the winter solstice, andthat of the Baptist, at the summer solstice. However, even more characteristic of thistemporal level are the oscillations in Amaro’s fortunes, as the anonymous authorpoints out: “it seems that this world is a spinning wheel […] One minute man is poor,the next he is rich; one minute exalted, the next brought down; one minute vigorous,the next without vigor; sometimes has comfort, sometimes affliction” [“parece queeste m[utilde] do anda em roda e corre […] hom ora he pobre, ora he rryco, ora xalçado,ora abayxado; ora he viçoso, ora sem viço; ora há sollaz, ora coytas”].19

There is nothing surprising about the appearance of such a concept in Conto deAmaro, so we now know the widespread notion of opposition between linear Christian

12Isidore of Seville, Liber nvmerorvm, 70–3. Many other sources for the meaning of thenumber are cited by Meyer and Suntrup, Lexikon, 615–20. The catalog of Alcobaça’smanuscripts is in Amos, Fundo Alcobaça.13Isidore of Seville, Liber nvmerorvm, 42–57; Meyer and Suntrup, Lexikon, 479–565.14Isidore of Seville, Liber nvmerorvm, 98–101; Meyer and Suntrup, Lexikon, 709–23.15Isidore of Seville, Liber nvmerorvm, 96–9; Meyer and Suntrup, Lexikon, 692–702.16Burrow, Ages of Man; Sears, Ages of Man.17The Latin texts on Trezenzónio from the Alcobaça library have been edited and translatedby Nascimento, Navegação de S. Brandão, 213–40.18Silva, Conto de Amaro, 266.19Silva, Conto de Amaro, 268–9.

u e e

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 55

time and pagan circularity is anachronistic, being a much later cultural projectionrather than a medieval fact. Though Saint Augustine attacked the concept of temporalcycles, which he branded “falsehoods and fabrications of the pseudo-learned,” sodeeply rooted was the notion of cyclical time that it survived even in the hostile groundof Christianity in the form of the cyclical year of the liturgy, which represents the pastin repetition.20 As the Italian historian Santo Mazzarino duly noted, the “linear intu-ition of time is something wholly modern, illuminist and romantic,” even “the greatesthistorian of the Middle Ages, Otto of Freising, was taken by the classical idea (throughBoethius) of the Wheel of Fortune.”21 In short, the Christianization of the WesternWorld failed to purge the ancient pagan goddess Fortuna, though she is seen thereafteras a mere servant of the One God. Having been eclipsed by Augustinian criticism fromthe seventh to the tenth centuries, in the early eleventh she was to gain her very owniconographic representation, becoming a pervading theme in the literature and art ofthe twelfth and thirteenth centuries and later. Yet she was no mere literary device: “hermeaning was really vital to everybody,” Howard Patch points out.22 One of her func-tions concerned the sea and the control of winds, storms, and periods of calm, some-times saving ships, sometimes dashing them against the rocks, an episode of whichcan be found in Conto de Amaro.23 After setting sail from Fonte Clara Island towardParadise, Amaro’s ship finds itself stopped by a “curdled sea” [“mar quoalhado”],perhaps frozen over with ice, and surrounded by man-eating sea creatures, a predica-ment from which he is freed with the help of the Virgin Mary. Her appearance,however, would not contradict Amaro’s submission to Fortuna, as there was a certainoverlapping between the two figures in medieval culture.24 In Portugal, a Wheel ofFortune in the form of a rosette was etched into the tomb of Pedro I, located in theright transept of the chapel at the monastery of Alcobaça, sometime between 1361 and1366, close to the date of composition of the Conto de Amaro. Inside the circle, scenesfrom the lives of Pedro and Inês de Castro, and their mutual love, from the idyllicbeginning of their romance to its tragic end, are sculpted in eighteen small reliefsframed by ogival arcs, constituting a perfect example of the reversal of fortune.

Amaro’s voyage was not exempt from oscillations, as evidenced in the varyinglengths of the different legs of his odyssey. As we have seen, it took eleven weeks toget to the hermit’s little island, a single day to reach Five Castles, a long and indeter-minate time before docking at Fonte Clara and from there to the Desert Island,followed by only a single night’s travel to Val de Flores monastery, and finally a shortjourney from there to Earthly Paradise. There were also oscillations in the durationsof his stay at the various ports of call: a single night on the first island, seven weeksat the Island of Five Castles, another seven weeks at Fonte Clara, a day at the DesertIsland, forty days at Val de Flores, thirty at the Port of the Four Houses, sixteen at Flor

20Saint Augustine, De civitate Dei, II, 368. It is telling that the Latin Bible speaks of the “annicirculus” (Leviticus XXV: 30), while “full year” is the term used in both the Hebrew(Kohlenberger, Interlinear NIV Hebrew/English Old Testament, I, 347; Kahn, Biblehébraïque/française, 207) and the Greek (Rahlfs, Bible des Septante, 559) Bibles. Christiancosmogonic time is linear, goal-oriented and irreversible, but not liturgical time, contrary towhat Pomian affirms in his L’ordre du temps, 224–5.21Mazzarino, Il pensiero storico classico, III, 377.22Patch, Goddess Fortuna, 9.23Patch, Goddess Fortuna, 101–7. The theme of Fortune was widely embraced in Portugal,appearing twenty-three times in Camões’ great Portuguese epic, Os Lusíadas (1572).24Silva, Conto de Amaro, 267–8; Patch, Goddess Fortuna, 61–3.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14

56 H. Franco Junior

de Donas, 267 years at the gates of Paradise and two more months at the city that laterbecame Port of the Four Houses. Then there are the oscillations in fortunes: after the“stormy sea” [“maar cõ tormta”], the island of beasts and the “cursed land” [“terramaldicta”] of the five castles, Amaro arrives at Fonte Clara, “land of the most beauti-ful creatures in the world” [“terra das mais fermosas criaturas que avy no m[utilde] do”],where nobody dies of disease but all pass away at the old age of 300.25 There isanother reversal of fortune when he gets to the Desert Island, where the rotting corpsesof lions and serpents exude a mortal stench, an episode followed by another qualita-tive swing, with the ascending scale of beauty encountered in Val de Flores, Port ofthe Four Houses, Flor de Donas and, obviously, Earthly Paradise itself. In expressivefashion, all the inconsistencies of human existence are resumed in the very name ofthe protagonist: one of the epithets of Fortuna was amara, and the adjective amaro(bitter) was used in Portugal to describe tears for departing seafarers.26

Finally, there comes a third and longer-lasting, rather non-lasting, level of time; adimension in which earthly time stands still, foreshadowing eternity.27 Upon reachingParadise, Amaro must content himself with waiting by the gates, whose keeper none-theless allows him to glimpse some of the wonders of the place. One such marvel isimmutable time, as “there, there was no night, no rain, no cold, no heat” [“aly n[utilde] caera noyte n chuva n fryo n quentura”].28 What Amaro fails to realize at first is thatthe simple sight of Eden has already interrupted the flow of time. He had left Flor deDonas monastery at the prime canonical hour, and had last eaten and drunk at the thirdhour, before reaching the gates of Paradise, where “on this day today, 267 years havepassed” [“oje em este dia som passados duz tos e seseenta e sete annos”] withouteating, drinking or aging.29 Even the clothes that he wears are beyond the passage oftime, and remain very beautiful (“teus panos som muy fremosos”).30 If the fall ofAdam and Eve has affected the human perception of time and its effects, inside Edenthe Creation still reverberates in that same prolonged present. As the gatekeeper saysto Amaro, “therefore, you have seen and heard how much good is done within”[“assaz viste e ouviste de quanto bem se dentro faz”].31 The use of the present tenseis no accident, but rather indicates that, though closed to mankind since the originalsin, Eden has stayed the same as ever, and will remain so until the end of time.

25Silva, Conto de Amaro, 265, 266 and 266 respectively.26Patch, Goddess Fortuna, 38; Camões, Os Lusíadas, 236. It is significant that Amaro shouldpass by a number of islands of the most varied characteristics, as islands are among Fortuna’smost traditional dwellings, according to Patch, 129–32.27For Saint Augustine, time is a “vestige of eternity”: De Genesi, 466; it is a “shadow ofeternity” for Honorius Augustodunensis, Imago mundi, 92.28Silva, Conto de Amaro, 278. The everlasting spring, a topos of medieval descriptions ofEarthly Paradise, was a well-known formula in the Iberian Peninsula, as we are reminded byits use in the late fourth century by Prudentius, Cathemerinon, 803; in the early seventh byIsidore of Seville, Etimologías, II, 166; at the end of the seventh by Valerius of Bierzo, Deuana saeculi sapientia, 377; in the mid-twelfth by Peter of Compostela, De consolationerationis, 114; and in the mid-thirteenth in Trezenzonii de solistitionis insula magna, 228.29Silva, Conto de Amaro, 278.30Silva, Conto de Amaro, 279.31Silva, Conto de Amaro, 279 (my emphasis). The sensation of frozen time is coherent withthe temperate paradisiacal climate, with little distinction between the seasons (ibid., 278),which is a topos in descriptions of Eden. Thus, to call the indefinite present of Paradise an“aberration of time” [“aberración temporal”] (as does Filgueira Valverde, Tiempo y gozoeterno, 27, 31, 33, 43, 53, 63, 68, 69, 70, 82 and 131), is an inadequate approach because itadopts an external angle of analysis.

u

ue e e

e

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 57

Simultaneities

To identify the existence of varying layers of time in Conto de Amaro is not sufficient,however, as they do not follow one another, but rather overlap. They are, indeed,simultaneous. This should come as no surprise, as the coexistence of temporal planesis something of a fixture in medieval texts, as it pertains to what Lévi-Strauss calledla pensée sauvage to be non-temporal, and seek to understand the world as a simulta-neously synchronic and diachronic totality. Needless to say, “la pensée sauvage doesnot mean the thought of savages, nor that of a primitive and archaic humanity, butrather thought in its savage state, as opposed to result-oriented cultured or domesti-cated thought.”32 The core episode in the Conto de Amaro exemplifies this well, asthe brief moments Amaro thinks he spends at the gates are in fact 267 years, and thePort of the Four Houses, where he has left his crew and companions only days before,has since grown into a sprawling city. Linear time (“on this day, […] before I arrivedhere” [“oje em este dia […] ante que aqui chegasse”], Amaro tells the gatekeeper) isrevealed as being parallel to the cyclical time (“in Terce I ate and drank” [“aa hora deterça comi e beby”] as he did every day).33 The rhythms are short (“today”), medium(“267 years”) and long (“nor did you age all that time” [“n envelheceste”], observesthe gatekeeper).34

