PORTUGAL, a republic of western
Europe, forming part of the
Iberian Peninsula, and bounded on the N. and E. by
Spain, and on the S. and W. by the
Atlantic Ocean.
Pop. (1900), 5,016,267; area, 34,254 sq. m. These totals do not
include the inhabitants and area of the
Azores and
Madeira Islands, which are officially regarded
as parts of continental Portugal. In shape the country resembles a
roughly drawn parallelogram, with its greatest length (362 m.) from
N. to S., and its greatest breadth (140 m.) from E. to W. For
map, see
Spain. The land frontiers are to some extent
defined by the course of the four principal rivers, the Minho and
Douro in the north, the
Tagus and
Guadiana in the south; elsewhere, and
especially in the north, they are marked by moun-
Proetie P Y ? Y Y
and
Coasrsts. tain ranges;
but in most parts their delimitation was originally based on
political considerations. In no sense can the boundary-line be
called either natural or scientific, apart from the fact that the
adjacent districts on either side are poor, sparsely peopled, and
therefore little liable to become a subject of dispute. The
Portuguese seaboard is nearly 500 m. long, and of the six ancient
provinces all are maritime except Traz-osMontes. From the extreme
north to Cape Mondego and thence onward to Cape Carvoeiro the
outline of the coast is a long and gradual
curve; farther south is the prominent mass of
rock and mountain terminating westward in Capes Roca and Espichel;
south of this, again, there is another wide curve, broken by the
headland of Sines, and extending to Cape
St Vincent, the southeastern extremity of
the country. The only other conspicuous promontory is Cape
Santa Maria, on the
south coast. The only deep indentations of the Portuguese littoral
are the
lagoon of
Aveiro and the estuaries of the
Minho,
Douro, Mondego, Tagus,
Sado
and Guadiana, in which are the principal harbours. The only islands
off the coast are the dangerous Farilhoes and Berlings (Portuguese
Berlengas) off Cape Carvoeiro.
Physical Features
Few small countries contain so great a variety of scenery as
Portugal. The
bleak and desolate
heights of the Serra da Estrella and the ranges of the northern
frontier are almost alpine in character, although they nowhere
reach the limit of perpetual
snow.
At a lower level there are wide tracts of moorland, covered in many
cases with sweet-scented cistus and other wild flowers. The lagoon
of Aveiro, the
estuary of
the Sado and the broad inland lake formed by the Tagus above
Lisbon, recall the waterways of
Holland. The
sand-
dunes of
the western coast and the Pinhal de
Leiria resemble the French
Landes. The
Algarve and parts of
Alemtejo might belong to North-West
Africa rather than to Europe. The
Paiz do Vinho, on the Douro, and the Tagus near
Abrantes, with their terraced
bush-vines grown up the steep
banks of the rivers, are often compared with the
Rhine and the
Elbe. The harbours of Lisbon and
Oporto are hardly inferior in beauty to those of
Naples and
Constantinople.
Apart from this variety, and from the historic interest of such
places as
Braga,
Bussaco,
Cintra,
Coimbra, or
Torres Vedras, the attractiveness of the
country is due to its colouring, and not to grandeur of form. Its
landscapes are on a small scale; it has no vast plains, no inland
seas, no mountain as high as 7000 ft. But its
flora is the richest in Europe, and combines with
the brilliant
sunshine,
the vivid but harmonious costumes of the peasantry, and the white
or paletinted houses to compensate for any such deficiency. This
wealth of colour gives to the scenery of Portugal a quite
distinctive character and is the one feature common to all its
varieties.
The
orography of
Portugal cannot be scientifically studied except in relation to
that of Spain, for there is no dividing line between the principal
Portuguese ranges and the highlands of
Galicia,
Leon
and Spanish
Estremadura. Three so-called Portuguese
systems are sometimes distinguished: (1) the Transmontane,
stretching between the Douro and the Minho; (2) the Beirene,
between the Douro and the Tagus; (3) the Transtagine, south of the
Tagus. The following ranges belong to the Transmontane system,
which is the southern extension of the mountains of Galicia: Peneda
(4728 ft.), forming the
watershed between the river
Lima and the lower Minho; the Serra do Gerez (4817
ft.), which rises like a gigantic wall between the Lima and the
Homem, and sends off a
spur known
as the Amarella, Oural and
Nora,
south-westward between the Homem and the Cavado; La Raya Seca, a
continuation of Gerez, which culminates in Larouco (4390 ft.) and
contains the sources of the Cavado; Cabreira (4196 ft.), which
contains the sources of the river Ave and separates the basin of
the Tamega from that of the Cavado; Marao (4642 ft.), Villarelho
(3547 ft.) and Padrella (3763 ft.), forming together a large
massif between the rivers
Tamega, Tua and Douro; and Nogueira (4331 ft.) and Bornes (3944
ft.), which divide the valley of the Tua from that of the Sabor.
The Beirene system comprises two quite distinct mountain regions.
North of the Mondego it includes Montemuro (4534 ft.), separating
the Douro from the upper waters of its left-hand tributary the
Paiva; Gralheira (3681 ft.) between the Paiva and the Vouga; the
Serra do Caramullo (35
11 ft.), between the Vouga
and the Dao; and the Serra da Lapa (3215 ft.), which gives rise to
the Paiva, Tavora, Vouga and
ado.
South of these ranges, but nominally included in the same system,
is the Serra da Estrella, the loftiest ridge in Portugal (6532
ft.). The Estrella Mountains, which enclose the headwaters of the
Mondego in a deep
ravine,
stretch from north-east to south-west and are continued in the same
direction by the Serra de Lousa (3944 ft.). They form the last
link in the chain of mountain ranges,
known to Spanish geographers as the Carpetano-Vetonica, which
extends across the centre of the Peninsula from east to west. The
greater part of the Serra da Estrella constitutes the watershed
between the Mondego and Zezere. Lesser ranges, which are included
in the Beirene system and vary in height from 2000 to 4000 ft., are
the Mesas, between the rivers Coa and Zezere; the Guardunha and
Moradal, separating the Zezere from the Ponsul and Ocreza,
tributaries of the Tagus; the Serra do Aire, and various ridges
which stretch south-westward as far as the mountains of Cintra
(q.v.). The Transtagine Mountains cannot rightly be described as a
single system, as they consist for the most part of isolated ranges
or
massifs. The Serra da Arrabida (1637 ft.) rises between
Cape Espichel and
Setubal.
Sao Mamede (3363 ft.), with the parallel and lower Serra de
Portalegre, extends along
part of the frontier of northern Alemtejo.
Ossa (2129 ft.), Caixeiro (1483 ft.), Monfurado
(1378 ft.) and Mendro (1332 ft.) form the high ground between the
rivers Sado, Sorraia and Guadiana. East of the Guadiana the
outliers of the Spanish
Sierra Morena enter Portuguese
territory. The Serra Grandola and Monte Cereal, two low ranges
stretching from north to south, skirt the coast of southern
Estremadura. In the extreme south the ranges are more closely
massed together. They include
Monchique, with the peak of Foya or Foia
(2963 ft.), and various lower ranges. There are numerous large
expanses of level country, the most notable of these being the
plains (
cameos) of the Tagus valley, and of Aviz or
Benavilla,
Beja and Ourique, in Alemtejo;
the high plateaux (
cimas) of Mogadouro in
Traz-os-Montes
and Ourem between the Tagus and the upper Sorraia; the highly
cultivated lowlands (
veigas) of
Chaves and Valenta do Minho in the extreme
north; and the marshy flats (
baixas) along the coast of
Alemtejo and the southern shore of the lower Tagus.
The three principal rivers which flow through Portugal to the
sea - the Douro, Tagus and Guadiana - are described in separate
articles. The chief Portuguese tributaries of the Douro are the
Tamega, Tua and Sabor on the north, the Agueda, Coa and Paiva on
the south; of the Tagus, the Ocreza, Ponsul and Zezere on the
north, the Niza and Sorraia on the south, while into the Guadiana,
on its right or Portuguese
bank, flow the Caia, Degebe,
Cobres, Oeiras and Vascao. The whole country drains into the
Atlantic, to which all the
main rivers flow in a
westerly direction except the Guadiana, which
turns south by east in the lower part of its course. The Minho
(Spanish
Mino) is the most northerly river of Portugal,
and in size and importance is only inferior to the three great
waterways already mentioned. It rises in the highlands of Galicia,
and, after forming for some distance the boundary between that
province and Entre-Minho-e-Douro, falls into the sea below the port
of Caminha. Its length is 170 m. Small coasters can ascend the
river as far as Salvatierra in Galicia (20 m.), but larger vessels
are excluded by a sandy
bar at the
mouth. Between the Minho and Douro the chief rivers are the Lima
(Spanish
Limia or
Antela), which also rises in
Galicia, and reaches the sea at
Vianna do Castello; the Cavado,
which receives the Homem on the right, and forms the port of
Espozende in its estuary; and the Ave, which rises in the Serra da
Cabreira and issues at the port of
Villa do
Conde. Between the Douro and Tagus the Vouga
rises in the Serra da Lapa and reaches the sea through the lagoon
of Aveiro; the Mondego flows north-east through a long ravine in
the Serra da Estrella, and then bends back so as to flow
west-south-west. Its estuary contains the important harbour of
Figueira da
Foz; its chief tributaries are the Dao on the right, and the
Alva, Ceira and Arunca on the left; its length is 125 m. of which
52 m. are navigable by small coasters. Several comparatively
unimportant streams, chief among which are the Liz and Sizandro,
enter the Atlantic between the mouths of the Mondego and Tagus.
Between the Tagus and Cape St
Vincent the principal rivers
are the Sado, which is formed by the junction of several lesser
streams and flows north-west to the port of Setubal; and the Mira,
which takes a similar direction from its headwaters south of Monte
Vigia to the port of
Villa Nova de Milfontes. On the
south coast the united waters of the Odelouca and
Silves form the harbour of Villa Nova de
Portimao, and the Algoz, Algibre or Quarteira, and the Asseca flow
into the sea farther east. Portugal abounds in hot and medicinal
springs, such as those of Caldas de Monchique, Caldas da Rainha and
Vidago.
By far the greater part of Portugal is occupied by ancient rocks
of Archean and Palaeozoic age, and by eruptive masses which
probably belong to various periods. All the higher mountains are
formed of these rocks, and it is only near the coast and in the
plain of the Tagus that later deposits are found. The Mesozoic beds
form an irregular
triangle
extending from Lisbon and
Torres Novas on the south to Oporto on the
north. There are also a narrow
strip along the southern shores of the Algarve
and a few smaller patches along the western coast. The
Tertiary deposits cover the
plain of the Tagus and are found in other low-lying areas near the
coast. Of the Lower Palaeozoic rocks the
Ordovician
appears to be the most widely-spread. Large areas have been
referred to the
Cambrian, but it is only at Villa Boim,
about 6 m. W.S.W. of
Elvas, that
Cambrian fossils have been found. The Ordovician beds have yielded
fossils in several places, Vallongo and Bussaco being amongst the
best-known localities. The succession is similar to that of
Brittany and Spain. Supposed
Silurian beds have been
described at Portalegre, and in the same neighbourhood
Devonian
fossils have been found. The Lower
Carboniferous, which belongs to
the "
Culm " facies so widely
spread in central Europe, occupies a wide area in southern
Portugal; but the Upper Carboniferous is very restricted in extent,
and occurs in small basins like those of the Central Plateau of
France, resting unconformably
upon the rocks below. The deposits in these basins consist largely
of coarse sandstones and conglomerates, amongst which lie seams of
coal. It is possible that some of
these deposits may belong to the
Permian or at least to the Perma-Carboniferous.
