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.
[Illustration: INES DE CASTRO.]
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.
The spirit of stern, revengeful justice which had marked the
commencement of the short reign of Dom Pedro continued to show itself in
all matters of administration; the king loved to dispense justice in
person, and the rigour with which he treated all culprits, noble and
priest as well as merchant and vagabond, won for him the title of “Pedro
the Severe.” This severity was not unpleasing to the people, and many
tales are extant of the king’s visits _incognito_ to the law courts, and
of his rigorous punishment of unjust judges. Many of the famous stories
told in the “Arabian Nights” of the Caliph Harun-ar-Rashid are also told
of Dom Pedro, and in them his Chancellor, Vasco Martins de Sousa, played
the part of the Vizīr, as companion and butt. In matters of policy
Dom Pedro followed in his father’s and grandfather’s steps, avoiding
interference with the other kingdoms of the peninsula, and maintaining a
close political and commercial connection with England. His reign was
too short to leave much trace on the history of Portugal, for he died in
1367 at Estremoz, and was buried at Alçobaça by the side of Ines de
Castro.
The accession of Ferdinand, called “the Handsome,” the only son of Dom
Pedro by Constance Manuel, marks a crisis in the history of the
Portuguese monarchy. As a natural result of the long era of peace and
prosperity which had succeeded the final conquest of the Algarves, the
people of Portugal had become more wealthy, more cultivated, and more
conscious of their nationality than almost any people in Europe while
the Court had become more and more dissolute, and more out of consonance
with the feelings of the people. If the Portuguese monarchy was to
continue to exist, it was obvious that it must again become a truly
national monarchy, as it had been in the days of Affonso Henriques and
of Diniz, which should lead the way in finding new outlets for the
growing energies of the people, and that the kings must remember their
duties, and not think only of their pleasures. The affection the people
showed for Dom Pedro, who was by no means a good king, but rather a
despot of the Oriental type, was a proof that they were ready to
recognize with gratitude the efforts of a just monarch, and their
energies, now that, owing to long peace, they were the richest nation in
the peninsula, only needed to be directed. Neither the priesthood nor
the nobility showed any disposition to check the dissoluteness of the
Court. The bishops lost their old commanding influence, as the Papacy,
on which they depended, became degenerate, and the nobles, now that they
had no longer wars to occupy them, either became courtiers and abettors
of the vices of the kings and princes, or else lived on their feudal
estates and imitated them. The people had now no share in the
government. The power which the Cortes had obtained during the reign of
Affonso III. was in abeyance, because the king did not need its help
against his bishops and nobles, but it was only in abeyance, and ready
to spring forth again into new life.
The life and reign of Ferdinand “the Handsome” are marked, like those of
his father, by a romantic amour, which, if not so tragic as the story of
Ines de Castro, had far greater political importance. Ferdinand was a
weak and frivolous, but ambitious, king, who, after binding himself to
marry Leonora, daughter of the King of Aragon, suddenly surprised every
one by claiming the thrones of Castile and Leon in 1369, on the death of
Pedro “the Cruel.” This claim was derived through his grandmother,
Beatrice of Castile, and was good in law, and Dom Ferdinand was
favourably received at Ciudad Rodrigo and Zamora. But the majority of
the Castilians, both noble and plebeian, had no desire to see a
Portuguese monarch on their throne, and therefore espoused the cause of
the illegitimate Henry of Trastamare as Henry II. of Castile and Leon.
The war which followed turned to the advantage of the Castilian
pretender, and the contest ended in 1371 by the intervention of Pope
Gregory XI., when Ferdinand agreed to surrender his claim to the throne
of Castile, and to marry Leonora, daughter of Henry II. However, in
spite of the Pope, this treaty was never carried out, for at the
marriage of his half-sister, Beatrice, the daughter of Dom Pedro and
Ines de Castro, to Sancho Count of Alboquerque, King Ferdinand saw and
fell passionately in love with Donna Leonor Telles de Menezes, daughter
of a nobleman in the Tras-os-Montes, and wife of João Lourenço da Cunha,
Lord of Pombeiro. This passion was the king’s ruin, for the object of it
was a sort of Portuguese Lucrezia Borgia, of whom horrible stories are
told, which historical research has unfortunately shown to be only too
well founded. At this very period, when she first met the king, she made
no attempt to repulse his advances, though she was a married woman, and
she bore an undying feeling of revenge against her sister, Donna Maria
Telles, for her attempts to repulse the amorous monarch. In spite of her
sister’s efforts, Donna Leonor managed to captivate the king, who, in
his infatuation for her, and in compliance with the dictates of her
ambition, refused to marry the daughter of Henry II. of Castile. This
refusal exasperated the people of Lisbon, who knew that the Castilians
would not tamely suffer such an insult, and a great popular tumult and
riot burst forth in the city. The story of this riot has been admirably
told by the chief modern historian of Portugal, Alexandra Herculano, in
one of his historical novels, and it affords a striking example of the
political foresight of the people, and of their conviction of a coming
revolution. The popular leader was a tailor named Fernan Vasques, under
whose command the mob burst into the palace at Lisbon, hunted in vain
for Donna Leonor, and made King Ferdinand swear to marry the Castilian
infanta on the very next day. But Ferdinand escaped the same night to
Santarem, and once there with his beloved, he forgot his oath, and sent
all the troops he could collect to punish the rioters of Lisbon. They
made but little resistance, being unprepared for their sovereign’s want
of faith to his plighted word, and Fernan Vasques, the tailor, and his
principal followers were beheaded. This cruel punishment inflicted, the
king betook himself to Oporto, and there married the Donna Leonor at
the Church of S. João do Hospital, although her first husband was still
alive. It shows to what a depth of degradation the Portuguese nobles had
sunk that all the nobility, with the exception of Dom Diniz, one of the
king’s half-brothers, acquiesced in this bigamous marriage, and
recognized Donna Leonor as queen. At the head of those who submitted
were Dom João or John, the elder son of the late king by Ines de Castro,
and Dom John, known as “the Bastard,” the Master of the Knights of Aviz,
and the son of Pedro by Theresa Lourenço.
The people of Lisbon were right in believing that the Castilians would
regard the marriage of Ferdinand to Donna Leonor as a deadly insult to
their infanta. Henry II. at once invaded Portugal, and laid siege to
Lisbon; Ferdinand lived meanwhile quietly at Santarem with his queen,
and made no effort to intervene; and the war would have ended badly for
Portugal, had not Cardinal Guy of Boulogne, who happened to be in Spain
as legate, interfered, and by using all the authority of the Church,
forced Henry II. to retire, and to make a treaty of peace with Ferdinand
at Santarem. Even after this proof of the power of Castile, and after
the sufferings incurred by the people of Lisbon during the siege,
Ferdinand refused to keep the peace. He would not believe that Henry II.
was firmly established on the throne, and in 1373 he treacherously
renewed the negotiations which he had entered into the year before with
John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. This son of Edward III. claimed the
throne of Castile for his wife Constance, the daughter of Pedro “the
Cruel,” and Ferdinand signed a treaty of alliance with Edward III.,
through his ambassadors, João Fernandes Andeiro and Vasco Domingues, by
which he agreed to support the claims of the English prince. But Donna
Leonor did not approve of the English alliance, and in 1374, Ferdinand
as usual broke his plighted word, and again made peace with Castile.