However, an analysis of the linguistic details of the tale proves that temporalcoexistences are not limited to that episode alone, even if it is the key moment of thestory. While only one linguistic marker – “em cãto” (“while”) – refers specifically tothat event, others cover the spectrum of block temporality: “n[utilde] ca” or “n[utilde] qua”(“never”) fifteen occurrences,35 “senpre” (“always”) six times, and “ja mais” (“notever”) three times. Together, these words account for 16% of the corpus of time-related terms. However, the linguistic element that carries most temporal weight is,naturally, the verb, even if it is true that in many languages the verb is not a necessaryexpression of time, which can be communicated in other ways.36 However, if – as isour concern here – we frame the question in terms of a European concept of time, fewwould hesitate to attribute this function to the verb, the German word for which sumsit up nicely: Zeitwort, meaning “temporal word.”37

32Lévi-Strauss, La pensée sauvage, 348 and 289–90 (the same idea appears in 313–24).33Silva, Conto de Amaro, 279.34Silva, Conto de Amaro, 279.35When this negative formula is used to speak of the sweet Edenic climate, it follows apractice which had been common since Homer, for whom, on the Elysium Fields, “no snowis there, nor heavy storm, nor ever rain” (Homer, The Odyssey, I, 149). For medievalexamples of the negative formula, see Patch, Other World.36This is the case in Sumerian, Egyptian, Semitic, Indo-European, Finno-Ugrian, Caucasian,Altaic, Siberian, Bantu and Indonesian languages. A well-known example is that of the HopiIndians from northern Arizona, who, according to Whorf (“An American Indian Model ofthe Universe”), have no verb tenses, though they do have temporal expressions. AsBenveniste observes, “the expression of time is compatible with all linguistic structures”(Problèmes de linguistique, II, 69); for example in primitive Indo-European the modes ofaction took precedence over degrees of temporality. 37Tellingly, time and verb tense share the same designation in many Western languages:chrónos (Gr.), tempus (Lat.), temps (Fr.), tempo (Port., It.), tiempo (Sp.). A distinction,however, exists in English (time vs. tense) and German (Zeit vs. Tempus).

e

u u

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14

58 H. Franco Junior

It is telling that the most often used verb tense in Conto de Amaro is the pastimperfect progressive, which refers to the as-yet-unfinished past and expresses, there-fore, more a duration than a precise moment (as in the past preterite), and in this senseenters the present and participates in its simultaneity.38 The past progressive is used417 times in comparison with just 241 uses of the past perfect and 18 of the pluper-fect. Likewise, the gerund, given its dynamic characteristics, also transmits the idea ofmovement and, therefore, duration. If we add the 33 gerunds to the 417 uses of thepast progressive, we have 45% of all the verb tenses that appear in the text. Alsoinvolved in this simultaneity is the present: “in the beginning was the Verb” is notonly a linguistic chronology or a metaphor, because He is the eternal present.39 Thisobservation was made in the Iberian context by Isidore, who remembers that in God,past, present and future are contemporary (simul).40 In the Romance languages,Portuguese included, all temporal movement embarks from the present, which, inbecoming past, draws the future into the spotlight of the present.41 This existentialexperience left its mark in languages, insofar as most have more pasts than futures, oneither side of a single present.42

If verb usage in the text reveals itself to be an essential marker for temporalissues, this is especially so in relation to two verbs in particular: ser and estar. Inmedieval Portuguese, the lexical separation between these forms of the verb “to be”did not represent a complete semantic separation, with ser bearing the marks of itsdual origin in essere (demotic form of the classical esse) and – in the conditional,future, present subjunctive, imperative and impersonal forms – sedere (“be sitting/seated”), which, in turn, lost part of its original sense as it metamorphosed to estar,which would remain as an autonomous verb, with separated existence from ser. Asoccurs in the lexicons of all languages, it is impossible to date the origin of theseverbs precisely, though their first documented occurrences do leave interesting clues.The first documented use (not necessarily the first occurrence, of course) of the verbser can be traced back to 938 (to 1194 in its infinitive form), while the first occur-rence of estar dates to 1044.43 Consequently, the former covered the semantic func-tions later assigned to the latter for roughly a century. As late as the fourteenthcentury, Conto de Amaro still occasionally employs ser with meanings and functionsthat would later be assigned to estar.44

In every way, since the separation of the two verbs, ser has been used to expressessence, concept, immutability, internality, permanence, structure, reality, while estar

38This traditional definition is contestable (Molendijk, Le passé simple et l’imparfait) but forour purposes, which are historical rather than linguistic, it remains the most appropriate. Forgood discussions and a vast bibliography on the question, see Langages 1981 thematic issue,Martin and Nef, “Temps linquistique.” 39John I: 1. Upon examining the history of languages, most Greek and Latin grammariansgave the verb precedence over the noun, unlike Saint Augustine and the medieval nominalists,for whom the noun was the priority.40Isidore of Seville, Sententiarum, II, 238.41In contrast, in Greek tense comes from the future.42Whereas all languages have various past forms, many have no specific form for referring tothe future, according to Benveniste, Problèmes de linguistique, II, 75. This is the case, forinstance, of the Hopi, says Whorf, “An American Indian Model,” 62.43Machado, Dicionário etimológico.44This occurs in 15 of the 114 uses of the verb ser. There was nothing rare about such usage,as can be seen from popular song lyrics, like those by thirteenth-century composer João Vasques:“dizen ora quantos aqui son” [“all that are here now say”] (Cancioneiro da Ajuda, I, 477).

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 59

designates existence, situation, mutability, externality, transience, conjuncture andappearance.45 Hence in the Portuguese version of the Hail Mary – contrary to whatwould normally occur in current linguistic construction – we find ser (“O Senhor éconvosco” [“The Lord is with thee”]) and not estar, thereby signifying an inalterablerather than transitory state of presence.

Being-in-the-world, be in Paradise

The predominance of ser over estar in medieval Portuguese was due to the spatial func-tions of the former and the temporal of the latter, because in all primitive societies –primitive in the anthropological sense – representations of time are always subordinateto those of space.46 In the first centuries of Christendom, under the marked influenceof Neo-Platonism, God was identified with absolute space. At least from Iamblichus(c. 250–330) to John Scotus Erigena (c. 810–c. 877), space and cause were assimilatedinto an all-containing God.47 According to William of Conches (1080–1146), “time isthe space that began with the world and will end along with it.”48 One miniature of atwelfth-century manuscript of Clavis Physicae, by Honorius Augustodunensis (1080–1157), figures time as masculine and space as feminine, indicating their complemen-tarity, but also underscoring the primordially creative character of the latter.49 Butperhaps nobody was quite as explicit on the subject as the greater moral authority ofthe twelfth century, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), whose works, in bothLatin and Portuguese, were amply represented in the library at Alcobaça. In his DeConsideratione, Bernard used spatial vocabulary to define God as length, width, heightand depth (longitudo, latitudo, sublimitas et profundum).50

Medieval Aristotelianism altered little in this respect, with Robert Grosseteste(1168–c. 1253), for example, seeing light as the fundament of space and the cause ofall physical phenomena. Thomas Bradwardine (c.1290–1348) and Nicolas Oresme (c.1325–82) continued to speculate as to the identity between infinite space and divineimmensity.51 The course of history was also imagined in spatial form, spreading fromthe East toward the West, where it would culminate. In the theological reflections ofHugh of Saint-Victor (d. 1141), for example, history began in the East and movedsteadily westward, signaling the end of days.52 In the universal chronicle of theCistercian Otto of Freising (d. 1158), the historical events narrated in book VII, whichprecedes a treatment of eschatalogical time in book VIII, also move in an East–West

45Without going into linguistic specifics of little interest to our present purpose, suffice it tosay that this is what has happened in Italian (essere/stare), Piedmontese (esse/sté), Friulian(jessi/sta), Venetian (esser/star), Sardinian (essere/istare), Corsican (esse/stà), Castilian (ser/estar), Catalan (esser/estar), and Galician (ser/estar).46Hallpike, Foundations of Primitive Thought, 349–65.47Parodi, Tempo e spazio nel Medioevo, 19–26.48William of Conches, Glosae super Platonem, 170.49Lucentini, Clavis Physicae.50Leclerq, Talbot, and Rochais, Sancti Bernardi Opera, III, 489. In fact, it is important to notethat, while Greeks only rarely associated divinity with space, Jews used the word makom(“place”) as a Divine name, hence the notion of the omnipresence of the Godhead (forexample, Psalms, CXXXVIII, 8–10), which the Zohar calls “space” because it is its ownspace (Jammer, Concepts of Space, 26–30).51For those thinkers, see Parodi, Tempo e spazio nel Medioevo.52Sicard, Hugonis de Sancto Victore Opera I, 111–12 (note that the works of Hugh of Saint-Victor were present at Alcobaça: MSS. 77/I, 327/LXXIV, 75/CLIII, 78/CLIV, 79/CLV, 80/CLVI, 216/CLXX, 74/CCXLII, 76/CCXLIII).

