[See also: A Brief History of Every King of Portugal: The First Dynasty (House of Burgundy)]
The Interregnum [1383-1385]
The first post in this series ended in a cliffhanger in 1383. D. Fernando, the last Portuguese King of the House of Burgundy, had just died without a male heir. His only daughter, D. Beatriz, was married to the King of Castile, Portugal’s larger and more powerful neighbour. It is fair to say that things did not look great for Portugal’s continued existence as an independent kingdom.
The period that followed is most commonly known as “the crisis of 1383-1385”; a creative designation reflecting the fact that it was a time of crisis which started in 1383 and ended in 1385 (sometimes you just have to love no-nonsense historians). However, it is also sometimes called the Interregnum. This more informative designation indicates a time during which there was no King – not just because no clear winner had emerged from the struggle that followed Fernando’s death, but also because strictly speaking there was nobody with a legal right to the throne. Kind of.
The thing is, even though D. Beatriz was D. Fernando’s only daughter, the treaty by which she was betrothed to the Castilian King specified that, in this situation, the one who was supposed to properly inherit the throne was D. Beatriz’s son with the King of Castile. Since the King of Castile already had sons from a previous marriage, this was supposed to protect Portugal’s independence. Sure, D. Beatriz and her husband were allowed to use the titles of Queen and King of Portugal, but until such a time as their son turned fourteen all power was to be wielded not by them but by the late King’s widow, D. Leonor Teles, who was to rule as Regent. There was, however, one teensy-weensy tiny problem: D. Beatriz and her husband hadn’t actually produced a son. And as it happens, this treaty specified that in the absence of such a son the Portuguese crown would be given to the King of Castile should he outlive his wife. Well, actually there were two problems: the other being that D. Leonor Teles was far more interested in securing her daughter’s position than her country’s independence (which is not all too surprising before nationalism was a thing, but did go against her late husband’s express wishes). I’m taking the (debatable) view that this means D. Beatriz was never actually legally Queen of Portugal in any meaningful way, and thus (spoiler alert!) I’m allowed not to list her as a monarch of Portugal (as indeed I’ve never seen done).
So, OK, following D. Fernando’s death the legal situation seems a bit shaky but ultimately still overwhelmingly in favour of the Castilian royal couple. This was sure to upset the Portuguese magnates, who knew they were bound to lose power and influence under a Castilian King – but then again, what were they going to do without an alternative pretender to the throne? Well, the obvious answer is: find an alternative pretender to the throne!
The obvious course of action would have been to revolt against the regency of the unpopular D. Leonor, declare D. Beatriz and her husband unfit to rule Portugal on some plausible-sounding ground, and just make the next person in the line of succession King. So who was that person? If you believed that D. Fernando’s father, D. Pedro I, really had married D. Inês de Castro before her murder (see the previous post); then that would be their eldest son, D. João. Unfortunately for the Portuguese magnates, D. João was living in Castile when the succession crisis started1, and was promptly imprisoned by the King of Castile before he could pose any real threat. D. João’s younger brother, D. Dinis, was an even worse option as he had by now been in the service of the King of Castile for a while.
Enter the stage another D. João who was also a son of D. Pedro I, albeit one whose illegitimacy could not be denied. To avoid confusion, let as refer to him by his title of (Grand) Master of Avis (Avis being an important military order), at least in the next couple of paragraphs. Legally, the Master of Avis’ illegitimate birth completely invalidated any claim he might have to the Portuguese throne. However, he was politically savvy and his title brought with it prestige and real power. He quickly became the leader of a group of young (mostly Southern) Portuguese conspirators and, within two months of D. Fernando’s death, killed D. Leonor’s lover and right-hand man, the Count of Andeiro, and had himself acclaimed “Regent and Defender of the Realm” in Lisbon, triggering a succession war. Formally, the Master of Avis was ruling in the name of his half-brother, D. João. In reality, D. João never had a chance of actually becoming King.
The Master of Avis turned out not to be a brilliant military leader. However, his friend D. Nuno Álvares Pereira (later to become the patron saint of Portuguese Scouts) turned out to fit the bill just fine. With his leadership and the assistance of English troops (meaning to counter the involvement of French troops on the Castilian side), the Portuguese won the ensuing war and managed to maintain their independence. Before the war was over, any pretence of ruling in the name of D. João was dropped, and the Master of Avis was formally elected King João I of Portugal, thereby starting our Second Dynasty.
