During these years, in which he had been fighting the Moors, Affonso Henriques had observed the terms of the Treaty of Zamora, and had prudently avoided all interference in the affairs of Spain; but the death of his cousin, the Emperor Alfonso, in 1157, which left him the oldest and most famous warrior in the peninsula, seems to have tempted him to abandon this prudent policy. The Emperor had divided his kingdoms, leaving Castile to his son Sancho, and Leon and Gallicia to his son Ferdinand, a division which also seems to have tempted Affonso to believe he could play a part in Spanish affairs. His alliance was sought on all sides, and in January, 1160, he betrothed his eldest daughter, Donna Matilda, to Raymond Berenger, heir to the throne of Aragon; and a little later in the same year he promised his second daughter, Donna Urraca, to King Ferdinand; and concluded the Treaty of Cella Nova, by which it was agreed that each monarch should prosecute his wars against the Moors independently, and that the course of the Guadiana should be the limit between their respective lines of conquest. This treaty was, undoubtedly, caused by the fact that the Moors in Africa had again become united under the rule of the Almohade caliph, Abd-el-Mumin, and that a great invasion of Spain by the Mohammedans was to be expected.
This invasion occurred in the very next year, 1161. Abd-el-Mumin crossed the straits of Gibraltar with eighteen thousand tried Almohade soldiers, and after subduing the independent Mohammedan emīrs, inflicted upon Affonso Henriques his first real defeat, and drove him back to Lisbon and Santarem. The death of Abd-el-Mumin in 1163 again changed the aspect of affairs. A disputed succession kept the Almohade warriors busy in Africa, and independent bands of “salteadors,” who were little better than brigands and free lances, began to establish themselves as petty feudal princes in the various cities and districts of the Alemtejo, the province south of the Tagus, which now became the battle-ground between the Christians and the Moors. Affonso Henriques let them do as they liked; he had a greater ambition, and as he had formerly schemed and planned to take Santarem, Lisbon, and Alcacer do Sal, he now cast his eyes upon the great city of Badajoz, although it lay upon the eastern side of the Guadiana which he had agreed to leave to the King of Leon. With this object in view he took Beja in 1162, Truxillo and Evora in 1165, and Caceres in 1166, thus gradually working up to the city which he coveted. King Ferdinand was not the man to allow these breaches of treaty to pass unnoticed, and founded the city of Ciudad Rodrigo, to command and threaten the north-eastern districts of Portugal.
But Ferdinand was at this time engaged in fighting his nephew, Alfonso IX. of Castile, and Affonso thought that he could take advantage of him. In 1167 he once more occupied Tuy and Limia, the two Gallician frontier cities, which he had formally surrendered by the Treaty of Zamora; and in 1169 he laid siege to Badajoz. This breach of treaty naturally incensed King Ferdinand, who collected a vast army, and besieged his father-in-law in his camp. The Spaniards were in every way successful; the Portuguese were everywhere defeated; their warrior monarch, now in advanced years, had his leg broken, and was forced to capitulate.
Ferdinand used his victory with moderation; he remembered what great things Affonso had done for Christendom; and after two months’ captivity, he allowed the Portuguese king to return to his country on his surrendering the cities in Gallicia, and on the left bank of the Guadiana, which he had taken in violation of treaties. But the spirit of the old warrior was broken; he was never again able to mount a horse, and about the year 1172, he associated his son Sancho with him in the government of Portugal, to whom he gave the title of King, and assigned all the duties of war and the leadership of the Portuguese armies.
Sancho was however a mere boy at this time, though he afterwards proved himself a worthy son of his father, and it was necessary for Affonso to take other measures against the Moors, who were now united under the Almohade caliph Yūsuf. He first promised the Knights Templars one-third of whatever they might conquer in the future, if they defended the Alemtejo. But the Templars were too weak in numbers to do much, and Yūsuf speedily reconquered the whole of the Alemtejo, and then laid siege to Santarem. Here however he was foiled; the defences had been strengthened with all the military skill known in the Middle Ages, and the city was well provisioned. Yūsuf was obliged to retire, and when he did so, Affonso, for the first time in his long career, made a truce with the infidels for seven years.
When his son Sancho, who had in 1174 married Donna Dulce, daughter of Raymond Berenger, Count of Barcelona, and Petronilla, Queen of Aragon, came to years of discretion, he broke this truce; and in 1176 he made an incursion into Moorish Spain as far as the city of Seville, and brought back much booty with him. This incursion revived perpetual fighting with the Mohammedans, and for the next few years the Alemtejo once more became a great battle-ground. In 1179, in which year Pope Alexander III. affirmed the independence of Portugal by a special papal bull, the Moors were beaten back from Abrantes; in 1180, they destroyed Corruche, and in 1181 they were defeated at Evora. The greatest struggle was yet to come. In May, 1184, Yūsuf crossed the straits with the finest and best-equipped Moslem army the Almohades ever brought into Spain; and in June he laid siege for the second time to Santarem. Pestilence defended the Portuguese city, and on 4th of July, 1184, Sancho utterly defeated the fever-stricken army of the Moors in a great battle, in which Yūsuf himself was mortally wounded. A legend runs that Affonso Henriques was carried in his litter at the head of the reinforcements, that enabled Sancho to win this signal victory, which, whether he himself were present or not, formed a worthy close to the reign of the great crusader-king.
