Henry Home from the Crusade
Read the full text in our reader
Já tinha vindo Anrique da conquista Da cidade Hierosólima sagrada, E do Jordão a areia tinha vista, Que viu de Deus a carne em si lavada; Que não tendo Gotfredo a quem resista, Depois de ter Judeia sojugada, Muitos, que nestas guerras o ajudaram, Para seus senhorios se tornaram;
Henry had already come from the conquest of the holy city of Jerusalem, and had seen the sand of the Jordan, the river that watched the flesh of God be washed in its own waters; and since Godfrey had no one left to resist him, after Judea had been subdued, many who had helped him in these wars went back to their own domains.
Vasco da Gama, recounting Portugal's origins to the King of Melinde, reaches Count Henry, who arrives in Iberia fresh from the First Crusade and the capture of Jerusalem.
The stanza splices the birth of Portugal into the story of the First Crusade. Count Henry, the future founder's father, arrives in Iberia not as an unknown adventurer but as a veteran of the taking of Jerusalem, and Camões lists him among the many soldiers who, once Godfrey of Bouillon had subdued Judea, scattered back to lands of their own. It is a genealogy of prestige: Portugal's line begins with a man who fought where Christendom most wanted to have fought.
What a first reader skims past is line 4. The Jordan is named not for geography but because it is the river that saw "a carne de Deus" washed in it, Christ's baptism. In one clause Camões upgrades Henry's travels from a military itinerary into a pilgrimage, so that the sand he crosses is holy ground before he ever reaches the Mondego. Godfrey of Bouillon, the historical captor of Jerusalem in 1099, anchors the fiction to a real date and lends Henry borrowed light.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Os Lusíadas 3.27 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the Os Lusíadas — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Os Lusíadas 3.27 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/lusiadas/3.27/