Tuesday, January 30, 2024

It is the 30th of January 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

 

Have you ever considered that the spike in the popularity of space movies and literature paralleled our first trips into space? It makes sense; just as we were exploring the unknown, we became fascinated with possibilities, utopias, and strange parallels.

So, too, was it in the 15th and 16th centuries that Europeans first explored the rest of the unknown globe. We have strange tales, utopias, and stories of strange parallels. Travel literature and pseudo-Anthropologies of foreign people and beasts were amongst the best-selling books of the 16th century.

For the Portuguese- a once mighty empire on the European stage their great epic was os Lusiades, a famous epic poem by Luís Vaz de Camões about national hero Vasco De Gama and his voyage to India. But the life and work of Camões are dwarfed when compared to his vastly understudied contemporary- the man I will dub “the most interesting man in 16th century Portugal” Damião de Góis (check the transcript for spelling- I spent over an hour on Portuguese YouTube learning the pronunciation).

Damião de Góis was born in February, 1502. His grandfather was a royal court member and traveled to Africa with the Prince. After proving his valor, the grandfather was granted land and the rights to lucrative soap factories.

Young Damião would grow up as a page in the court of King Manuel I and would later recall his particular fascination with foreign emissaries, elephants and rhinos, spices, and foreign music.

At 21, he was made secretary at a Dutch trading port. His wanderlust was further encouraged when he himself was made an emissary on behalf of the crown to England, Scotland, Russia, Eastern Europe, and Germany.

On Palm Sunday in 1531, he was traveling through Wittenberg and, despite being a Catholic, attended a service to hear Martin Luther preach. Afterward, he was treated to tea in the Castle and then had lunch with Luther and Philip Melanchthon- he was enamored with the apples and hazelnuts served by Luther’s wife, Katharina. They talked theology, but mostly international economics- Luther was concerned with the new international economy and argued for local production and agriculture.

Curiously, Melanchthon wanted to prove to de Gois that he was poor and took him to his small apartment near the college. The two would exchange letters for the next decade.

De Gois would also become friendly with the Humanist Erasmus; he traveled to Basel to meet the mapmaker Sebastian Munster and to Strasbourg to meet the evangelical ecumenist, Martin Bucer.

In 1533, he resigned from his government post to focus on his own studies. He went to Padua and spent four years reading and writing on his voyages. There, he met another Portuguese man, Simao Rodrigues, who looked at his fellow Catholic with some suspicion.

De Gois moved to the Netherlands, where he married Joanna van Hargen and wrote one of the first books on Ethiopian Christianity. During a French invasion of the Netherlands, he was taken prisoner and only released with the intervention of the Portuguese king and a ransom of 6000 Ducats.

He and his family moved back to Portugal, where he was made the head of the state archives. He was known for his extensive library and art collection, which led to his notoriety and reintroduction to Simao Rodrigues, who had ascended the Jesuit hierarchy and called for the Inquisition to call on Damião. He would be imprisoned during a hearing that lasted two years, only to be released and sent to a monastery to repent for his sins (largely circumstantial rumors and on account of his friendliness with Protestants).

He returned home in 1573, and it was on this, the 30th of January the following year, that he died under mysterious circumstances. The official story had him falling into a fireplace at an inn, but others claimed he was murdered. In 1941, his body was exhumed, and it was revealed that he had a fractured skull, legitimizing the rumors that he was, in fact, murdered.

The decline of Portugal as a world power and the paucity of English-speaking Early Modern scholars of Portugal has made him an often overlooked figure in 16th-century history. This was partially alleviated with Edward Wilson-Lee’s curiously titled but wonderfully written A History of Water, published in 2022.

Born in 1502 and murdered on this, the 30th of January in 1574, Damião de Góis was 71 years old.

 

 

The last word for today is appropriately exotic- from the daily lectionary and a rare trip to the book of Numbers, the story of Balaam’s donkey:

24 Then the angel of the Lord stood in a narrow path through the vineyards, with walls on both sides. 25 When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, it pressed close to the wall, crushing Balaam’s foot against it. So he beat the donkey again.

26 Then the angel of the Lord moved on ahead and stood in a narrow place where there was no room to turn, either to the right or to the left. 27 When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, it lay down under Balaam, and he was angry and beat it with his staff. 28 Then the Lord opened the donkey’s mouth, and it said to Balaam, “What have I done to you to make you beat me these three times?”

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 30th of January 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who thought, “If God can even speak through a donkey, I might as well give it a shot.” He is the preacher Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man whose youngest squirmed in the pew the first time he heard that story in a different translation- I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.