During these last years of the Moorish wars, Affonso preserved all the quickness of intellect, if none of the bodily activity of his early years, and as his son Sancho was always at war, he devoted himself entirely to his last remaining daughter, Donna Theresa. The beauty of this princess was sung by the troubadours in all the courts of Europe, and her hand in marriage was eagerly sought by many suitors. In 1183, the old king at last accepted an offer for her, and she left her father and her country to marry Philip, the wealthy Count of Flanders. Poets and chroniclers agree in saying that the departure of this dear daughter broke the old king’s heart; he lived however to hear of, even if the legend be unfounded that he was not present at, the last great victory at Santarem, and he died on 6th of December of the following year, 1185, at Coimbra. He was buried in the church of the priory of Santa Cruz, in that city of which his friend S. Theotonio had been prior, and his tomb has been rightly reverenced as that of the true founder of Portuguese independence.
It is seldom the case that in one man’s reign a small inconsiderable county has grown into a powerful compact little kingdom, even during the Middle Ages, and that the new kingdom should be perpetuated to modern times is quite unparalleled in the history of Europe. This is what gives the history of the reign of Affonso Henriques such unusual interest and importance in general, as distinct from Portuguese, history. There is no geographical or ethnological reason why the part of the Iberian peninsula called Portugal should have formed an independent kingdom, more than Leon or Castile. It was the greatness of one man which made it an independent country. This is the first lesson taught by the Story of Portugal, that nations are not always marked out by natural geographical limits, or race divisions. The second lesson is, that a nation, which has thus become independent, may under certain circumstances develop a distinct individuality, which gives it a different character in every way to its neighbours. It has been shown that chance, the foresight of Donna Theresa and the greatness of Affonso Henriques made Portugal independent; the course of the history to be narrated will show how, while the other kingdoms of the peninsula coalesced into Spain, Portugal remained independent and developed separately. Spain and Portugal are now two separate countries with different languages, literatures, and national characteristics; how they began to separate has been shown; how they became finally distinct is now to be related.
CONVENTO DE CHRISTO AT THOMAR. (After a Photograph.)
CONVENTO DE CHRISTO AT THOMAR. (After a Photograph.)
SANCHO I., the Povoador or City-builder, had already won his reputation as a warrior in his father’s life-time, and his fame as king rests rather on the success of his internal administration of his country. But before he had time to gratify his inclination towards the more peaceful duties of government, he had to continue the life and death struggle with the Moors. The great victory won the year before his accession, gave him a little breathing space, and in 1188 he even proposed to take part in the Third Crusade, for which great preparations were being made all over Europe. But the Moors were not likely to forget their repulse at Santarem, and in the same year Ya’kūb, the son of Yūsuf, the new Almohade caliph landed in the peninsula, and marched without a check until he was once more driven from before Santarem by the conjoined influence of pestilence and of the courage of the Portuguese knights. In the following year King Sancho took his revenge; he stopped at Lisbon first an army of Dutch, Frisian, and Danish crusaders; then a body of French crusaders under Jacques d’Avesnes, Bishop of Beauvais, and the Count of Bar; and finally a well-equipped force of Londoners, all on their way to the Holy Land—and with their help he not only reduced the whole of the Alemtejo, but even took Silves, the capital of the distant emirate of the Alfaghar or Algarves. Ya’kūb was astounded at these successes. He collected a large Mohammedan army, and again crossed to Spain. But ill-luck followed his advance; his army was badly equipped, and not well supplied with provisions; he was foiled by one hundred young London crusaders in an attack on Silves; he was driven back from Thomar, the headquarters of the Knights Templars, by their Grand Master in Portugal, Gualdim Paes; and was finally obliged to abandon the siege of Santarem by a pestilence, which the Portuguese ascribed to a visitation from God. But the great Almohade caliph determined to be more successful the next time; he spent two years in Africa in preaching the Holy War against the Christians, and in 1192 crossed to the peninsula with the finest Mohammedan army which had appeared there since the days of the Almoravides. King Sancho and his Portuguese knights had to oppose this formidable invasion unaided, for the crusaders had gone on their way to Palestine, and were there fighting under Richard Cœur de Lion, and Philip Augustus of France. The Mohammedan soldiers advanced in a triumphal march; they easily reconquered Silves and the Algarves, and then swept across the Alemtejo, taking in rapid succession Beja, Alcacer do Sal, the hard-won conquest of Affonso Henriques, and even Palmella and Almada—the cities which guarded the approach to Lisbon from the south. Sancho, seeing that resistance was of no avail, was only too glad to be permitted to make a treaty with the Moors, which fixed the Tagus as his southern boundary, and the vast Mohammedan army turned into Andalusia and utterly defeated Alfonso VIII. of Castile at the battle of Alarcos in 1195.