Second Dynasty (House of Avis)
Named after the Order of Avis, of which its founder was the Grand Master. (Note that I’m opting for the standard modern Portuguese spelling, as opposed to the archaic spelling Aviz that is still standard in English sources. I have made this choice in the interest of coherence, since I’m already using standard modern Portuguese names throughout; as discussed in the introduction to the first part of this series.)
This dynasty saw Portugal change dramatically: from a more or less typical Medieval European kingdom into a major transcontinental empire. It is during this dynasty that several key factors of Portuguese national identity are established: an awareness of a distinctively Portuguese language2, an almost mystical association with the Sea and the Age of Discovery, a canon of foundational myths (*cough* *cough* Camões), etc.
D. João I, the One of Fond Memory [1385-1433]
Claim to throne: Elected at the Cortes of Coimbra (by representatives of the clergy, the nobility, and the peasantry). Also, D. Nuno Álvares Pereira (and a legendary baker lady) kicked some Castilian bottoms on his behalf, just to be safe.
Reason for cognomen: Following his sneaky rise to power at a time of great instability, his reign was almost five decades of really good times.
Best known for: Marrying Philippa of Lancaster, thereby securing the world’s oldest alliance and fathering the best royal children any Portuguese king has ever fathered!
Consort: Philippa of Lancaster (daughter of John of Gaunt, cousin of Richard II of England, and sister of Henry IV of England)
The ascension of D. João I marks a very significant shift in Portugal’s political centre of mass: from the North (home of the old magnates descended from the Galician nobles who originally helped establish the Kingdom of Portugal) to the South (the power base of the young nobles who had supported D. João since the beginning). During the First Dynasty, when the ruling elite tried to inspire dreams of conquest in the minds of the King, they usually had a “reconquest” of Galicia in mind. From this point onwards, this “spiritual” connection with Galicia is severed (and indeed all things Galician gradually acquire negative connotations), and further dreams of conquest tend to focus in the North of Africa instead.
The first target of these dreams was the city of Ceuta, on the African side of the Strait of Gibraltar. Ceuta at the time seemed like the perfect war prize for a Portuguese king wishing to consolidate his power: it was controlled by the muslim sultanate of Morocco (therefore it would earn him brownie points with the clergy and hark back to the days of the Reconquista) and it was a major centre of trade (therefore it seemed pretty tempting to the merchants). The nobility were just happy for the opportunity to exercise and look useful on the battlefield (and also glory and maybe titles and land and bla bla bla; they just were really on board with war). In 1415, after years of preparation, the Portuguese took Ceuta by storm. The ensuing glory was as expected, but the riches less so. For some reason the muslim merchants that had made Ceuta such an important hub were mostly driven to other trade routes. It’s almost like they didn’t want to help make Portugal rich! The soundbite that survived to modern Portuguese classrooms was that “Ceuta was a military success and an economic failure”. Yet for the first time Portugal had crossed into a different continent, and the stage was set for the budding stages of an empire.
After Ceuta, Portuguese merchants became less enthusiastic about wars in Africa. Generally they would henceforth be much more supportive of the programme of Discovery (and much later3 colonisation) which was kick-started by D. João’s son the Infante D. Henrique and offered mouth-watering possibilities for opening up new (maritime) trade routes. The nobility kept favouring glory sought in the battlefields of Africa, and thus a lot of the evolution of Portugal’s fortunes in the ensuing century and a half was influenced by the balance between these two factions and their projects. When D. João died in 1433, the Portuguese hadn’t really expanded beyond Ceuta in mainland Africa, but they had already rediscovered and started to colonise the (uninhabited) archipelagos of Madeira and Açores.
D. Duarte, the Philosopher King [1433-1438]
Claim to throne: Oldest surviving legitimate son of D. João I
Reason for cognomen: He was into culture and philosophy. He also wrote some books about things like morals and horseriding.
Best known for: Being the less well-known brother of Infante D. Henrique
Consort: Leonor of Aragon (daughter of the King of Aragon)
Poor D. Duarte didn’t have a very long reign, having had to wait for his father to die at the ripe old age of 76 only to himself shuffle off his mortal coil aged only 46. To me, D. Duarte comes across as a learned man with good instincts who ultimately failed to make a mark in his short reign. In fact, the most significant happenings during his reign, good and bad, were chiefly due to his younger brother, Infante D. Henrique.
