by Will Durant
For four years (1715-19) he directed the Cappella Giulia at the Vatican, and officiated at the organ in St. Peter’s; now he composed a “Stabat Mater” which has been pronounced “a genuine masterpiece.”128 In 1719 he conducted his opera Narciso in London. Two years later we find him in Lisbon as chapelmaster to John V, and as teacher to the King’s daughter Maria Barbara, who became a skilled harpsichordist under his tutelage; most of his extant sonatas were composed for her use. Returning to Naples (1725), he married, age forty-two, Maria Gentile, age sixteen; and in 1729 he took her to Madrid. In that year Maria Barbara married Ferdinand, Crown Prince of Spain. When she moved with him to Seville Scarlatti accompanied her, and he remained in her service till her death.
Scarlatti’s wife died in 1739, leaving him five children. He married again, and soon the five were nine. When Maria Barbara became queen of Spain (1746) she brought the Scarlatti family with her to Madrid. Farinelli was the favorite musician of the royal pair, but the singer and the virtuoso became good friends. Scarlatti’s position was that of a privileged servitor, providing music for the Spanish court. He obtained leave to go to Dublin in 1740 and to London in 1741; but mostly he lived in quiet content in or near Madrid, almost secluded from the world, and probably with no suspicion that he would become a favorite with pianists in the twentieth century.
Of the 555 “sonatas” that now precariously support his fame on their tonal filigree, Scarlatti in his lifetime published only thirty. Their modest title, Esercizii per gravicembalo, indicated their limited aim—to explore the possibilities of expression through harpsichord technique. They are sonatas only in the older sense of the term, as instrumental pieces to be “sounded,” not sung. Some have contrasted themes, and some are paired in major and minor keys, but they are all in single movements, with no attempt at thematic elaboration and recapitulation. They represent the emancipation of harpsichord music from the influence of the organ, and the reception, by keyboard compositions, of influences from opera. The vivacity, delicacy, trills, and tricks of sopranos and castrati are here surpassed by agile fingers obeying a playful and prodigal imagination. Scarlatti literally “played” the harpsichord. “Do not expect,” he said, “any profound learning, but rather an ingenious jesting with art.”129 Something of the Spanish dance—its prancing feet and swirling skirts and tinkling castanets—is in these ripples and cascades, and everywhere in the sonatas is the abandon of a performer to pleasure in mastery over his instrument.130
That joy in the instrument must have been one source of solace to Scarlatti in those serving years in Spain. It was rivaled by his delight in gambling, which consumed much of his pension; the Queen had repeatedly to pay his debts. After 1751 his health failed, and his piety increased. In 1754 he returned to Naples, and there, three years later, he died. The good Farinelli provided for his friend’s impoverished family.
We have left to a later chapter the strange career of Farinelli in Spain. He and Domenico Scarlatti, Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo, were among the gifted Italians who, with the almost Italianate Mengs, brought Italian music and art into the Spanish quickening. In 1759 the King of Naples followed or preceded them. In that year Ferdinand VI died without issue, and his brother Charles IV of Naples inherited the Spanish throne as Charles III. Naples was sorry to see him go. His departure, in a fleet of sixteen ships, was a sad holiday for the Neapolitans; they gathered in great throngs along the shore to see him sail away, and many, we are told, wept in bidding farewell to “a sovereign who had proved himself the father of his people.”131 He was to crown his career by rejuvenating Spain.
CHAPTER X
Portugal and Pombal
1706-82
I. JOHN V: 1706-50
WHY had Portugal declined since the great days of Magellan, Vasco da Gama, and Camões? Once her flesh and spirit had sufficed to explore half the globe, leaving bold colonies in Madeira, the Azores, South America, Africa, Madagascar, India, Malacca, Sumatra; now, in the eighteenth century, she was a tiny promontory of Europe, tied in trade and war to England, and nourished by Brazilian gold and diamonds reaching her by permission of the British fleet. Had her loins been exhausted by furnishing brave men to hold so many outposts precariously poised on the edges of the world? Had that influx of gold washed the iron out of her veins, and relaxed her ruling classes from adventure into ease?