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14

60 H. Franco Junior

direction.53 In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it was quite common to see the sixages of the Earth spatially represented in the mappa mundi.54

This mythical-theological intuition was confirmed by modern scientific specula-tions. For Sigmund Freud, representations of space can substitute those of time, as theformer tend to predominate.55 For Ernst Cassirer, intellectual relations only becomecomprehensible and subject to representation when projected in, and analogicallyassociated with, space.56 For Maurice Halbwachs, collective memory needs spatialreferences that associate each individual to all others so that the “all” can be tracedback to a common past.57 These psychoanalytical, philosophical and sociologicalpositions had their linguistic correlates. Walter Porzig sees the origin of thought asresiding in the perception of space, considered as the model of all abstract relations.58

For his part, Gustave Guillaume observes that time cannot be represented in and ofitself, but only through space.59 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson agree that most ofour fundamental concepts are organized around spatially based metaphors.60

In light of this mindset, the primacy of space, attested in Latin, was reflected inthe vernacular languages of the Middle Ages in the expression “space of time.” Inother words, time was measurable only over distance traveled, whether by ship orsome geographical accident. This same reflection occurs in the Conto de Amaro: “andbeing there for the space of seven weeks” [“e el estando aly per espaço de setesomanas”].61 Another medieval manifestation of the same conception was the spatial-ization of sentiment, which was so widespread that it was reduced to a set of literaryimages in later centuries. The Beyond described by Dante Alighieri, besides being theperfect poetic composition it is considered today, was, at its root, a manifestation ofthis thinking. The same occurs in a contemporary Portuguese narrative about Amaro:this unhappy world “is a river of bitterness, and a lake of darkness, and a valley oftears, a fountain of weeping and sorrow, a treasury of mean-spiritedness” [“he rryo deamarguras e lago de treevas e valle de lagrymas, fonte de choro e de planto, thesourode mizquindade”].62 Therefore, to speak of the “space of time” is neither solely ametaphor nor a paradox. It is one of those intuitions that allow language to transformimpressions into representations, to use Cassirer’s categories. Even in physics, fromGalileo to Minkowski, through Newton, Fresnel, Maxwell and Einstein, there is a

53Otto of Freising, Chronica, 494–581.54Lecoq, “Le temps et l’intemporel,” 113–49.55Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, I, 51–2.56Cassirer, La philosophie des formes symboliques, 151–71.57Halbwachs and Namer, La mémoire collective, 193–236.58Porzig, Das Wunder des Sprache, 156.59Guillaume, L’architectonique du temps, 17.60Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, 17–19.61Silva, Conto de Amaro, 266. Since Ancient Latin, spatium was also used with reference totime (Ernout and Meillet, Dictionnaire étymologique). Among the many possible medievalexamples, let us recall a text from 1134, Statuta Capitulorum, fundamental to the Cistercians,the monastic order to which Alcobaça belonged, in which one reads, “can flourish the space ofmany years” [“plurimorum annorum spatia possit vigere”] (Canivez, Statuta Capitulorum, I,13). Of the vernacular examples, let us dwell on only three. A French sermon that may haveindirectly influenced Conto de Amaro, speaks of “espace d’un sol jor” (Robson, Maurice ofSully and the Medieval Vernacular Homily, 128). An Italian legend contemporaneous with thePortuguese tale reads “ispazio di quarenta dì” (Zambrini, “Leggenda del viaggio,” 177). APortuguese philosophical treatise says, decades after the story of Amaro, that “em breve spaçorecobrei saude” (Dom Duarte, Leal Conselheiro, 75).62Silva, Conto de Amaro, 271.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 61

tendency to spatialize time, to represent time in terms of space. In fact, the verynames of the verb tenses are spatial. In Portuguese, passado (passed) is the past parti-ciple form of the verb passar (to pass), has been used to denote passage throughspace since the eleventh century (as is the equivalent in English today) and to denote“beyond,” “having left behind” (as in the English “past”) since the thirteenth century.The futuro (future), on the other hand, is what is “yet to come,” “come to pass”(porvir). The presente (present), as the etymology shows us (praesens), is what isbrought into someone’s presence, what is in the consciousness of the individualbefore his world.

Likewise, the definition of the grammatical person in which the verb is conjugatedis grounded in a spatial positioning, as it separates the internal from the external, theworld from the body, a separation through which the individual attains consciousnessof itself. It is the act of existere (etymologically “stand forth,” “appear”), the root ofautonomous existence. So the first person is the place of discourse, the second personan adjacent space, and the third more remote in relation to the first two. In similarfashion, personal pronouns derive from the spatial reference of the speaker. Whenconscious space turns to memory it becomes past, when it turns to imagination itbecomes future, in both cases transferring itself into a temporal dimension. As Freudrecognized, there is no time beyond consciousness; the unconscious is zeitlos, time-less.63

In archaic cultures and later, it is the quality of space that defines the quality oftime. The suspension of time that Amaro experiences at the gates of earthly Paradiseis not of his own doing, but was rather made manifest to him because he was in Edenicspace. The conceptual issue was so important that the Bishop of Paris felt compelled,in 1277, to condemn the notion that time does not exist in re, but only in apprehen-sione.64 In one form or another, the Augustinian notion of psychological timeremained valid. In Hell, time seems to crawl: a fourteenth-century German tale, forexample, tells us that a man who spent an hour in the Castle of the Dead believed hehad been there for 1000 years.65

Naturally, the reverse is true in paradisiacal space. An Irish story, most likely fromthe ninth century, of which over 100 separate manuscripts remain today, states that thefifteen days Barintus and Mernoc thought they had spent in terra repromissionis werereally a whole year.66 Equally, a French tale, the lay of Guingamor (c. 1180), recountsthe story of a knight who becomes lost in the forest and stumbles upon the land of thefairies. When he finally makes it back to his own world, he sees that 300 years havepast.67 One or two years later, an English chronicler tells of how King Herla, whosewedding guests had included the King of the Pygmies, decides to return the honorby attending the latter’s own nuptials. Upon his return he finds that the three daysspent in the Pygmy Kingdom was really a period of 200 years.68 A few years later, an

63Such notions arise at various points throughout Freud’s work, especially in TheInterpretation of Dreams and The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. From another angle,Husserl, Leçons pour une phénoménologie, convinced that the time of consciousness obeysneither its own physical nor psychological rules, recognizes that consciousness owes its unityto time, considered as time consciousness.64Piché, La condamnation parisienne, 140.65Klapper, Visio quod ossa mortuorum, 356–7.66Nascimento, Navegação de S. Brandão, 6–7.67Micha, Lai de Guingamor, 80–98.68Map, De nugis curialium, 26–31.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14

62 H. Franco Junior

Italian-German chronicler reports that when some Breton monks came back from ajourney to Paradise, they realized, like Enoch and Elijah had told them, that there eachyear is equal to 100 normal years.69 Also in the late twelfth century, a sermon by theBishop of Paris speaks of a monk who followed a bird (the form assumed by an angel)for a few hours, only to return to his monastery and find that 300 years had gone by.70

In the first half of the thirteenth century, an Italian narrative (written in Latin and latertranslated into German) tells the story of a duke’s son who makes what he thinks is athree-hour visit, but which really lasts three centuries.71

Three further examples date from the fourteenth century; they are, therefore,contemporary to Conto de Amaro. One Austrian tale speaks of a priest who goes tocelebrate mass in a neighboring parish, but when he raises the host at the Eucharist,he spends 500 years holding aloft the Infant the Virgin has placed before him on thealtar.72 A German story declares that a Cistercian monk, Brother Felix, who yearnedto see Paradise, is met by an angel who sings to him for a century that seemed nolonger than an hour.73 An Italian account speaks of three monks who find a marvel-ously beautiful branch by the water of Geon and decide to find the tree from which ithas fallen. They finally arrive at Earthly Paradise, and the guardian angel allows themto enter, whereupon they eat delicious fruits, drink the purest water and converse withEnoch and Elijah for three days. However, when they return to their monastery theyfind that three centuries have in fact passed.74

From the same cultural and linguistic space as the Conto de Amaro, though with-out suggesting any direct filiation, comes a hagiographic song composed around1264–65, in Galician-Portuguese. This song, from the Cantigas de Santa María,adapts Maurice of Sully’s story to a Marian eulogy and tells of a monk who is soenchanted by the melody of a songbird that he decides to follow its trail awhile.When he gets back to his monastery he finds it much changed, as 300 years haverolled by.75 In both texts, a request is made to see Earthly Paradise in life: “before Ileave from here” [“ante que saya daquí”] says the song, “before he left the world”[“ante que ell do m[utilde] do saysse”] states the Portuguese tale.76 While the plea is madeto the Virgin in the song, and to God himself in the Conto, Amaro addresses theVirgin seven times during the story and on one of these occasions he makes a suppli-cation that bears great similarities to the Marian hymns of the day.77 The refrain fromthe old song applies well to both: “Who well serves the Virgin / to Paradise will go”[“Quen Virgen ben servirá / a Parayso irá”]. It is interesting, in terms of temporalanalysis, that in both stories the characters receive the help of the Virgin Mary, a

69Godfrey of Viterbo, Pantheon, 81.70Robson, Maurice of Sully, 122–8.71Schwarzer, “Visionslegende,” 338–51 (text summarized and analyzed by Gatto, “Le voyageau Paradis”).72Herbert, Catalogue of Romances, III, 591.73Graf, Il mito del Paradiso terrestre, 147–8.74Zambrini, “Leggenda del viaggio,” 165–78.75Alfonso X, Cantigas de Santa Maria, no. 103, II, 16–17.76Cantigas de Santa Maria, no. 103, II, 16; and Silva, Conto de Amaro, 265.77Conto de Amaro, 265 and 267. Devotion to the Virgin grew considerably in Portugalbetween the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, according to Almeida, História da Igreja emPortugal, I, 472. Proof of this can be seen in the fact that all of Lisbon’s churches pleaded forher intercession on occasion of the battle of Aljubarrota, in 1385 (Lopes, Crónica de D. JoãoI, I, 127–30).

u

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 63

figure who blends the human time of her nature and the divine eternity granted her bythe Holy Spirit.78

Essentially, the concept of time in the Conto de Amaro shows no apparent diver-gence from that of Latin medieval culture as a whole. Nevertheless, there are someinteresting particularities; every text, after all, is a response to the imaginary andconcrete conditions under which it is derived and received.