King Sancho recognized the fact that the Moors, while united under their great Almohade caliph, were too powerful for him to attack, and he therefore turned his attention to the disputes among the Spanish sovereigns, and to matters of internal administration. It is fortunately not necessary to relate the history of Sancho’s wars with his Christian neighbours. The independence of Portugal was now an established fact, and the minute details of the various wars waged up to the year 1200 have no especial importance or interest, except in so far as they contribute to a knowledge of the causes of the quarrel which ensued between Sancho and the Pope. It will be remembered that the eldest daughter of Affonso Henriques, Donna Urraca, had married Ferdinand II., King of Leon, and that she was the mother of Alfonso IX. This monarch had commenced his reign on friendly terms with Affonso Henriques, and his successor Sancho, and this friendliness had culminated in 1191, in the marriage of Alfonso IX. of Leon to Sancho’s daughter, Donna Theresa. This princess, whose virtues were such that she was canonized as a saint in 1705, was thus first cousin to her husband, and as the canon law was very strict against such marriages, Pope Celestine III. by threats of excommunication and of interdict, forced her husband to repudiate her and to send her back to Portugal in 1195. This insult not only brought about the wars with Leon, which have been mentioned, but left in the mind of King Sancho a rankling animosity against the Papacy, which found its outlet later in his great quarrel with Pope Innocent III.
His truce with the Moors in 1192, and his determination to abandon all interference in Leon and Gallicia after 1200, left King Sancho time to attend to the crying wants of his people. He recognized clearly that there was no use in his pushing across the Tagus and conquering the Alemtejo and the Algarves, when the little kingdom he actually ruled was not half populated. During his father’s reign there had been nothing but fighting, and except in Oporto and Lisbon, where a flourishing trade existed, fostered by the frequent visits of the crusading fleets from the north, and in the northern provinces of the Entre Minho e Douro and the Tras-os-Montes, where agriculture survived, the scanty population subsisted chiefly on the spoils taken in the yearly invasions of Mohammedan territory. The population of the Beira and the northern part of Portuguese Estremadura lived entirely in towns, or in villages clustered round the castles of the nobility, and looked upon war as the only means for obtaining a livelihood. This habit of mind had made a nation of warriors, but it had left the land uncultivated. Tracts of wilderness extended between the towns and villages especially in the more recently conquered districts to the south of Coimbra, and now that the truce with the Moors had deprived the population of their chief means of subsistence, King Sancho saw that it was necessary to revive the pursuit of agriculture.
But, first of all, King Sancho devoted himself to the task of repairing the old city walls, and to the foundation of new towns in commanding strategic positions, which gave him his sobriquet of “O Povoador” or the City-builder. This policy was dictated by the threatening attitude of the Moors under the Almohades; for Sancho, like most of his contemporaries, could not believe that the Moslem dominion in the Peninsula was nearing its close, and he made every preparation for resisting fresh invasions. His first care was to see that all the walls of old cities were put into thorough repair by the citizens, and adequately manned by the city militia; his next, to found new cities, which should command important roads, wherever they were not already in close proximity to powerful towns. Among these new cities, his favourite, and the one which afterwards attained the greatest historical importance was Guarda, which was founded to the westward of the threatening Spanish fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo. In matters of city government Sancho wisely followed the example of the Mohammedans in continuing the old Roman system of municipal administration, which left all matters of internal government entirely in the hands of the citizens, and when he granted the lordship of a city to a bishop, baron, or military order, he carefully regulated their functions, and allowed them only to take a fixed share of the municipal revenue for fulfilling certain fixed duties, such as leading the contingent of the city in war, or holding courts of justice. The rural districts he treated on a different principle. He granted large tracts to noblemen, military orders, and cities on the express condition that they should be cultivated and populated within a fixed period under pain of revocation of the grants. This plan proved effective in the Beira and northern Estremadura, which King Sancho hoped would be sufficiently secured against invasion by the great fortresses on the Tagus, Lisbon, Santarem, and Abrantes, but was quite inapplicable to the Alemtejo. This province he had, in imitation of his father’s policy, entirely portioned out among the great military orders before its recapture by Ya’kūb. He not only confirmed his father’s and grandmother’s large grants to the Templars, Hospitallers, and Knights of the Sepulchre, but greatly increased them; he showed especial favour to the Portuguese order of chivalry, the Knights of St. Benedict of Aviz, which Affonso Henriques had founded; and he introduced from Spain the Order of Caceres, to which he granted Alcacer do Sal, Palmella, and Almada, and that of Calatrava, to which he granted Evora, Alcanede, and Jurumenha, thus attracting to his kingdom some of the most famous warriors of Spain. It was true that the conquests of Ya’kūb had annulled the effect of these grants, but the knights looked upon their possessions across the Tagus, as only in the temporary occupation of the Mohammedans, and were inspired by this feeling into redoubled alacrity in guarding the line of the Tagus, and with an ardent desire for the war against the Moors to begin again.
PRINCIPAL FAÇADE OF THE IGREGA DOS JERONYMOS AT BELEM. (PRESENT STATE.) (After a Photograph.)
PRINCIPAL FAÇADE OF THE IGREGA DOS JERONYMOS AT BELEM.
(PRESENT STATE.) (After a Photograph.)
