Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis


Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis was a manuscript written by the Portuguese writer Duarte Pacheco Pereira.
It was dedicated to King Manuel I of Portugal, the work was divided into five parts with a total of fifty nine chapters and around two hundred pages, in 1506. As describerd in the author's own words, written in a work with "cosmography and seafare". The title name is in Portuguese Latin, it was written in Portuguese and featured geographical coordinates with latitude and longitude and all the known parts at the time.

...a experiencia he madre das cousas, por ella soubemos rradicalmente a verdade...
Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis, p. 196

Four Books

The work are divided into four books, it forms into the only volume:
Duarte Pacheco Pereira which referenced in some maps but they had completely disappeared.

Study by Jorge Couto

According to a recent study by the Portuguese historian Jorge Couto of the University of Lisbon, the work was lost for four centuries, it was divided into the nature of its informations. The title was encrypted as:
The title Esmeraldo de situ orbis signifies its form "The treaty on the new places of the World by Manuel and Edward".
The sovereign however considered the nautical, geographic and economic information reuniting the work so valuable, it never allowed public access. The work consists of a tiny relation of the voyages of Duarte Pacheco Pereira in Brazil, near the coast of Africa, the main source of the commerce of Portugal of the 16th century,

Discovery of Brazil

In relation to the Discovery of Brazil, it presents information on the second chapter of the first part:
"Como no terceiro ano de vosso reinado do ano de Nosso Senhor de mil quatrocentos e noventa e oito, donde nos vossa Alteza mandou descobrir a parte ocidental, passando além a grandeza do mar Oceano, onde é achada e navegada uma tam grande terra firme, com muitas e grandes ilhas adjacentes a ela e é grandemente povoada. Tanto se dilata sua grandeza e corre com muita longura, que de uma arte nem da outra não foi visto nem sabido o fim e cabo dela. É achado nela muito e fino brasil com outras muitas cousas de que os navios nestes Reinos vem grandemente povoados."
Otherwise, the first round of the Portuguese navigation mentioned the coast of Brazil and the abundance of brazilwood which exista. In the South Atlantic between the Oceanic islands presended its "ladezas" known at the time:
Also in the South Atlantic it omits the other islands of Saint Helena and today's Ascension Island.

A secret manuscript

A secret manuscript, a copy from 1573 which was secretly sent to Philip II of Spain by the Italian spy Giovanni Gesio, under the service of the Spanish ambassador in Lisbon. By the mission, Gesio was regally rewarded, being the receipt of the payment by his services, a copy is now at the library of El Escorial Monastery in Spain.
The manuscript was only published in 1892, a part of the localization into two copies: the first is at the Lisbon Municipal Library and another at Portuguese city Évora.
According to one of the most important biographers of Duarte Pacheco Pereira, Portuguese historian Joaquim Barradas de Carvalho who lived in exile in Brazil in the 1960s, the title "Esmeraldo de situ orbis", rather than a travel script, the work was an erudition of all the knowledge of amounted navigations by the Portuguese in the 15 and the 16th centuries.