The Conto de Amaro as social product

On both the imaginary and the concrete planes, the concept of time expressed inConto de Amaro was related to its origins, as the literary theme of suspended timewas, in fact, a “Cistercian hallmark,” in the words of José Filgueira Valverde.79

Indeed, this origin is perceptible in various aspects of its internal analysis. First of all,at the very beginning of the narrative, Amaro tells us that he “relinquished all hispossessions and gave many to the poor” [“desbaratou todollos b es que avya, e deumuito dello aos pobres”], an act of charity that was a keynote of the Cistercian voca-tion as defined in 1119 by the Carta Caritatis Prior; in 1138 by Saint Bernard, whosemonks of Clairvaux would be fundamental in the creation of Alcobaça; and in 1152,the year before the abbey’s foundation, by the Carta Caritatis Posterior.80 Secondly,the Cistercians were also known as “white monks” owing to the habit they wore, andthe text refers to “white monks of virtuous life” [“frades brancos e hom es de bõoavida”] who dwelt in Val de Flores monastery, near Eden.81 In fact, it was at this samemonastery that the saint would fast for forty days before resuming his pilgrimage.Thirdly the Eucharist was of central importance to the Cistercians (the new feast ofCorpus Christi was celebrated for the first time in 1252, at Villers-en-Brabant Abbey),which explains why Amaro receives communion at two key moments in the tale. Thefirst of these is during his forty-day penitence at Val de Flores, and the second justbefore his death, in the interval between his return from Earthly Paradise and hisascension into Celestial Heaven. Moreover, we are also told that the hermit Valides,who had arrived at Earthly Paradise before Amaro, and who instructs him on how toreach it, travels to the Flor de Donas monastery three times a year to receive commun-ion. Fourthly, the Virgin, pivotal to Cistercian spirituality, warrants seven mentions in

78Concerning the treatment of time in Cantiga no. 103, we can remember three studies:Picchio, “Tempo del mistico e tempo del convento;” Devoto, “El tiempo en las Cantigas;” andPoole, “In Search of Paradise.”79Filgueira Valverde, Tiempo y gozo eterno, 87, 92 and 98.80Silva, Conto de Amaro, 265. The first document mentioned above is edited and translatedby Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, 442–50. The second can be found in Corpusepistolarum in Leclerq, Talbot, and Rochais, Sancti Bernardi Opera, VII, 340–1. The third isin Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, 500–5.81Silva, Conto de Amaro, 269–70. The narrator speaks of “hermit” and “friars,” and not of“monks,” because these terms are often confused in the documentation because the oldVisigothic monasticism had much in common with the rigidity of the Cistercian customs,according to Cocheril, Études sur le monachisme, 153–6 and 199.

e

e

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14

64 H. Franco Junior

Conto de Amaro.82 Fifthly, one of the most important locations described in the taleis the Flor de Donas monastery, which is clearly Cistercian given the “white-as-snow”habit worn by its nuns and the presence of various mills, which were common assetsof that monastic order, and Alcobaça was no exception.83 At Alcobaça we find thetombs of Afonso II and his wife Urraca, Afonso III and his wife Dona Beatriz andtheir three children, Pedro I and the rainha morta Inês de Castro; Flor de Donas wasthe resting place of “ten Emperors and thirteen kings, as well as many princes andcounts.”84 That the anonymous author of Conto de Amaro includes a convent mayreflect the growing number of women’s cloisters affiliated with Alcobaça in the thir-teenth century: São Dinis de Odivellas (1294), Santa Maria de Cós (1300), and SantaMaria de Almoster (1300).

If we accept the hypothesis that the Conto does indeed hail from Alcobaça, thenext question that arises concerns the status of Amaro himself. Unlike the vast major-ity of medieval tales recounting a voyage to the Beyond, manuscript 462 fromAlcobaça does not identify its namesake protagonist as a monk. A passage of thenarrative states that Amaro in spite of being a “good man” [“homem bõo”], does nothave monastic status: a white friar of Val de Flores acknowledges that the visitor is“more worthy than I” [“mais digno que eu”], but “the monk blessed him first in rever-ence to the order” [“primeiro o benzeo o frade polla reverencia da hord ”].85 In fact,Amaro’s decision to embark on an odyssey, propelled by his yearning [“desejo”] tosee Earthly Paradise, would not have been acceptable for a Cistercian, as the brethrenhad to respect the old Benedictine pledge to stability, whose better formulation wasgiven exactly by the largest Cistercian: “it is not by travel that one seeks God, but bydesire (desideratum).”86

One could therefore consider Amaro a conversus, or lay brother. This categoryof servant sporadically used by certain earlier monastic orders became central toCistercian houses, where, at the end of the thirteenth century, conversi outnumberedthe monks.87 This hypothesis is supported by some indications in the tale, one ofwhich is a reference to “Earthly Paradise in which God made and formed Adam”[“parayso terreal em que Deus fez e formou Adam”], a theologically incorrect notionwhich contradicts the Bible and would never be uttered by a monk, but which couldbe expected from a typical conversus, relatively unlettered and uncultured.88 UnlikeNavigatio, which stipulates the monastic condition of Brendanus and the companions

82From the onset, in 1134 the Cistercian order (founded in 1098) stipulated that each newmonastery must be dedicated to the Virgin Mary, taken as the Order’s patron in 1283 andrepresented in its seal from 1335 onwards. Evidently, the Alcobaça monastery wasconsecrated in her honor and it is interesting to note that when Amaro is marooned on“curdled seas,” surrounded on all sides by flesh-eating monsters, it is the Virgin who comes tohis aid, while in the Spanish version of the tale he is saved by the Divine Voice.83Silva, Conto de Amaro, 276; Lekai, The White Monks, 220; São Boaventura, Historiachronologica e critica, 45ff. At least one windmill is mentioned (in Infonte, Óbidos) by theTombo de propriedade of Alcobaça (1262), according to Oliveira Marques, Portugal na crise,49, and Introdução à história da agricultura, 195–6.84Silva, Conto de Amaro, 274.85Silva, Conto de Amaro, 269–70.86See Sermones in Cantica Canticorum in Leclerq, Talbot, and Rochais, Sancti BernardiOpera, II, 303.87Lekai, The White Monks, 232.88Silva, Conto de Amaro, 278; Lekai, The White Monks, 230–3.

e

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 65

with whom he visited Earthly Paradise, the Conto de Amaro tells of someone whogoes no further than its gates, perhaps because his lay status precludes access to amonastic cloister, a common metaphor for Eden: “be gone, for it is time, and mark thatyou shall never enter this Earthly Paradise” [“vay te d’aquy que ja tenpo he e cree bemque tu nõ entrarás aca este parayso terreal”].89 The relatively recent cloister ofAlcobaça and its ogival galleries, erected in the early fourteenth century, seems tohave impressed the anonymous author and inspired him to describe the tent pitchednear Paradise as having “arches all around it” [“arcos toda aa rredor”].90 Similarly, thesources in the northern wing at Alcobaça may have led the narrator to endow the tentwith “four beautiful and precious fountains in gilded metal with lions’ mouths forwater spouts” [“quatro fontes muy bellas e muy preciosas e eram lavradas de metal, esaya a augua per senhas bocas de lyoões”].91

That said, the hypothesis of Amaro being a lay brother is undermined on severalgrounds. In order to join the conversi the individual had to take a vow of poverty,chastity and obedience and renounce all earthly possessions. The text tells us that,prior to his departure in search of Paradise, Amaro gave away everything he owned tothe poor, save a sum “to cover his expenses” [“per sua despesa”], sufficiently large topurchase a ship and hire a crew of “sixteen strong and brave young men” [“dezaseismãcebos grandes e arryzados”].92 Though lay brothers of high social status were notuncommon during the first century of the Cistercian Order, this practice was expresslyforbidden under the General Charter of 1118, after which conversi were recruitedexclusively from among the peasantry and artisan class.93 Given his riches, Amarocan hardly be ascribed to either category. More importantly, soon after teachingAmaro the path to Paradise, Valides presented him with a white habit, which hedonned with great emotion and tears. Later, sensing the proximity of death, he“ordered that he be buried in that monastery” [“mãdou que o enterrass em aquellmoesteiro”] from which his habit had come.94 In reality, it was formally forbidden fora lay brother to become a monk.95

It would seem more plausible to consider Amaro a pious layman, perhaps awealthy merchant who sympathized with the moral and material values of the Cister-cians. He may have belonged to the donati, benefactors of the Order, devout menwho wore secular clothes and took no vows. This semi-monastic condition, institutedto substitute the conversi whose numbers were perceptibly waning, would enjoy

89Silva, Conto de Amaro, 279. The cloister as a metaphor for Eden can be found, among othertexts, in Honorius Augustodunensis, Gemma animae, 590; Hugues de Fouilloy, De claustroanimae, 1167–8; and Dante Alighieri, Commedia, 912 et passim. For the Cistercian SaintBernard of Clairvaux, it was no metaphor, because “the cloister is a true Paradise” (seeSermones diversis in Leclerq, Talbot, and Rochais, Sancti Bernardi Opera, VI-1, 258).90Silva, Conto de Amaro, 277. Though they could not live in the cloister themselves, laybrothers were allowed to watch the processions that occurred there to mark the Purification,Palm Sunday, the Ascension and (from 1224 on) the Assumption.91Silva, Conto de Amaro, 277. It might not be superfluous to note that one of theparticularities of the Cistercian mass is that the acolytes wash their hands for the Lavabo (arite that precedes the preparation of offering): Usus antiquiores ordinis cisterciensis, 1425).92Silva, Conto de Amaro, 265. The lay brother’s renunciation of earthly riches is stipulated inan institutional text prepared between 1125 and 1132, the Usus conversorum, edited andtranslated by Waddell, Cistercian Lay Brothers, 71 and 186.93Canivez, Statuta Capitulorum, I, 108.94Silva, Conto de Amaro, 281.95See Usus conversorum in Waddell, Cistercian Lay Brothers, 71 and 186.

e

e

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14

66 H. Franco Junior

such success that the General Chapter of 1293 referred to its “excessive number.”96

It is as such that Amaro seems to have participated in the well-known expansionactivities of the Cistercians in general, including Alcobaça. Nestled between thevalleys of the Alcoa and Baça rivers and a lake with direct access to the sea, it isonly natural that the monastery was involved in seafaring. It has been said that manyof the ships used in Portuguese voyages of discovery were built at the shipyards inPederneira, within the abbey’s jurisdiction.97 It was at the beginning of Lusitanianmaritime expansion that Amaro, instructed by a vision, took to the “coast” [“rrybeirado mar”], where he “bought a ship” [“mercou h[utilde] a nave”] and set sail “in thedirection the sun rises” [“contra hu nace o sol”].98 On Amaro’s bidding, while hecontinued toward Paradise, his crew stayed behind to build a city near the site wherethey had made port. Amaro himself, upon descending from the Edenic mount, neveragain returned to his land of origin, unlike those who had preceded him (includingBrendan and Trezenzónio), but founded the town of Treville, near the Flor de Donasmonastery.

