the miseries as well as relate the glories of the period, and so to offend some of the most powerful families. Goes had already written a Chronicle of Prince John (afterwards John II.), and when, after more than eight years’ labour, he produced the First Part of his Chronicle of King Manoel (1566), a chorus of attacks greeted it, the edition was destroyed, and he was compelled to issue a revised version. He brought out the three other parts in 1566–1567, though chapters 23 to 27 of the Third Part were so mutilated by the censorship that the printed text differs largely from the MS. Hitherto Goes, notwithstanding his Liberalism, had escaped the Inquisition, though in 1540 his Fides, religio, moresque Aethiopum had been prohibited by the chief inquisitor, Cardinal D. Henrique; but the denunciation of Father Rodriguez in 1545, which had been vainly renewed in 1550, was now brought into action, and in 1571 he was arrested to stand his trial. There seems to be no doubt that the Inquisition made itself on this occasion, as on others, the instrument of private enmity; for eighteen months Goes lay ill in prison, and then he was condemned, though he had lived for thirty years as a faithful Catholic, and the worst that could be proved against him was that in his youth he had spoken against Indulgences, disbelieved in auricular confession, and consorted with heretics. He was sentenced to a term of reclusion, and his property was confiscated to the crown. After he had abjured his errors in private, he was sent at the end of 1572 to do penance at the monastery of Batalha. Later he was allowed to return home to Alemquer, where he died on the 30th of January 1574. He was buried in the church of Nossa Senhora da Varzea.
Damião de Goes was a man of wide culture and genial and courtly manners, a skilled musician and a good linguist. He wrote both Portuguese and Latin with classic strength and simplicity, and his style is free from affectation and rhetorical ornaments. His portrait by Albrecht Dürer shows an open, intelligent face, and the record of his life proves him to have been upright and fearless. His prosperity doubtless excited ill-will, but above all, his ideas, advanced for Portugal, his foreign ways, outspokenness and honesty contributed to the tragedy of his end, at a time when the forces of ignorant reaction held the ascendant. He had, it may be presumed, given some umbrage to the court by condemning, in the Chronicle of King Manoel, the royal ingratitude to distinguished public servants, though he received a pension and other rewards for that work, and he had certainly offended the nobility by his administration of the archive office and by exposing false genealogical claims in his Nobiliario. He paid the penalty for telling the truth, as he knew it, in an age when an historian had to choose between flattery of the great and silence. The Chronicle of King Manoel was the first official history of a Portuguese reign to be written in a critical spirit, and Damião de Goes has the honour of having been the first Portuguese royal chronicler to deserve the name of an historian.
His Portuguese works include Chronica do felicissimo rei Dom Emanuel (parts i. and ii., Lisbon, 1566, parts iii. and iv., ib. 1567). Other editions appeared in Lisbon in 1619 and 1749 and in Coimbra in 1790. Chronica do principe Dom Joam (Lisbon, 1558), with subsequent editions in 1567 and 1724 in Lisbon and in 1790 in Coimbra. Livro de Marco Tullio Ciceram chamado Catam Mayor (Venice, 1538). This is a translation of Cicero’s De senectute. His Latin works, published separately, comprise: (1) Legatio magni imperatoris Presbiteri Joannis, &c. (Antwerp, 1532); (2) Legatio Davidis Ethiopiae regis, &c. (Bologna, 1533); (3) Commentarii rerum gestarum in India (Louvain, 1539); (4) Fides, religio, moresque Aethiopum (Louvain, 1540), incorporating Nos. (1) and (2); (5) Hispania (Louvain, 1542); (6) Aliquot epistolae Sadoleti Bembi et aliorum clarissimorum virorum, &c. (Louvain, 1544); (7) Damiani a Goes equitis Lusitani aliquot opuscula (Louvain, 1544); (8) Urbis Lovaniensis obsidia (Lisbon, 1546); (9) De bello Cambaico ultimo (Louvain, 1549); (10) Urbis Olisiponensis descriptio (Evora, 1554); (11) Epistola ad Hieronymum Cardosum (Lisbon, 1556). Most of the above went through several editions, and many were afterwards included with new works in such collections as No. (7), and seven sets of Opuscula appeared, all incomplete. Nos. (3), (4) and (5) suffered mutilation in subsequent editions, at the hands of the censors, because they offended against religious orthodoxy or family pride.
