noticing because of the assistance rendered to the Portuguese by the
English; it is the first instance of the close connection between the
two nations, which has lasted down to the present century, a connection
which makes the history of Portugal of especial interest to Englishmen.
After the conquest, most of the crusaders sailed on their way to the
Holy Land, but the Portuguese king, by liberal offers, managed to
persuade a few to settle down in his dominions, some of whom founded
great families. It was no wonder that Affonso was almost astounded at
his own success. Cintra, Palmella, Mafra, and Almada surrendered to him
without a blow in 1147; Alemquer, Obidos, Torres Novas, and Porto de Moz
in 1148; and he found himself master of the whole of the southern Beira
and of Estremadura. His great difficulty was how at the same time to
occupy and settle his new possessions, and to prepare for a further
advance, and it was only sheer lack of men that checked his conquering
career. Gilbert of Hastings, an Englishman, whom he had made Bishop of
Lisbon, went to England to preach the crusade in Portugal with the full
consent of King Henry II., but he did not bring many men back with him,
and Affonso had to wait ten years before he made his next decisive step
in advance. He spent these years in strengthening the fortifications of
his new cities, and attracting inhabitants to them from his older
cities; nor did he forget to show his gratitude to the Church, which had
allowed its sworn soldiers to help him; for he founded, in 1153, the
magnificent monastery of Alçobaça, the future resting-place of the kings
of Portugal, and the finest specimen of mediæval architecture in the
whole country. All this time he was impatiently longing to take a step
further in advance and to capture the wealthy city of Alcacer do Sal. In
1152 he was beaten back in his first attack on that city; in 1157 he was
again repulsed, although he had the assistance of Thierry of Alsace and
a body of crusaders; but at last, on June 28, 1158, he was successful,
and reached the height of his greatness and prosperity.
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.
[Illustration: text decoration]
IV.
PORTUGAL ATTAINS ITS EUROPEAN LIMITS.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.