The town grew and prospered, because if earthly time is powerless to act upon theatemporal nature of Paradise, the reverse is not the case. When scattered upon the siteof the new city, the clod of soil Amaro had brought back with him from the AdamicGarden made the trees grow “more in one year than the five years they would takesomewhere else” [“ h[utilde] u anno mais que em outro lugar em cinquo”].99 The towns-folk grew herbs, flowers, apples, oranges and “all the other fruits of the world”[“todallas outras fruytas do m[utilde] do”], so abundant in Paradise.100 In other words,bringing back that soil clod served the same function as the Cistercian practice ofbringing prime specimens from one monastery to another in order to improve yields.The high productivity obtained at Amaro’s new city was comparable to the averageattained by the orchards and fields of Alcobaça in the first half of the fifteenthcentury, when the manuscript was copied: for each seed planted they obtained eightto thirteen units in some places, five to eight in other, and between two and three inmost.101 As Alcobaça possessed the most fertile lands of the kingdom, his Edeniccharacter was thus insinuated.102

The Paradisiacal earth clod [“escudella de terra”], therefore, proved to be quiteliterally a grail, a cornucopia. It is not without note that certain narratives from theliterary Grail cycle were translated into Portuguese by a friar of the Order of Santiago,perhaps between 1240 and 1263, including A Demanda do Santo Graal, which hassurvived in a copy probably dating to sometime between 1433 and 1438. This textattributes clear supremacy to the priesthood of virtue over official priesthood, a notion

96Canivez, Statuta Capitulorum, III, 261.97Fernandes Marques, Estudos sobre a Ordem de Cister, 188.98Silva, Conto de Amaro, 265 and 269. The Canary Islands were conquered around the timeof composition of the narrative (mid-fourteenth century). Decades later, around the date ofcopy of the manuscript, the Portuguese arrived in Ceuta (1415) Madeira (1425), Azores(1427) and Cape Verde (1443). Within the Madeira archipelago there are three little islandscalled “deserted,” a stop in Amaro’s voyage (Silva, Conto de Amaro, 269).99Silva, Conto de Amaro, 281. It is interesting to note that the Spanish versions do not clarifythe fate of the sod of earth brought back from Paradise.100Silva, Conto de Amaro, 278.101Silva, Conto de Amaro, 281; Oliveira Marques, Introdução à história da agricultura, 46–8.On local economic conditions, see Gonçalves, O patrimonio do mosteiro de Alcobaça. 102Oliveira Marques, Introdução à história da agricultura, 74; Veríssimo Serrão, História dePortugal, 176.

u

e u

u

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 67

that has been considered related to the thought of the Cistercian Joachim of Fiore,introduced to Portugal by members of his Order.103 It is noteworthy that the Conto deAmaro also espouses, to a certain degree, the idea that a monasticism of virtue is supe-rior to formal monasticism: neither of those who gain access to Earthly Paradise,Valides (“a friend of the Lord”) and Amaro (“a virtuous man”), is a monk. Just as thevision of the Grail appeared to the knights of the Round Table on the Pentecost, it wasthe visible form of the Holy Spirit that sent Amaro to the gates of Paradise, as thegatekeeper recognizes, when he says: “I know well that you did not come here but thewill of the Holy Spirit” [“eu bem sei que tu nõ vieste aquy se nõ pello SpirituSancto”].104

Awaiting Paradise

In spite of these words by the gatekeeper, Amaro does not have access to Paradisebecause, as the gatekeeper explains to him, “it is not yet time for you to enter”[“ainda nõ as tenpo de entrar”].105 In other words, the linear time of the terrestriallife of Amaro has not reached its limit: a fact which nevertheless does not impedehim from living in suspended time. Since the progression of the idea of Purgatory inthe thirteenth century, there had been an intimate relationship between earthly timeand the Beyond, and the author of our anonymous tale constructs just such a rela-tionship. The only singularity, and a significant one at that, is that whereas, accord-ing to Jacques Le Goff, “the Purgatory system” brings the individual time of thesinner into play,106 the Portuguese narrative values the collective time of humanity,synthesized in Amaro. This is made clear not so much by the use of certain adverbsor even verbs, but by the use of two specific nouns: esperança (hope) and saudade(pining).

Few would disagree that linguistic sense is not limited to the conveyance of aconcept, but rather carries a “psychic load” of affective, imaginative and, only occa-sionally, conceptual elements. As Dámaso Alonso puts it, “there is no concept that isnot affective” [“no hay ni un solo concepto que no sea afectivo”].107 However, it isundeniable that some signifiers are more intense than others, as is the case with espe-rança (two occurrences in the text) and saudade (four occurrences).108 Both expresssentiments associated with temporalities not measurable in days, months or years, butonly subjectively in terms of the waiting or absence of something.

It is important to point out that esperança derives etymologically from esperar(wait, expect, hope), in turn coming from the Latin sperare, which had two meaningsin the Middle Ages, namely “considering something as about to happen” and “awaiting

103On the influence of Joachimism in A Demanda do Santo Graal, see Bruneti, A lenda doGraal. The importance of the Arthurian cycle in Portugal is demonstrated by the emergence,in the second half of the fifteenth century, of new anthroponyms, such as Artur, Lançarote andTristão (Oliveira Marques, Portugal na crise, 255).104Silva, Conto de Amaro, 279.105Silva, Conto de Amaro, 278–9.106Le Goff, “La naissance du Purgatoire,” 1198–206.107Alonso, Poesia española, 22 and 27. This observation is supported by Benveniste: “thereality of the language stays in general unconscious” (Problèmes de linguistique, I, 63).108Silva, Conto de Amaro, 265 (sperança), 267 (esperança), 271 (saudade), 273 (soydade,twice), and 276 (saudade).

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14

68 H. Franco Junior

for something with uncertain expectation.”109 This dual acceptation was maintainedin medieval Portuguese – whereas the modern language tends not to distinguish onefrom the other – and esperar became the verb for everything indicative of unclosedtime, the yet-to-come time that appears to have stood still for those who wait, hope orexpect. That is why, in Portuguese, the verb requires the use of subjunctive in a depen-dent/subordinate clause, which expresses a modal of possibility, doubt, uncertainty,hypotheses. The language did not, therefore, entirely accept the Biblical formulationaccording to which “hope does not disappoint us” [“spes autem non confundit”], northe Isidorian definition that “hope is good expectation of the future” [“spes est bonorumexspectatio futurorum”].110 This psycholinguistic process came to fruition – or at leastgained enough importance to be registered in writing – in the thirteenth century, at thesame time as “a mental attitude of clearly Aristotelian presuppositions” was consoli-dated.111 In defining the object of that theological virtue as an “arduous and difficult”future good, Thomas Aquinas recognizes that the wait can generate a certain angst(anxietas, angustia).112 In fact, esperança implies lack, the wait for something one doesnot have: “the hope presupposes the desire” [“spes praesupponit desiderium”].113

Saudade is a sentiment that expresses the lack or want of someone or something, butit should not be confused with nostalgia, a word coined in 1678 by the Alsatian physicianJohannes Hofer to designate, nosographically, a yearning for one’s homeland (Heim-weh).114 The etymology leaves no doubt as to its spatial sense: a return (nostos) in whichwaiting breeds pain (algos). Hence the French (nostalgie) is defined as maladie du pays.As Portuguese already had saudade, it took quite a while for “nostalgia” to filter into thelexicon (1836), much later than in French (1759), Italian (1764) or English (1770). In theearliest use of saudade, in the first half of the thirteenth century, Nuno Eanes Cerzeoemployed the term in the sense of a pining for a beloved but lost space – “pero das terrasaverei soidade” (“but the lands I will miss”) – and it was only as a synecdoche that thissense of loss also came to apply to those who lived therein: “eu das gentes algun saboravia” (“I had some longing for the people”), as the same troubadour explains.115

109In Classical Latin, for example in Cicero, spes is an antonym of metus, but in medieval Latinone of the meanings of sperare is timere (hence the French espérance, first recorded in 1080,initially bore the negative connotation of “hoping something will not happen”). However,positive meanings prevailed in sperare: credere, expectare, petere, pro spectare – according toDu Cange, Glossarium – such that the French word acquired in the twelfth century a positivesense of “hoping some desire will be fulfilled” (Rey, Dictionnaire historique).110Epistle to the Romans, V, 5; Isidore of Seville, De differentiis, 92. For more on thetheological history of the concept, see Bougerol, La théologie de l’espérance.111Santos, “Aristotelismo em Portugal,” 182.112Thomas Aquinas, Commento alle sentenze, VI, 264; also Busa, Index Thomisticus, II, no.06737. In an encyclical issued at the end of 2007, Pope Benedict XVI affirms that faith givesman something of the reality for which he hopes: “Faith draws the future into the present, sothat it is no longer simply a ‘not yet.’ The fact that this future exists changes the present”(Sauvés dans l’espérance, 16).113Thomas Aquinas, Commento alle sentenze, 264; and also Summa Theologiae, VI, 265.Saint Augustine had already said that “there is no love without hope, nor hope without love”[“nec amor sine spes est, nec sine amore spes”] (Enchiridion, 52)114His dissertation Dissertatio curioso-medica de nostalgia (1678), published ten years lateras Dissertatio medica de nostalgia, was analyzed by Ernst, Vom Heimweh, 63–72. On the laterhistory of the concept, see Bolzinger, Histoire de la nostalgie.115Cancioneiro da Ajuda, I, 765. Note that formerly “sabor” also had the figurative meaningof “vontade,” by association “desejo” and consequently “saudade” (Bluteau, Vocabularioportuguez; Machado, Dicionário etimológico).

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 69

To feel saudade is, without doubt, to experience distance from the object of one’slove, be it animate or inanimate. As by the quill of some medieval troubadour,saudade idealizes and stereotypes the loved object.116 Just as the women of the poet’ssongs were less real women than they were Love itself, perhaps the homeland forwhich we pine is less a real nation than it is the home par excellence, Eden itself. Infact, the tale says that Amaro “had a great yearning to see Earthly Paradise and he wasonly calm when he heard tell of it. And in his heart he always prayed to God to showhim that place before he left the world.”117 Accordingly, the word desejo, firstrecorded in the thirteenth century, is close in meaning to saudade.118

But is it really possible to miss Eden, a place where one has never actually been?The answer would appear to be yes, on both the theological and psychological planes.For Saint Augustine, it was because the first man was “rooted” [“radicata”] in allhumanity, because “everyone of us is Adam” [“omnis autem homo Adam”], an ideain the essential proceeded by different theological currents along the Middle Ages. ForFreud, it was because the unconscious processes escape from the irreversibility of time,and just as time does not render memories vague or uncertain, unconscious desires areimmortal.119 Otherwise put, saudade manifests in the individual, but it belongs to thespecies. Hence the obsession of the medieval Occident with a return to Paradise lost,and of the later West with building Paradise on earth. According to the medieval texts,each and every one of us is an “exile,” a “foreigner” on earth, a soul out of place andin search of its “celestial home.” As such, esperança (hope) is the present turnedtoward the future, and saudade (pining), the present turned toward the past.