Of the Mesozoic systems the
Jurassic is the most widely-spread. Supposed
Triassic
beds are found, but they are confined chiefly to the eastern margin
of the Mesozoic area north of Lisbon. The Jurassic deposits are
partly marine and partly fresh-water or terrestrial, including beds
of
lignite. On the whole,
excepting in eastern Algarve, the Upper Jurassic beds indicate the
neighbourhood of a shore-line. The
Cretaceous system is very limited in
extent. Its most interesting feature is the occurrence near its
summit, north of Cape Mondego, of sands and gravels containing
plant remains. Here both Cretaceous and Tertiary forms are found,
and the Mondego beds seem to represent the passage between the. two
systems. At the close of the Cretaceous period great eruptions of
basalt and basaltic
tuff took place, especially in the
Lisbon area. The volcanic rocks then formed are followed by marine
deposits of
Oligocene and
Miocene age. Towards the north these are
associated with fresh-water limestones, indicating the presence of
land in that direction. Marine
Pliocene beds occur at the mouth of the Tagus.
The contemporaneous beds inland are of
freshwater origin. Eruptive masses of
various age are found in many localities. The Cintra
granite sends
veins into the base of the Upper Jurassic, and is
very probably of Tertiary age. The Serra de Monchique is
petrographically of great interest. It consists chiefly of
elaeolite-
syenite and other
rocks derived from the same igneous magma.
Climate
The climate of Portugal is equable and temperate. Lisbon,
Coimbra,
Evora and Oporto have
mean temperatures between 60° and 61.5° F., and the daily variation
nowhere exceeds 23°. This equability of temperature is partly
caused by the very heavy rainfall precipitated on Portugal as one
of the westernmost countries of Europe and the one most exposed to
the Atlantic. The rainfall has been as heavy as 16 ft. in a year,
and sometimes, as in the winter of 1909-1910, great damage is
wrought by floods. Heavy fogs are also common along the coast,
rendering it dangerous to ships. The rainfall is heaviest in the
north and on the Serra da Estrella; it is least in Algarve. A fine
climate and equability of temperature are not universal in
Portugal; they are to be enjoyed mainly in
Beira and Estremadura, especially at Cintra and
Coimbra, and in the northern provinces. In the deep valleys where
the mountains keep off the cool winds, it is excessively hot in
summer; while on the summits of the mountains snow lies for many
months. The meteorological station on the Serra da Estrella, with a
mean annual temperature of 44.7° F., is the coldest spot in
Portugal in which systematic observations are taken. Montalegre has
a mean of 48.3° and
Guarda of
50.3°. Even in Lisbon the yearly variation is not less than 50°. In
Alemtejo the climate is very unfavourable, and, though the heat is
not so great as in Algarve (where
Lagos has a mean of 63°), the country has a more
deserted appearance; while in winter when the Tagus overflows,
unhealthy swamps are left. Notwithstanding that Algarve is hotter
than Alemtejo, a profuse vegetation takes away much of the tropical
effect. Portugal is very rarely visited by thunderstorms; but
shocks of
earthquake
are frequently felt, and recall the great earthquake of Lisbon
(q.v.) in 1755.
An account of the fauna of the Iberian Peninsula as a whole is
given under
Spain. Wolves are
found in the wilder parts of the Serra da Estrella, and wild boars
are preserved in some districts. As far as the constituents of its
flora are concerned Portugal is not very dissimilar from Spain, but
their distribution is peculiar. The vegetation of Spain is
distributed in clearly marked zones; but over the whole of
Portugal, except the hottest parts of Algarve and Alemtejo, the
plants of northern Europe flourish side by side with cacti, palms,
aloes and
tree-ferns (see
Cintra). This is largely due to
the fact that the moistureladen winds from the Atlantic penetrate
almost as far inland as the Portuguese frontier, but do not reach
the interior of Spain. The soil is fertile, and the indigenous
flora has been greatly enriched by the importation of such plants
as the
agave, the Mexican
opuntia, the American
maple, the
Australian
eucalyptus,
the Scotch
fir and the so-called
Portuguese
cypress
(
Cupressus lusitanica) from the Azores. There are many
fine tracts of forest, among which may be mentioned the famous
convent-wood of Bussaco (q.v.);
cork trees are extensively
cultivated,
Barbary oaks
(
Quercus ballota, Port.
azinheira) furnish edible
acorns and excellent
timber
for
charcoal, and
carob-trees (
Ceratonia siliqua, Port.
alfarrobeira) also produce edible
seed-pods somewhat resembling beans. Elms, limes
and poplars are common north of the Tagus, ilexes, araucarias,
myrtles, magnolias and a great variety of conifers in all parts.
The Serra da Estrella has a rich alpine flora, and the lagoon of
Aveiro contains a great number of aquatic plants.
Inhabitants
The population of Portugal numbered 4,550,699 in 18 7 8, 5, 0
49,7 2 9 in 1890 and 5,423,132 in 1900. These totals include the
inhabitants of the Azores and Madeira, which together amounted to
406,865 in 1900. Few immigrants enter the country, but the
birth-rate is about 30 per 1000, while the mortality is only about
20 per 1000. Large bodies of emigrants, chiefly recruited from the
sober, hardy and industrious peasantry of the northern provinces,
annually leave Portugal to seek fortune in
America. A few go to the Portuguese colonies,
the great majority to
Brazil. Many of these emigrants
return with considerable savings and
settle on the land. The mortality is highest
among male children, and the normal excess of females is in the
proportion of 109 to loo. Six-sevenths of the population of
continental Portugal inhabit the provinces north of the Tagus. The
density of population is
greatest in Madeira (479.5 per sq. m. in 1900), Entre-Minho-e-Douro
(419.5) and the Azores (277.9), nowhere else does it reach 200 per
sq. m. In Alemtejo the percentage sinks to 45.1, and for the whole
country, including the islands, it amounts only to 152.8.
The Portuguese people is composed of many racial elements. Its
earliest known ancestors were the
Iberians. The peasantry, especially in the
north, are closely akin to the Galician and Asturian Spaniards in
character, physique and
dialect; and these three ethnical groups -
Portuguese of the north, Galicians, Asturians - may perhaps be
regarded as the purest representatives of the Spanish stock. The
first settlers with whom they intermarried were probably
Carthaginians, who were followed in smaller numbers by. Greeks; but
the attempts which have sometimes been made to ascribe certain
attributes of the Portuguese to the influence of these races are
altogether fanciful. The
Romans, whose supremacy was not seriously
threatened for some six centuries after the
Punic Wars, gave to Portugal its language
and the foundation of its civilization; there is, however, no
evidence that they seriously modified the physical type or
character of its people. In these respects the Suevic and
Visigothic conquests left a more permanent impression, especially
in the northern provinces. After 711 came the long period of
Moorish (i.e. Arab and Berber) predominance. The influence of the
Moors was greatest south of the
Tagus. In Alemtejo, and still more in Algarve, Arab and
Berber types are common; and the
influence of these races can everywhere be discerned in the
architecture,
handicrafts and speech of the peasantry. So complete was the
intellectual triumph of the Moors that an intermediate " Mozarabic
" population arose, Portuguese in blood, Christian in religion, but
Arab in language and manners. Many of the Mozarabs even adopted the
characteristic Mahommedan rite of
circumcision. Under the tolerant rule of
Islam the Portuguese
Jews rose to a height of wealth and culture
unparalleled in Europe; they intermarried with the Christians both
at this period and after their forced conversion by King
Emanuel I. (1495-1521).
After 1450 yet another ethnical element was introduced into the
nation, through the importation of African slaves in vast numbers.
Negroid types are common throughout central and southern Portugal.
No European race confronted with the problem of an immense coloured
population has solved it more successfully than the Portuguese and
their kinsmen in Brazil; in both countries intermarriage was freely
resorted to, and the offspring of these mixed unions are superior
in character and intelligence to most half-
breeds.
National Characteristics
The normal type evolved from this
fusion of many races is dark-haired,
sallow-skinned, browneyed and of low stature. The poorer classes,
above all the fishermen and small farmers, are physically much
finer than the wellto-do, who are prone to excessive stoutness
owing to their more sedentary habits. The
staple diet of the labouring classes and small
farmers is
fish, especially the
dried codfish called
bacalhdo, rice, beans,
maize bread
and
meal,
olive oil,
fruit and vegetables.
Meat is rarely eaten except on festivals. In
Alemtejo chestnuts and figs are important articles of diet.
Drunkenness is
extremely rare. There is no single national
dress, but a great variety of picturesque
costumes are worn. The sashes, broad-brimmed hats and
copper-tipped quarterstaves of
the men, and the brilliant
cotton dresses and
gold or
silver filigree ornaments worn on holidays by the
women are common throughout the country; but many classes have
their own costumes, varying in detail according to the district or
province. These costumes may be seen at their best at bull-fights
and at such popular festivals as the
romarias or
pilgrimages, which combine religion with the attractions of a fair.
The national
sport of
bull-fighting is
conducted as humanely as possible, for the Portuguese are lovers of
animals. The artistic sense of the nation is perhaps greatest among
the peasantry, although Portugal has the most illiterate peasantry
in western Europe. It is manifested in their
poetry and
music even more than in their admirable costumes
and in the good taste which has preserved the Roman or Moorish
forms of their domestic pottery. Even the men and women who till
the soil are capable of improvizing verse of real merit, and
sometimes excel in the ancient and difficult art of composing
extempore amoebean rhymes. In this way, although the ancient
ballads are not forgotten, new
words are also fitted to the plaintive folk-tunes (
fados)
which every
farm-hand knows and
sings, accompanied sometimes by a rude
clarinet or bagpipes, but more frequently by
the so-called Portuguese
guitar - an instrument which resembles a
mandolin rather than the guitars of
Italy and Spain. The native dances, slow but not
ungraceful, and more restrained than those of
Andalusia or the south of France, are
obviously Moorish in origin, and depend for their main effects on
the movement of the arms and body. Many curious superstitions
survive in the country districts, including the beliefs in witches
(
feitigeiras, bruxas) and werewolves
(
lobishomens); in
sirens (
sereias) which haunt the
dangerous coast and lure fishermen to destruction; in fairies
(
fadas) and in many kinds of enchantment. It will be
observed that the nomenclature of Portuguese folk-
lore suggests that the popular superstitions are
of the most diverse origin -
Latin, Greek, Arabic, native:
lobishomem
is the Latin
lupus
homo, wolf-man,
sereia is the Greek
aaprt y, bruxa is Arabic,
feitireira and
fada Portuguese. Other beliefs can
be traced to Jewish and African sources.
Chief Towns
The chief towns of Portugal are Lisbon (pop. 1900, 356,009), the
capital and principal seaport; Oporto (167,955), the capital of the
northern provinces and, after Lisbon, the most important centre of
trade; the seaports of Setubal (22,074),
Ilhavo (12,617),
Povoa de Varzim (12,623),
Tavira (12,175),
Faro (11,789),(11,789),
Ovar (10,462), Olhao (10,009) Vianna do Castello
(io,000), Aveiro (9975), Lagos (8291),
Leixoes (7690) and Figueira da Foz (6221); and
the inland
cities or towns of Braga
(24,202), Louie (22,478), Coimbra (18,144), Evora (16,020),
Covilha (15,469), Elvas
(13,981), Portalegre (11,820),
Palmella (11,478), Torres Novas (10,746),
Silves (9687),
Lamego (9471),
Guimaraes (9104), Beja
(8885),
Santarem
(8628),(8628),
Vizeu (8057),
Estremoz (7920), Monchique
(7345),
Castello
Branco (7288), Abrantes (7255), Torres Vedras (6900),
Thomar (6888), Villa Real (6716),
Chaves (6388), Guarda (6124), Cintra (5914),
Braganza (5535),
Mafra (4769), Leiria (4459),
Batalha (3858),
Almeida (2330), Alcobaga (2309), Bussaco
(1661). All these are described in separate articles.