D. Henrique’s project of maritime discovery continued to yield fruit, most notably with Gil Eanes’ crossing of the Cape Bojador in Northern Africa in 1434. Although this cape is still fairly close to mainland Portugal, its treacherous winds made safely sailing close to the coast impossible. This crossing, achieved by sailing far from the coast around the cape, demonstrated the sort of approach to dangerous capes that would eventually allow Portuguese navigators to reach the Indian Ocean.
The young infante‘s military endeavours, by contrast, were doomed to end in a disaster of epic proportions. Since the last year of his father’s reign, D. Henrique was preparing a grand conquest of the city of Tangier, which was seen as essential to the viability of the recently-conquered city of Ceuta and the African empire that Portuguese nobles dreamed of. Upon his accession, D. Duarte shelved the idea for a few years but D. Henrique didn’t give up and eventually managed to get both his younger brother Fernando and D. Duarte’s wife on his side. When his brothers threatened to finance the expedition from their own pockets if need be, D. Duarte was finally forced to give the enterprise his blessing.
I intend to write more about this disaster in the future, but what you need to know for now is that in 1437 they failed to conquer Tangier and D. Fernando was captured and held hostage with the price of his ransom being the return of Ceuta. Eventually D. Fernando died in captivity (a willing martyr of the fatherland according to the legend; a probably much less willing one judging from his letters to his brother the King, in which he appeared to expect to be released). The victorious vizier of Fez successfully leveraged the ensuing glory to found a dynasty of Moroccan sultans. D. Henrique’s military reputation never recovered, and from then on his efforts were mostly focused on maritime exploration.
D. Afonso V, the African [1438-1477]
Claim to throne: Oldest legitimate son of D. Duarte
Reason for cognomen: He was very involved in the project of expansion into Northern Africa
Little-known fact: He seems to have maybe suffered a depression at the end of his reign, when he abdicated in favour of his eldest son.
Consort: Isabel of Coimbra (daughter of his uncle the Duke of Coimbra), Joanna la Beltraneja (a claimant to the throne of Castile)
The beginning of D. Afonso’s reign was marked by one of the most important legal reforms in Portuguese history: what became known as the Afonsine Ordinances. This constituted the first general codification of Portuguese laws – basically the compilation of currently applicable laws for the entire Kingdom, which made it much easier to both carry out justice and update existing laws. This mammoth endeavour had, unsurprisingly, little to do with the young king after whom they are named – after all, he was only 15 when work on these was concluded. The actual work had actually begun in 1404, during his grandfather’s reign, and the one person most commonly associated with this reform is D. Pedro, the Duke of Coimbra and D. Afonso’s oldest uncle and regent, and arguably the most illustrious member of the illustrious generation in his lifetime.
D. Afonso was only six when his father died, and his early reign saw the type of political intrigue that is typical of the early reigns of child-kings. Originally the regent was his mother, Leonor of Aragon, but she was unpopular due to being seen as a foreigner and in 1439 D. Pedro got the Cortes to declare him the regent. His regency focused on limiting the power of the nobility, which won him many enemies. Even though D. Pedro enjoyed a powerful position of influence over the King, having even got him to marry his daughter D. Isabel just before the end of his regency, he would eventually be undone by the machinations of his half-brother (unhelpfully also called D. Afonso), the first Duke of Bragança. Just one year after the end of his regency, the King ended up declaring his uncle/father-in-law a rebel, leading to his death in combat. This led to some measure of international outcry – chiefly from Burgundy, whose influential Duchess was another member of the illustrious generation, D. Pedro’s sister D. Isabel; but it should be kept in mind that D. Pedro had an enviable network of royal connections, having been made a Knight of the Garter by England’s Henry IV and Duke of Treviso by Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund. This also led to the King’s wife, D. Pedro’s daughter, becoming the Duke of Bragança’s mortal enemy. Her influence saw her father’s memory gradually rehabilitated and is thought to have played a big part in her son’s (D. João II) later persecution of the Duke of Bragança’s family.