In short, both are experienced in the present, but envisage the eschatalogicalfuture in a bid to understand and guide this present. Through the act of rememberingour origins, the past perpetually represented in sacramental practice becomes apresent that anticipates the absolute future of the end, lived in hope, hence the inde-scribable yearning in hope and the touch of hope in yearning. Just as the CistercianWilliam of Saint-Thierry said that “hope is no longer needed when hope isfulfilled,” saudade will cease when its object is restored.120 On the one hand, boundto worldly time, Christians also live the present of faith and hope that places themon the very frontier of the world and its eschatology.121 And so, if time is a distance

116The 10,391 verses in the corpus of Galician-Portuguese lyrics contain only 1200 differentwords, according to Michäelis de Vasconcelos’ Glossário of the Cancioneiro da Ajuda, I, viii.The stereotyping and de-personalizing nature of the Galician-Portuguese amorous lyric iswidely recognized and is summarized by Lanciani and Tavani in the “Cantigas de amor” entryof their Dicionário da literatura medieval, 136–7.117The hero “avia grã desejo de veer o parayso terreall e que n[utilde] ca folgava se nõ quandoouvya fallar elle. E em seu coraçõ senpre rrogava a Deus que lhe demostrasse aquell lugarante que ell do m[utilde] do saysse” (Silva, Conto de Amaro, 265).118Silva, Conto de Amaro, 272, 273, 274 and 273 respectively. Vieira, “A soidade,” II, 819–21, rightly observes that, in the verses of Nuno Eanes Cerzeo, Sancho Sanchez and Alfonso X,there is a correspondence between soidade and desejo.119Saint Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, 960; Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, II, 579;and Psychopathology of Everyday Life, 274. For those troubadours after Nuno Eanes Cerzeowho used the word, people are invariably the object of soidade, and yet, for Alfonso X, theobject can also be something concrete, such as water (Cantigas de Santa María, no. 48, I,176), or, more importantly for our hypotheses, a city that does not exist, a place one does notknow personally (ibid., no. 379, III, 271).120Speculum Fidei, 24.121Silva, Conto de Amaro, 271 and 281; Lacoste, Note sur le temps; Baude, Théologie dutemps; Leftow, Time and Eternity; Mouroux, Le mystère du temps.

ue

u

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14

70 H. Franco Junior

between man and God, Amaro’s glimpse through the gates of Earthly Paradise was aprovisional re-approximation and his death, some time later, a definitive annulmentof that distance.

The modality of that rapprochement defines in medieval texts the remaining of theterrestrial life. The monks of Geon withered to ash within forty days of their return toearthly time and space. When Guingamor temporarily leaves the fairy kingdom of hisbeloved, he is warned that in order to be able to return he must not eat or drinkanything of the human world. When the duke’s son from the Italian tale returns to theterrestrial world, he ages rapidly and dies soon after eating a morsel of bread. Thepriest who holds the Host aloft for 500 years also grows old and dies with the firstmouthful of food upon returning to his parish. Coming back from the party of thePygmy king’s marriage, where they had eaten and drunk richly, some companions ofking Herla, when they get off their horses, were transformed into powder.122 Thenotion that food binds the individual to the place in which it is consumed is a universalmotif, found in both classical mythology (for example, the myth of Persephone) andregional folklore. If in Nauigatio Sancti Brendani Barintus and Mernoc suffer noconsequences after spending fifteen days on the island of Paradise, it is because theyhave neither eaten nor drunk during this time. The same occurs with Amaro, as thegatekeeper of Paradise emphasizes: “here you did not eat nor drink” [“ca tu nõcomeste n bebeste”].123

While Conto de Amaro contains few marvelous episodes in comparison with thefamous Epistola Presbiteri Johannis written in the 1160s and copied at Alcobaçascriptorium in the early thirteenth century, its concept of time owes a lot to thiswork.124 It is in this epistolary text that we read the description of the palace of themythical emperor, in which “none shall hunger or fall ill, none can die in the day ofhis entrance there” [“nullus unquam esuriet, nullus infirmabitur, nullus etiam intusexistens poterit mori in illa die, qua intraverit”].125 The Portuguese tale describesParadise as a “larger castle, more towering and more beautiful than any on earth”[“castello mais grande e mais alto e mais fremoso de quantos no m[utilde] do avya”], and atits gates Amaro spends 267 years without feeling hunger or suffering the ravages oftime upon his perishable body.126 Moreover, it is not without importance that the firstmention of Prester John, in 1146, should have come from the quill of a Cistercian,Otto of Freising. Nor is it surprising that the great promoter of Portuguese maritimeexpansion, Prince Henry the Navigator (1394–1460), should have wanted to visit thelands of Prester John, as attested by the chronicler Gomes Eanes de Zurara in 1453.127

Also far from trivial is the fact that the circumstances of maritime expansion and thePortuguese interests in Africa led the view of Prester John in the fifteenth century as

122Respectively, Zambrini, “Leggenda del viaggio,” 178; Micha, Lai de Guingamor, 96;Schwarzer, “Visionslegende,” 349; Herbert, Catalogue of Romances, III, 591; Map, De nugiscurialium, 30.123Silva, Conto de Amaro, 279.124The definition of marvels as those “which are beyond our comprehension, ever though theyare natural” was given around 1214 by Gervase of Tilbury, Otia imperialia, 559. ThePortuguese copy of Epistola is in Lisbon, at the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, codexAlcobacense CCLVI/380. It was edited by Maurício, “Ainda a Carta do Preste João dasÍndias,” 285–303. This version corresponds to the so-called B interpolation of the classicZarncke’s edition, “Der Priester Johannes. Text des Briefes.”125Zarncke, Epistola Presbiteri Johannis, 920.126Silva, Conto de Amaro, 277 and 279.127Zurara, Crónica dos feitos de Guiné, 89.

u

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 71

an Abyssinian emperor, an identification refuted by the chroniclers of the sixteenthcentury,128 who still harbored a lingering dream of a Johannine empire in the Orient,that is, one bordering on Paradise and, by extension, brimful of paradisiacal charac-teristics, including a slow-running time close to eternity.129

Conclusion

In the Conto de Amaro several temporary modalities coexist; but the one that has mostimpact on listeners and readers is the suspension of the flow of time at the sight ofParadise. The fact is significant, because as Maria Clara de Almeida Lucas observes,visionary texts (the Conto de Amaro included) “exist not to modify the author, who isalready a saint, but to sanctify the reader.”130 What did this mean in the last decadesof the fourteenth century when the text was written? If we suppose, and not unreason-ably, that the Black Death wrought the same havoc upon the micro-society ofAlcobaça as it did on Portugal and western Europe in general, one could argue thatthis saint’s tale – written in the vernacular – served propagandist purposes, attractingnew novices to the near-deserted monastery.131 It is in these terms that we shouldunderstand the four references made in the story to the missal chants. Seen within suchproselytizing logic, it was no accident that two cities should have been founded byAmaro and his companions. The urban concerns of the tale were most likely aresponse to competition from mendicants, which had been affecting the Cistercianssince the first half of the thirteenth century. Even though the Cistercian Order hadmuch more to do with feudal society than with the latent stirrings of bourgeois society,it nonetheless managed to forge its urban bonds.132 The copy of the manuscript madebetween 1431 and 1446 must have had some other objective, because there was aresurgence in the number of conversi at the time. One could therefore speculatewhether the lay and saint Amaro may not have been to Cistercian monasticismwhat the lay and chaste Dom Nuno Álvares Pereira was to Portuguese nationalism.Effectively, the condestável lived according to the model of Galahad, the virtuousGrail hero,133 and died the same year in which the copy of the sole surviving Amaromanuscript was probably begun.

One way or another, it is in times of crisis, doubt and anxiety that we flee tempo-ral pressures in search for the euphoria of eternity, which can come, among otherforms, in oneiric and mystic trance.134 At the time of the Conto de Amaro, incipientPortuguese maritime expansion and the continued quest for the kingdom of PresterJohn reveal a certain frustration with the limits of the terrestrial world. It is thereforeno surprise that from the onset of the fifteenth century the Portuguese should have

128Sanceau, Portugal in Quest of Prester John; Maurício, “A Carta do Preste João dasÍndias;” Pistarino, “I Portoghesi verso l’Asia del Prete Gianni;” Costa, “Socotorá e o domínioportuguês no Oriente.”129Franco Júnior, “Le concept de temps dans l’Epistola.” 130Almeida Lucas, A literatura visionária, 12.131The population of Portugal dropped from 1.5 million in 1347 to somewhere between800,000 and 1 million in 1349, according to Oliveira Marques, Portugal na crise, 16–21. Itwas clear that Portugal was in need of labor, hence Dom João I (1385–1433) and Dom Duarte(1433–38) sought to attract foreign settlers (Oliveira Marques, Introdução à história daagricultura, 59–60).132Carville, “The Urban Property of the Cistercians.”133Dom Nuno’s mythic-literary model is transmitted by Fernão Lopes, Crónica, I, 69.134Bonaparte, “L’inconscient et le temps,” 66–72.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14

72 H. Franco Junior

come to embody most fully the medieval figure of homo viator, as they venturedacross seas and lands for the grandeur of the realm, but also to purge the Adamic loss,to fulfill human fate (fado – a word that all too fittingly goes back to those times).Teetering on the rim of Europe and faced with the immensity of the ocean, they hadan acute expectation of breaching the bounds of Finis terrae and entering the Veraterrae. Or, in other words, since space defines time, to change the finiteness of thetime for the immensity of the timelessness. Seen in this context, the suspended timeof Conto de Amaro expressed the age-old and deep-set paradisiacal yearning thenreawakened by what many contemporaries saw as the quickened march of history.

AcknowledgementsA preliminary version of this paper was presented on 3 March 2008 at the École des HautesÉtudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) by invitation of Adeline Rucquoi, and two days later atthe Centre d’Études Supérieures de Civilisation Médiévale (Poitiers) by initiative ofStéphane Boissilier. To these two colleagues and to all the participants in these meetings,our acknowledgements.