The latter years of Sancho’s reign were signalized by his quarrels with his bishops and the Pope, and naturally enough since the Pope was Innocent III. This struggle bears a close resemblance to the contest between Henry II. of England and the Pope a few years before, and also possesses an importance of its own. The main points were that Sancho insisted upon priests accompanying their flocks to battle, and in making them amenable to the civil courts. These ideas seemed monstrous to Pope Innocent III., who sent legate after legate to demand Sancho’s withdrawal of these claims and the payment of his tribute to the Holy See. But Sancho had in his chancellor, Julião, a great statesman, who had been the first Portuguese to study the revival of Roman law at Bologna, and who had learnt broad notions there as to the extent of the Papal authority; and he in the king’s name asserted the supremacy of the royal power in everything, and even his right to resume the estates held by the Church in Portugal. Pope Innocent declared these notions to be heretical, but the king supported his chancellor, who in return took every opportunity to support the royal authority. The lower clergy of Portugal were not unwilling to comply with their sovereign’s demands, and the military orders stood by him as a valiant crusader; his chief difficulty was with his bishops, and especially with the wealthiest among them. The bishops of Lamego, Viseu, Lisbon, and Guarda were all poor, the latter not even possessing a cathedral or a palace in his newly established see; but the Archbishop of Braga, and the bishops of Oporto and Coimbra were ecclesiastical princes disposing of vast revenues, and it was with them that King Sancho quarrelled. His quarrel with the Bishop of Coimbra is worth noting, as affording evidence of the superstitious disposition of even a crusading monarch in those times, for it arose about a so-called witch, whom the king insisted on keeping in his palace. His contest with Martinho Rodrigues, Bishop of Oporto, is far more complicated, but need not be related at length. It is enough to say that the bishop offended not only the king, but his chapter and the people of his city, and that he was eventually shut up in his palace and besieged there for five months. When he made his escape he fled to Rome, and Pope Innocent III. forthwith placed the kingdom of Portugal under an interdict. For a time, Sancho supported by his chancellor and by the inferior clergy, who refused to obey the interdict, paid no attention to the Pope, and went on building towns and castles, notably those of Celorico and Linhares; but at last in 1210, feeling that his health was declining and that he was about to die, he made his submission, received the Bishop of Oporto back into the kingdom, and paid the Pope one hundred marks of gold. He then retired to the convent of Alçobaça, where he died on March 26, 1211, leaving a reputation as a warrior and a statesman second only to that acquired by his father.
Nothing proves more certainly the assured position attained in so short a time by the little kingdom of Portugal than the great marriages made by some of King Sancho’s daughters, and the relations he entered into not only with the kings of Spain, but with the more distant princes of Christendom. It has been noted that one of Sancho’s daughters, Donna Theresa, married Alfonso IX. of Leon, and was repudiated by the order of the Pope, because the marriage infringed the laws of consanguinity. The same interference for the same reason took place with regard to her sister Donna Mafalda or Matilda, who married Henry I. of Castile after her father’s death, and was forced to leave him by Pope Innocent III. The beauty of the Portuguese princesses was so famous that their hands were sought by distant kings. King John of England sent an embassy in 1199 to ask for the hand of an infanta in vain; and Sancho’s youngest daughter, Donna Berengaria, married King Waldemar of Denmark in 1213. Not less brilliant were the marriages of his sons. The eldest, Dom Affonso, married Donna Urraca, daughter of Alfonso VIII. of Castile and Eleanor of England, and sister of Blanche, the famous queen of France and the mother of Louis IX., the crusader-saint; the second, Dom Pedro, married a daughter of the Count of Urgel, and became lord of Segorba; and the third, Dom Ferdinand, married Joanna, Lady of Flanders, and fought at the head of the Flemish troops by the side of John of England at the battle of Bouvines. These alliances show how thoroughly Portugal was recognized at this early date as one of the kingdoms of Europe, although at the death of Sancho her southern boundary was the Tagus, and she had lost all the conquests made by Affonso Henriques in the Alemtejo.
The reign of Affonso II., “the Fat,” is chiefly important in the constitutional history of Portugal, and is only remarkable for one memorable feat of arms, the recapture of Alcacer do Sal. On his father’s death the young king, probably by the advice of the chancellor Julião, summoned a “Cortes” or parliament, consisting of the bishops, “fidalgoes” and “ricos homens” of the realm, which was the first regular assembly of notables ever held in Portugal, for the Cortes of Lamego, generally asserted to have met in 1143, is apocryphal. In the presence of this Cortes Affonso II. gave his solemn adhesion to the final compact which his father had made with the Church, and he then propounded a law of mortmain, drawn up by Julião, by which religious foundations could receive no more legacies of land, because they could not perform military service. The new king proved to be no such warrior as his father and grandfather had been, but he was very tenacious of the wealth and power of the Crown, and he refused to hand over to his brothers the large estates which King Sancho had bequeathed to them by his will. It was not until after a long civil war, in which Alfonso IX. of Leon, Alfonso VIII. of Castile, and Pope Innocent III. intervened, that he gave his sisters their legacies, at the same time taking care that they became nuns; but his brothers were forced to become exiles, and never received the estates bequeathed to them at all.