D. Afonso himself was a warrior king, distinguishing himself in North African campaigns between 1458 and 1471 that saw Tangier (his uncle the Infante D. Henrique’s white whale) finally fall to the Portuguese, among other important cities. After these wars, he embroiled himself in a succession war in 1475 by marrying Joanna, arguably the rightful heir to the throne of Castile who had been outmaneuvered by her aunt Isabel. This war was eventually lost at the (usually portrayed as a defeat but actually inconclusive) Battle of Toro in 1476, when it became clear that the Portuguese King lacked the military might to install his new wife as Queen of Castile. This failure seems to have plunged the King into a depressive state, leading to his abdication to his son D. João II in 1477 and moved to a convent (four years before D. Afonso’s death in Sintra in the same room where he’d been born).
When I was in school, D. Afonso was portrayed as mostly not caring about the project of Discoveries his uncle D. Henrique had started. The illustrative example of this attitude was always his “privatising” of the Discoveries, when he left it in charge of the merchant Fernão Gomes da Mina in 1469. It’s since become apparent to me that this was actually important in keeping the Discoveries going after the death of D. Henrique in 1460, at which point the entire enterprise had stalled. Besides, even though he was crushed by his failure to become King of Castile, he still managed to quit strong enough to include in the ensuing peace treaty a recognition for Portugal’s sovereignty over their Atlantic possessions and a guarantee that Castile would refrain from navigating south of the Cape Bojador, which was critical for Portugal’s monopoly on African Discoveries.
D. João II, the Perfect Prince [1477-1495]
Claim to throne: Oldest surviving legitimate son of D. Afonso V
Reason for cognomen: He projected an image of shrewdness and power, and his investment in the Discoveries was crucial for making it possible for the Portuguese to reach India just three years after his death.
Best known for: Negotiating the Treaty of Tordesillas, in which Portugal and Spain “split the world” between them; thereby ensuring Portugal “got” both Brazil and India.
Consort: Leonor of Viseu (a cousin of the King’s)
As his cognomen suggests, D. João II is a strong contender for the title of greatest Portuguese king ever in our collective imagination. (When our national broadcaster organised a Greatest Portuguese competition-poll, this was demonstrated by his having been ranked in 6th place overall, below only one King, our founder D. Afonso Henriques.) This reputation was gained by a combination of a strong reputation among his contemporaries and a strong national bet that paid off in the long term: his determination to reinvest in the Discoveries directly (with his goal to reach India having been the Moon landing of his time, and him having rightfully earned most of the kingly credit for it despite it only having actually been achieved shortly after his death).
His career as a king began at 22, when his father abdicated, but he’d been gradually taking more of an active role in the country for at leat 6 years by then – as far as I can tell mostly on the military front, such that by the time of his father’s war against Castile he was a leading general of the Portuguese forces (and arguably it was his performance at the Battle of Toro that enabled the Portuguese to negotiate their exit from the war from a position of relative strength).
He was never popular with the country’s nobility, but unlike previous kings similar in that regard he was successful at curtailing his opponents’ power through a relentless struggle to centralise and assert royal power. During his reign several leading nobles were executed and exiled – most notably from the House of Bragança, the family of his mother’s mortal enemy (and often seen as partly revenge for the end of his maternal grandfather and possibly role model, D. Pedro). It is said that he once remarked, about his relations with his vassals, “I am the lords of the lords, not the servant of the servants”.
In 1488, the navigator Bartolomeu Dias crossed the Cape of Good Hope (which he originally named Cape of Torments, before D. João renaming it) and might have tried to push for India had his crew not mutinied and forced him to sail back to Lisbon. This convinced D. João that the way to India was within reach, and he started planning for the expedition that would reach it. This project was met with insistent opposition from the nobility and ended up not being carried out until after the King’s demise.
Arguably his most consequential action was his negotiation of the Treaty of Tordesillas with the Castile/Spain in 1494. This happened after Columbus’ discovery of America, in which he claimed for the Spanish Crown lands to which the Portuguese were entitled according to the exploration agreements negotiated by D. João’s father. At the time the Pope got involved in nogotiations, strongly favouring a solution which attributed to the Spanish the newly discovered lands. D. João ended up agreeing with the basics of the proposed framework – that the world would be divided in two through a specific meridian, with Portugal getting the rights to explore and claim lands on one half and Spain in the other. At the time it is likely the Spanish thought this division would bag them India as well as America and that the Portuguese knew India was safely in the Portuguese half of the world. The notable contribution of D. João was energic arguing which led to the agreed-upon meridian to be moved a little bit westwards, seemingly inconsequentially as far as officially discovered lands at the time went. As it turns out, this alteration guaranteed Portuguese rights to what is now Brazil, thereby being the first step towards Portuguese becoming the most spoken native language in the Southern Hemisphere. (Note that this negotiation is probably the strongest evidence, but not the only, in favour of Brazil having been discovered by the Portuguese earlier than the official date of 1500.)
