The Story of the Nations: Portugal

by H. Morse Stephens

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.

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.