[1253-1279 A.D.]
Alfonso III, on arriving at a height which, a few years before, his ambition could scarcely have reached, was not without apprehensions that the Castilian king or infante might trouble him in his usurpation, and assembled the three estates of his realm to deliberate on the means of defence. Fortunately for his ambition, both father and son were absorbed by their Andalusian conquests. To secure, if possible, the good will of the former, he sent a considerable aid to the Christian camp, which was readily received by the hero. In the meantime he himself resolved to profit by the reverses of the misbelievers, and finish the conquest of Algarve. At the head of a sufficient force, he accordingly penetrated into that province, and speedily recovered the places which the Mohammedans had again surprised. In a subsequent expedition, his ardour or avarice led him to encroach on the possessions of Alfonso el Sabio, Ferdinand’s successor. The Castilian army marched against the Portuguese, who were compelled to retreat. The Castilian king did not stop here. On the pretext that Algarve, as chiefly conquered by his subjects, the knights of Santiago, belonged to him, he invaded that province, and quickly reduced its chief fortresses. The Portuguese was glad to sue for an accommodation; and it was at length agreed that he should marry Doña Beatrice de Guzman, a natural daughter of the Castilian, and with her receive the sovereignty of Algarve. As the province had been conquered by the subjects of both crowns, equity would have indicated its division by the two monarchs; but as such a division would probably have led to future wars, the present arrangement might be a politic one. The Castilian appears to have reserved to himself the sovereignty of Algarve, his feudatory being required both to pay tribute and to furnish a certain number of forces whenever he should be at war. The cession, with whatever conditions it was accompanied, was disagreeable to the Castilians, who thought that their monarch had sacrificed the interests of the state in favour of his daughter. The marriage was solemnised in the following year (in 1254), and a few years afterwards Portugal was declared forever free from homage to the Castilian kings.
From the facility with which this matrimonial connection was formed, it would be inferred that the Portuguese was become a widower. But the countess Matilda still lived, and was anxious to return to her lord. Her only defects were her barrenness and her age—two which, though no canonist would recognise, were sufficient in the mind of so unscrupulous a prince as Alfonso. She sailed for Portugal. He refused to see her; and when at length she forced her way into his presence, he heard, unmoved, her entreaties, her expostulations, and threats. The queen (for such history must call her) retired to Boulogne, and laid her complaints before the pope and her liege superior, St. Louis. After a patient examination of the case, Alexander IV expedited a bull, by which he declared Matilda the lawful wife of Alfonso, and annulled the recent marriage with Doña Beatrice. The king persevered in his lust, as he had already done in his usurpation, even when excommunicated by the pope; and he and his household were interdicted from the offices of the church. A second time is she said to have visited Portugal, but with as little success. She had married him when poor—when almost an exile from his native court—and had thereby raised him to power and riches: and her unshaken attachment—unshaken even by his sickening ingratitude—proves that though the empire of the passions had ceased, she possessed an uncommon share of woman’s best feeling. Her last act, by which she bequeathed a considerable sum to this faithless deserter, was characteristic enough of her ruling misfortune. On her death, in 1262, his prelates obtained from the pope a bull to render legitimate the present marriage.[h]
POLITICAL IMPORTANCE OF ALFONSO’S REIGN
Alfonso determined to bridle the power of the bishops, in spite of his oath at Paris. Perceiving that this could only be done with the help of the mass of the people, he summoned a cortes at Leiria in 1254, to which representatives of the cities were elected and sat with the nobles and higher clergy. With the help of the cortes—one of great importance in the constitutional history of Portugal—he dared the interdict laid upon the kingdom for having married again (the daughter of Alfonso el Sabio) whilst his first wife (Matilda, countess of Boulogne) was alive. Finally, however, on the petition of the archbishops and bishops of Portugal, Pope Urban IV legalised the disputed marriage in 1262 and legitimated his eldest son, Dom Diniz, while in 1263, Alfonso X made over to him the full sovereignty of Algarve. On the other hand, the people made use of their power, and in a full cortes at Coimbra in 1261 the representatives of the cities boldly denounced Alfonso’s tampering with the coinage, and compelled recognition of the fact that taxes were not levied by the inherent right of the king but the free consent of the people. After a prosperous and successful reign Nemesis came upon Alfonso in the rebellion of his eldest son Diniz[140] in 1277, which continued until 1279, in which year the king died.
The period of war and of territorial extension in the peninsula was now over, and the period of civilisation was to dawn. Territorially and constitutionally Portugal was now an established kingdom; it remained for it to become civilised and thoroughly homogeneous before the great heroic period of exploration and Asiatic conquest should begin.
DOM DINIZ
[1279-1325 A.D.]
No better man for such work than the new king, Dom Diniz, could have been found; he was himself a poet and loved letters; he was a great administrator and loved justice; above all he saw the need of agriculture and the arts of peace to take the place of incessant wars, and nobly earned the title of the Ré Lavrador, or Diniz the Labourer. From all these points of view his reign is of vast importance in the history of Portugal, though, like all reigns of peaceful progress, it is not signalised by many striking events. It began with a civil war between Diniz and his brother Alfonso, who disputed his legitimacy, which ended in a compromise; and in 1281 Diniz married Isabella, daughter of Pedro III of Aragon, who for her pure and unselfish life was canonised in the sixteenth century. His reign is marked by only one war with Sancho IV and his successor, Ferdinand IV, of Castile and Leon, which was terminated in 1297 by a treaty of alliance, according to the terms of which Ferdinand IV married Constanza, daughter of Diniz, while Alfonso, the heir to the throne of Portugal, married Beatrice of Castile, sister of Ferdinand. At the end of this reign war broke out between the king and the heir-apparent, and a pitched battle was only prevented in 1323 by St. Isabella riding between the armies 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.[c]