Rome seen from the Portuguese Empire: Manuel Godinho de Erédia (1558?-1623) and his Summa de Arvores e Plantas da Índia intra Gangez

Abstract

. Based on the itinerary and works of an original figure of the Portuguese imperial society, Manuel Godinho de Erédia (1558?-1623), the article reflects on the complex relations between two capitals, between two Romes of the second half of the 16th century: that of the spiritual empire of post-Tridentine Catholicism founded on the ruins of the great ancient empire, which can be seen on the maps of our ordinary historiography; and that of the second capital of a Portuguese empire in the process of expansion, towards the East, and eventually extended to the whole world. It highlights the double system of references that nourishes and aims to reinforce the scholarly credentials of Erédia, a man of the Rome of the East: the humanist soil of a culture shared with his contemporaries across distances; the renewed horizon, carried by the Iberian crown, of an imperial construction that does not equal but surpasses that of ancient Rome. The proposed reading of Erédia’s numerous productions, in particular his Atlas or his Summa de Arvores e Plantas da Índia intra Gangez, aims to shed light on this double system of references, which thus weaves another vision of the production of knowledge, with, against or from Rome, at the end of the 16th century.