Communications
Up to 1851 there was practically no good
carriage road in the country except the
highway between Lisbon and
Cintra. In 1853 the work of constructing a proper system of roads
was undertaken, and by the end of the century all the larger towns
were linked together by the main or " royal " highways to which the
" district " and " municipal " roads were subsidiary. Each class of
road was named after the authority responsible for its construction
and upkeep. In some of the remoter rural districts there are only
bridle-paths, or rough tracks, which become almost impassable in
wet seasons, and are never suitable for vehicles less solid than
the Portuguese
ox-carts. The first
railway was opened in 1853 to
connect Lisbon with
Badajoz.
In 1910 1758 m. were completed, of which 672 m. were state lines.
The Portuguese ] railways meet the Spanish at Valenta do 1Vlinho on
the northern frontier, at
Barca
d'Alva, at Villar Formoso, near
Valencia de Alcantara, and near
Badajoz on the eastern frontier. In some of the chief towns there
are electric tramways. The most important internal waterways are
the lower Tagus and the Douro between Oporto and the Paiz do Vinho.
In 1908, 11,045 vessels of 19,354,967 tons entered Portuguese
seaports, but a very large majority of these ships were foreign,
and especially British. The postal and telegraphic services are
adequate; tel° p
hone systems are
installed in Lisbon, Oporto and other large towns; and the Eastern
Telegraph Co. has an
important
cable station at
Carcavellos near Lisbon (q.v.).
Land Tenure. -
Four modes of land tenure are common in Portugal. The poor and
thinly-peopled region of Alemtejo is divided into large estates,
and cultivated by
tenant
farmers. Numerous estates in various provinces are held on the
metayage
system. In the north, where the land is much subdivided,
peasant proprietorship and a
kind of emphyteusis (see
Roman Law) are the most usual tenures. The
Portuguese form of emphyteusis is called
aforamento; the
landlord parts with the user of his
property in exchange for a quit-
rent (
foro or
canon). He may evict his tenant should the
rent be in arrear for five years, and may at any time distrain if
it be overdue; but he cannot otherwise interfere with the holding,
which the tenant may improve or neglect. Should the tenant sell or
exchange his interest in the property, the right of pre-emption is
vested in the landlord, and a corresponding right is enjoyed by the
tenant should the quitrent be for sale. As this tenure is very
ancient, though modified in 1832 and 1867, the value of such
holdings has been greatly enhanced with the improvement of the land
and the decline in the purchasing power of currency.
Many of the instruments and processes of Portuguese agriculture
and viticulture were introduced by the Romans, and are such as
Columella described in the 1st century A.D. The characteristic
springless. ox-
cart which is used
for heavy loads may be seen represented on Roman frescoes of even
earlier date. One form of
plough still used consists of a
crooked bough, with an
iron share attached. Oxen are
employed for all field-work; those of the commonest breed are
tawny, of great muscular power, very docile, and with horns
measuring 5 or 6 ft. from tip to tip. The ox-yokes are often
elaborately carved in a traditional pattern in which
Gothic and Moorish designs are
blended. The Moors introduced many improvements, especially in the
system of
irrigation;
the characteristic Portuguese
wells with their perpetual chains or buckets are
of Moorish invention, and retain their Moorish name of
noras. In all, rather more than 45% of the country is
uncultivated, chiefly in Alemtejo, Traz-os-Montes and the Serra da
Estrella. The principal
grain-crops are maize,
wheat and
rye;
rice is grown among the marshes of the coast. Gourds, pumpkins,
cabbages and other vegetables are cultivated among] the cereals..
The large onions sold in Great
Britain as Spanish are
extensively produced in the northern provinces. Every district has
its vineyards, the finest of which are in the Paiz do Vinho (see
Oporto and
Wine). The bush vines of this region are more
exposed to the attacks of
Oidium Tuckeri, which invaded
the country in 1851, and of
Phylloxera vastatrix, which followed in
1863, than the more deeply-rooted vines trained on trellises or
trees. Both these pests have been successfully combated, largely by
the use of
sulphur and by
grafting immune American vines upon native
stocks. In addition to grapes the commoner
fruits include quinces, apples, pears, cherries, limes, lemons and
loquats (Port.
nespras); Condeixa is famous for oranges,
Amarante for peaches, Elvas for plums, the southern provinces for
carobs and figs. Large quantities of olive oil are manufactured
south of the Douro. Almost all
cattle, except fighting-bulls, are
stall-fed. The fighting-bulls are
chiefly reared in the marshes and alluvial valleys; they are bred
for strength and swiftness rather than size, and a good specimen
should be sufficiently agile to leap over the inner barrier of the
arena (about 68 in. high). Large
herds of
swine are fed in the
oak and
chestnut woods of Alemtejo;
sheep and goats are reared in the mountains,
where excellent cheeses are made from goats'
milk.
About 50,000 Portuguese are classed as hunters and fishermen.
The majority of these are employed in the sardine and
tunny fisheries. This industry is
carried on in a fleet of more than to,000 small vessels, including
the whalers of the Azores and the
cod-boats which operate outside Portuguese waters.
The fishermen and fisherwomen form a quite distinct class of the
people; both sexes are noted for their bodily strength, and the men
for their bold and skilful
seamanship. Tunny and sardines are cured and
exported in large quantities, oysters are also exported, and many
other sea fish, such as
hake,
sea-
bream,
whiting,
conger and various
flat-fish are consumed in the country. In the
early years of the 10th century the competition of foreign
steam trawlers inflicted much
hardship on the fishermen. The average yearly value of the fish
landed in Portugal (exclusive of cured fish from foreign countries)
is about 800,000.
Salmon,
lampreys and eels are caught in some of the larger rivers;
trout abound in the streams of the
northern provinces; but many fresh-water fish common elsewhere in
Europe, including
pike,
perch,
tench and
chub, are not found.
Mines
It is usually stated that Portugal is rich in minerals,
especially copper, but that want of capital and, especially in the
south, of transport and labour, has retarded their exploitation.
The
mineral
deposits of the country are very varied, but their extent is
probably exaggerated. The average yearly output from 1901 to 1905
was worth less than £300,000. Copper is mined in southern Portugal.
Common
salt (chiefly from Alcacer
do Sal near Setubal),
gypsum,
lime and
marble are exported; marble and granite of fine
quality abound in the southern provinces. Iron is obtained near
Beja and Evora,
tin in the district
of Braganza.
Lead, wolfram,
antimony and auriferous
quartz exist in the districts of
Coimbra, Evora, Beja and Faro. Lignite occurs at many points around
Coimbra, Leiria and Santarem;
asphalt abounds near Alcobaca;
phosphorite,
asbestos and sulphur are
common south of the Tagus.
Petroleum has been found near Torres Vedras;
pitchblende,
arsenic,
anthracite and
zinc are also mined. Gold was washed from some of
the Portuguese rivers before the Christian era, and among the
Romans the auriferous sands of the Tagus were proverbially famous;
it is, however, extremely improbable that large quantities of gold
were ever obtained in this region, although small deposits of
alluvial gold may still be found in the valleys of the Tagus and
Mondego.
Manufactures
The Methuen Treaty of 1703 prevented the establishment of some
manufacturing industries in Portugal by securing a
monopoly for British
textiles, and it was only after 1892 that Portuguese
cotton-spinning and
weaving were fostered by heavy
protective duties. In 20 years these industries became the most
important in the country after agriculture, the
wine and cork trades and the fisheries. In
connexion with the wine trade there are many large cooperages; cork
products are extensively manufactured for export. Lisbon is the
headquarters of the ship-building trade. Here, and in other cities,
tanning, distilling, various metallurgical industries, and
manufactures of
soap,
flour,
tobacco, &c., are carried on; the entire
output is sold in Portugal or its colonies. There is a steady trade
in natural
mineral
waters, which occur in many parts of continental Portugal and
the Azores. From the 16th century to the 18th many artistic
handicrafts were practised by the Portuguese in imitation of the
fine pottery, cabinetwork, embroideries, &c., which they
imported from
India and
Persia. Portuguese cabinet-work
deteriorated in the 19th century; the glassworks and
potteries of the
Aveiro and Leiria districts have lost much of their ancient
reputation; and even the exquisite
lace of Peniche and Vianna do Castello is
strangely neglected abroad. The finest Caldas da Rainha
china-ware, with its fantastic
representations of birds, beasts and fishes, still commands a fair
price in foreign markets; but the blue and white ware originally
copied from
Delft and later
modified under the influence of Persian pottery is now only
'manufactured in small quantities, of inferior quality. Skilful
copies of Moorish
metal-work may be purchased in the
goldsmiths' and silversmiths' shops of. Lisbon and Oporto;
conspicuous among these are the filigree ornaments which are bought
by the peasant women as investments and by foreign visitors as
curiosities. In 1900 the total industrial population of Portugal
was 455,296.
|
Years.
|
Exports.
|
Imports.
|
|
1901
|
£6,284,800
|
£12,849,622
|
|
1902
|
£6,318,888
|
£12,354,800
|
|
1903
|
£6,800,710
|
£13,068,000
|
|
1904
|
£6,824,692
|
£13,801,622
|
|
1905
|
£6,460,000
|
£13,486,666
|
Commerce
The annual value of the foreign trade of Portugal amounts
approximately to £19,000,000. The following table shows the value
for five years of the exports, and of all imports not reexported
(exclusive of
coin and bullion): - In 1910 the
principal exports, in order of value, were wine (chiefly port,
common wines and Madeira), raw and manufactured cork, preserved
fish, fruits and vegetables, cottons and
yarn, copper ore, timber, olive oil, skins, grain
and flour, tobacco and
wool. The
imports were raw and manufactured cotton, wool and
silk, wheat and maize, coal, iron and machinery,
dried codfish,
sugar, rice,
hides and skins,
oils. The
United
Kingdom, which annually purchases wine to the value of about
£900,000 and cork to the value of about £500,000, is the chief
consumer of Portuguese goods, and the chief exporter to Portugal.
Germany and
the United
States rank respectively second and third among the countries
which export to Portugal; Spain, which buys bullocks and pigs,
Brazil, which buys wine, and the Portuguese colonies, which buy
textiles, are among the chief purchasers of Portuguese products. In
addition to its direct foreign commerce Portugal derives much
benefit from its share in the trade between
South America and
Europe. Large liners from
Liverpool,
Southampton,
London,
Hamburg, Havre and
Antwerp call regularly for passengers or
cargo at Leixoes or Lisbon, or both
ports, on their way to and from South America (especially Brazil).
In connexion with this trade an important tourist traffic, chiefly
from Great Britain and Germany, was developed towards the end of
the 19th century.
Banks and Money
In 1910 the Bank of Portugal, to which the XXII. 5 a treasury
was deeply indebted, had a capital of £1,500,000, and a monopoly of
note issue in continental Portugal, but the notes of the
Ultramarine Bank
circulated in the colonies. The notes of the Bank of Portugal in
circulation amounted in value to about £14,000,000. For an account
of the Monte Pio Geral, which is a combined bank,
pawnbroking
establishment and benefit society, see
Pawnbroking; the deposits in the Monte Pio
and the State Savings Bank amounted in 1910 to some £5,228,000.
There are also many private banks, including
savings banks. Gold
is the standard of value, but the actual currency is chiefly Bank
of Portugal notes. The values of coin and notes are expressed in
multiples of the
real (plural
reis), a monetary
unit which does not actually exist. The milreis, 1000 reis of the
par value of 4s. 5d. (or 4.5 milreis to the
pound sterling) and the conto of
reis (moo milreis) are used for the calculation of large sums. Gold
pieces of 10, 5, 2 and 1 milreis were coined up to 1891; 10, 5, and
2 testoon (
testdo) pieces, worth respectively 1000, 500
and 200 reis, are coined in silver; testoons of Ioo reis and half
testoons of 50 reis, in
nickel; pieces of 20, 10 and 5 reis in
bronze. The milreis fluctuates
widely in value, the balance of exchange being usually adverse to
Portugal; for the purposes of this article the milreis has been
taken at par. The British sovereign is legal
tender for 4500 reis, but in practice usually
commands a
premium. The
metric system of
weights
and measures has been officially adopted, but many older
standards are used, such as the
libra (1.012 lb
avoirdupois),
alqueire (0.36
imperial
bushel),
moio (2.78
imp. bushels),
almude of Lisbon (3.7 imp. gallons) and
almude of
Oporto (5.6 imp. gallons).