The one area where D. João II was unsuccessful was his succession. He had a single legitimate child, possibly the first heir-apparent in Portuguese history to use the title of Prince, D. Afonso. D. Afonso was married very young to the eldest daughter of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, whose only son was frail and would die before ever becoming King. Thus D. João’s line almost united the Iberian Crowns under one rule, and probably would have if not for a freak (suspicious?) horse-riding accident which killed D. Afonso in 1491. Instead, the Portuguese Crown simply passed to D. Manuel, the King’s cousin, brother-in-law, and nominated successor once it became apparent that D. João would not succeed at making a bastard son King. D. João’s own death at only 40 is sometimes seen as supicious – but then again there were not many unsuspicious ways for someone who angered so many powerful families to go.
D. Manuel I, the Fortunate [1495-1521]
Claim to throne: Nominated heir by D. João II
Reason for cognomen: By birth alone it would have been highly unlikely for him to ever be king (in fact, he was the only Portuguese king who was neither a descendant nor a first-degree relative of his predecessor) – yet he ended up reigning over the zenith of Portuguese glory and prosperity.
Best known for: Reaping the benefits of the newly-discovered maritime trade route to India. Also for the persecution and expulsion of the Jews living in Portugal at the time.
Consort: Isabel of Aragon and Castile (eldest daughter and heir presumptive to the Catholic Monarchs of Spain), Maria of Aragon and Castile (third surviving daughter of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain), and Leonor of Austria (the eldest child of Duke Philip of Burgundy and Queen Joanna of Castile)
D. Manuel was never meant to be King. As the youngest son of the Duke of Viseu (a younger brother of D. Afonso V) he wasn’t even meant to be Duke. And yet he was. The Dukedom of Viseu came to him when D. João II personally stabbed his eldest brother Diogo (for apparently having been the leader of a plot to assassinate the King). And the Kingdom came through D. João’s personal nomination – presumably due to a combination of family relations (besides being the King’s cousin, he was also the Queen’s brother) and having managed to steer clear of noble factions conspiring against him.
In the years before his death, D. João II had carefully planned for the expedition which would finally reach India by sea. All D. Manuel had to was to enact it and reap the rewards, which he duly did. In 1498 the Portuguese expedition led by Vasco da Gama arrived in Calicut, and the old dream of a Portuguese-controlled major trade route for spices (and gold and ivory and slaves) became a reality. Later in 1500, Brazil was officially discovered in a detour on the way to India. He went on to pursue a policy of military control of the Indian Ocean as well as exploration in the West. Suddenly the man who should not have been King was the wealthiest and most powerful monarch in the history of the country up until then. D. Manuel’s name became so inextricably linked to the Discoveries and the blossoming of the Portuguese Renaissance that the architectural style seen in monuments of this time became known as Manuelino.
Like other kings before him, D. Manuel tried to play the marriage game to unify the Iberian crowns. The month after Vasco da Gama first returned from India, his Queen and eldest daughter of the neighbouring Catholic Monarchs died giving birth to a baby boy. This boy was promptly recognised as the heir to the thrones of Portugal, Castile, and Aragon (in exchange for being raised by his grandparent monarchs). His birth was seen as heralding a new era of peace amongst formerly bitter enemies – and thus he was named D. Miguel da Paz (literally of the Peace). Alas, he didn’t live to see his second birthday. The following month D. Manuel duly married another daughter of the Catholic Monarchs, who would birth his eventual descendant, but no ruler of a unified Iberia.
The marriage game came at a steep cost. One of the conditions for D. Manuel’s first marriage was that he would expel all Muslims and Jews from Portugal (which the Catholic Monarchs had done in Spain in 1492 and demanded out of apparently genuine zealotry). Thus in 1497 the expulsion of these minorities began, along with forceful convertions of those left behind. Some of these New Christian families ended up producing some prestigious individuals (such as the mathematician and Royal Cosmographer Pedro Nunes), but most were discriminated for generations due to suspicions that they secretly still kept to their old faiths. Many simply left the country and instead contributed to the rise of foreign powers like the Netherlands.
