Jesuit biography with much on Goa, Malabar, Malaca, Ceylon, and Hormuz

Queirós, P. Fernão de. História da vida do veneravel Irmão Pedro de Basto [...].

€ 8,500.00

First and only edition of this work on the life of Father Pedro de Basto and the Jesuits in the Gulf, East Africa, India, and Southeast Asia.

Born Cabeciera de Basto, Quinta do Sobredo, de Basto entered the Jesuit Order in 1589, after previous military experience in Southeast Asia. This work constitutes his biography, but also an overview of Jesuit interests along all the coastlines of the Indian Ocean, with particularly interesting digressions into less-known Portuguese and Jesuit action in the Gulf region. For example, this work is one of the primary historical sources for the Portuguese loss of the Kingdom of Ormuz, and Portuguese attempts to defend their foothold in Muscatan episode described in Book III, Chapter V: "Depoys de perda de Urmuz, Gonsalo de Sequeyra com sete sustas, desviou de Soar ao Persa, com muyto estrago, & nao sem perda nossa; & Dom Gonsalo da Sylveyra os rompeo, vindo com poder dobrado sobre Mascate; & Ruy Freyre, colhendo duas naos da Persia, a nenhum deu vida, & poz em grande estryteza a Urmuz, tirádohe os viveres, & fzendoos reconhecer em sua pessoa hú estremado Capitao em valor, & predencia" (p. 277).

Though based on de Basto's original unpublished writings, the author and compiler of this work was Fernão de Queirós, whose works are an important piece of Portuguese historiography in Asia: "His 'Conquista de Ceylao' earned him the title of 'the greatest Portuguese historian of Ceylon'; his 'Historia da vida do Ven. Irm. P. de Basto' is in many of its parts a correction and supplement to the works of Faria y Sousa and D. Luis de Menezes, as Queiroz expressly states, and a very important source of information about the wars between the Portuguese, Dutch, and English in the 17th century" (Schurhammer 215).