Relations with another Portuguese writer, the exiled Viscount of Santarém, also appear not to have been easy. D. Miguel’s former Foreign Minister had dedicated himself wholeheartedly to the study of Portuguese antiquities in Paris. On realising the importance of the manuscript Denis had discovered in 1837 and made public in 1839, Santarém sought to copy the entire text at the end of 1839 and at the beginning of 1840 in collaboration with the official representative of Portugal in France, the Viscount of Carreira. However, neither the Committee for Manuscript Conservation at the Royal Library in Paris nor the French Ministry of Public Instruction were formally asked for their authorisation. Denis naturally did not appreciate this underhand manoeuvre of the Portuguese Viscounts, who even so still managed to carry out their project and published the Crónica da Conquista da Guiné in 1841.

The Portuguese-Brazilian historian and geographer Varnhagen, who was living at the time in Lisbon, also did not appreciate the secrecy with which the manuscript had been copied, studied and printed in Paris without the Academy of Sciences (of which he was an enthusiastic and prolific correspondent member) being formally informed. Thus in some of his own texts he directed certain criticisms at the Viscount of Santarém in relation to Zurara and his principal work (Revista Universal Lisbonense, nº 3, de 14/10/1841, pp. 34-36).

Santarém and Varnhagen were at the time at different stages of their careers as historians and geographers, which is only natural given the 25-year age difference between them. Since 1839 they had been criticizing each other’s works relating to the geography of Brazil and to historical sources and facts about the country, especially with regard to the reliability and veracity of Amerigo Vespucci’s voyages. In 1839-1840 both were seeking to break out of relative anonymity and to become more widely known through publishing the complete annotated text of a hitherto unpublished historical document that was central to Portugal’s historical culture: this was the most famous of all Zurara’s chronicles, which was directly linked to the image and memory of the Infante D. Henrique. By managing to do this, the Viscount of Santarém thereby associated his name with a historical document that was shortly to become intimately linked with the political policy of mobilizing documental and critical resources to safeguard the prestige of the Portuguese Discoveries; and to simultaneously protect historically legitimated territorial rights in West Africa in response to France’s pretensions and territorial occupation of the Casamance.

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