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In the same year, Dennis Fernandes of Lisbon, an esquire to the king, entered upon these discoveries, more to acquire fame than for profit.
Juan Fernandes, on his desolate island, was not so pitiable an object as this poor lame man. Blind and crippled, he was too superannuated to think for a moment of taking care of himself, and he greatly feared no persons would interest themselves in his behalf.
Nevertheless, these Jews owned horses and caravans, and sailed their own ships long before the time when great merchants, like the English Jew Antonio Fernandes Carvajal, traded in their own vessels between London and the Canaries. We hear of Palestinian Jews in the third century and of Italian Jews in the fifth century with ships of their own.
The first document which speaks of him at Batalha is dated 1503, and mentions him as Matheus Fernandes, vassal of the king, judge in ordinary of the town of Santa Maria da Victoria, and master of the works of the same monastery, named by the king. He died in 1515, and was buried near the west door.
"Do you know what that land is?" I asked, pointing to it; for with the increasing light it was now seen clearly from the deck. "Why, it's no other than Robinson Crusoe's island Juan Fernandes; and my father says he intends to run in there, as it will be more convenient to repair damages at anchor; and he thinks that very likely the gale may come back again on us.
In the year 1517, in which Charles, afterwards emperor, came into Spain, Francis Fernandes de Cordova, Christopher Morantes, and Lopez Ochoa, armed three ships from Cuba, at their own expence, having also with them a barque belonging to the governor Diego Velasques, with which they came to land in Jucutan, in 20° N. at a place which they called Punta de las Duennas, which was the first place in which temples and houses of stone and lime had been seen in the new world.
Judging also from the style, for the windows show many well-known Manoelino features, while the detail of the great south door is more purely Gothic, they too and the walls may be the work of Boutaca or of Lourenço Fernandes, while the great door is almost certainly that of João de Castilho.
Deeply though one must regret that this great chapel has been left unfinished and open to the sky, yet even in its incomplete state it is a treasure-house of beautiful ornament, and it is wonderful how well the more commonplace Gothic of Huguet's work agrees with and even enhances the richness of the detail which Fernandes drew from so many sources, late Gothic, early renaissance, and naturalistic, and which he knew so well how to combine into a beautiful whole.
Now the question arises, from whence did Matheus Fernandes draw his inspiration?
Lionel, it seems, was on his way to "John Ferdinando," as he calls the modern Juan Fernandes.