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HISTORY] Pope Honorius III., and Portugal remained under interdict until Alphonso II. died in 1223.

Sancho II. succeeded at the age of thirteen. To secure the removal of the interdict the leading statesmen who were identified with the policy of his father—Gongalo Mendes the chancellor, Pedro Annes the lord chamberlain (mordomo-mor) and Vicente, dean of Lisbon—resigned their offices. Estevao Soares, archbishop of Braga, placed himself at the head of the nobles and churchmen who threatened to usurp the royal power during Sancho II.'s minority, and negotiated an alliance with Alphonso IX., by which it was arranged that the Portuguese should attack Elvas, the Spaniards Badajoz. Elvas was taken from the Moors in 1226, and in 1227 Sancho assumed control of the kingdom. He reinstated Pedro Annes, made Vicente chancellor, and appointed Martim Annes chief standard-bearer (alferes mór). He continued the crusade against the Moors, who were driven from their last strongholds in Alemtejo, and in 1239–1244, after a dispute with Rome which was once more ended by the imposition of an interdict and the submission of the Portuguese ruler, he won many successes in the Algarve. But his career of conquest was cut short by a revolution (1245), for which his marriage to a Castilian lady, D. Mecia Lopez de Haro, furnished a pretext. The legitimacy of the union has been questioned, on grounds which appear insufficient; but of its unpopularity there can be no doubt. The bishops, resenting the favour shown by Sancho to his father's anti-clerical ministers, took advantage of this unpopularity to organize the rebellion. They found a leader in Sancho's brother Alphonso, count of Boulogne, who owed his title to a marriage with Matilda, countess of Boulogne. The pope issued a bull of deposition in favour of Alphonso, who reached Lisbon in 1246; and after a civil war lasting two years Sancho II. retired to Toledo, where he died in January 1248.

One of the first acts of the usurper, and one of the most important, was to abandon the semi-ecclesiastical titles of visitor (visitador) or defender (curador) of the realm, and to proclaim himself king (rei). Hitherto the position of the monarchy had been precarious; as in Aragon the nobles and the church had exercised a large measure of control over their nominal head, and though it would be pedantry to over-emphasize the importance of the royal title, its assumption by Alphonso III. does mark a definite stage in the evolution of a national monarchy and a centralized government. A second stage was reached shortly afterwards by the conquest of Algarve, the last remaining stronghold of the Moors. This drew down upon Portugal the anger of Alphonso X. of Leon and Castile, surnamed the Wise, who claimed suzerainty over Algarve. The war which followed was ended by Alphonso III. consenting to wed Donna Beatriz de Guzman, illegitimate daughter of Alphonso X., and to hold Algarve as a fief of Castile. The celebration of this marriage, while Matilda, countess of Boulogne and first wife of Alphonso III., was still alive, entailed the imposition of an interdict upon the kingdom. In 1254 Alphonso III. summoned a cortes at Leiria, in which the chief cities were represented, as well as the nobles and clergy. Fortified by their support the king refused to submit to Rome. At the cortes of Coimbra (1261), he further strengthened his position by conciliating the representatives of the cities, who denounced the issue of a debased coinage, and by recognizing that taxation could not be imposed without consent of the cortes. The clergy suffered more than the laity under a prolonged interdict, and in 1262 Pope Urban VI. legalized the disputed marriage and legitimized Dom Diniz, the king's eldest son. Thus ended the contest for supremacy between Church and Crown. The monarchy owed its triumph to its championship of national interests, to the support of the municipalities and military orders, and to the prestige gained by the royal armies in the Moorish and Castilian wars. In 1263 Alphonso X. renounced his claim to suzerainty over Algarve, and thus the kingdom of Portugal simultaneously reached its present European limits and attained its complete independence. Lisbon was henceforth recognized as the capital. Alphonso III. continued to reign until his death in 1279, but the peace of his later years was broken by the rebellion (1277–1279) of D. Diniz, the heir-apparent.

2. The Consolidation of the Monarchy: 1279–1415.—The chief problems now confronting the monarchy were no longer military, but social, economic and constitutional. It is true that the reign of Diniz was not a period of uninterrupted peace. At the outset his legitimacy was disputed by his brother Alphonso, and a brief civil war ensued. Hostilities between Portugal and the reunited kingdoms of Leon and Castile were terminated in 1297 by a treaty of alliance, in accordance with which Ferdinand IV. of Leon and Castile married Constance, daughter of Diniz, while Alphonso, son of Diniz, married Beatrice of Castile, daughter of Ferdinand. A further outbreak of civil war, between the king and the heir—apparent, was averted in I293 by the queen-consort Isabella of Portugal, who had married Diniz in 1281, and was canonized for her many virtues in the 16th century. She rode between the hostile camps, and succeeded in arranging an honourable peace between her husband and her son.

These wars were too brief to interfere seriously with the social reconstruction to which the king devoted himself. At his accession the Portuguese people was far from homogeneous; it would be long before its component races—Moors and Mozarabs of the south, Galicians of the north, Jews and foreign crusaders—could be fused into one nationality. There were also urgent economic problems to be solved. The Moors had made Alemtejo the granary of Portugal, but war had undone their work, and large tracts of land were now barren and depopulated. Commerce and education had similarly been subordinated to the struggle for national existence. The machinery of administration was out of date and complicated by the authority of feudal and ecclesiastical courts. The supremacy of the Crown, though recognized, was still unstable. It was Diniz who initiated the needful reforms. He earned his title of the rei lavrador or “farmer king” by introducing improved methods of cultivation and founding agricultural schools. He encouraged maritime trade by negotiating a commercial treaty with England (1294) and forming a royal navy (1317) under the command of a Genoese admiral named Emmanuele di Pezagna (Manoel Pessanha). In 1290 he founded the university of (q.v.). He was a poet and a patron of literature and music (see Literature, below), His chief administrative reforms were designed to secure centralized government and to limit the jurisdiction of feudal courts. He encouraged and nationalized the military orders. In 1290 the Portuguese knights of Sao Thiago (Santiago) were definitely separated from the parent Spanish order. The orders of Crato and of St Benedict of Aviz had already been established, the traditional dates of their incorporation being 1113 and 1162. After the condemnation of the Templars by Pope Clement V. (1312) an ecclesiastical commission investigated the charges against the Portuguese branch of the order, and found in its favour. As the Templars were rich, influential and loyal, Diniz took advantage of the death of Clement V. to maintain the order under a new name; the Order of Christ, as it was henceforth called, received the benediction of the pope in 1319 and subsequently played an important part in the colonial expansion of Portugal.

Alphonso IV. adhered to the matrimonial policy initiated by Diniz. He arranged that his daughter Maria should wed Alphonso XI. of Castile (1328), but the marriage precipitated the war it was intended to avert, and peace was only restored (1330) after Queen Isabella again intervened. Pedro, the crown prince, afterwards married Constance, daughter of the duke of Penafiel (near Valladolid), and Alphonso IV. brought a strong Portuguese army to aid the Castilians against the Moors of Granada and their African allies. In the victory won by the Christians on the banks of the river Salado, near Tarifa, he earned his title of Alphonso the Brave (1340). In 1347 he married his daughter Leonora