The Story of the Nations: Portugal

by H. Morse Stephens

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.

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.