(^134) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
meantime, the crypto-Jews, including Abraham Zacut and other
astronomers, found life in Portugal dangerous enough to leave in
droves. They took with them money, commercial know-how,
connections, knowledge, and—even more serious—those
immeasurable qualities of curiosity and dissent that are the leaven of
thought.
That was a loss, but in matters of intolerance, the persecutor's
greatest loss is self-inflicted. It is this process of self-diminution that
gives persecution its durability, that makes it, not the event of the
moment, or of the reign, but of lifetimes and centuries. By 1513,
Portugal wanted for astronomers; by the 1520s, scientific leadership
had gone. The country tried to create a new Christian astronomical
and mathematical tradition but failed, not least because good
astronomers found themselves suspected of Judaism.^12 (Compare the
suspicious response to doctors in Inquisition Spain.)
As in Spain, the Portuguese did their best to close themselves off
from foreign and heretical influences. Education was controlled by
the Church, which maintained a medieval curriculum focused on
grammar, rhetoric, and scholastic argument. Featured were
exhibitionism and hair-splitting (some 247 rhymed, learn-by-heart
rules on the syntax of Latin nouns). The only science at the higher
level was to be found in the one faculty of medicine at Coimbra.
Even there, few instructors were ready to abandon Galen for Harvey
or teach the yet more dangerous ideas of Copernicus, Galileo, and
Newton, all banned by the Jesuits as late as 1746.^13
Meanwhile no more Portuguese students went to study abroad,
and the import of books was strenuously controlled by inspectors
sent by the Holy Office to meet incoming ships and visit bookshops
and libraries. An index of prohibited works was first prepared in
1547; successive expansions culminated in the huge list of 1624—
the better to save Portuguese souls.
Within the kingdom and overseas, a triple censorial barrier
begrudged imprimaturs and discouraged originality. Such printing
presses as were allowed (in Goa, none in Brazil) were in the hands of
clerics, generally Jesuits, who limited their publications to
dictionaries and religious matter. * From Brazil and Angola, even
these safe materials had to be sent to Portugal for prior censorship.
- The printing press was not brought to Brazil until 1807, when the Portuguese
court fled there. Modern bureaucracies keep records and issue decrees and regulations,
and a printing press was indispensable—Lang, Portuguese Brazil, p. 195.