Treachery and abuse of power were so frequent that, notwithstanding various diplomatic disloyalties, Diniz was considered one of the most loyal and just princes and lords of the two kingdoms. For this reason the two great kingdoms of Aragon and Castile appointed him arbitrator in the most serious disputes, and submitted to his judgment. Although the genius of war did not weave martial crowns for him, as conqueror in battles—for during his time no great honours fell to the Portuguese arms—yet he was ever at the head of the national armies in all the campaigns; knowing that his most powerful allies had been destroyed and others had betrayed him, he had the skilful audacity to penetrate forty leagues into the interior of Castile, and availing himself of the opportunity afforded by his opponents’ weakness, he increased the Portuguese dominion by two castles and eleven important towns, as though he were the most successful of warriors. The civil dissensions which disturbed his reign both arose from the same causes and circumstances, mediæval feudalism, assisted by Castilian elements. Taking for leaders first the brother and then the son of Diniz, the rebels combatted royal power in the kingdom, which, supported by the people, daily increased feudal privileges and forces.
The husband of Isabella was as rapid and successful in his measures against his brother as he was undecided and weak in repressing his son. In the first instance his courage was heightened by the just ambition of safe-guarding his throne; whereas, in the second instance, it was weakened by paternal affection and respect of legitimacy in the succession of the crown.
However, the principal glory of Diniz was not won with his sword. Of his epoch a perfect king, penetrated by his country’s needs, he notably increased the territory of Alfonso Henriques, but above all he raised to an amazing height the edifice of internal organisation, the foundations of which had been laid by Sancho I. His disloyalties with respect to the neighbouring kingdoms, his rare moments of repressive cruelty, the errors into which he may have fallen as a politician, the many faults into which he was in truth led by an ardent and sensual character—Diniz redeemed them all by the general and profound reform he effected with regard to Portuguese society.
He raised the population of the country, as none of his predecessors had done, by the means we have spoken of; he brought agriculture to a pitch of prosperity which we now marvel at; he created the internal industry and commerce, promoted municipal organisation, favouring labour, encouraging markets, and raising the spirit of the people; he safeguarded navigation by establishing vast societies of mutual aid between merchants, and definitely established a navy, with which he defended the coasts and the Portuguese merchant ships against pirates, and equipped his subjects for the discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which brought universal and eternal fame upon Portugal. He built nearly fifty fortresses, reorganised the popular militia, and nationalising the military orders with praiseworthy abnegation, he widely prepared the defence of the country, and bequeathed to Dom João I the possibility of opposing a formidable invasion by Castile and establishing once for all, with immortal glory, the independence of the country.
He was a zealous administrator, wise and economic, so that with the national resources he left the public treasury wealthy. Of a tolerant spirit, prudent and just in the application of the laws, no prince of his own times surpassed him in these qualities, then most rare. With gentle measures, affectionately and frequently protecting individual rights, he was one of the most determined opponents of the excessive privileges of the nobility and the church. Having received civil power, bound beneath the yoke of the Portuguese clergy, in their turn fettered to the Roman tiara, Diniz not only raised this power, but even succeeded in giving life to the national episcopacy.
The establishment of the councils begun by previous governments largely progressed, and the cortes, continuing to summon the deputies of the people, was a new and powerful aid towards the destruction of mediæval, ecclesiastical, and military feudalism in Portugal. With the laws respecting mortmain decreed and executed with civic firmness and superior wisdom, the clergy were deprived of territorial power and the sovereign right of administering justice; civil actions were brought before secular tribunes, which by a usurpation of jurisdiction had up to that time been brought before ecclesiastical tribunals.
The nobles were prohibited from raising new seigniorial castles, and many of the old were levelled; they were deprived of their traditional rights of deciding mutual disputes with the sword, of making knights, of exempting themselves from the royal tax, turning into fiefs and boroughs the lands they had seized without just cause, and even those with which they had established merely personal relations, and finally by giving judgment in causes in which the nobles claimed for themselves exclusive knowledge, the feudal nobility was totally destroyed, as was the temporal power of the church. Up to then the beneficial influence of the times sufficed to totally undermine the old oligarchic institutions of the Middle Ages, which were an overwhelming oppression of the people, and absorbed the forces of the state.
[1300-1340 A.D.]