D. João III, the Pious [1521-1557]
Claim to throne: Oldest surviving legitimate son of D. Manuel I
Reason for cognomen: Personally, I have a suspicion that this is the type of cognomen monarchs earn when their contribution to a country is mostly unremarkable. Supposedly, it’s because of his strong religious conviction (which also seem to me the type of quality emphasised in monarchs with few other qualities to emphasise, but he did welcome the Inquisition into Portugal so there is that too).
Best known for: Introducing the Inquisition to Portugal and dividing Brazil among hereditary captain Generals
Consort: Catarina of Austria (daughter of the nominal Queen of Castile Joanna the Mad and first cousin to D. João III)
I’ll be honest: I’ve always seen D. João III as kind of a blur between the much more interesting D. Manuel and D. Sebastião. His reign’s direction seems to have been basically the one on which his father set his budding empire (continuing expansion in Asia and Brazil, plus enforcing religious uniformity) but with a distinct hint of managed decline for which it is hard to blame anyone in particular – with piracy becoming a major hindrance and several cities in North Africa being abandoned due to the excessive cost of their defence.
Basically, after the glory in which his father basked, D. João’s days were spent managing crisis after crisis: excessive expenses, competition from two new superpowers (Charles V’s Habsburg empire in Europe and the Ottoman empire in Asia), the Reformation, piracy, and even nature (including outbreaks of plague, bad years for agriculture, and an earthquake in Lisbon).
The two most consequential aspects of his reign were probably the establishment of the State of Brazil with its hereditary captaincies of Brazil (which helped develop what would become our most profitable colony and protect it from pirates) and the way the marriage of his daughter Maria Manuela to the future Filipe II of Spain endangered the succession after all nine of his sons died before him…
D. Sebastião, the Desired [1557-1578]
Claim to throne: Only legitimate grandson of D. João III descended through the male line
Reason for cognomen: D. Sebastião’s father and last surviving son of D. João III, D. João Manuel, died of disease at the age of 16 when his wife was pregnant with D. Sebastião. His birth and survival was literally the only thing standing in the way of the union of all Iberian Crowns under Filipe II of Spain. The archbishop of Lisbon requested to be notified of the onset of his mother’s labour pains, after which he organised a grand procession which saw so many people flock to the Church of São Domingos that preachers were employed both inside and outside the church. No other Portuguese King ever had his birth be so eagerly awaited. Moreover, when he eventually died without heirs, he became the subject of a messianic mythology according to which he would return out of the mist to deliver Portugal from its darkest hour.
Best known for: Dying. Without heirs. Because he couldn’t be bothered with securing the succession before personally leading his armies to war.
Consort: None. See above.
D. Sebastião became King at the wise old age of three. During his minority the regency fell first upon his mother, D. Catarina, and then upon his paternal uncle, the cardinal D. Henrique. During this period, expansion efforts were halted in favour of a strategy of consolidation and the Church continued to increase in power and infuence (I mean, a cardinal regent was an easy hint).
The young king was educated by Jesuits and surrounded by nobles, so when he took over the reigns of power, aged 14, it should have come as no big surprise that he fancied himself a holy warrior in the mold of the old heroes of the crusades and the Reconquista. He was deeply religious and much more interested in the glory of conquest than the boring business of exploration and colonial expansion. His great ambition was the launch of a grand crusade against Morocco, whom he saw not just as the ancestral enemy of Iberian Christians but also as a dangerous potential ally/vassal to the Ottomans, through whom they might come to strike not just at Portugal’s Asian possessions but also at our continental heartlands. (Technically, his pretext for invading was to restore a Moroccan ruler who had been deposed by his Ottoman-backed uncle. That does make the whole holy war motivation a bit less clean, but presumably he wanted to make sure he had as legitimate a casus belli as possible.) The very Catholic king schtick, it must be said, might at least have been popular with the masses – what with him having got the most influential work of Portuguese literature dedicated to him and whatnot (though that might have been for political reasons).
I always get the impression that, even after taking power, D. Sebastião remained a child-king, a zealot teenager incapable of seeing the world but in black-and-white. He seems, for example, to have been confounded by the lack of interest his uncle (Filipe II of Spain) showed in joining him in his African adventure, which he saw as a sacred duty of the Iberian rulers (though he did apparently arrange for a small volunteer force to join the Portuguese army). But in no area is this more apparent than in his approach to marriage negotiations at a point in time when the continued independence of his country depended on his ability to father a child. Basically, he seems to have engaged with them but with no real sense of urgency – and for some reason saw nothing wrong with departing to Morocco at the head of an army before having even found himself a queen with whom he might think of producing an heir. One can only assume his certainty of victory was absolute as only a child’s certainty can be.