Yes, and it had enervated Portuguese industry as well. What was the use of trying to compete in handicrafts or manufactures with artisans or entrepreneurs of England, Holland, or France, when imported gold could be paid out for imported clothing, food, and luxuries? The rich, handling the gold, grew richer and more gorgeously accoutered and adorned; the poor, kept at a distance from that gold, remained poor, and had only hunger as a prod to toil. Negro slave labor was introduced on many farms, and beggars made the cities noisy with their cries. William Beckford, hearing them in 1787, reported: “No beggars equal those of Portugal for strength of lungs, luxuriance of sores, profusion of vermin, variety and arrangement of tatters, and dauntless perseverance. … Innumerable, blind, dumb, and scabby.”1
Lisbon was not then the lovely city that it is today. The churches and the monasteries were magnificent, the palaces of the nobility were immense, but fully a tenth of the population was homeless, and the tortuous alleys reeked with rubbish and filth.2 Yet here, as elsewhere in southern lands, the poor had the consolations of sunny days, starry evenings, music, religion, and pious women with tantalizing eyes. Undeterred by fleas on their flesh and mosquitoes in the air, the people poured into the streets after the heat had subsided, and there they danced, sang, strummed guitars, and fought over a damsel’s smile.
Treaties (1654, 1661, 1703) had bound Portugal to England in a strange symbiosis that allied them in economy and foreign policy while keeping them enthusiastically diverse in manners and hostile in creed. England promised to protect Portugal’s independence, and to admit Portuguese wine (port from Oporto) at a greatly reduced tariff. Portugal pledged herself to admit English textiles duty free, and to side with England in any war. The Portuguese thought of the English as damned heretics with a good navy; the English looked upon the Portuguese as benighted bigots with strategic ports. British capital dominated Portuguese industry and trade. Pombal complained, with some exaggeration:
In 1754 Portugal scarcely produced anything toward her own support. Two thirds of her physical necessities were supplied by England. England had become mistress of our entire commerce, and all our foreign trade was managed by English agents. … The entire cargo of vessels sent from Lisbon to Brazil, and consequently the riches that were returned in exchange, belonged to them. Nothing was Portuguese except in name.3
Nevertheless enough of colonial gold, silver, and gems reached the Portuguese government to finance its expenses and make the king independent of the Cortes and its taxing power. So John V, in his reign of forty-four years, lived in sultanic ease, gracing polygamy with culture and piety. He gave or lent enormous sums to the papacy, and received in return the title of His Most Faithful Majesty, and even the right to say Mass—though not to change bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. “His pleasures,” said Frederick the Great, “were in priestly functions; his buildings were convents, his armies were monks, his mistresses were nuns.”4
The Church prospered under a King who owed her so many absolutions. She owned half the land,5 and her devotees filled nine hundred religious houses. Of the nation’s two million population some 200,000 were ecclesiastics of some degree, or attached to a religious establishment. The Jesuits were especially prominent, at home and in the colonies; they had shared in winning Brazil for Portugal, and were pleasing even Voltaire by their administration of Paraguay; several of them were welcomed at court, and some of them acquired ascendancy over the King. In the great procession of Corpus Christi the King bore one of the poles of the canopy under which the Patriarch of Lisbon carried the Blessed Sacrament. When Englishmen marveled to see the route of the procession lined with
troops and worshipers, all bareheaded and kneeling, it was explained to them that such ceremonies, and the display of precious vessels and miraculous relics in the churches, were a main factor in keeping social order among the poor.
Meanwhile the Inquisition watched over the purity of the nation’s faith and blood. John V checked the power of the institution by securing from Pope Benedict XIII a bull allowing its prisoners to be defended by counsel, and requiring that all its sentences be subject to review by the king.6 Even so the authority of the tribunal sufficed to burn sixty-six persons in Lisbon in eleven years (1732-42). Among them was the leading Portuguese dramatist of the age, Antonio José da Silva, who was charged with secret Judaism. On the day of his execution (October 19, 1739) one of his plays was performed in a Lisbon theater.7
John V loved music, literature, and art. He brought French actors and Italian musicians to his capital. He founded the Royal Academy of History. He financed the great aqueduct that supplies Lisbon with water. He built, at a cost of fifty million francs, the Convent of Mafra (1717-32), vaster than the Escorial, and still among the most imposing structures in the Iberian Peninsula. To adorn the interior he summoned back from Spain the greatest Portuguese painter of the century.