Though Affonso himself was no soldier, the Portuguese infantry showed how free men could fight in the great battle of Navas de Tolosa in 1212, in which Mohammed En-Nāsir, the successor of Ya’kūb, was utterly defeated; and the Portuguese statesmen, bishops, and captains determined to take advantage of the weakness of the Almohades after this reverse to reconquer the Alemtejo. Fortunately for their purpose there arrived at Lisbon in July, 1217, a great fleet of English, Dutch, and German ships bearing crusaders to the Holy Land. The leaders of the English crusaders were the earls of Wight and Holland, both friends of the exiled prince, Dom Ferdinand, who had fled to his aunt, Donna Theresa, in Flanders. Sueiro, Bishop of Lisbon, made an effort to detain this powerful army, and succeeded in persuading the English division to stop, though the eighty Frisian ships sailed away. The English knights and men-at-arms disembarked at Lisbon, under their earls, and a Portuguese army, not raised by the royal summons or commanded by the royal officers, was led by Sueiro, Bishop of Lisbon, the Abbot of Alçobaça, Martinho, Commander of Palmella, and Pedro Alvitiz, Grand Master of the Portuguese Templars, to join them. The two armies formed the siege of Alcacer do Sal, the city which Affonso Henriques had won with so much difficulty, and which Sancho I. had been forced to surrender. The defence was most obstinate, and in September, 1217, a Mohammedan army of forty thousand infantry and fifteen thousand cavalry came up to relieve the city, under the command of the wālis of Badajoz, Seville, Jaen, Cordova, and Xeres. The Christian and Mohammedan armies met in battle on September 12th; the latter were defeated with immense loss, and were pursued by the Templars for three days; the wālis of Cordova and Jaen were killed; and on October 18th the city of Alcacer do Sal surrendered, and its gallant defender, Abu-Abdallah, in admiration of the valour of the Christians, consented to be baptized.
In this expedition the king took no part; he was more bent upon filling his treasury, a tendency which soon brought him again into conflict with the Church. His chancellor, Gonçalo Mendes, who had inherited the policy of Julião, and the chief officers of his Court, Pedro Annes, the Mordomo Mor or Lord Steward, and Martim Fernandes, the Alferes Mor or Grand Standard-bearer, encouraged him to lay hands on the great estates of Estevão Soares da Silva, the noble and learned Archbishop of Braga. Pope Honorius III. at once espoused the cause of the archbishop, excommunicated the king, and laid an interdict on the kingdom, in order to force Affonso to make restitution to the archbishop and to expel Pedro Annes and Gonçalo Mendes from his Court. Affonso refused to submit, and he was still under the interdict of the Church when he died on the 25th of March, 1223. This avaricious monarch had devoted himself to increasing the wealth and power of the Crown; to this must be attributed not only his quarrels with his brothers and sisters and with the Church, but the great constitutional measures which distinguish his reign. It was for this purpose that he summoned the first Portuguese Cortes to assent to his law of “mortmain,” and despatched the first “inquiracão geral” through the kingdom to examine on oath into the titles of all holders of landed property by sworn juries of inhabitants of the vicinity, a proceeding exactly similar to the commissions sent by Henry II. to inquire into cases of “mort d’ancestor” and “darrein presentment.” Yet the reign of this irreligious and excommunicated king was marked by a revival of religion in Portugal. Sueiro Gomes, one of the earliest followers of S. Dominic, was a Portuguese, and was sent by his master to found branches of the order of preaching friars in his native land, and though in every way checked by Affonso, he made much progress in all the great cities and towns. Far greater was the success of the Franciscan friars, who were introduced into Portugal by Donna Sancha, one of the king’s sisters, who had taken the veil and was canonized in 1705, and for whom Queen Urraca built two splendid convents at Lisbon and Guimaraens. The order took deep root, and its fame was sealed by the martyrdom of the five friars sent by S. Francis of Assisi to Morocco, whose bodies were brought to Portugal by Dom Ferdinand, the king’s brother, and were buried at Santa Cruz in Coimbra, where they were covered by the most sacred shrine in Portugal.
Sancho II. was only thirteen when he succeeded his father, and, as might have been expected during a minority, the turbulent nobility and intriguing bishops tried to undo the effect of the late king’s labours to consolidate the royal authority. The old statesmen and advisers of Affonso II., Gonçalo Mendes, the chancellor, Pedro Annes, and Vicente, Dean of Lisbon, saw that it was necessary to get the interdict removed if there was to be any peace during the king’s minority, and prudently retired into the background, and Sueiro Gomes, the great Bishop of Lisbon, came to the front, and with the help of the pious infantas, the king’s aunts, made peace with the Archbishop of Braga and with Pope Honorius III., who solemnly confirmed the crown to the boy king. The archbishop then became the most powerful man in the kingdom, and with Abril Peres, the new Mordomo Mor agreed with Alfonso IX. of Leon that the Portuguese should attack Elvas, at the same time that the Spaniards laid siege to Badajoz. The opportunity was a favourable one; a disputed succession had resulted in a civil war amongst the Mohammedans both in Spain and Morocco, and Elvas was stormed in 1226. At this siege the young king performed prodigies of valour, and the Portuguese knights and soldiers looked on him with admiration as a worthy successor of Affonso Henriques. Confiding in the love and support of his people, young Sancho, though only seventeen, then took the reins of power into his own hands, and recalled his father’s friends to power making Vicente chancellor, Pedro Annes Mordomo Mor, and Martim Annes Alferes Mor.