For the five financial years,1901-1902to 1905-1906, the average
revenue of Portugal was about £13,300,000 and the average
expenditure £13,466,000. The chief sources of revenue were
customs duties,
taxes on land and industries, duties on tobacco and breadstuffs,
the Lisbon
octroi, receipts
from national property,
registration and stamps, &c. The
heaviest expenditure (nearly £ 5,000,000) was incurred for the
service of the consolidated debt; payments for the
civil list,
cortes, pensions, &c.,
amounted to more than £2,000,000, and the cost of public works to
nearly as large a sum. The ministries of war and marine together
spent about £ 2,500,000 each year. The practice of meeting deficits
by loans, together with the great expenditure, after 1853, on
public works, especially roads and railways, explains the rapid
growth of the
national debt in modern times. In 1853
the total public debt, internal and external, amounted to
£2,082,680. It exceeded £90,000,000 in 1890, and in1891-1892the
finances of the kingdom reached a crisis, from which there was no
escape except by arranging for a reduction in the amount payable as
interest (see
History, below). By the law of the 26th of
February 1892 30% was deducted from the internal debt payable in
currency; by the law of the 20th of April 1893 663% was deducted
from the interest on the external debt, due in gold. A law of the
9th of August 1902 provided for the conversion of certain gold
debts into three series of consolidated debt, at reduced interest.
In 1909 the total outstanding debt amounted to £161,837,430, made
up as follows: new external 3% converted in three series,
£34,223,465 42% tobacco
loan
£7,267,480; internal 3% (quoted in London) £ 11 3, 1 3 2 ,979.
Internal debt at 3, 4 and 42% was also outstanding to the amount of
£7,213,506.
Constitution
Up to October 1910 the government was an hereditary and
constitutional monarchy, based on the constitutional charter which
was granted by King Pedro IV. on the 29th of April 1826, and was
afterwards several times modified; the most important changes were
those effected by the acts of the 5th of July 1852, the 24th of
July 1885, and the 28th of March and 25th of September 1895. The
revolution of the 5th of October 1910 brought the monarchy to an
end and substituted republican government for it. The monarchical
constitution recognized four powers in the state - the executive,
moderating, legislative and judicial. The two first of these were
vested in the sovereign, who might be a woman, and who shared the
legislative power with two chambers, the
Camara dos Pares
or House of Peers, and the
Camara dos Deputados or House
of Commons; these were collectively styled the
Corks
Geraes, or more briefly the
Conies. The royal
veto could not be imposed on
legislation passed twice by both houses. The annual
session lasted four months, and
a general election was necessary at the end of every four years, or
immediately after a
dissolution. A committee representing both
houses adjudicated upon all cases of conflict between Peers and
Commons; should it fail to reach a decision, the dispute was
referred to the sovereign, whose
award was final. Up to 1885 some members sat in
the House of Peers by hereditary right, while others were nominated
for life. It was then decided that such rights should cease, except
in the case of princes of royal blood and members then sitting, and
that when all the hereditary peerages had lapsed the house should
be composed of the princes of the royal blood, the archbishops and
bishops of the continental
dioceses, a hundred legislative peers appointed by the king for
life, and fifty elected every new parliament by the Commons. In
1895 the number of nominated life peers was reduced to ninety and
the elective branch was abolished. Subject to certain limitations
and to a property qualification, any person over 40 years of age
was eligible to a
peerage.
The titles and social position of the Portuguese
aristocracy were not
affected when its political privileges were abolished. In the
nomination of life peers, and in certain administrative matters the
sovereign was advised by a council of state, whose twelve members
were nominated for life and were principally past or present
ministers. The sovereign exercised his executive power through a
cabinet which was responsible to the cortes, and consisted of seven
members, representing the ministries of (I) the interior, (2)
foreign affairs, (3) finance, (4) justice and worship, (5) war, (6)
marine and colonies, (7) public works, industry and commerce. The
House of Commons was composed of 148 members, representing the 26
electoral divisions of Portugal, the Azores and Madeira, which
returned 113 elected members and 35 representatives of minorities,
and of 7 members representing the colonies. Peers, naturalized
foreigners and certain employees of the state were unable to sit in
the House of Commons; members were required to be graduates of one
of the highest, secondary or professional schools, or to possess an
income of not less than 400 milreis (88). All members might, in
connexion with their official duties, travel free on railways and
ships owned by the state; but since 1892 none had received any
salary except the colonial
members, who were paid loo milreis (£22) per month during the
session, and So milreis (III) per month during the remainder of the
year. All male citizens 21 years old who could read and write, or
who paid taxes amounting to 500 reis yearly, had the parliamentary
franchise, except
convicts, beggars, undischarged bankrupts, domestic servants,
workmen permanently employed by the state and soldiers or sailors
below the rank of commissioned officer. (For changes made under
republican rule, see
History, § 8.)
Local
Government. - Continental Portugal was formerly divided for
administrative purposes into six provinces which corresponded to a
great extent with the natural geographical divisions of the country
and are described in separate articles; the names of these, which
are still commonly used, are Entre-Minho-e-Douro (also called
Entre-Douro-e-Minho or Minho), Traz-os-Montes, Beira, Estremadura,
Alemtejo and Algarve. The province of Douro, another administrative
division of less antiquity, comprised the present districts of
Aveiro and Oporto, or part of Beira and EntreMinho-e-Douro. The six
ancient provinces were subdivided on the 28th of June 1833 into
districts, each named after its chief town, as follows:
Entre-Minho-e-Douro into Vianna do Castello, Braga, Oporto;
Traz-os-Montes, into Villa Real, Braganza; Beira, into Aveiro,
Vizeu, Coimbra, Guarda, Castello Branco; Estremadura, into Leiria, Santarem,
Lisbon; Alemtejo, into Portalegre, Evora, Beja; Algarve was renamed
Faro. In 1910 the Azores comprised three districts and Madeira
formed one. Each district was governed by a commission composed of
(I) the civil governor, who was nominated by the central authority
and presided over the commission; (2) the administrative auditor;
and (3) three members chosen by indirect suffrage. The districts were divided into
communes (concelhos), each administered by an elected council, and
a mayor nominated by the central
authority. The mayor could not preside over the council, which
appointed one of its own members to preside and to give effect to
its decisions. The communes were subdivided into parishes
(freguesias), which were administered by the elected council (junta de parochia) over which the
parish priest (presbitero)
presided, and by the regedor, an official who represented the mayor
of the commune and was nominated by
the civil governor. The central authority had almost complete
control over local administration through its representatives, the
civil governor, mayors and regedores. Justice. - In 1910 Portugal
was divided into 193 judicial districts (comarcas), in each of
which there was a court of first instance. The three courts of
appeal (tribunaes de relacao) sat at Lisbon, Oporto and Ponta Delgada
(Azores), and there was a Supreme Court in Lisbon.Colonies
At the beginning of the 19th century Portugal possessed a larger
colonial empire than any European power except Great Britain and
Spain. At the beginning of the 10th century its transmarine
possessions had been greatly reduced in size by the loss of Brazil,
but were still only surpassed in extent by those of three powers -
Great Britain, France and Germany. Their total area was about
803,000 sq. m., of which 7 9 4,000 sq. m. are in Africa. They
comprised, in Africa, the
Cape Verde Islands, St Thomas and
Prince's Islands,
Portuguese Guinea,
Angola and
Portuguese East Africa, or
Mozambique; in India,
Goa, Damaun and
Diu; in China,
Macao; and in the
Malay Archipelago part of
Timor. All these are described in
separate articles. In all the white population is in a minority; in
most the climate is unsuitable for European colonization, nor is
the commercial value of the colonies commensurate with their
extent. Viewed as a whole, Portuguese administration has been
carried on under difficulties which have rendered it costly and
inefficient, the home government being compelled to contribute a
large annual
subsidy towards
its maintenance. The amount paid in subsidies from 1870 to 1900 was
about £15,000,000.
Religion
Roman Catholicism was the state religion until 1910, but other
creeds were tolerated, and the
Church lost its temporal authority in 1834, when the monasteries
were suppressed and their property confiscated for the first time.
There are three ecclesiastical provinces - Braga, Lisbon and Evora,
each under an
archbishop. The archbishop of Braga, whose
see is the most ancient, has the title of
Primate; the archbishop of Lisbon has the
honorary title of
Patriarch, and is usually elected a
cardinal. His province
includes Madeira, the Azores and the West African colonies. There
are fourteen dioceses, of which Oporto is the most important. The
annual revenues of the upper
hierarchy of the Church amounted, up to 1910,
to about £65,000. In some of the larger towns the foreign residents
have their own places of worship. (See further under
History.)
Education. - Primary education is regulated by a law of 1844,
under which children between the ages of 7 and 15 are bound to
attend a school, should there be one within a mile, under
penalty to the parents of a
fine and deprivation of civil rights. This law has not been
strictly enforced; primary education was never properly organized;
and, according to
census
returns, the proportion of the population (including children)
unable to read was 82.4% in 1878, 79.2 in 1890 and 78.6 in 1900.
There were in 1910 5250 public and 1750 private primary schools. In
the chief towns there are training schools for teachers. The system
of secondary education was reorganized in 1894. In 1905 there were
state lyceums in each district capital and in Guimardes, Lamego and
Amarante; 5 municipal lyceums, at Celorico de Basto, Chaves,
Ponte de Lima, Povoa de Varzim and
Setubal; military and naval colleges; a secondary school for girls
in Lisbon; numerous private secondary schools and ecclesiastical
seminaries; industrial, commercial and technical schools; and
pilot schools at Lisbon, Oporto,
Faro and Ponta Delgada (Azores). Other important educational
institutions are described under
Lisbon and
Oporto. The national university is at Coimbra
(q.v.).
Defence
Under the monarchy, the army was maintained at its normal
strength partly by voluntary enlistment and
conscription, the chief law regulating it
being that of 1887, as variously modified in subsequent years. The
cortes fixed the number of conscripts to be enrolled in each year:
in 1905, 15,000 men for the army, moo for the
navy, 500 for the municipal guards and 400 for the
fiscal guards. The organization of the army was based on the acts
of the 7th of September 1899 and the 24th of December 1901. With
certain exceptions all men over 21 years of age were liable for
service3 years in the regular army, 5 years in the first reserve
and 7 years in the second reserve; but exemption could always be
purchased. In time of war, the municipal guards, numbering about
2200, and the fiscal guards, numbering about 5200, might be
incorporated in the army. The total effective force of the active
army on a peace footing was 1787 officers, 31,281 men, 6479 horses
and mules and 100 guns. The total effective force on a war footing,
inclusive of reservists, municipal guards and fiscal guards, was
4221 officers, 178,603 men, 19,600 horses and mules and 336 guns.
Lisbon, Elvas and
Angra in the
Azores, were considered first-class fortresses, but only Lisbon had
modern defences. The Portuguese navy in 1910 consisted of 1
armoured vessel, 5 protected cruisers, 2 third-class cruisers, 19
gunboats, I
torpedo gunboat,
4 torpedo boats, 16 river gunboats, 4 transports and 3 training
ships. Twelve other vessels, including 2 submarines, were under
construction. The whole fleet was manned by about 5000 men.