BibliographyAlfonso X. Cantigas de Santa Maria. Ed. Walter Mettmann. 3 vols. Madrid: Castalia, 1988.Almeida, Fortunato de. História da Igreja em Portugal. Ed. Damião Peres. 4 vols. Porto:

Portucalense, 1967–71.Almeida Lucas, Maria Clara de. A literatura visionária na Idade Média portuguesa. Lisbon:

Instituto de Cultura e Língua Portuguesa, 1986.Alonso, Dámaso. Poesia española: ensayo de métodos y límites estilísticos. Madrid: Gredos,

1993.Amos, Thomas Leslie. The Fundo Alcobaça of the Biblioteca Nacional, Lisbon. 3 vols.

Collegeville, MN: Hill Monastic Manuscript Library, 1988–90.Aquinas, Saint Thomas. Commento alle sentenze di Pietro Lombardo e testo integrale di

Pietro Lombardo. Introd. Inos Biffi. Trans. Roberto Coggi. 10 vols. Bologna: StudioDomenicano, 1999–2002.

Aquinas, Saint Thomas. In octo libros Physicorum Aristotelis. Ed. Mariani Maggiòlo. Rome:Marietti, 1954.

Aquinas, Saint Thomas. Summa Theologiae. Ed. Fratrum Eiusdem Ordinis. Vol. VI. Rome:Polyglotta, 1891.

Aristotle. The Physics. Ed. and trans. Philip Henry Wickstead and Francis Macdonald Cornford.Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press/William Heinemann, 1980.

Augustine, Saint. De civitate Dei. Ed. Bernhard Dombart and Alfons Kalb. 2 vols. Turnhout:Brepols, 1955.

Augustine, Saint. De Genesi ad litteram imperfectvs liber/Sur la Genèse au sens littéral, livreinachevé. Ed. Joseph Zycha. Trans. Pierre Monat. 2 vols. Paris: Institut d’Études Augusti-niennes, 2004.

Augustine, Saint. Enarrationes in Psalmos. Ed. Eloi Dekkers and Jean Fraipont. Turnhout:Brepols, 1956.

Augustine, Saint. Enchiridion ad Lavrentivm de fide et spe et caritate. Ed. E. Evans. Tunhout:Brepols, 1969.

Baude, Marguerite. Théologie du temps. Paris: Cerf, 1991.Benedicte XVI. Sauvés dans l’espérance. Paris: Cerf, 2007.Benveniste, Émile. Problèmes de linguistique générale. 2 vols. Paris: Gallimard, 2002.Bluteau, Raphaël. Vocabulario portuguez e latino. 8 vols. Coimbra: Collegio das Artes da

Companhia de Jesu, 1712–28. http://www.brasiliana.usp.br/dicionario/1. (accessed January12, 2010).

Bolzinger, André. Histoire de la nostalgie. Paris: Campagne Première, 2007.Bonaparte, Marie. “L’inconscient et le temps.” Revue française de psychanalyse 2 (1939):

61–105.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 73

Bougerol, Jacques-Guy. La théologie de l’espérance aux XII et XIII siècles. 2 vols. Paris:Études Augustiniennes, 1985.

Bruneti, Almir de Campos. A lenda do Graal no contexto heterodoxo do pensamento portu-guês. Lisbon: Sociedade de Expansão Cultural, 1974.

Burrow, John Anthony. The Ages of Man: A Study in Medieval Writing and Thought. Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1986.

Busa, Roberto, ed. Index Thomisticus. Concordantia prima. 56 vols. Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt:Friedrich Frommann/Günther Holzboog, 1974–80.

Camões, Luis de. Os Lusíadas. Ed. Hernani Cidade. Lisbon: Sá da Costa, 1956.Cancioneiro da Ajuda. Ed. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcelos. 2 vols. Lisbon: Imprensa

Nacional/Casa da Moeda, 1990.Canivez, Joseph-Marie, ed. Statuta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Cisterciensis ab anno

1116 ad annum 1786. 8 vols. Louvain: Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 1933–41.Carville, Geraldine. “The Urban Property of the Cistercians in Medieval Ireland.” Studia

Monastica 14 (1972): 35–48.Cassirer, Ernst. La philosophie des formes symboliques. Le langage. Trans. Ole Hansen Løve

and Jean Lacoste. Paris: Minuit, 1972.Castro, Ivo. “Vidas de santos de um manuscrito alcobacense.” Revista Lusitana 4 (new series,

1982–83): 5–52.Cepeda, Isabel Vilares. Vidas e paixões dos apóstolos. Lisbon: Instituto Nacional de Investigação

Científica, 1982.Cocheril, Maur. Études sur le monachisme en Espagne et au Portugal. Paris/Lisbon: Les

Belles Lettres/Bertrand, 1966.Conto de Amaro. Lisbon, National Library, Ms. Alc. 462/CCLXVI.Cornu, Jules. “Études de grammaire portugaise.” Romania 10 (1881): 334–45.Costa, José Pereira da. “Socotorá e o domínio português no Oriente.” Revista da Universidade

de Coimbra 23 (1973): 323–71.Dante Alighieri. Commedia. In Enciclopedia Dantesca, vol. 6, ed. Giorgio Petrocchi, 835–964.

Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1996.Devoto, Daniel. “El tiempo en las Cantigas.” In Alfonso X of Castile: The Learned King

(1221–1284): An International Symposium, ed. Francisco Márquez-Villanueva and CarlosAlberto Vega, 1–16. Cambridge: Department of Romance Languages & Literatures ofHarvard University, 1990.

Dom Duarte. Leal Conselheiro. Ed. Maria Helena Lopes de Castro. Lisbon: Imprensa Nacio-nal/Casa da Moeda, 1998.

Du Cange, Charles Du Fresne. Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis. Ed. Léopold Favre. 5vols. Graz: Akademische Druck-U Verlagsanstalt, 1954.

Dulles Allen, Joseph Heatly, Jr, ed. Two Old Portuguese Versions of the Life of Saint Aléxis.Codices Alcobacenses 36 and 266. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1953.

Ernout, Alfred, and Antoine Meillet. Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine. Ed.Jacques André. Paris: Klincksieck, 2001.

Ernst, Fritz. Vom Heimweh. Zurich: Fretz und Wasmuth, 1949.Esteves Pereira, Francisco Maria, ed. “Visão de Túndalo.” Revista Lusitana 3 (1895):

97–120.Fernandes Marques, Maria Alegria. Estudos sobre a Ordem de Cister em Portugal. Lisbon/

Coimbra: Colibri/Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Coimbra, 1998.Filgueira Valverde, José. Tiempo y gozo eterno en la narrativa medieval. Vigo: Edicións

Xerais de Galicia, 1982.Franco Júnior, Hilário. “Le concept de temps dans l’Epistola Presbiteri Johannis.” In Le

Prêtre Jean. Formation et transformations d’une légende médiévale, ed. Michel Tardieu.Paris: Collège de France. Forthcoming.

Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Trans. James Strachey. London: Hogarth, 1991.Freud, Sigmund. The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. Trans. James Strachey. London:

Hogarth, 1991.Gatto, Giuseppe. “Le voyage au Paradis. La christianisation des traditions folkloriques au

Moyen Age.” Annales. E.S.C. 34 (1979): 929–42.Gervase of Tilbury. Otia imperialia. Ed. and trans. S.E. Barks and James W. Binns. Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 2002.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14

74 H. Franco Junior

Godfrey of Viterbo. Pantheon. In Rerum Germanicorum scriptores, vol. I, ed. Johann Pistorius.Frankfurt: Andrea Wechel, 1684.

Gomes, Jesué Pinharanda. Dicionário de Filosofia portuguesa. Lisbon: Publ. Dom Quixote,1987.

Gonçalves, Iria. O patrimonio do mosteiro de Alcobaça nos séculos XIV e XV. Lisbon:Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 1989.

Graf, Arturo. Il mito del Paradiso terrestre. Rome: Edizioni Graal, 1982.Guillaume, Gustave. L’architectonique du temps dans les langues classiques. Paris: Honoré

Champion, 1993.Halbwachs, Maurice, and Gerard Namer, eds. La mémoire collective. Paris: Albin Michel, 1997.Hallpike, Christopher Robert. The Foundations of Primitive Thought. Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1979.Heinen, Eugen. Die altportugiesische Amaro-Legende. Kritische Ausgabe der ältesten

Fassung. Bamberg: Schadel und Wehle, 1973.Herbert, John Alexander. Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the

British Museum. London: British Museum, 1910.Hofer, Johannes. Dissertatio medica de nostalgia oder Heimwehe. Basel: Jacob Bertschi, 1688.Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. Augustus Taber Murray. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 1984.Honorius Augustodunensis. Clavis Physicae. Ed. Paolo Lucentini. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e

Letteratura, 1974.Honorius Augustodunensis. Gemma animae. In Patrologia Latina 172, 543–738.Honorius Augustodunensis. Imago mundi. Ed. Valérie I.J. Flint. Archives d’histoire doctrinale

et littéraire du Moyen Age 49 (1982): 7–153.Hugues de Fouilloy. De claustro animae. In Patrologia Latina 176, 1017–1182.Husserl, Edmund. Leçons pour une phénoménologie de la conscience intime du temps. Trans.

Henri Dussort. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1964.Isidore of Seville. De differentiis. In Diferencias, ed. Carmen Codoñer Merino. Paris: Les

Belle Lettres, 1992.Isidore of Seville. Etimologías. Ed. Wallace Lindsay. Trans. José Oroz Reta and Manuel-A.

Marco Casquero. Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1982.Isidore of Seville. Liber nvmerorvm/Le livre des nombres, ed. and trans. Jean-Yves

Guillaumin. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2005.Isidore of Seville. Sententiarum. ed. Faustino Arévalo, trans. Ismael Roca Meliá, in Santos

Padres Españoles. Madrid: BAC, 1971, vol. II.Jammer, Max. Concepts of Space. The History of Theories in Physics. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press, 1954.Kahn, Zadoc, ed. and trans. La Bible hébraïque/française, Paris: Corbo, 1967.Klapper, Joseph, ed. Visio quod ossa mortuorum non sunt deridenda, et contra ebrios. In

Erzählungen des Mittelalters in deutscher Übersetzung und lateinischem Urtext, 356–7.Breslau: M. and H. Marcus, 1914.

Klob, Otto, ed. “A vida de sancto Amaro, texte portugais du XIVe siecle.” Romania 30(1901): 504–18.