This change of power greatly disconcerted the party of the bishops, who began to intrigue for the overthrow of the young king, but he wisely continued to occupy himself with fighting the Mohammedans, knowing well that no pope would dare to attack a crusading monarch. He tried in everything, in his internal administration and his crusading ardour, to imitate his cousin, Louis IX. of France, and this wise policy secured him the protection of the Pope, who, in 1228, sent a legate, John of Abbeville, Cardinal of S. Sabina, with full powers, and with orders to rebuke the Portuguese bishops. The legate did his best to settle long-standing quarrels in the Church, and especially that between Martinho Rodrigues, Bishop of Oporto, the old adversary of Sancho I., and his chapter, and showed his approval of the king’s advisers by making the chancellor, Vicente, Bishop of Guarda. The legate also expressed his satisfaction at the king’s favourable treatment of the friars and the military religious orders, and as the bishops still intrigued against him, he persuaded Pope Gregory IX. to administer a severe rebuke to them by an encyclical letter. The people, the friars, and especially the military orders, simply adored their young monarch at this time, and it was impossible to foresee the catastrophe which was to sadly terminate his reign. The most distinguished military orders at this time were the Knights Hospitallers, whose prior, Affonso Peres Farinha, was the greatest warrior of his time, and who, in 1231, captured the important towns of Moura and Serpa; and the knights of Santiago, whose valiant prior, Paio Peres Correia, in 1234, took Aljustrel. But the king himself was the most ardent crusader of them all, and his youngest brother, Dom Ferdinand, who from Serpa ravaged the districts held by the Mohammedans every year, soon won a reputation second only to his own. In these halcyon days King Sancho II. imitated his grandfather in attempting to settle and cultivate the lands of the Alemtejo, on the same principles that Sancho I. had acted upon in the Lower Beira and Estremadura, while peace was maintained with the neighbouring kingdom of Leon, where, indeed, the greatest men at this period were of Portuguese birth, namely, Dom Pedro, the king’s uncle, who was Mordomo Mor of that kingdom, and Martim Sanches, an illegitimate son of Sancho I., who was the principal general of its armies.
GATE AND WINDOW OF THE MONASTERY OF BELEM.
GATE AND WINDOW OF THE MONASTERY OF BELEM.
Meanwhile the wise advisers of the youth of Sancho II. gradually died off, and his Court was thronged with gay young knights and troubadours, who filled him with conceit and encouraged him in foolish courses. The first result of the removal of his old counsellors was to be seen in a serious quarrel with the Church. When on the death of Sueiro Gomes, the famous Bishop of Lisbon, in 1237, the royal candidate was not elected as his successor, the king sent his brother Dom Ferdinand to the city, where he burnt the house of the opposition candidate, João the dean, and killed several priests; and the king’s uncle, Rodrigo Sanches, acted in much the same high-handed manner at Oporto. Such behaviour was not to be tolerated even in a crusading monarch, and a papal interdict was laid on the kingdom; but prompt submission on the part of Sancho, and the journey of his brother, Dom Ferdinand, to Rome to do solemn penance for his misbehaviour, made atonement and the interdict was removed. The king then once again turned his arms against the Mohammedans, and invaded the Algarves, capturing Mertola and Ayamonte in 1239, Cacello in 1240, and Tavira in 1244.
Unfortunately in the interval between these two last campaigns, King Sancho paid a visit to the Court of Castile, where he fell in love with Donna Mencia Lopes de Haro, the widow of a Castilian nobleman, Alvares Peres de Castro, whom he probably married. This woman became the evil genius of his life; the king grew lazy and sensual, and his Court degenerated into a hotbed of vice and intrigue. The connection was most distasteful to the people of Portugal, and gave an opportunity for the bishops and discontented feudal nobility to overthrow Sancho, whom they had always hated, if they could only find a leader and obtain the assistance of the Pope. Even his brother, Dom Ferdinand, deserted him in disgust, and became a vassal of Castile, and his worthless courtiers and favourites, while urging him on to despotism and vicious indulgences, made him more and more unpopular. Pope Innocent IV., who had been forced to fly from Rome to France by the Emperor Frederick II., longed to show his spiritual power over some monarch, and was easily persuaded by the Portuguese bishops that Sancho was both impious and cowardly. A leader was not hard to find, and in 1245, the king’s next brother, Affonso, who had settled at the Court of Blanche of Castile, the mother of Louis IX., and who had there married the heiress to the county of Boulogne, offered himself to the malcontents as a candidate for the throne of Portugal. The Pope then issued a bull “Grandi non immerito,” of which the terms were used as precedents in depositions of the more important monarchs in later days, and João Egas, Archbishop of Braga, Tiburcio, Bishop of Coimbra, and Pedro Salvadores, Bishop of Oporto, went to Paris and offered Affonso of Boulogne the crown of Portugal on certain conditions, which he accepted and swore to observe. Civil war had already broken out before the arrival of Affonso at Lisbon in 1246, when he declared himself Defender of the kingdom; Donna Mencia behaved in a most disgraceful manner to the king, whom she had ruined; Sancho and the Castilian troops which he brought to his help were defeated, and the unfortunate monarch, whose early years had been so full of promise, retired to Toledo where he died, deserted and unhappy, on January 8, 1248.