Bibliography
Numerous official reports, chiefly statistical, are published
periodically in Lisbon; a few are written in French, the majority
in Portuguese. Read in conjunction with the British consular and
diplomatic reports, they afford a comprehensive survey of the
movement of population, the progress of trade, &c. The
following state papers deserve special notice:
Caminhos de
ferro (1877, &c.),
Commercio e navigarao (annual,
issued by the Ministry of Marine),
Le Portugal vinicole
(1900),
Le Portugal .... agricole (1900),
Notas sobre
Portugal (2 vols., 1908). For geology, see the section of
Le Portugal .... agricole written by P. Choffat and
entitled " Apergu de la geologie de Portugal," also " The Work of
the Portuguese Geological Survey," by
Philip Lake, in
Science
Progress (1896) v. 439-453; both these summaries refer to the
most important original papers. Two illustrated volumes by
Oswald Crawford,
Portugal Old
and New (London, 1880) and
Round the Calendar in Portugal (London, 1890)
contain much valuable information on agriculture, viticulture and
peasant life in the northern provinces.
Through Portugal,
by Major Martin Hume (London, 1907) and
Lisbon and Cintra,
by A. A. Inchbold (London, 1908), describe the towns, &c., most
frequently visited by tourists, and are illustrated in colours.
Le Portugal (Paris, 1899), by 18 writers, is a brief but
encyclopaedic description of continental Portugal. See also
Portugal: its Land and People, by W. H. Koebel (London,
1909), and
Portuguese Architecture, by W. C. Watson
(London, 1908). The following books deal comprehensively with the
Portuguese colonies;
As Colonias portuguezas, by E. J. de
Vasconcellos (2nd ed., Lisbon, 1903),
Les Colonies
portugaises, by A. de Almada Negreiros (Paris, 1908). (K. G.
J.)
History Throughout the
centuries which witnessed the destruction of Carthaginian power by
Rome, the establishment and
decline of Latin civilization, the invasion by
Alani, Suevi and other
barbarian races, the resettlement under
Visigothic rule and the overthrow of the Visigoths by Arab and
Berber tribes from Africa, Portugal remained an undifferentiated
part of Hispania, without sign of national consciousness. The
Iberian Peninsula was one: and its common history is related under
Spain. It is true that some
Portuguese writers have sought to identify their race with the
ancient Lusitani, and have claimed for it a separate and continuous
existence dating from the 2nd century B.C. The revolt of Lusitania
against the Romans has been regarded as an early manifestation of
Portuguese love of liberty, Viriathus as a national hero. But this
theory, which originated in the 15th century and was perpetuated in
the title of
The Lusiads, has no historical foundation. In
1095 Portugal was an obscure border
fief of the kingdom of Leon. Its territories, far
from the centres of European civilization and consisting largely of
mountain, moorland and forest, were bounded on the north by the
Minho, on the south by the Mondego. Its name (
Portucalia, Terra
portucalensis) was derived from the little seaport of
Portus Cale or Villa Nova de
Gaia, now a suburb of Oporto, at the mouth of the Douro. Its
inhabitants, surrounded by Moorish or Spanish enemies and
distracted by civil war, derived such rudiments of civilization as
they possessed from Arabic or Leonese sources. But from these
obscure beginnings Portugal rose in four centuries to be the
greatest maritime, commercial and colonial power in Europe.
The history of the nation comprises eight periods. (I) Between
1095 and 1279 a Portuguese kingdom was established and extended
until it reached its present continental limits. (2) Between 1279
and 1415 the monarchy was gradually consolidated in spite of
resistance from the Church, the nobles and the rival kingdom of
Castile. (3) In 1415 began a
period of
crusades and
discoveries, culminating in the discovery of an ocean-route to
India (1497-1499). (4) From 1499 to 1580 Portugal acquired an
empire stretching from Brazil eastward to the
Moluccas, reached the
zenith of its prosperity and entered upon a
period of
swift decline. (5)
Spanish kings ruled over Portugal from 1581 to 1640. (6) The chief
event of the years 1640 to 1755 was the restoration of the
Portuguese monarchy. (7) Between 1755 and 1826 the reforms of
Pombal and the
Peninsular War prepared the country for
a change from
absolutism to constitutional monarchy. (8)
In 1826 the era of constitutional government began.
1.
The Establishment of the Monarc/iy. - The origin of
Portugal, as a separate state, was an incident in the Christian
reconquest of Spain. Towards the close of the 11th century
crusading knights came from every part of Europe to aid the kings
of northern and central Spain in
driving out the Moors. Among these adventurers
was Count
Henry of
Burgundy, an ambitious warrior who, in 1095,
married Theresa, natural daughter of
Alphonso VI., king of Leon. The county of
Portugal, which had already been won back from the Moors
(1055-1064), was included in Theresa's
dowry. Count Henry ruled as a
vassal of Alphonso VI., whose Galician marches
were thus secured against any sudden Moorish
raid. But in 1109 Alphonso VI. died, bequeathing
all his territories to his legitimate daughter Urraca, and Count
Henry at once invaded Leon, hoping to add to his own dominions at
the expense of his suzerain. After three years of war against
Urraca and other rival claimants to the throne of Leon, Count Henry
himself died in 1112. He left Theresa to govern Portugal north of
the Mondego during the minority of her
infant son Affonso Henriques (Alphonso I.):
south of the Mondego the Moors were still supreme.
Theresa renewed the struggle against her half-sister and
suzerain Urraca in 1116-1117, and again in I r 20; in 1121 she was
besieged in Lanhoso and captured. But a peace was negotiated by the
archbishops Diogo p g Y o P g Gelmires of
Santiago de Compostela and
Burdino of Braga, rival churchmen whose wealth and military
resources enabled them to dictate terms. Bitter
jealousy existed between the two prelates,
each claiming to be primate of " all the Spains," and their
antagonism had some historical importance in so far as it fostered
the growth of separatist tendencies among the Portuguese. But the
quarrel was temporarily suspended because both Gelmires and Burdino
had reason to dread the extension of Urraca's authority. It was
arranged that Theresa should be liberated and should continue to
hold the county of Portugal as a fief (
honor) of Leon.
During the next five years she lavished wealth and titles upon her
lover Fernando Peres, count of Trava, thus estranging her son, the
archbishop of Braga and the nobles, most of whom were foreign
crusaders. In I128, after her power had been crushed in another
unsuccessful conflict with Leon and Castile, she was deposed by her
own rebellious subjects and exiled in company with Peres. She died
in 1130. Alphonso, who became count of Portugal in 1128, was one of
the warrior heroes of medieval romance; his exploits were sung by
troubadours throughout south-western Europe, and even in Africa "
ibn Errik " - the son of Henry - was known and feared. The annals
of his reign have been encum
Alphonso 1.,
bered with a mass of legends, among which must be g g included the
account of a cortes held at Lamego in 1143; probably also the
description of the Valdevez
tournament, in which the Portuguese knights
are said to have vanquished the champions of Leon and Castile.
Alphonso was occupied in almost incessant border fighting against
his Christian or Moorish neighbours. Twelve years of campaigning on
the Galician frontier were concluded in 1143 by the peace of
Zamora, in which Alphonso was
recognized as independent of any Spanish sovereign, although he
promised to be a faithful vassal of the
pope and to pay him a yearly
tribute of four ounces of gold. In 1167,
however, the war was renewed. Alphonso succeeded in conquering part
of Galicia, but in attempting to capture the frontier fortress of
Badajoz he was wounded and forced to surrender to
Ferdinand
II. of Leon (1169).
Ferdinand was his
son-in-law, and was probably disposed to leniency by the imminence
of a Moorish invasion in which Portugal could render useful
assistance. Alphonso was therefore released under promise to
abandon all his conquests in Galicia.
He had already won many victories over the Moors. At the
beginning of his reign the religious fervour which had sustained
the Almoravide dynasty was rapidly subsiding; in Portugal
independent Moorish chiefs ruled over cities and petty states,
ignoring the central government; in Africa the
Almohades were destroying the remnants of the
Almoravide power. Alphonso took advantage of these dissensions to
invade Alemtejo, reinforced by the
Templars and Hospitallers, whose respective
headquarters were at Soure and Thomar. On the 25th of July 1139 he
defeated the combined forces of the Moors on the plains of Ourique,
in Alemtejo. Legend has magnified the victory into the rout of
200,000 Moslems under five kings; but so far was the battle from
being decisive that in 1140 the Moors were able to seize the
fortress of Leiria, built by Alphonso in 1135 as an outpost for the
defence of Coimbra, his capital. In 1144 they defeated the Templars
at Soure. But on the 15th of March 1147 Alphonso stormed the
fortress of Santarem, and about the same time a band of crusaders
on their way to
Palestine landed at Oporto
and volunteered for the impending
siege of Lisbon. Among them were many Englishmen,
Germans and Flemings, who were afterwards induced to settle in
Portugal. Aided by these powerful allies, Alphonso captured Lisbon
on the 24th of October 1147. This was the greatest military
achievement of his reign. The Moorish garrisons of Palmella, Cintra
and Almada soon capitulated, and in 1158 Alcacer do Sal, one of the
chief centres of Moorish commerce, was taken by
storm. At this time, however, the Almohades had
triumphed in Africa and invaded the Peninsula, where they were able
to check the Portuguese reconquest, although isolated bands of
crusading adventurers succeeded in establishing themselves in
various cities of Alemtejo. The most famous of these free-lances
was Giraldo Sempavor (" Gerald the Fearless "), who captured Evora
in 1166. In 1171 Alphonso concluded a
seven years' truce with the Moors;
weakened by his
wound and by old
age, he could no longer take the field, and when the war broke out
afresh he delegated the chief command to his son Sancho. Between
1179 and 1184 the Moors retrieved many of their losses in Alemtejo,
but were unable to retake Santarem and Lisbon. Alphonso died on the
6th of December 1185. He had secured for Portugal the status though
not the name of an independent kingdom, and had extended its
frontier southwards from the Mondego to the Tagus. He had laid the
foundation of its navy and had strengthened, if he did not
inaugurate, that system of
co-operation between the
Crown and the military orders
which afterwards proved of incalculable service in the maritime and
colonial development of the nation.
Sancho I. continued the war against the Moors with varying
fortune. In 1189 he won Silves, then the capital of Algarve; in
1192 he lost not only Algarve but the greater part of Alemtejo,
including Alcacer do Sal. A eace was
ancho 1, g p
11 8
,x1 211
. then arranged, and for
the next eight years Sancho was engaged in hostilities against
Alphonso IX. of Leon.
The motives and course of this indecisive struggle are equally
obscure. It ended in 1201, and the last decade of Sancho's reign
was a period of peaceful reform which earned for the king his
popular name of
o Povoador, the " maker of towns." He
granted fresh charters to many cities, legalizing the system of
self-government which the Romans had bequeathed to the Visigoths
and the Moors had retained or improved. Lisbon had already (1179)
received a charter from Alphonso I. Sancho also endeavoured to
foster
immigration
and agriculture, by granting estates to the military orders and
municipalities on condition that the occupiers should cultivate or
colonize their lands. Towards the close of his reign he became
embroiled in a dispute with Pope
Innocent III. He had insisted that priests
should accompany their flocks in battle, had made them amenable to
secular jurisdiction, had withheld the tribute due to Rome and had
even claimed the right of disposing of ecclesiastical domains.
Finally he had quarrelled with Martinho Rodrigues, the unpopular
bishop of Oporto, who was
besieged for five months in his palace and then forced to seek
redress in Rome (1209). As Sancho was in weak health and had no
means of resisting Papal pressure, he made full submission (1210);
and after bestowing large estates on his sons and daughters, he
retired into the monastery of Alcobaca (q.v.), where he died in
1211.
The reign of
Alphonso
II. (" the Fat ") is noteworthy for the first meeting of the
Portuguese cortes, to which the upper hierarchy of the Church and
the nobles (
fidalgos and
ricos homens) were
summoned by royal
writ.