The eighty-four years of Francisco Vieira mingled love and art in a romance that stirred all Portugal. Born at Lisbon in 1699, he fell in love with Ignez Elena de Lima when both were children. Enamored also of painting, he went to Rome at the age of nine, studied there for seven years, and, aged fifteen, won the first prize in a competition offered by the Academy of St. Luke. Returning in 1715, he was chosen by John V to paint a Mystery of the Eucharist. This, we are told, he finished in six days; then he set out to find Ignez. Her titled father turned him away, and immured the girl in a convent. Francisco appealed to the King, who refused to intervene. He went to Rome and secured a bull annulling Ignez’ conventual vows and authorizing the marriage. The bull was ignored by Portuguese authorities. Francisco, back in Lisbon, disguised himself as a bricklayer, entered the convent, carried off his beloved, and married her. Her brother shot him; he recovered and forgave his assailant. John V made him court painter and gave him commissions to decorate not only the Mafra Convent but the royal palaces. After Ignez died (1775), Francisco spent his remaining years in religious retreat and works of charity. How many such romances of soul and blood are lost behind the façades of history!
II. POMBAL AND THE JESUITS
John V died in 1750 after eight years of paralysis and imbecility, and his son Joseph I (José Manoel) began an eventful reign. He appointed to his cabinet, as minister for war and foreign affairs, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello, whom history knows as the Marquês de Pombal, the greatest and most terrible minister who ever governed Portugal.
He was already fifty-one years old when Joseph reached the throne. Educated by the Jesuits at the University of Coimbra, he won his first fame as an athletic and pugnacious leader of the “Mohocks” gang that infested the streets of Lisbon. In 1733 he persuaded the highborn Dona Teresa de Noronha to elope with him. Her family denounced him, then recognized his talent and promoted his political career. His wife brought him a small fortune; he inherited another from an uncle. He made his way by influence, persistence, and obvious ability. In 1739 he was appointed minister plenipotentiary to London. His wife retired to a convent, and died there in 1745. In his six years in England Pombal studied the English economy and government, noted the obedience of the Anglican Church to the state, and perhaps shed some of his Catholic faith. He returned to Lisbon (1744), was sent as envoy to Vienna (1745), and there married a niece of Marshal Daun, who was to earn immortality by defeating Frederick once. Pombal’s new bride remained devoted to him through all his triumphs and defeats.
John V had distrusted him as having “a hairy heart,”8 as “coming from a cruel and vindictive family,”9 and as capable of defying a king. Nevertheless Pombal was called home in 1749, and was raised to ministerial office with Jesuit support. Joseph I confirmed the appointment. Intelligence combined with industry soon gave Pombal dominance in the new cabinet. “Carvalho,” reported a French chargé d’affaires, “may be looked upon as the chief minister. He is indefatigable, active, and expeditious. He has won the confidence of the King his master, and in all political matters none has it more than he.”10
His superiority became evident in the great earthquake of November 1, 1755. At 9:40 A.M. on All Saints’ Day, when most of the population were worshiping in the churches, four convulsions of the earth laid half of Lisbon in ruins, killing over fifteen thousand people, destroying most of the churches, sparing most of the brothels,11 and Pombal’s home. Many inhabitants ran in terror to the shores of the Tagus, but a tidal wave fifteen feet high drowned thousands more, and wrecked the vessels that lay in the river. The fires that broke out in every quarter of the city claimed additional lives. In the resultant chaos the scum of the populace began to rob and kill with impunity. The King, who himself had narrowly escaped death, asked his ministers what should be done. Pombal is reported to have answered, “Bury the dead and relieve the living.” Joseph gave him full authority, and Pombal used it with characteristic energy and dispatch. He stationed troops to maintain order, set up tents and camps for the homeless, and decreed immediate hanging for anyone found robbing the dead. He fixed the prices of provisions at those that had prevailed before the earthquake, and compelled all incoming ships to unload their cargoes of food and sell them at those prices. Helped by an undiminished influx of Brazilian gold, he supervised the rapid rebuilding of Lisbon with wide boulevards and well-paved and well-lit streets. The central part of the city as it is today was the work of the architects and engineers who worked under Pombal.12
His success in this demoralizing catastrophe confirmed his power in the ministry. Now he undertook two far-reaching tasks: to free the government from domination by the Church, and to free the economy from domination by Britain. These enterprises required a man of steel, of patriotism, ruthless-ness, and pride.