With such a commencement it might have been expected that the reign of Affonso III. would have been a period of civil war and internal dissension, or at the least of complete submission to the Church and the feudal nobility; but, on the contrary, it was from a constitutional point of view the most important of all the early reigns, and also that in which Portugal concluded its warfare with the Mohammedans in the Peninsula and attained its European limits. In short, Affonso III. proved by the events of his reign to be essentially a politic king, if not a high-minded man. On his brother’s death he exchanged his title of “visitador” or “curador” of the realm for that of king, and, in order to establish his fame as a warrior and a crusader, he at once prepared to complete the conquest of the Algarves, where most of the acquisitions of Sancho II. had been lost to the Moors during the civil war. Aided by his uncle, Dom Pedro, and the Knights Hospitallers under Gonçalo Peres Magro, he was speedily successful, taking Faro, Albufeira, which he granted to the knights of Aviz, and Porches, which he assigned to his chancellor, Estevão Annes, in 1249, and Ayamonte, Cacello, and Tavira in 1250. This extension of the Portuguese territory was by no means acceptable to Alfonso X. “the Wise,” who was now king of Castile and Leon; and after a short war, Affonso III. consented to marry Alfonso’s illegitimate daughter, Donna Beatrice de Guzman, though the Countess of Boulogne was still alive, and to hold the Algarves in usufruct only.
Affonso then turned his attention to his own position in Portugal, and determined to bridle the power of the bishops in spite of his oath at Paris. Perceiving that this could only be done with the assistance of the great body of his people, he summoned a great Cortes at Leiria in 1254, to which representatives of the cities of the kingdom were elected to sit with the nobles and higher clergy. This Cortes is of the greatest importance in the constitutional history of Portugal, and its composition shows that Affonso III. understood, like Simon de Montfort and Edward I. in England, that it was only by an alliance with the people that he could check the power of feudalism and sacerdotalism. His policy was rewarded; the bishops recognized the need for submission; and with the consent of the Cortes, Affonso dared the interdict laid on the kingdom for his second marriage, and forced the clergy to continue their functions. Abroad he maintained peace through his alliance with Alfonso the Wise, and finally, on the petition of the now submissive prelates of Portugal, Pope Urban IV. legalized the king’s second marriage and legitimated his son Diniz in 1262. He was everywhere honoured and successful, and in 1263 Alfonso X. made over the full sovereignty of the Algarves to him, when he assumed the title of King of Portugal and the Algarves.
FAÇADE OF LISBON CATHEDRAL. (After a Photograph.) The oldest church in the city, as expressed by the proverb, “Velho Como a Sé”.
FAÇADE OF LISBON CATHEDRAL. (After a Photograph.)
The oldest church in the city, as expressed by the proverb, “Velho Como
a Sé”.
The people now began to make their power felt in the Cortes, and Affonso soon had to pay for the assistance which they had previously rendered to him. In a full Cortes held at Coimbra in 1261, the representatives of the cities boldly denounced the king’s habit of tampering with the coinage, and compelled his recognition of the principle that taxes were not levied by the inherent right of the king, but by the free consent of the people. As a popular king, he completely mastered the bishops, in spite of their ability and learning, and he was much aided in this work by the orders and regulations specially issued by Pedro Hispano, the great Portuguese scholar and theologian, who had been the king’s friend when Archbishop of Braga, and who became a cardinal, and afterwards for a short time pope, as Pope John XXI. After a prosperous and successful reign, Nemesis came upon Affonso III. for his behaviour to his brother, in the rebellion of his son Diniz in 1277, who remained in arms until 1279, when the king died in a state of despair, and of misery at his son’s ingratitude.
During the reigns of Sancho I., Affonso II., Sancho II., and Affonso III., Portugal attained its European limits, and started on the way to become a great, free, and wealthy nation. The period of war and of territorial extension in the peninsula was now over, and the period of civilization was to dawn. Territorially and constitutionally, Portugal was now an established kingdom; it remained for it to become civilized and thoroughly homogeneous before the great heroic period of exploration and Asiatic conquest should begin. The kingdom and its people had passed through the stage of childhood; now was to come its stirring youth, in which the great qualities of the Portuguese were to be trained and developed, before the period of glorious manhood was to mark the height of its greatness.
NO better ruler than Diniz, or Denis, could be found for a country which, after centuries of war, needed to have a period of peace and quiet. He was a poet, and loved literature; he was a great administrator, and loved justice; he was a statesman, and avoided foreign wars; he was a far-seeing man, and prepared for the extension of Portuguese energies beyond the sea by encouraging commerce; and, above all, he saw the need of agriculture and of the arts of peace to take the place of incessant wars, and in every respect he nobly earned the sobriquet of the “Ré Lavrador,” or “Denis the Labourer.” From all these points of view his reign is of vast importance in the history of Portugal, for it marks the development of the people into an independent nation, but, like all peaceful reigns of quiet progress, it is not signalized by many striking events.
