The first epic (and censored) poem about Columbus was hidden in Montserrat

BarcelonaThe Portuguese poet, humanist, and writer Francisco Botelho de Morais e Vasconcelos (1670-1747) must have thought it wiser to hide his support for the Austrian cause during the War of the Spanish Succession. To conceal any evidence, he removed about 200 octaves, about twenty pages of sensitive political and biographical information from the epic poem. The New World (1701), which features Christopher Columbus.

However, the poet did not discard the original manuscript, and Claudia García-Minguillán, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Barcelona, has located it in the Library of the Abbey of Montserrat. The discovery may help us understand the political, literary, and cultural motivations of Botelho de Moraes e Vasconcelos and shed light on the difficulties and censorship faced by creators in Baroque Barcelona. The document had gone unnoticed by researchers despite appearing as a brief reference in an old catalogue compiled by Father Alexandre Olivar in 1977. The manuscript, of thirty-nine pages, has notable differences from the printed edition of 1701. Columbus is a controversial figure and there is a significant production in the 15th and 16th centuries praising him, but not in Spanish," explains García-Minguillán. The poem by Botelho de Moraes e Vasconcelos is considered to be of great philological and historical value, because it is the first epic work written in Spanish that has Columbus as its protagonist and places him as a hero of the political imagination.

The poem was written in Barcelona at a rather turbulent time. In 1702 the War of Succession, where the Austrians and Philippians, who had different political and economic ideas, clashed. The Crown of Aragon was predominantly Austrian. There was a more republican political culture. The Crown of Castile was Philippian and defended a model with a strong influence of royal power and without Corts. The political moment is key to understanding the strategic changes of the poet, who was initially closely linked to the intellectual and diplomatic circles of the Catalan capital, which were Austrian. In fact, the author participated in the founding of theAcademy of the Distrustful, an entity that was closed by Felip V. With the motto Tuta, quia diffidens [Sure, because he distrusts], its members met periodically to discuss mythology, history, politics, philosophy... and they were clearly pro-Austracism.

"The censored part of the poem contains mainly biographical information about the author and the political situation," explains García-Minguillán. "It talks, for example, about Manuel de Toledo, who was a relative of the Duke of Alba and had pro-Austracism leanings. We don't know if he did it out of prudence or if he was forced to, but he eliminated everything that linked him to the pro-Austracism side," adds the researcher, who spent hours in the Montserrat Library studying its collection.

The manuscript, which will now be the subject of a critical edition and a monographic study, has some aesthetic peculiarities: despite being written in Spanish, the composition follows classical epic models that were more common in the Latin and Italian tradition. The choice of the Castilian language, in this case, would surely respond to a desire to intervene in the political debate of the Spanish monarchy.

Among the unpublished fragments, some verses stand out where the poet talks about how he had to leave Portugal to develop his literary career:

With Ulysses you can (discreet lover)
my cases compare various and impious
But alas! You will see more abundant pain
that in centuries of yours, in moments of mine.
The squadron of friends found constant;
I in all came the affection to be detours,
and the faith that until then judged certain

They threw her on land because she was already dead.

In another fragment he praises the figure of Manuel de Toledo:

From the great Toledo, always among glorious
the most discreet, the great, the always august;
the best breast, in it pious stars
the spirit united more robust
fear of rewarding her with a thousand [crossed out text] prodigious timbres,
stripping stars crowns it just
immortal diadem cone and new laurel
the deity of Phoebus is enjama.