The king was no warrior, but in 1212 a Portuguese
con-
1223. tingent aided the Castilians to defeat the
Moors at Las Navas de
Tolosa,
and in 1217 the ministers, bishops and captains of the
realm, reinforced by foreign
crusaders, retook Alcacer do Sal. Alfonso II. repudiated the will
of his father, refused to surrender the estates left to his
brothers, who went into exile, and only gave up the property
bequeathed to his sisters after a prolonged civil war in which
Alphonso IX. of Leon took part against them. Even then he compelled
the heiresses to take the
veil.
His attempts to strengthen the monarchy and fill the treasury at
the expense of the Church resulted in his
excommunication
by 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 - Goncalo Mendes the
23
chancellor, Pedro Annes the
lord chamberlain
1223--121248. (
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
mor). 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
111., 1248- proclaim himself king (
rei).
Hitherto the position
1279. 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 1293 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 g ? g
p 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 Coimbra (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
IV., 1325- peace was only restored (1330) after Queen
Isabella
1357. had 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 1 Throughout this article the
abbreviation
D. is used for the Portuguese title
Dom and for
its feminine form
Dona (see
DoMINus).
(Lenor) to Pedro IV. of Aragon. The later years of his reign
were darkened by the tragedy of
Inez de Castro. He died in 1357, and the
first act of his successor, Pedro the Severe,
1., was to
take vengeance on the murderers of Inez.
Pedro 1357-1367.
Throughout his reign he strengthened the central government at the
expense of the aristocracy and the Church, by a stern enforcement
of law and order. In 1361, at the cortes of Elvas, it was enacted
that the privileges of the clergy should only be deemed valid in so
far as they did not conflict with the royal
prerogative. Pedro maintained friendly
relations with England, where in 1352
Edward III. issued a
proclamation in favour of Portuguese
traders, and in 1353 the Portuguese
envoy Affonso Martins Alho signed a
covenant with the merchants
of London, guaranteeing mutual good faith in all commercial
dealings.
The foreign policy of Diniz, Alphonso IV. and Pedro I. had been,
as a rule, successful in its main object, the preservation of peace
with the Christian kingdoms of Spain; in consequence, the
Portuguese had advanced in prosperity and culture. They had
supported the monarchy because it was a national institution,
hostile to the tyranny of nobles and clergy. During the reign of
Ferdinand (1367-1383) and under the regency of Leonora the ruling
dynasty ceased to represent the national will; the Portuguese
people therefore made an end of the dynasty and chose its own
ruler. The complex events which brought about this crisis may be
briefly summarized.
Ferdinand, a weak but ambitious and unscrupulous king, claimed
the thrones of Castile and Leon, left vacant by the death of Pedro
I. of Castile (1369); he based his claim on the fact that his
grandmother Beatrice
1367-1385. belonged to the legitimate
line of Castile. When the majority of the Castilian nobles refused
to accept a Portuguese sovereign, and welcomed
Henry
of Trastamara (see
Spain:
History), as
Henry
II. of Castile, Ferdinand allied himself with the Moors and
Aragonese; but in 1371 Pope
Gregory XI. intervened, and it was decided
that Ferdinand should renounce his claim and marry Leonora, the
daughter of his successful rival. Ferdinand, however, preferred his
Portuguese
mistress,
Leonora Telles de Menezes, whom he eventually married. To avenge
this slight, Henry of Castile invaded Portugal and besieged Lisbon.
Ferdinand appealed to
John of Gaunt, who
also claimed the throne of Castile, on behalf of his wife
Constance, daughter of Pedro I. of Castile. An alliance between
Portugal and England was concluded; and although Ferdinand made
peace with Castile in 1374, he renewed his claim in 1380, after the
death of Henry of Castile, and sent Joao Fernandes Andeiro, count
of Ourem, to secure English aid. In 1381
Richard II. of England despatched a powerful
force to Lisbon, and betrothed his cousin Prince Edward to
Beatrice, only child of Ferdinand, who had been recognized as
heiress to the throne by the cortes of Leiria (1376). In 1383,
however, Ferdinand made peace with
John I. of Castile at Salvaterra, deserting his
English allies, who retaliated by ravaging part of his territory.
By the treaty of Salvaterra it was agreed that Beatrice should
marry John I. Six months later Ferdinand died, and in accordance
with the terms of the treaty Leonora became
regent until the eldest son of John I. and
Beatrice should be of age.
Leonora had long carried on an intrigue with the count of Ourem,
whose influence was resented by the leaders of the aristocracy,
while her tyrannical rule also aroused
of bitter
opposition. The malcontents chose D.
John,
1383.1383. grand-master of the knights of
Aviz and illegitimate son of Pedro the Severe, as their leader,
organized a revolt in Lisbon, and assassinated the count of Ourem
within the royal palace (Dec. 6, 1383). Leonora fled to Santarem
and summoned aid from Castile, while D. John was proclaimed
defender of Portugal. In 1384 a Castilian army invested Lisbon, but
encountered a heroic resistance, and after five months an outbreak
of
plague compelled them to
raise the siege. John I. of Castile, discovering or alleging that
Leonora had plotted to
poison
him, imprisoned her in a convent at Tordesillas, where she died in
1386. Before this, Nuno Alvares Pereira,
constable of Portugal, had gained his popular
title of " The Holy Constable " by twice defeating the invaders, at
Atoleiro and Trancoso in the district of Guarda.
On the 16th of April 1385 the cortes assembled at Coimbra
declared the crown of Portugal elective, and at the instance of
Joao das Regras, the chancellor, D. John was chosen king. No event
in the early constitutional history of Portugal is more important
than this election, which definitely affirmed the national
character of the monarchy. The choice of the grand-master of Aviz
ratified the old alliance between the Crown and the military
orders; his election by the whole cortes not only ratified the
alliance between the Crown and the commons, but also included the
nobles and the Church. The nation was unanimous.
Ferdinand had been the last legitimate descendant of Count Henry
of Burgundy. With John I. began the rule of a new dynasty, the
House of Aviz. The most urgent matter which confronted the king -
or the group of statesmen, led by Joao das Regras and the " Holy
Constable " who inspired his policy - was the menace of Castilian
aggression. But on the 14th of August 1385 the Portuguese army,
aided by 500 English archers, utterly defeated the Castilians at
Aljubarrota. By this victory the Portuguese showed themselves equal
in military power to their strongest rivals in the Peninsula. In
October the " Holy Constable " won another victory at Valverde;
early in 1386 5000 English soldiers, under John of Gaunt,
reinforced the Portuguese; and by the treaty of
Windsor (May 9, 1386), the alliance between
Portugal and England was confirmed and extended. Against such a
combination the Castilians were powerless; a truce was arranged in
1387 and renewed at intervals until 1411, when peace was concluded.
D. Diniz, eldest son of Inez de Castro, claimed the throne and
invaded Portugal in 1398, but his supporters were easily crushed.
The domestic and foreign policy pursued by John I. until his death
in 1433 may be briefly described. At home he endeavoured to reform
administration, to encourage agriculture and commerce, and to
secure the
loyalty of the
nobles by grants of land and privileges so extensive that, towards
the end of his reign, many nobles who exercised their full feudal
rights had become almost independent princes. Abroad, he aimed at
peace with Castile and close friendship with England. In 1387 he
had married Philippa of
Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt; Richard
II. sent troops to aid in the
expulsion of D. Diniz;
Henry IV.,
Henry V. and
Henry VI. of England successively ratified the
treaty of Windsor; Henry IV. made his ally a knight of the Garter
in 1400. The convent of Batalha (q.v.), founded to commemorate the
victory of Aljubarrota, is architecturally a monument of the
English influence prevalent at this time throughout Portugal.
The cortes of Coimbra, the battle of Aljubarrota and the treaty
of Windsor mark the three final stages in the consolidation of the
monarchy. A period of expansion oversea began in the same reign,
with the capture of
Ceuta in
Morocco. The three eldest sons
of King John and Queen Philippa - Edward, Pedro and Henry,
afterwards celebrated as Prince Henry the Navigator - desired to
win
knighthood by
service against the Moors, the historic enemies of their country
and creed. In 1415 a Portuguese fleet, commanded by the king and
the three princes, set
sail for
Ceuta. English men-at-arms were sent by Henry V. to take part in
the expedition, which proved successful. The town was captured and
garrisoned, and thus the first Portuguese outpost was established
on the mainland of Africa.
3.
The Period of Discoveries: 1415-1499. - Before
describing in outline the course of the discoveries which were soon
to render Portugal the foremost colonizing power in Europe it is
necessary to indicate the main causes which contributed to that
result. As the south-westernmost of the free peoples of Europe, the
Portuguese were the natural inheritors of that work of exploration
which had been carried on during
the middle ages, chiefly by the
Arabs. They began where the Arabs
left off, by penetrating far into the Atlantic. The long littoral
of their country, with its fine harbours and rivers flowing
westward to the ocean, had been the training-ground of a race of
adventurous seamen. It was impossible, moreover, to expand or reach
new markets except by sea: the interposition of Castile and Aragon,
so often hostile, completely prevented any intercourse by land
between Portugal and other European countries. Consequently the
Portuguese merchants sent their goods by sea to England,
Flanders, or the Hanse towns.
The whole history of the nation had also inspired a desire for
fresh conquests among its leaders. Portugal had won and now held
its independence by the
sword.
The long struggle to expel the Moors, with the influence of foreign
Crusaders and the military orders, had given a religious sanction
to the desire for martial fame. Nowhere was the ancient crusading
spirit so active a political force. To make war upon Islam seemed
to the Portuguese their natural destiny and their duty as
Christians.
It was the genius of Prince Henry the Navigator (q.v.) that
co-ordinated and utilized all these tendencies towards expansion.
Prince Henry placed at the disposal of his captains the vast
resources of the Order of Christ, the best information and the most
accurate instruments and maps which could be obtained. He sought to
effect a junction with the half-fabulous Christian Empire of "
Prester John " by way
of the " Western
Nile,"
i.e. the
Senegal,
and, in alliance with that potentate, to crush the
Turks and liberate Palestine. The conception of
an ocean route to India appears to have originated after his death.
On land he again defeated the Moors, who attempted to re-take Ceuta
in 1418; but in an expedition to
Tangier, undertaken in 1436 by King Edward
(1433-1438), the Portuguese army was defeated, and could only
escape destruction by surrendering as a
hostage Prince Ferdinand, the king's youngest
brother. Ferdinand, known as " the Constant," from the fortitude
with which he endured captivity, died unransomed in 1 443. By sea
Prince Henry's captains continued their exploration of Africa and
the Atlantic. In 1433 Cape Bojador was doubled; in 1 434 the first
consignment of
slaves was brought to Lisbon; and slave trading soon became one of
the most profitable branches of Portuguese commerce. The Senegal
was reached in 1445, Cape Verde was passed in the same year, and in
1446 Alvaro Fernandes pushed on almost as far as
Sierra Leone. This
was probably the farthest point reached before the Navigator died
(1460). Meanwhile colonization progressed in the Azores and
Madeira, where sugar and wine were produced; above all, the gold
brought home from
Guinea stimulated the
commercial energy of the Portuguese. It had become clear that,
apart from their religious and scientific aspects, these voyages of
discovery were highly profitable. Under
Alphonso V., surnamed the African
(1443-1481), the Gulf of Guinea was explored as far as Cape St
Catherine, and three
expeditions (1458, 1461, 1471) were sent to Morocco; in 1471 Arzila
(Asila) and Tangier were captured from the Moors. Under
John II. (1481-1495) the
fortress of Sao Jorge da Mina, the modern
Elmina, was founded for the protection of the
Guinea trade in 1481-1482;
Diogo Cam, or Cao, discovered the
Congo in 1482 and reached Cape
Cross in 1486;
Bartholomeu Diaz doubled the
Cape of Good Hope in 1488, thus proving that the
Indian Ocean was
accessible by sea. After 1492 the discovery of
the West Indies
by
Columbus rendered
desirable a delimitation of the Spanish and Portuguese spheres of
exploration. This was accomplished by the treaty of Tordesillas
(June 7, 1 494) which modified the delimitation authorized by Pope
Alexander VI. in
two bulls issued on the 4th of May, 1493. The treaty gave to
Portugal all lands which might be discovered east of a straight
line drawn from the
Arctic Pole to the
Antarctic, at a distance of 370 leagues west
of Cape Verde. Spain received the lands discovered west of this
line. As, however, the known means of measuring
longitude were so inexact
that the line of demarcation could not in practice be determined
(see J. de Andrade Corvo in
Journal das Sciencias
Mathematicas, xxxi. 147-176, Lisbon, 1881), the treaty was
subject to very diverse interpretations. On its provisions were
based both the Portuguese claim to Brazil and the Spanish claim to
the Moluccas (see
Malay Archipelago:
History).
