Part 7

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.

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.

V.

THE CONSOLIDATION OF PORTUGAL.

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.

“See, next that Diniz comes in whom is seen the ‘brave Afonso’s’ offspring true and digne; whereby the mighty boast obscurèd been, the vaunt of lib’eral Alexander’s line: Beneath his sceptre blooms the land serene (already compast golden Peace divine) With constitution, customs, laws and rights, a tranquil country’s best and brightest lights.

The first was he who made Coimbra own Pallas-Minerva’s gen’rous exercise; he called the Muses’ choir from Helicon to tread the lea that by Mondego lies: Whate’er of good whilere hath Athens done, here proud Apollo keepeth ev’ery prize: Here gives he garlands wove with golden ray, with perfumed Nard and ever-verdant Bay.”[6]

Personally dissolute, as the nature of much of his poetry and his encouragement of the troubadours and their Courts of Love show, the stories told of the Court of Dom Diniz are far from edifying. Yet some of them are full of romantic interest, and exhibit the more constant love of the south instead of the airy fancies of Provence. Of these stories, the most romantic of all is perhaps that of Donna Branca or Blanche, the sister of Diniz and the abbess of Lorvão and Huelgas, who loved a humble carpenter Pedro Esteves, and was the mother of a son, João Nunes do Prado, who became Master of the Order of Calatrava, and was beheaded by Pedro the Cruel of Castile. It is this story which has furnished the plot of one of the most striking of modern Portuguese dramas, Almeida-Garrett’s “Donna Branca.” The king’s favours to his bastards, João Affonso and Affonso Sanches, whom he successively made Mordomo Mor, and Pedro Affonso, whom he made Alferes Mor and Count of Barcellos, involved him towards the end of his reign in bitter disputes with his only legitimate son, Affonso. Open war at last broke out between Dom Diniz and his heir-apparent, and a pitched battle was only prevented by S. Isabel riding between the armies in 1323, and making a peace between her husband and her son, which lasted until the death of the great peace monarch, the “Ré Lavrador” in 1325.

Immediately on his accession to the throne, Affonso IV., the successor of Dom Diniz, gave full vent to his rage against his half brothers, and with the consent and assistance of the nobility of Portugal, he beheaded João Affonso and confiscated all his lands, as well as those of Affonso Sanches, who had escaped to Castile. This act of revenge, or of justice, as he called it, consummated, he settled down as a worthy successor of his father, and fostered all the schemes of Diniz for the development of Portugal. He also continued his father’s policy of peace with Castile, and made a formal alliance with that country in 1327 when he married his daughter Donna Maria to Alfonso XI. of Castile. This marriage did not prove a happy one; the king neglected his young wife for Leonora de Guzman, and treated her so badly that in 1336 Affonso IV. invaded Castile. A terrible war was impending, when S. Isabel once more played the part of peacemaker. Leaving the convent of Poor Clares at Coimbra, whither she had retired after her husband’s death, she hurried to Estremoz, where the two armies were facing each other, and made peace between the opposing monarchs. Alfonso XI. promised to treat his wife better, and the Infant Dom Pedro, the only surviving son of the King of Portugal, was granted the hand of Constance Manuel, daughter of the Duke of Penafiel. The strength of the new alliance was soon tried; for in 1340 Abu-l-Hasan, king of Morocco, crossed the straits to come to the help of the king of Granada, with a great army. Alfonso XI. sent his wife to beg for the assistance of the Portuguese chivalry, and Affonso willingly complied. In the great battle of the Salado on 29th of October the Moors were utterly defeated, and the two generals who were most conspicuous on the Christian side, were Affonso IV. of Portugal, who won the sobriquet of Affonso “the Brave,” and Don Pedro Fernandez de Castro, Mordomo Mor of Castile. This victory also marks an advance in Portuguese poetry, for on it was written the first Portuguese epic by Affonso Giraldes, the forerunner of Camoens.

It is interesting during this reign to notice the close intimacy growing up between Portugal and England, which was to have many important results. Directly on his accession, Affonso IV. determined to maintain the friendly relations which Diniz had commenced, and in 1325 he sent an ambassador to propose a matrimonial alliance with the English royal family, probably with a view of contracting a marriage between his elder daughter, Donna Maria, and the young Prince of Wales, afterwards Edward III. The English Court, then under the influence of Queen Isabella, replied that the ambassador was not of sufficiently high rank for his application to be received. Accordingly, in the following year, Affonso sent his Lord High Admiral, Dom Manoel Pessanha, and Dom Rodrigo Domingues on the same mission, but their embassy led to no result, probably owing to the disturbed state of affairs in England, and Donna Maria married, as has been said, the King of Castile. Friendly communications continued, nevertheless, between Portugal and England, and in 1344 Edward III. sent two ambassadors, Henry, Earl of Lancaster, and Richard, Earl of Arundel, to draw up a treaty of alliance with Affonso IV. This was followed by the mission of Andrew of Oxford, Richard of Saham, and Philip Borton to ask for the hand of Donna Leonora, the King of Portugal’s younger daughter, for Edward, Prince of Wales, better known as the Black Prince. The marriage was agreed upon, and in 1347 Robert Stratton and Richard of Saham arrived to fix the day for the passage of the infanta to England. But at this moment matrimonial alliances of more political importance occurred to each of the high contracting parties, and in this very year Donna Leonora was married to King Pedro IV. of Aragon, and the Black Prince to the Fair Maid of Kent. The rupture of this marriage scheme did not break the friendship of the two kings, both of whom perceived the wealth to be obtained for their countries and themselves by encouraging commerce. The business relations between the two nations soon became very close, and the wine of Portugal was freely exchanged for the long-cloth of England. On July 25, 1352, Edward III. issued a royal proclamation, ordering his subjects never to do any harm to the Portuguese, and on October 20, 1353, a curious sequel to the commercial treaty of 1294 was signed in London by Affonso Martins Alho. This young wine merchant had been sent to England as representative of the merchants of the maritime cities of Portugal, and the treaty he negotiated with the citizens of London was one guaranteeing mutual good faith in all matters of trade and commerce, with many other technical clauses referring to special lines of business. The very fact of this treaty or agreement being signed is a proof, not only of the close connection between Portugal and England, but of the high degree of wealth, intelligence, and business capacity possessed by the merchants of both countries.

