Garcia da Horta

1499?: Garcia da Orta is born in Castelo de Vide, Portugal, the son of Fernando (Isaac) da Orta and Leonor Gomes. – 1523: He studies medicine at Salamanca and Alcalá de Henares before returning to Portugal. – 1530: He is appointed Professor of Logic at Coimbra University. – 1534: He goes to Goa, Portuguese India, where he settles, employed as a physician and trading in spices and precious stones. – 1563: His “Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India” is published. – 1568: Garcia da Orta dies. – 4 December 1580: Condemned post-mortem by the Inquisition for the “crime” of “Judaism”, his bones are exhumed and burned.

"Favour the ancient
Science which Achilles held in esteem;
Look, because you must see
What was created in our time
The fruit of a Garden* where
New plants bloom, unknown to scholars.
Look, how in your lifetime
A remarkable Garden produces many herbs
In the Lusitanian fields,
Herbs which those wise sorcerers
Medea and Circe never found,
Because the laws of Magic outwitted them."




*A pun on Garcia da Orta’s name. ‘Orta’ or ‘horta’, from the Latin ‘hortus’, also means ‘garden’.
(The above is an extract from a poem written by Luis de Camões to the Count of Redondo, Viceroy of India, in homage to Garcia da Orta’s book, “Colloquies on the Simples, Drugs and Materia Medica of India and some of the fruits found there, and wherein matters are dealt with concerning practical medicine and other goodly things to know”, Goa 1563).i



A BOOK TALKS ABOUT ITS AUTHOR

Frontispiece from "Colóquios dos Simples e Drogas da Índia"


I know it’s not normal – I mean, it usually happens the other way round – but I am the book of an author whose biography I am about to write. It might seem strange, but the fact is that we books wander around our writers’ heads for so long that we end up knowing them inside out. Of course, we are not like human beings. For example, we are used to being named only after we have been printed. (By the way, printing was invented a mere century ago and has already caused quite a stir amongst us. Some books are jealous because they have not been printed and are still in manuscript form. Others have been printed but wish they had remained as manuscripts. After all, we live inside the heads and hearts of men, so we can’t help but take on some of their defects.) My name, “Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India”, had been given to me a long time before I was printed, but that’s another story. (“Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India” is actually an abbreviation of my full name – these days books come off the printing press with very long names, something my friend “The Illiad” will never get used to.)

My author is Garcia da Orta, a Portuguese doctor and New Christian. His life begins in about 1500 in Castelo de Vide, Portugal, and ends in 1568 in Goa, India (where, in 1563, I am printed for the first time). He is a descendant of Jews who are expelled from Spain in 1492 and flee to Portugal.

In 1497, King Manuel converts all Jews compulsorily to Christianity. From then on, they are known as New Christians, a term which already exists in Castile and Aragon (although the situation is different there). My author’s parents settle in Portugal and start to build a new life. Garcia, for whom I am not yet even a twinkle in his eye, finishes his general education and then goes to Salamanca and Alcalá de Henares, Castile, where he studies medicine.
It is there that I am conceived.