Authorities.—(A) Joaquim de Vasconcellos, Goesiana (5 vols.), with the following sub-titles: (1) O Retrato de Albrecht Dürer (Porto, 1879); (2) Bibliographia (Porto, 1879), which describes 67 numbers of books by Goes; (3) As Variantes das Chronicas Portuguezas (Porto, 1881); (4) Damião de Goes: Novos Estudos (Porto, 1897); (5) As Cartas Latinas—in the press (1906). Snr. Vasconcellos only printed a very limited number of copies of these studies for distribution among friends, so that they are rare. (B) Guilherme J. C. Henriques, Ineditos Goesianos, vol. i. (Lisbon, 1896), vol. ii. (containing the proceedings at the trial by the Inquisition) (Lisbon, 1898). (C) A. P. Lopes de Mendonça, Damião de Goes e a Inquisição de Portugal (Lisbon, 1859). (D) Dr Sousa Viterbo, Damião de Goes e D. Antonio Pinheiro (Coimbra, 1895). (E) Dr Theophilo Braga, Historia da Universidade de Coimbra (Lisbon, 1892), i. 374-380. (F) Menendez y Pelayo, Historia de los Heter. Españoles, ii. 129-143. (E. Pr.)
GOES, HUGO VAN DER (d. 1482), a painter of considerable
celebrity at Ghent, was known to Vasari, as he is known to
us, by a single picture in a Florentine monastery. At a period
when the family of the Medici had not yet risen from the rank
of a great mercantile firm to that of a reigning dynasty, it employed
as an agent at the port of Bruges Tommaso Portinari, a
lineal descendant, it was said, of Folco, the father of Dante’s
Beatrix. Tommaso, at that time patron of a chapel in the hospital
of Santa Maria Nuova at Florence, ordered an altar-piece of
Hugo van der Goes, and commanded him to illustrate the sacred
theme of “Quem genuit adoravit.” In the centre of a vast
triptych, comprising numerous figures of life size, Hugo represented
the Virgin kneeling in adoration before the new-born
Christ attended by Shepherds and Angels. On the wings he
portrayed Tommaso and his two sons in prayer under the protection
of Saint Anthony and St Matthew, and Tommaso’s
wife and two daughters supported by St Margaret and St Mary
Magdalen. The triptych, which has suffered much from decay
and restoring, was for over 400 years at Santa Maria Nuova,
and is now in the Uffizi Gallery. Imposing because composed
of figures of unusual size, the altar-piece is more remarkable
for portrait character than for charms of ideal beauty.
There are also small pieces in public galleries which claim to have been executed by Van der Goes. One of these pictures in the National Gallery in London is more nearly allied to the school of Memling than to the triptych of Santa Maria Nuova; another, a small and very beautiful “John the Baptist,” at the Pinakothek of Munich, is really by Memling; whilst numerous fragments of an altar-piece in the Belvedere at Vienna, though assigned to Hugo, are by his more gifted countryman of Bruges. Van der Goes, however, was not habitually a painter of easel pieces. He made his reputation at Bruges by producing coloured hangings in distemper. After he settled at Ghent, and became a master of his gild in 1465, he designed cartoons for glass windows. He also made decorations for the wedding of Charles the Bold and Margaret of York in 1468, for the festivals of the Rhetoricians and papal jubilees on repeated occasions, for the solemn entry of Charles the Bold into Ghent in 1470–1471, and for the funeral of Philip the Good in 1474. The labour which he expended on these occasions might well add to his fame without being the less ephemeral. About the year 1475 he retired to the monastery of Rouge Cloître near Ghent, where he took the cowl. There, though he still clung to his profession, he seems to have taken to drinking, and at one time to have shown decided symptoms of insanity. But his superiors gradually cured him of his intemperance, and he died in the odour of sanctity in 1482.
GOES, a town in the province of Zeeland, Holland, on the island of South Beveland, 1112 m. by rail E. of Middelburg. Pop. (1900) 6919. It is connected by a short canal with the East Scheldt, and has a good harbour (1819) defended by a fort. The principal buildings are the interesting Gothic church (1423) and the picturesque old town hall (restored 1771). There are various educational and charitable institutions. Goes has preserved for centuries its prosperous position as the market-town of the island. The chief industries are boat-building, brewing, book-binding and cigar-making. The town had its origin in the castle of Oostende, built here by the noble family of Borssele. It received a charter early in the 15th century from the countess Jacoba of Holland, who frequently stayed at the castle.