The treaty was chiefly valuable to the Portuguese as a recognition
of the prestige they had acquired. That prestige was enormously
enhanced when, in 1497-1499,
Vasco da Gama completed the voyage to
India.
While the Crown was thus acquiring new possessions, its
authority in Portugal was temporarily overshadowed by the growth of
aristocratic privilege. At the cortes of Evora (1433) King Edward
had obtained the enactment of a law' declaring that the estates
granted by John I. to his adherents could only be inherited by the
direct male descendants of the grantees, and failing such
descendants, should revert to the Crown. After the death of Edward
further attempts to curb the power of the nobles were made by his
brother, D. Pedro, duke of Coimbra, who acted as regent during the
minority of Alphonso V. (1438-1447). The head of the aristocratic
opposition was the duke of Braganza, who contrived to secure the
sympathy of the king and the dismissal of the regent. The quarrel
led to civil war, and in May 1449 D. Pedro was defeated and killed.
Thenceforward the grants made by John I. were renewed, and extended
on so lavish a scale that the Braganza estates alone comprised
about a third of the whole kingdom. An unwise foreign policy
simultaneously injured the royal prestige, for Alphonso married his
own niece,
Joanna, daughter of
Henry IV. of Castile, and claimed that kingdom in her name. At the
battle of
Toro, in 1476, he was
defeated by Ferdinand and Isabella, and in 1478 he was compelled to
sign the treaty of Alcantara, by which Joanna was relegated to a
convent. His successor, John II. (1481-1495) reverted to the policy
of matrimonial alliances with Castile and. friendship with England.
Finding, as he said, that the liberality of former kings had left
the Crown " no estates except the high roads of Portugal," he
determined to crush the feudal
nobility and seize its territories. A cortes
held at Evora (1481) empowered judges nominated by the Crown to
administer justice in all feudal domains. The nobles resisted this
infringement of their rights; but their leader, Ferdinand, duke of
Braganza, was beheaded for high
treason in 1483; in 1484 the king stabbed to
death his own brother-in-law, Ferdinand, duke of Vizeu; and 80
other members of the aristocracy were afterwards executed. Thus
John " the Perfect," as he was called, assured the supremacy of the
Crown. He was succeeded in 1495 by Emanuel (Manoel) I., who was
named " the Great " or " the Fortunate," because in his reign the
sea route to India was discovered and a Portuguese Empire
founded.
4.
The Portuguese Empire: 1499-1580. -
In 1500 King Emanuel assumed the title " Lord of the
conquest, navigation and commerce of India,
Ethiopia,
Arabia and Persia," which was confirmed by Pope
Alexander VI. in 1502. It was now upon schemes of conquest that the
energy of the nation was to be concentrated, although the motives
which called forth that energy were unchanged. " We come to seek
Christians and spices," said the first of Vasco da Gama's sailors
who landed in India: and the combination of missionary ardour with
commercial enterprise which had led to the exploration of the
Atlantic led also to the establishment of a Portuguese Empire. This
expansion of national interests proceeded rapidly in almost every
quarter of the known world. In the North Atlantic Gaspar and Miguel
Corte-Real penetrated as far as
Greenland (their "
Labrador ") in 1500-1501; but
these voyages were politically and commercially unimportant.
Equally barren was the intermittent fighting in Morocco, which was
regarded as a crusade against the Moors. In the South Atlantic,
however, the African coast was further explored, new settlements
were founded, and a remarkable development of Portuguese-African
civilization took place in the kingdom of Kongo (see
Angola).
1 Known as the lei mental, because it was supposed to
fulfil the intention which John I. had in mind when the grants were
made.
Pedro Alvares Cabral, sailing to India, but steering far
westward to avoid the winds and currents of the Guinea coast,
reached Brazil Woo) and claimed it for his sovereign. Joao da Nova
discovered
Ascension
(1501) and St
Helena
(1502);(1502); Tristao da Cunha was the first to sight the
archipelago still known
by his name (1506). In East Africa the small Mahommedan states
along the coast -
Sofala,
Mozambique,
Kilwa, Brava,
Mombasa, Malindi - either were
destroyed or became subjects or allies of Portugal. Pedro de
Covilham had reached
Abyssinia as early as 1490;
in 1520 a Portuguese
embassy
arrived at the court of " Prester John," and in 1541 a military
force was sent to aid him in repelling a Mahommedan invasion. In
the Indian Ocean and
Arabian Sea, one of Cabral's ships
discovered
Madagascar
(150r), which was partly explored by Tristao da Cunha (1507);
Mauritius was discovered in
1507, Socotra occupied in 1506, and in the same year D. Louren90
d'Almeida visited
Ceylon. In
the
Red Sea Massawa was the most northerly
point frequented by the Portuguese until 1541, when a fleet under
Estevao da Gama penetrated as far as
Suez.
Hormuz,
in the Persian Gulf, was seized by
Alphonso d'Albuquerque (1515),
who also entered into diplomatic relations with Persia. On the
Asiatic mainland the first trading-stations were established by
Cabral at
Cochin and
Calicut (1501); more important,
however, were the conquest of Goa (1510) and
Malacca (1511) by
Albuquerque, and the acquisition of Diu
(1535) by Martini Affonso de Sousa. East of Malacca, Albuquerque
sent Duarte Fernandes as envoy to
Siam (1511), and despatched to the Moluccas two
expeditions (1512, 1514), which founded the Portuguese dominion in
the Malay Archipelago (q.v.). Fernao Pires de Andrade visited
Canton in 1517 and opened up
trade with China, where in 1557 the Portuguese were permitted to
occupy Macao.
Japan,
accidentally discovered by three Portuguese traders in 1542, soon
attracted large numbers of merchants and missionaries (see
Japan, § viii.). In 1522 one of the
ships of
Ferdinand Magellan - a Portuguese
sailor, though in the Spanish service - completed the first voyage
round the world.
Up to 1505 the Portuguese voyages to the East were little more
than trading ventures or plundering raids, although a few "
factories " for the exchange of goods were
and Alba= founded in
Malabar. In theory, the objects of
querque King Emanuel's policy were the
establishment of friendly commercial relations with the Hindus (who
were at first mistaken for Christians " not yet confirmed in the
faith," as the king wrote to Alexander VI.) and the prosecution of a
crusade against Islam. But Hindu and Mahommedan interests were
found to be so closely interwoven that this policy became
impracticable, and it was superseded when D. Francisco d'Almeida
(q.v.) went to India as first Portuguese viceroy in 1505. Almeida sought to subordinate
all else to sea power
and commerce, to concentrate the whole naval and military force of
the kingdom on the maintenance of maritime ascendancy; to annex no
territory, to avoid risking troops ashore, and to leave the defence
of such factories as might be necessary to friendly native powers,
which would receive in return the support of the Portuguese fleet.
Almeida's statesmanship was to a great extent sound. The Portuguese could
never penetrate far inland; throughout the 16th century their
settlements were confined to the coasts of Asia, Africa or America, and the
area they were able effectively to occupy was far less than the
area of their empire in the 10th century. A Chinese critic, quoted
by Faria y Sousa, said of them
that they were like fishes, " remove them from the water and they
straightway die." It is thus absurd to speak of a " Portuguese
conquest of India "; in a land campaign they would have been
outnumbered and destroyed by the armies of any one of the greater
Indian states. But their artillery and superior maritime science made
them almost invulnerable at sea, and their principal military
achievements consisted in the capture or defence of positions
accessible from the sea, e.g. the defence of Cochin by
Duarte Pacheco Pereira in 1504, the defence of Diu (q v.)
in 1538 and 1546.Alphonso d'Albuquerque (q.v.), who succeeded Almeida in 1509,
found it necessary to modify the policy formulated by his
predecessor.
Command of the sea could not be
maintained - least of all in the
monsoon months - while the Portuguese fleets
were based on Lisbon, which could only be reached after a six
months' voyage; and experience had proved that almost every
Portuguese factory required a fortress for its defence when the
fleets were absent. Portugal, like every great maritime trading
community from
Carthage to
Venice, discovered that the
ideal of " sea power and commerce " led directly to empire. In 1510
Albuquerque seized Goa, primarily as a naval base,. and in so doing
recognized the fact that his country was cornmitted to a policy of
territorial aggrandisement. Other seaports and islands were
conquered or colonized in rapid succession, and by 1540 Portugal
had acquired a line of scattered maritime possessions extending
along the coasts of Brazil, East and West Africa, Malabar, Ceylon,
Persia,
Indo-China and the Malay Archipelago.
The most important settlements in the East were Goa, Malacca and
Hormuz.
To a superficial observer the prosperity of Portugal might. well
seem to have culminated during this period of expansion.. Vast
profits were derived from the import trade in the innumerable
products of the tropics, of which Portugal was the sole purveyor in
Europe. This influx of wealth furnished the economic basis for a
sudden development of literary and artistic activity, inspired by
contrast with the new world of the tropics.. The 16th century was
the golden age of Portuguese literature;. humanists, such as
Damiao de Goes,
and scientists, such as the astronomer Pedro Nunes (Nonius), played
conspicuous parts in the great intellectual movements of the time;
a distinctive school of painters arose, chief among them being the
so-called " Grao Vasco " (Vasco Fernandes of Vizeu); in
architecture the name of King Emanuel was given to a new and
composite
style (the Manoeline
or Manoellian), in which decorative forms from India and Africa
were harmonized with Gothic and Renaissance designs; palaces,
fortresses, cathedrals, monasteries, were built on a scale never
before attempted in Portugal; and even in the minor arts and
handicrafts - in goldsmith's work, for example, or in pottery - the
influence of the East made itself felt. Oriental splendour and
Renaissance culture combined to render social life in Lisbon hardly
less. brilliant than in Rome or Venice.
In order to understand the apparently sudden collapse of
Portuguese power in1578-1580it is necessary to examine certain
facts and tendencies which from the first rendered a
catastrophe inevitable.
Chief among these were the extent of the empire and its
organization, the financial and commercial policy of its rulers,
the hostility, often wantonly provoked,. of the chief Oriental
states, the depopulation of Portugal and the slave trade, the
expulsion of the Jews, the growth of ecclesiastical influence in
secular affairs, and the decadence of the monarchy.
It is necessary to exclude Brazil from any survey of the
Portuguese imperial system, because the colonization of Brazil
(q.v.) was effected on distinctive lines. Otherwise the whole
empire was governed on a more or less uniform
Organiza- system, although it included communities
of the most
tion. diverse nature - protectorates
such as Hormuz and
Ternate
in the Moluccas, colonies such as Goa and Madeira, captaincies
under military rule such as Malacca, tributary states Rich as
Kilwa, fortified factories as at
Colombo and Cochin. West of the Cape the
settlements in Africa and the Atlantic were governed, as a rule, by
officials directly nominated by the king. East of the Cape the
royal power was delegated to a viceroy or governor - the
distinction was purely titular - whose legislative and executive
authority was almost unlimited during his term of office. The
viceroyalty was created in 1505, and from 1511 the Indian capital
was Goa. Between 1505 and 1580 only four holders of the office -
Almeida (1505-1509), Albuquerque (1509-1515), D. Vasco da Gama
(1524) and D.