If his anticlericalism struck especially at the Jesuits, it was primarily because he suspected them of fomenting the resistance to Portuguese appropriation of that Paraguayan territory where the Jesuits had since 1605 been organizing over 100,000 Indians into thirty-one reductiones, or settlements, on a semicommunistic basis in formal submission to Spain.13 Spanish and Portuguese explorers had heard of (quite legendary) gold in Paraguayan soil, and merchants complained that the Jesuit fathers were monopolizing the export trade of Paraguay and were adding the profits to the funds of their order. In 1750 Pombal negotiated a treaty by which Portugal surrendered to Spain the rich colony of San Sacramento (at the mouth of the Rio de la Plata) in exchange for seven of the Jesuit “reductions” adjacent to the Brazilian frontier. The treaty stipulated that the thirty thousand Indians in these communities should emigrate to other regions, and relinquish the land to the incoming Portuguese. Ferdinand VI of Spain ordered the Paraguayan Jesuits to leave the settlements, and to instruct their subjects to depart in peace. The Jesuits claimed to have obeyed these orders, but the Indians resisted with a passionate and violent tenacity, which it took a Portuguese army three years to overcome. Pombal accused the Society of Jesus of secretly encouraging this resistance. He resolved to end all Jesuit participation in Portuguese industry, commerce, and government. Perceiving his intention, the Jesuits of Portugal joined in efforts to overthrow him.
Their leader in this movement was Gabriel Malagrida. Born in Menaggio (on Lake Como) in 1689, he distinguished himself at school by biting his hands till the blood flowed; so, he said, he prepared himself to bear the pains of martyrdom. He joined the Society of Jesus, and sailed as a missionary to Brazil. From 1724 to 1735 he preached the Gospel to Indians in the jungle. Several times he escaped death—from cannibals, crocodiles, shipwreck, disease. His beard turned white in early middle age. He was credited with miraculous powers, and expectant crowds followed him whenever he appeared in the cities of Brazil. He built churches and c
onvents, and founded seminaries. In 1747 he came to Lisbon to solicit funds from King John. He received them, sailed back to Brazil, and established more religious houses, often sharing in the manual labor of construction. In 1753 he was in Lisbon again, for he had promised to prepare the Queen Mother for death. He attributed the earthquake of 1755 to the sins of the people, called for a reform of morals, and, with others of his order, predicted further earthquakes if morals did not improve. His house of religious retreat became a focus of plots against Pombal.
Some noble families were involved in these plots. They protested that the son of an insignificant country squire had made himself master of Portugal, holding their lives and fortunes in his hands. One of these aristocratic factions was led by Dom José de Mascarenhas, Duke of Aveiro; another was headed by the Duke’s brother-in-law, Dom Francisco de Assiz, Marquis of Tavora. Tavora’s wife, the Marchioness Dona Leonor, a leader of Portuguese society, was a fervent disciple and frequent visitor of Father Malagrida. Her oldest son, Dom Luis Bernardo, the “younger Marquis” of Tavora, was married to his own aunt. When Luis went off to India as a soldier, this lovely and beautiful “younger Marchioness” became the mistress of Joseph I; this too the Aveiros and the Tavoras never forgave. They heartily agreed with the Jesuits that should Pombal be removed the situation would be eased.