From the seventh century to the capture of Lisbon in 1147 Moorish architecture had its compromising effect on the elegant majesty of the great lines and arches of the Saracens’ predecessors; the baths of Cintra, the wall and seventy-seven towers of Lisbon, the fortifications and palaces of Evora, and many mosques since transformed into churches, signified, towards the close of the twelfth century, the degree of Islam’s foothold on Portuguese soil—an unsteady tenure, without consistence, without depth, bearing witness to the rapidity of conquest as well as to the fear of ephemeral possession. Little by little, in place of the mosques, arose churches, veritable apostolic citadels, headquarters for the war against the infidel. Formless and rude at first, they developed as the Christian armies won back the land; but when the native peoples effected their definite triumph they were obliged to call in foreign artists, more skilful than themselves in the interpretation of the architectural vernacular.
The Portuguese knew how to fight bravely and to sing their triumphs, but they did not know how to build; and for this reason the monastery of Alcobaça, founded in fulfilment of a vow by Alfonso I, king of Portugal, in 1170, is an Anglo-Saxon church, built by workmen from England. A new architectural epoch dates from the fifteenth century, and its character has been best perpetuated in the abbey of Batalha. Of its kind, this is one of the most beautiful edifices in existence; and assuredly it is the most majestic and the most pure in form that Portugal possesses. It was built in the reign of João I (1385-1433) who brought from England a celebrated sculptor named Stephenson. Many German, English, and Norman artists summoned by the monarch came to aid him. João himself and his queen Philippa, granddaughter of Edward III of England, supervised the work. And that nothing might be lacking to the poetic magnificence and graceful details of the building, another queen, the pious Leonora, and two monarchs—João II, the poet king, and after him, Emmanuel—followed the continuance of the work with intelligent interest. Nothing in the whole peninsula rivals in magnificence the façade of the monastery, nor in boldness of design its chapter hall.[b]
THE ORIGIN OF PORTUGAL
[712-1109 A.D.]
It has been stated that geographically the kingdom of Portugal is an integral part of the Iberian peninsula; the only reason why it has retained its independence, while the other mediæval states of that peninsula have merged into the kingdom of Spain, is to be found in its history. When Philip II of Spain annexed Portugal it was a century too late for it to coalesce with Spain. It had then produced Vasco da Gama and Alfonso de Albuquerque, and its language had been developed from a Romance dialect into a literary language by Camoens and Sá de Miranda. Conscious of its national history, it broke away again from Spain in 1640, and under the close alliance of England maintained its separate and national existence during the eighteenth century. A union with Spain might have been possible, however, during the first half of the present century had not a generation of historians and poets arisen who, by recalling the great days of the Portuguese monarchy, have made it impossible for Portugal ever again to lose the consciousness of her national existence.
The history of Portugal really begins with the gift of the fief of the Terra Portucalensis or the county of Porto Cale to Count Henry of Burgundy in 1094; for any attempt to identify the kingdom of Portugal and the Portuguese people with Lusitania and the Lusitanians is utterly without foundation. With the rest of the Iberian peninsula, Portugal was colonised by the Phœnicians and conquered by the Carthaginians; and the Roman province of Lusitania, whether according to the division of Iberia into three provinces under Augustus or into five under Hadrian, in no way coincided with the historical limits of the kingdom of Portugal. In common with the rest of the peninsula, it was overrun by the Vandals, Alans, and Visigoths, and eventually conquered by the Arabs in the eighth century. It was not until the fifteenth century that an attempt was made by Garcia de Menezes to identify Lusitania with Portugal. Under the influence of the Renaissance, Bernardo de Brito insisted on the identity, and claimed Viriathus as a Portuguese hero. Other writers of the same epoch delighted in calling Portugal by the classical name of “Lusitania,” and Camoens, by the very title of his great epic, Os Lusiadas, has immortalised the appellation.
For two centuries Portugal remained subject to the Omayyad caliphs, and under their wise rule the old Roman coloniæ and municipia, such as Lisbon, Lamego, Viseu, and Oporto, maintained their Roman self-government and increased in wealth and importance. Towards the close of the tenth century, as the Omayyad caliphate grew weaker, the Christian princes of Visigothic descent who dwelt in the mountains of the Asturias began to grow more audacious in their attacks on the declining power, and in 997 Bermudo II, king of Galicia, won back the first portion of modern Portugal from the Mohammedans by seizing Oporto and occupying the province now known as Entre-Minho-e-Douro. In the beginning of the eleventh century the Omayyad caliphate finally broke up, and independent emirs established themselves in every large city, against whom the Christian princes waged incessant and successful war.[c]
In 1027 Alfonso V of Leon fell before Viseu, the siege of which was in consequence abandoned; but in 1057, both it and Lamego were recovered by his son-in-law, Ferdinand I; and the following year Coimbra shared the same fate. In 1093, Santarem, Lisbon, and Cintra were reduced by Alfonso VI, the famous conqueror of Toledo, whose arms were generally so successful against the misbelievers.[135] As these conquests were continually exposed to the irruptions of the Almoravids, in 1095 that monarch conferred the government of Portugal from the Minho to the Tagus, and the right of conquering as far as the Guadiana, on Henry of Besançon or Burgundy, who in 1072 had married his illegitimate daughter Theresa, and to whose arms he had been so much indebted for many of his recent successes.[136]
[1095-1139 A.D.]
The nature of the authority conferred on the new count has been a matter of much controversy between the Castilian and Portuguese writers. While the latter maintain that the concession of Alfonso was full and entire,—a surrender of all feudal claims over the country, which the count was to govern in full sovereignty,—the former no less zealously contend that the government was to be held as a fief, hereditary indeed, but no less dependent on the crown of Leon. In the absence of documentary evidence, probability only can guide us. It is unreasonable to suppose either that the king was willing, or, if willing, that his nobles would allow him to dismember at once and forever so fair a territory from his crown, and that too in favour of a stranger and an illegitimate daughter—for illegitimate she was, notwithstanding the allegations to the contrary by some Portuguese writers, who seldom regard truth if unpalatable to their national vanity. That Portugal was conferred as a dependent fief is also confirmed by the disputes between its early sovereigns and those of Leon—the former striving to maintain their avowed independence, the latter to reduce them to their reputed original vassalage. Alfonso died in 1109.