In the end, his expedition ended in disastrous defeat at Alcácer Quibir, where D. Sebastião was killed (probably, the body was never recovered) along with the cream of Portuguese nobility and most of the hope for the continued independence of Portugal. A popular legend spread, claiming he had not truly died and would return on a misty morning to claim his rightful place at the throne. Some imposters even did try to claim to be the returned king some years later. In time, this legend grew into the mystic movement Sebastianism, where D. Sebastião became synonymous with a great deliverer who would rise at the country’s hour of greatest need. This movement retains enduring symbolic power4 even in 21st century Portugal!
Cardinal D. Henrique, the Chaste [1578-1580]
Claim to throne: Only remaining son of D. Manuel I.
Reason for cognomen: He was a cardinal, meaning that he was bound by a vow of chastity. Which was very unfortunate given the lack of Portuguese heirs to the Portuguese throne.
Little-known fact: Between 1539 and 1578, he was the highest-ranking member of the Portuguese Inquisition.
Consort: None. But at least he tried.
D. Henrique didn’t do much during his brief joyless affair of a reign. As the country mourned the untimely demise of his grand-nephew, he renounced his station among the clergy in what turned out to be but a short postponement to the end of his dynasty and Portuguese independence. The whole thing reads like the most perfunctory of hiatus – an empire ending with a whimper.
He apparently went as far as petitioning Pope Gregory XIII (the one from the Gregorian calendar!) to release him from his vow of chastity, in hopes that he might still wed and produce a Portuguese heir. The Pope did not comply, and thus the fate of the Portuguese crown was sealed. (Although he was 66 at this time, so it’s not guaranteed he’d have been able to produce an heir even if the Pope had played along.)
He passed away on the day of his 68th birthday. With him, ended the House of Avis, Portuguese independence, and the Golden Age of Portuguese history.
Footnotes
1. Why was he living in Castile if he could reasonably expect to become King of Portugal? Funny story. He seems to have been a big shot and indeed viewed as the natural heir to the throne in the event that D. Fernando died childless. His mistake was that he first married and then murdered the sister of the queen D. Leonor (apparently under the pretext of infidelity and possibly expecting to be allowed to marry his niece, D. Beatriz, in due time). Basically, his wife’s powerful family was not happy, and he left for Castile in the interest of preserving his general health.
2. Yes, I know that in the previous post I told you that D. Dinis made Portuguese the official language. As it happens, I have learnt a thing or two since I wrote that; and one of them is that there is no record of anyone referring to a Portuguese language before around 1400. The story here is fascinating and I plan to talk about it at length later. As for D. Dinis, the language in which he wrote and which he made official, although a direct ancestor of Portuguese, would have been called Galician at the time. I blame my History textbooks!
3. I know colonisation is too sensitive and complex a topic to properly cover here. A future exploration of this topic is probably in the cards. All I want to emphasise for now is that at this stage Portugal was not seeking anything like what colonisation became a few centuries later. The African conquests were struggles for territory in the spirit of the Reconquista (which had been ongoing for centuries) and the stated aim of D. Henrique’s push for discoveries was to expand trade and to try and find the legendary Prester John, whom he thought would be a crucial ally in the general Christians vs Muslims narrative. It was only a few kings later that a strategy of establishing big colonies which displaced local peoples was adopted. Also, yes, this expansion of trade did involve trading in slaves – but keep in mind that this was not a new development, as slavery had persisted in Iberia throughout the Reconquista. Nevertheless, the seeds for all the greater tragedies to come had undoubtedly been sown.
4. Sebastianism is a major component in Mensagem, the only book published by the foremost Portuguese language author of the 20th century (and arguably ever), Fernando Pessoa. One of the Poems in Mensagem is titled “D. Sebastião, King of Portugal”, and I can’t resist leaving you my own loose translation of it:
Mad, yes, mad, for I wanted greatness
Such that Fortune does not hand.
I was too small for my certainty;
And thus on the sand
Stayed the me that was, not the one that is.
My madness, let others take it
With what was in it.
Without madness what is man
More than the healthy beast,
Postponed cadaver that breeds?
Aetherial Porosity 