Kohlenberger, John R. III, ed. and trans. The Interlinear NIV Hebrew/English Old Testament.4 vols. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1987.

Lacoste, Jean-Yves. Note sur le temps. Essai sur les raisons de la mémoire et del’espérance.Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1990.

Lakoff, George, and Marc Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1980.

Lanciani, Giulia, and Giuseppe Tavani, eds. Dicionário da literatura medieval galega e portu-guesa. Lisbon: Caminho, 1993.

Le Goff, Jacques. “La naissance du Purgatoire.” In Un autre Moyen Âge, 775–1231. Paris: LeGrand Livre du Mois, 1999.

Leclerq, Jean, Charles Talbot, and Henri Rochais, eds. Sancti Bernardi Opera. 8 vols. Rome:Editiones Cistercienses, 1957–77.

Lecoq, Danielle. “Le temps et l’intemporel sur quelques représentations médiévales du mondeau XII et XIII siècle.” In Le temps, sa mesure et sa perception au Moyen Age, ed. BernardRibémont, 113–49. Caen: Paradigme, 1992.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 75

Leftow, Brian. Time and Eternity. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991.Leite de Vasconcelos, José. “Fabulário português.” Revista Lusitana 8 (1906): 5–109.Lekai, Louis. The White Monks: A History of Cistercian Order. Okauchee, WI: Our Lady of

Spring Bank, 1953.Lévi-Strauss, Claude. La pensée sauvage. Paris: Plon, 1962.Lopes, Fernão. Crónica de D. João I. Ed. Manuel Lopes de Almeida and Artur de Magalhães

Basto. 2 vols. Porto: Civilização, 1990.Lucas of Tuy. Chronicon Mundi. Ed. Emma Falque. Turnhout: Brepols, 2003.Lucentini, Paolo, ed. Clavis Physicae. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1974.Machado, José Pedro. Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa. 5 vols. Lisbon: Horizonte,

1990.Map, Walter. De nugis curialium. Ed. and trans. Montague Rhodes James. Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1983.Martin, Robert, and Frédéric Nef. “Temps linguistique et temps logique.” Special Issue,

Langages 15 (1981): 7–20.Martins, Mário. Estudos de literatura medieval. Braga: Livraria Cruz, 1956.Maurício, Domingos. “A Carta do Preste João das Índias e seu reflexo nos descobrimentos do

Infante D.Henrique.” Brotéria 70 (1960): 218–44.Maurício, Domingos. “Ainda a Carta do Preste João das Índias.” Brotéria 71 (1961): 285–303.Mazzarino, Santo. Il pensiero storico classico. 3 vols. Bari: Laterza, 1990.Meyer, Heinz, and Rudolf Suntrup. Lexikon der mittelalterlichen Zahlenbedeutungen.

Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1987.Micha, Alexandre, ed. and trans. Lai de Guingamor. In Lais féeriques des XII et XIII siècles,

64–103. Paris: Flammarion, 1992.Molendijk, Arie. Le passé simple et l’imparfait: une approche reichnbachienne. Amsterdam:

Rodopi, 1990.Mouroux, Jean. Le mystère du temps. Approche théologique. Paris: Aubier, 1962.Nascimento, Aires Augusto, ed. and trans. Navegação de S. Brandão nas fontes portuguesas

medievais: edição crítica de textos latinos, tradução, estudo introdutório e notas decomentário. Lisbon: Colibri, 2002.

Nascimento, Aires Augusto. “Navigatio Brandani: aventura e circularidade.” In A imagem domundo na Idade Média, ed. Helder Godinho, 215–23. Lisbon: Ministério da Educação, 1992.

Oliveira Marques, António Henrique de. Introdução à história da agricultura em Portugal.Lisbon: Cosmos, 1968.

Oliveira Marques, António Henrique de. Portugal na crise dos séculos XIV e XV. Lisbon:Presença, 1987.

Otto of Freising. Chronica sive Historia de duabus Civitatibus/Chronik oder die Geschichteder Zwei Staaten. Ed. Adolf Hofmeister and Walther Lammers. Trans. Adolf Schmidt.Berlin: Rütter und Loening, 1960.

Parodi, Massimo. Tempo e spazio nel Medioevo. Turin: Loescher, 1981.Patch, Howard. The Goddess Fortuna in Mediaeval Literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 1927.Patch, Howard. The Other World According to Descriptions in Medieval Literature.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950.Peter of Compostela. De consolatione rationis. Ed. Pedro Blanco Soto. Münster: Aschendorff,

1912.Picchio, Luciana Stegagno. “Tempo del mistico e tempo del convento. Una cantiga di Alfonso

X.” Critica del testo 1 (1998): 225–52.Piché, David, ed. and trans. La condamnation parisienne de 1277. Paris: Vrin, 1999.Pinto, Maria Luísa Mereiles. “O Conto de Amaro. Leitura crítica do texto e glossário.”

Licenciatura thesis, Universidade de Lisboa, 1961.Pistarino, Geo. “I Portoghesi verso l’Asia del Prete Gianni.” Studi Medievali 2 (1961): 75–137.Pomian, Krzysztof. L’ordre du temps. Paris: Gallimard, 1984.Poole, Kevin R. “In Search of Paradise: Time and Eternity in Alfonso X’s Cantiga 103.”

eHumanista 9 (2007): 110–28. http://www.ehumanista.ucsb.edu/volumes/volume_09/Articles/4%20Kevin%20R%20Poole%20Article.pdf. (accessed January 12, 2010).

Porzig, Walter. Das Wunder des Sprache. Probleme, Methoden und Ergebnisse der modernenSprachwissenschaft. Bern: A. Francke, 1950.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14

76 H. Franco Junior

Prudentius, Aurelius Clemens. Cathemerinon. Trans. Pope Robert Martin. Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 1969.

Rahlfs, Alfred, ed. La Bible des Septante. Trans. Cécile Dogniez and Marguerite Harl. Paris:Cerf, 2001.

Rey, Alain. Dictionnaire historique de la langue française: contenant les mots français enusage […]. 2 vols. Paris: Dictionnaires Le Robert, 1992.

Rico, Francisco. Alfonso el Sabio y la “General Estoria.” Barcelona: Ariel, 1984.Robson, Charles Alan, ed. Maurice of Sully and the Medieval Vernacular Homily with the

Text of Maurice’s French Homilies from a Sens Cathedral Chapter Ms. Oxford: BasilBlackwell, 1952.

Sanceau, Elaine. Portugal in Quest of Prester John. London: Hutchinson, 1943.Santos, Delfim. “Aristotelismo em Portugal.” In Dicionário de história de Portugal, vol. I, ed.

Joel Serrão, 182–3. Porto: Figueirinhas, 1992.São Boaventura, Fortunato de. Historia chronologica e critica da Real Abadia de Alcobaça.

Lisbon: Impressão Régia, 1827.Schwarzer, Joseph, ed. “Visionslegende.” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 13 (1882): 338–51.Sears, Elizabeth. The Ages of Man: Medieval Interpretations of the Life Cycle. Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1986.Sicard, Patrice, ed. Hugonis de Sancto Victore Opera. 2 vols. Turnhout: Brepols, 2001.Silva, Elsa Maria Branco da, ed. Conto de Amaro. In Navegação de S. Brandão nas fontes

portuguesas medievais: edição crítica de textos latinos, tradução, estudo introdutório enotas de comentário, ed. Aires Augusto Nascimento, 243–81. Lisboa: Colibri, 2002.

Trezenzonii de solistitionis insula magna. Appendix to Navegação de S. Brandão nas fontesportuguesas medievais, ed. Aires Augusto Nascimento, 213–40.

Usus antiquiores ordinis cisterciensis. In Patrologia Latina 166, 1385–1500.Valerius of Bierzo. De uana saeculi sapientia. In España Sagrada, vol. XVI, ed. Enrique

Flórez. Madrid: Antonio de Sancha, 1762.Vasconcelos, Laura Remartinez Paes de. “Conto de Amaro, edição e estudo de um texto do

códice alcobacense 266.” MA thesis, Universidade Nova at Lisbon, 1997.Vega, Carlos Alberto. The Saint Amaro Legend: The Popular Creation of a Peninsular

Hagiographic Narrative. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997.Veríssimo Serrão, Joaquim. História de Portugal, 1080–1415. Lisbon: Verbo, 1990.Vieira, Yara Frateschi. “A soidade/suidade na lírica galego-portuguesa.” In Estudos dedicados

a Ricardo Carvalho Calero, ed. José Luís Rodríguez, II, 807–24. Santiago de Compostela:Parlamento de Galicia/Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 2000.

Waddell, Chrysogonus, ed. and trans. Cistercian Lay Brothers: Twelfth-century Usages withRelated Texts: Latin Text with Concordance of Latin Terms, English Translations andNotes. Brecht: Cîteaux, Commentarii cistercienses, 2000.

Waddell, Chrysogonus, ed. and trans. Narrative and Legislative Texts from Early Cîteaux.Cîteaux: Commentarii cistercienses, 1999.

Whorf, Benjamin Lee. “An American Indian Model of the Universe.” In Language, Thoughtand Reality, ed. John B. Carroll, 57–64. Cambridge: MIT, 1993.

William of Conches. Glosae super Platonem. Ed. Édouard Jeauneau. Paris: Vrin, 1965.William of Saint-Thierry. Speculum Fidei. Ed. Marie-Madeleine Davy. Paris: Vrin, 1959.Zacherl, Elisabeth, ed. Conto de Amaro. Salzburg: Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft für

Forschungen zum romanischen Volksbuch, 1979.Zambrini, Francesco, ed. “Leggenda del viaggio di tre santi monaci al Paradiso terrestre.” In

Miscellanea di opuscoli inedite o rare dei secoli XIV e XV, ed. Francesco Zambrini,165–78. Turin: UTET, 1861.

Zarncke, Friedrich. “Der Priester Johannes. Text des Briefes.” Abhandlungen der philolo-gisch-historischen Classe der königlich sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften 7(1879): 909–34.

Zarncke, Friedrich. Epistola Presbiteri Johannis/Zwei lateinische redactionen des briefes desPresbyter Johannes. [n.p]: [n.p.], 1877.

Zurara, Gomes Eanes de. Crónica dos feitos de Guiné. Ed. António J. Dias Dinis. Lisbon:Agência geral das colônias, 1949.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

irm

ingh

am]

at 0

0:35

15

Nov

embe

r 20

14