The civil war, which Diniz had waged with his father, was followed on his accession to the throne by a fierce struggle between Diniz and his brother Affonso, who disputed his legitimacy, which ended in a compromise. He then married, in 1281, Donna Isabel, daughter of Pedro III. of Aragon, who was canonized in later years for her pure and unselfish life. His reign is only marked by one war with Sancho IV. and Ferdinand IV. of Castile and Leon, which was terminated in 1297 by a treaty of alliance, according to the terms of which Ferdinand IV. married Constance, daughter of Diniz, while Affonso, the heir to the throne of Portugal, married Beatrice of Castile, the sister of Ferdinand, but his reputation none the less stood very high in the peninsula, as is shown by his being chosen in 1304 to act as joint arbitrator with the King of Aragon between Ferdinand of Castile and his cousin, Ferdinand of Lacerda. Still more interesting are the king’s relations with Edward I. of England, with whom he exchanged many letters, chiefly on commercial subjects, and with whom he made a treaty of commerce in 1294. He had much correspondence also with Edward II., and in particular he agreed with the English king in 1311 that the Knights Templars had been greatly maligned. When that famous order was suppressed by Pope Clement V. in compliance with the wishes of Philip le Bel of France, Dom Diniz took a course which demonstrated his political wisdom. He recollected the great services which the military orders had formerly rendered to Portugal, and bore in mind their influence and power, and he therefore founded the Order of Christ in conjunction with Pope John XXII. in 1319, and invested it with all the property of the Templars, thus at once obeying the Pope and avoiding a serious disturbance at home. He showed the same wisdom with regard to the knights of Santiago in Portugal, whom he persuaded Pope Nicholas IV. to release from the control of the Grand Master of the Order in Castile, and to establish on an independent footing.
These few lines touch on every important event, in regard to foreign affairs, which occurred during the long reign of Dom Diniz, but they give no idea of the progress of Portugal during this period of nearly fifty years. Agriculture was greatly encouraged by the monarch, who founded agricultural schools and homes for farmers’ orphans, and established model farms. He did much by showing honour to agricultural pursuits to raise them in the consideration of his nobility, and he attempted to wean his people in general from the notion that war was the only occupation fit for a free man. He undertook several important agricultural experiments himself, established farmers in the still barren province of the Alemtejo, paid special attention to the cultivation of vines in the north, and planted the great pine forest of Leiria by which he hoped to reclaim the sandy regions in that neighbourhood. He was also a great builder, and did much to improve the three royal cities of Lisbon, Coimbra, and Santarem, in which the Court used to reside, and he built the towns of Salvaterra and Villa Real. In administrative matters, the feudal system, under which the country districts were ruled was left almost untouched, as were the charters and franchises of the greater cities and towns, and the only important measures passed by the Cortes in 1286 and 1291 were still more stringent laws of mortmain directed against the Church than that passed in 1250. It was in the administration of justice that the greatest reforms were introduced. The period of great chancellors, who were statesmen rather than lawyers, which commenced with Julião, and included Gonçalo Mendes, Vicente, and Estevão Annes, was over, and a new class of chancellors was appointed. These men were invariably ecclesiastics, and looked forward to a bishopric, as the reward of their services. They were essentially lawyers, learned in the Roman law, which they had studied at Padua and Bologna; and applying the maxims of their studies to the common law of Portugal, which was largely founded on Visigothic ideas, they began to build up a system of Portuguese law, of which the importance became visible later. Diniz did not venture to abolish the feudal courts, though he checked their abuses, and among other reforms, he appointed royal “corregidors” in every city and town belonging to the Crown in lordship, who were to act as judges of appeal from the feudal and city courts, as well as to take charge of the police. His wise encouragement of commerce appears in his commercial treaty with England, and by his establishment of a royal navy, commanded by a new official, entitled the “Almirante Mor,” or Lord High Admiral, which office was first granted to a distinguished Genoese sailor, Emmanuel Pessanha.
But the greatest qualification of Dom Diniz for the sovereignty of a country, which had at last got time to learn the arts of peace and to become civilized, was his affection for literature and his encouragement of education. It was Diniz, who, in 1300, founded the first Portuguese university at Lisbon, which after many changes between that city and Coimbra, found its permanent home in the latter city, and became the centre of literary influence in Portugal. The king was also a poet of exquisite taste, and in the number, beauty, and variety of his songs he proved himself the greatest poet of his Court. Educated by Aymeric d’Ebrard of Cahors, whom he made Bishop of Coimbra, he shows in his poems the influence of the troubadours, and not of the trouvères who had thronged his father’s Court. He had inherited poetic feeling and power of expression from his father, Affonso III., who was no mean poet, and who is said to have written a powerful “sirvente” against Alfonso X., but his father had during his long residence at Paris been impressed with the poetry of northern France, and had invited trouvères only to his Court. Dom Diniz, both by education and feeling, belonged to a different school, and preferred the softer themes and methods of the troubadours. With the Courts of Love which he introduced into Portugal came the substitution of the Limousin decasyllabic for the national octosyllabic metre, and the ancient forms were lost in the intricacies of the “ritournelle.” But the best service done by Diniz and his poetic courtiers was in developing the Portuguese dialect into a beautiful and flexible literary language. The king went further; as he grew older, he threw off the trammels of Provençal forms, and perceiving the beauty of his people’s lyrics, he wrote some quaint and graceful “pastorellas” inspired by their influence, which are full of poetic life and truth. The effects of the influence of Dom Diniz, in the words of a recent writer on Portuguese literature, “pervade the whole of Portuguese poetry; for not only was he in his ‘pastorellas’ the forerunner of the great pastoral school, but by sanctifying to literary use the national storehouse of song, he perpetuated among his people, even to the present day, lyric forms of great beauty.”[5] Literary excellence and the growth of a national poetry form the natural sequel of the attainment of national independence; and it is interesting to observe that the king, who peacefully consolidated the Portuguese kingdom, was the founder of Portuguese literature. Camoens happily hits off in a couple of stanzas the characteristics of his reign.