The later years of the reign of Affonso IV. were marked by a fearful pestilence and a sad tragedy. In 1348 the plague, or, as it was more commonly called, the Black Death, reached Portugal, after traversing Europe, and more than decimated the inhabitants of Lisbon. On January 7, 1355, Donna Ines de Castro was murdered in the streets of Coimbra. The history of the various dynasties of Portugal is full of romantic stories, some with ludicrous, and others with tragical, endings, which illustrate, not only the characters of the respective monarchs, but the tendencies of their different epochs. The story of Donna Branca, the princess who loved a carpenter, has been told, with the comment that her son became Grand Master of the wealthy Order of Calatrava; the romance of Dom Pedro’s life ended more tragically. Dom Pedro was the only son of Affonso IV. and Beatrice of Castile who had survived his first year. He was born in 1320, and had married in 1336, in order to cement his father’s alliance with Castile, the Donna Constance Manuel, daughter of the Duke of Penafiel. In her suite as lady-in-waiting came the Donna Ines de Castro, daughter of Pedro Fernandez de Castro, Mordomo Mor of Castile, and hero of the battle of the Salado, and sister of Alvaro Peres de Castro, first Constable of Portugal. Dom Pedro fell in love with the beautiful Castilian lady, and though, during his wife’s lifetime, he always treated his wife with the utmost consideration, and was the father by her of Dom Ferdinand, afterwards King of Portugal, and of Donna Maria, afterwards Queen of Aragon, it was well known at the Portuguese Court that the love of Dom Pedro’s heart was centred on Donna Ines. In that dissolute Court little attention was paid to the conduct of the prince; princes were in those days privileged persons, and he was known besides to have another lady-love, the Donna Theresa Lourenço, who was the mother of João, afterwards King of Portugal. It was not until after the death of his wife that it was perceived that Dom Pedro’s love for the Donna Ines was more than the ordinary fancy of a prince, and was an absorbing passion. For love of her, he refused to marry any of the foreign princesses proposed to him by his father, and it is probable that he went through a form of marriage with her after his first wife’s death. However that may be, King Affonso determined to put an end to his son’s infatuation by murdering the object of it, and by his directions Donna Ines was murdered in the streets of Coimbra by three courtiers, Alvaro Gonçalves, the “Meirinho Mor” or Lord Chamberlain, Pedro Coelho, and Diogo Lopes Pacheco. This is the tragedy which Camoens has celebrated in an immortal passage,[7] and which has since become a common theme for the playwrights of the world, good, bad, and indifferent; and it may be said, that it is not so much in the murder itself, as in the events which followed it, that the most romantic part of the story is to be found. Dom Pedro was absent on his estates in the south when he heard of the murder of Ines. He at once collected his vassals, and prepared to attack his father, but, as had happened in the days of S. Isabel, the Queen, Beatrice of Castile, interposed, and a compromise was made, by which father and son agreed to see each other no more, and to abandon active hostilities, and this compact lasted until the death of Affonso “the Brave” in 1357.

The first act of Dom Pedro on ascending the throne was to punish the murderers of Ines de Castro, and he induced the King of Castile to surrender Alvaro Gonçalves and Pedro Coelho to him. Pacheco had escaped to England, and could not be found, and thus escaped the fate of his accomplices, who were slowly tortured to death in front of the royal palace at Coimbra before the eyes of Dom Pedro. The king four years later had the strange ceremony performed, which is far better known than the circumstances of his love affair with Donna Ines. On April 24, 1361, either to show his undying affection for her, or to confirm the story of his marriage and legitimate his children by her, he had her body disinterred at Coimbra, and conveyed to the Convent of Alçobaça, where it was solemnly crowned, and then buried. It is usual to speak of the Convent of Alçobaça as if it had been the burial-place of all the kings and queens of Portugal up to this time. Such was not the case; only Affonso II. and Affonso III. and their queens were buried there. Count Henry and Donna Theresa had their last resting-place in the Cathedral of Braga, Affonso Henriques and Sancho I. and their queens in the Convent of Santa Cruz at Coimbra, Diniz in the Convent of Odivelas, near Lisbon, S. Isabel in that of the Poor Clares at Coimbra, Affonso IV. and his queen in Lisbon Cathedral, and Dom Pedro’s wife, Constance Manuel, in the Convent of S. Francis at Santarem.