How to Cite
License (Chapter)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Identifiers (Book)
Published
Die Frühgeschichte der portugiesischen Expansion in Einzelschicksalen. Atlantikinseln und afrikanische Küste in Gesuchen an den Papst (ca. 1440–1510)
Abstract Among the supplications are some that throw some light on the early discoveries of the Portuguese. From the lower perspective of their personal fate, the supplicants – this time normal human beings rather than discoverers and admirals, mostly convicted clergy – name the Azores, Madeira, the Cape Verde Islands, the Guinea Islands etc.: banishment to islands, some of which were unpopulated and only just discovered („an island on which to die rather than live“) and now request the termination of their exile (they all used the pope as an appellate body); the sentencing of clerics to fight for Ceuta against the Muslims; husbands missing at sea; the role of the Order of Christ, and many other cases. Besides, from another source for the most part long overlooked, the Roman customs registers, one finds references to the first arrivals in Rome of slaves, animals and goods from areas south of the Sahara, thus from Portuguese enterprises heading to the African west coast before reaching the Cape.
