PINTO, FERNAO MENDES Portuguese ad venturer, was born at MontemOr-o-Velho, of poor parents, and entered the service of a noble lady in Lisbon. He embarked for India in 1537 in a fleet commanded by the son of Vasco da Gama, and for 21 years travelled, fought and traded in China, Tartary, Pegu and the neighbouring countries, sailing in every sea, and introducing the musket into Japan. Though he was 13 times a captive and 17 times sold into slavery, his gay and dauntless spirit brought him through every misfortune. He was soldier and sailor, merchant and doctor, missionary and ambassador ; moreover, as the friend and travelling companion of St. Francis Xavier, he lent the apostle of the Indies the money with which to build the first Jesuit establishment in Japan.
In Jan. 1554 Pinto was in Goa, waiting for a ship to take him to Portugal, when he decided to devote a large part of his capital to the evangelization of Japan. The viceroy appointed him am bassador to the king of Bungo in order to give the mission an official standing, and on April 18th he set sail with the provincial, Father Belchior Nunes. The missioners did not reach Japan until July 1556. On Nov. 14, 1556, Father Belchior and Mendes Pinto began their return voyage and reached Goa on Feb. 17, 1557. During his stay of a twelve-month there, Pinto left the company, being dispensed from his vows for want of vocation at his own request, though a modern authority states that he was expelled because he was a marrano, i.e., had Jewish blood. He finally re turned to Portugal on Sept. 22, 1558, and settled at Pragal near Almada, where he married and wrote his famous book, the Pere grination; the ms., in fulfilment of his wishes, was presented by his daughter to the Casa Pia for penitent women in Lisbon, and it was published by the administrators in 1614. Philip II. of
Spain gave him (1583) a pension for his services in the Indies. But the reward came too late, for he died on July 8.
Pinto was on the whole a careful observer and truthful narrator, but he invented on occasion, and often repeats stories at second hand. Some witty Portuguese parodied his name into Ferndo, mentes? Minto! ("Ferdinand, do you lie? I do !") ; and the English dramatist Congreve only expressed the general opinion of the unlearned when he wrote in Love for Love, "Mendes Pinto was but a type of thee, thou liar of the first magnitude." In the narrative portions of his work Pinto's style is simple, clear and natural. He did for the prose of Portugal what Camoens did for its poetry.
The Peregrination has gone through many editions subsequent to that of 1614, and in i865 Castilho published excerpts in his Livraria classics portugueza with an interesting notice of Mendes Pinto's life and writings. Versions exist in German (3 editions) , French (3 editions), Spanish (4 editions), and in English by Henry Cogan, London (1663, 1692 and—abridged and illustrated, with introduction by Arminius Vambery-1890 . Cogan omits the chapters relating to Mendes Pinto's intercourse with, and the last days of, St. Francis Xavier, presumably as a concession to anti-Catholic prejudice.
See Christovao Ayres, Ferndo Mendes Pinto (Lisbon, 1904). Ferndo Mendes Pinto e o Japiio (Lisbon, 1906) ; also . . . pare a biographia de Ferndo Mendes Pinto by Jordao de Freitas (Coimbra, 1905).