Note 402 — III The Sixteenth Century [1502-80] (continued 2)
Reading edition
Dr. Wilhelm Storck, the author of the most elaborate life of Camões in existence, considered that the words quando vim da materna sepultura in one of Camões’ poems could only mean that his mother (Anna de Macedo) died at his birth, and that he was survived by Anna de Sá, his stepmother. It may have been so, but there is not a scrap of evidence in favour of the theory nor were the words materna sepultura anything more than a conventional phrase. Cf. Antonio Feo, Trattados Quadragesimais (1609), pt. 1, f. 2: Como Nazianzeno diz ... e tumulo prosiliens ad tumulum iterum contendo, em nacendo saimos de hũa sepultura que foi as entranhas da mãi e morrendo entramos noutra. So Pinto, Imagem, pt. 2, 1593 ed., f. 342 v.: tornar nu ao ventre de sua mãi, o qual é a sepultura da terra, and Bernardes, Nov. Flor. i. 122: A terra e nossa mãe, de cujo tenebroso ventre que é a sepultura, &c.