The Painted Pentecost
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Ali tinha em retrato afigurada Do alto e Santo Espírito a pintura: A cândida pombinha debuxada Sobre a única Fénix, Virgem pura; A companhia santa está pintada Dos doze, tão torvados na figura, Como os que, só das línguas que caíram, De fogo, várias línguas referiram.
There, painted in portrait, was depicted the image of the high and Holy Spirit: the white little dove sketched above the sole Phoenix, the pure Virgin; the holy company of the twelve is painted there, their faces so troubled and amazed, like those who, only from the tongues of fire that fell upon them, reported the many different tongues they now could speak.
Still describing the false Christian shrine that Bacchus has raised at Mombasa to lure Gama's men ashore. The images are of the Holy Spirit, the Virgin, and the twelve apostles at Pentecost.
The stanza is a painting come to life in words. Camões walks us through a sacred picture panel by panel: the dove of the Holy Spirit above the Virgin, the twelve apostles below with their faces stunned, and the tongues of fire of Pentecost, when the disciples suddenly spoke every language. The "única Fénix" is the Virgin, borrowed from the myth of the one deathless bird to say she is unrepeatable, uniquely pure.
What a first reader misses is whose picture this is. These are not devout images set up by Christians. Bacchus, the poem's pagan enemy of the Portuguese, has raised a false chapel at Mombasa and painted it with Christian scenes precisely to look trustworthy and draw Gama's sailors into a trap. The tenderness of the little dove and the pure Virgin is bait. Pentecost, the miracle of understanding across languages, hangs over a scene built entirely on deceit.
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