Joao
de Castro (1545-1548) - were men of marked ability and high
character. All officials, including the viceroy and naval and
military officers, were usually appointed for no more than three
years. Although few large salaries were paid, the perquisites
attached to official positions were enormous; at the beginning of
the 17th century, for example, the captain of Malacca received not
quite boo yearly as his pay, but his annual profits from other
sources were estimated at 20,000. Even judges were expected to live
on their perquisites, in the shape of bribes. The competition for
appointments was naturally very keen; Couto mentions the case of
one grantee who received the reversion of a post to which 30
applicants had a prior claim.' Such reversions could be sold,
bequeathed, or included in the dowries of married women; the right
of trading with China might be part of the endowment of a school; a
monastery or a
hospital
might purchase the command of a fortress. In 1538 the viceroy, D.
Garcia de Noronha, publicly sold by auction every vacant
appointment in Portuguese India - an example followed in 1614 by
the king. Hardly less disastrous than the system by which officials
were chosen and paid was the influence exercised by the Church.
Simao Botelho, an able revenue officer, was denied
absolution in 1543
because he had reorganized the Malacca customs-house without
previously consulting the
Dominicans in that city. In 1560 a supposed
tooth of
Buddha was brought to
Goa; the
raja of
Pegu offered ioo,000 for the relic, and as
Portuguese India was virtually bankrupt the government wished to
accept the offer; but the archbishop intervened and the relic was
destroyed.
The empire in the East was rarely solvent. Almeida and
Albuquerque had hoped to meet the expense of administration mainly
out of the fees extorted for safe-conducts at sea and
trading-licences, with the tribute wrung from native states and the
revenue from Crown lands in India. But the growth of expenditure -
chiefly of an unremunerative kind, such as the cost of war and
missions - soon rendered
these resources inadequate; and after 1515 the empire became ever
more dependent on the spoils of hostile states and on subsidies
from the royal treasury in Lisbon. Systematic debasement of the
coinage was practised both in India, where the monetary system was
extremely complex, 2 and in Portugal; and owing to the bullionist
policy adopted by Portuguese financiers little permanent benefit
accrued to the mother country from its immense trade. Seeking for
commercial profit, not in the exchange of commodities, but solely
in the acquisition of actual gold and silver, and realizing that
the home market could not absorb a tithe of the merchandise
imported, the Lisbon capitalists sent their ships to discharge in
Antwerp (where a Portuguese staple was established in 1503), or in
some other port near the central markets of Europe. The raw
materials purchased by Flemish, German or English traders were used
in the establishment of productive industries, while Portugal
received a vast influx of
bullion, most of which was squandered on war,
luxuries or the Church.
In theory the most lucrative branches of commerce, such as the
pepper trade, were monopolies
vested in the Crown; the
chartered companies and
associations of merchant
Policy. adventurers, which
afterwards became the pioneers of British and Dutch colonial
development, had no counterpart in Portuguese history, except in
the few cases in which trading concessions were granted to military
or monastic orders. But the Crown frequently farmed out its
monopolies to individual merchants, or granted trading-licences by
way of
pension or reward.
These were often of great value;
e.g. in 1612 the right of
sending a merchant ship to China was valued at £25,000. Great loss
was necessarily inflicted on native traders by the monopolist
system, which pressed most hardly on the Mahommedans, who had been
the chief carriers in Indian waters. Two great powers,
Egypt and
Turkey, challenged the naval
and commercial supremacy of the Portuguese, but an Egyptian
armada was destroyed by
Almeida in 1509, and though
Ottoman fleets were on several occasions (as in
1517 and 1521) despatched from Suez or
Basra, they failed to achieve any success, and
the Portuguese were able to close the two principal trade routes 1
Decadas, XII. i. so.
2 See R. S. Whiteway, Rise of the Portuguese Power,
&c. (London, 1898), pp. 67-72.
between India and Europe. One of these trade routes passed up
the Persian Gulf to Basra, and thence overland to
Tripoli, for Mediterranean
ports, and to
Trebizond,
for Constantinople. The other passed up the Red Sea to Suez, and
thence to
Alexandria, for Venice,
Genoa and Ragusa. But by occupying
Hormuz the Portuguese gained command of the Gulf route; and though
they thrice failed to capture
Aden
(1513, 1517 5547), and so entirely to close the Red Sea, they
almost destroyed the traffic between India and Suez by occupying
Socotra and sending fleets to cruise in the Strait of
Bab el-Mandeb. In
Malacca they possessed the connecting link between the traderoutes
of the Far and Middle East, and thus they controlled the three
sea-gates of the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea - the Straits of
Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb and Malacca - and diverted the maritime trade
with Europe to the Cape route.
During the critical period in which their empire was being
established (
c. 1505-1550) the Portuguese were fortunate
in escaping conflict with any Oriental power of the first rank
except Egypt and Turkey; for the Bahmani sultanate of the
Deccan had been already
disintegrated before 1498, and the Mughals and
Mahrattas were still far off. A
coalition of the minor
Mahommedan states was prevented by the great Hindu kingdom of
Vijayanagar, which
comprised the southern half of the Indian Peninsula. Vijayanagar
gave the militant Mahommedanism of Northern India no, opportunity
for a combined attack on the Portuguese settlements. After 1565,
when the power of Vijayanagar was broken at the battle of Talikot,
a Mussulman coalition was at last formed, and the Portuguese were
confronted by a line of hostile states stretching from
Gujarat to
Achin; but by this time they were strong enough
to hold their own. It is characteristic of their native policy that
they had not only refrained from aiding Vijayanagar in 1565, but
had even been willing to despoil their Hindu allies. In 1543 Martim
Affonso de Sousa, governor of India, organized an expedition to
sack the Hindu temples at Conjeveram
in Vijayanagar itself, and similar incidents are common in
Indo-Portuguese history. Albuquerque was almost the only Portuguese
statesman who strove to deal justly with both Hindus and
Mahommedans, to respect native customs, and to establish friendly
relations with the great powers of the East. Apart from the
rigorous restrictions imposed by his successors upon trade, the
sympathies of the natives were estranged by the harshness and
venality of Portuguese administration, by such barbarities as the
wholesale
mutilation
of non-combatants in war-time, and by religious persecution. After
the arrival of the Franciscan missionaries, in 1517, Goa gradually
became the headquarters of an immense proselytizing organization,
which by 1561 had extended to East Africa, China, Japan and the
Malay Archipelago (see GoA:
Ecclesiastical History).
Wherever the Portuguese were supreme they endeavoured to obtain
converts by force. The widespread resentment thus aroused was a
frequent cause of insurrection, and between 1515 and 1580 not a
single year passed without war between the Portuguese and at least
one African or Asiatic people.
Centuries of fighting against the Moors and Castilians had
already left Portugal thinly populated.; large tracts of land were
uncultivated, especially in Alemtejo, and wolves were still common
throughout the kingdom. It was lel on.
impossible, from the first, to
garrison the empire with
trained men. As early as 1505 one of Almeida's ships contained a
crew of rustics unable to distinguish
between port and starboard; soon afterwards it became necessary to
recruit convicts and slaves, and in 1538 a royal
pardon was granted to all prisoners who would
serve in India, except criminals under sentence for treason and
canonical offences. Linschoten estimates that of all those who went
to the East not one in ten returned. The heaviest losses were due
to war, shipwreck and tropical diseases, but large numbers of the
underpaid or unpaid soldiers deserted to the armies of native
states. It is impossible to give more than approximately accurate
statistics of the
resultant depopulation of Portugal; but it seems probable that the
inhabitants of the kingdom decreased from about 1,800,000 or
2,000,000 in 1500 to
The Slave thus discredited; the
peasants sold their farms and
p emigrated or
flocked to the towns;
and small holdings were
merged into vast estates, unscientifically cultivated by slaves and
comparable with the
latifundia which caused so many
agrarian evils during the last two centuries of the Roman republic.
The decadence of agriculture partly explains the prevalence of
famine at a time when Portuguese
maritime commerce was most prosperous. The Portuguese intermarried
freely with their slaves, and this infusion of
alien blood profoundly modified the character and
physique of the nation. It may be said without exaggeration that
the Portuguese of the " age of discoveries " and the Portuguese of
the 17th and later centuries were two different races. Albuquerque,
foreseeing the dangers that would arise from a shortage of
population in his colonies, had encouraged his soldiers to marry
captive Brahman and Mahommedan women, and to settle in
India as farmers, shopkeepers or artisans. Under his rule the
experiment was fairly successful, but the married colonists
afterwards became a privileged
caste, subsisting upon the labour of their
slaves, and often disloyal to their rulers. Intermarriage led to
the adoption, even by the rich, and especially by women (see GoA),
of Asiatic dress, manners and modes of thought. Thus in the East,
as in Europe,
slavery
reacted upon every class of the Portuguese.
The banishment, or forcible conversion, of the Jews deprived
Portugal of its middle class and of its most scientific traders and
financiers. Though the Jews had always been
of
compelled to reside in separate quarters called
the Jews.
Juderias, or Jewries, they had been protected by the earlier
Portuguese kings. Before 1223 their courts had received
autonomy in civil and
criminal jurisdiction; their chief
rabbi was appointed by the king and entitled to
use the royal arms on his
seal. Alphonso V. even permitted
his Jewish subjects to live outside the Juderias, relieved them
from the
obligation to
wear a distinctive
costume
(enforced in 1325), and nominated a Jew,
Isaac Abrabanel, as his minister of
finance. In culture the Portuguese Jews surpassed their rulers.
Many of them were well versed in Aristotelian and Arabic
philosophy, in
astronomy,
mathematics, and
especially in
medicine.
Three Hebrew
printing-presses were established between 1487
and 1495; both John II. and Emanuel I. employed Jewish physicians;
it was a Jew - Abraham Zacuto
ben Samuel - who supplied Vasco
da Gama with nautical instruments; and Jews were employed in the
overland journeys by which the Portuguese court first endeavoured
to obtain information on Far Eastern affairs. The Jews paid taxes
on practically every business transaction, besides a special
poll-tax of 30
dinheiros in memory of the 30 pieces of silver paid to
Judas Iscariot;
and for this reason they were protected by the Crown. For centuries
they were also tolerated by the commons; but the other orders -
ecclesiastics and nobles - resented their religious exclusiveness
or envied their wealth, and gradually fostered the growth of
popular
prejudice
against them. In 1449 the Lisbon Juderias were stormed and sacked,
and between 1450 and 1481 the cortes four times petitioned the
Crown to enforce the anti-Jewish provisions of the
canon law. John II. gave
asylum to 90,000 Jewish refugees
from Castile, in return for a heavy poll-tax and on condition that
they should leave the country within eight months, in ships
furnished by himself. These ships were not provided in time, and
the Jews who were thus unable to depart were enslaved, 1 In the
north, which had been relatively immune from wars agriculture was
more prosperous and the peasants more tenacious of their land;
hence the continuance of peasant proprietorship and the rarity of
African types between the Douro and the Minho.
while their children were deported to the island of St Thomas,
and there left to survive as best they might. In 1496 Emanuel I.
desired to wed Isabella, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, but
found that he was first required to purify his kingdom of the Jews,
who were accordingly commanded to leave Portugal before the end of
October 1497. But in order to avoid the economic dangers threatened
by such an exodus, every Jew and Jewess between the ages of 4 and
24 was seized and forcibly baptized (19th March): " Christians "
were not required to emigrate. In October 20,000 adults were
treated in the same way. These " New Christians " or " Maranos," as
they were called, were forbidden to leave the country between 1498
and 1507. In April 1506 most of those who resided in Lisbon were
massacred during a
riot, but
throughout the rest of Emanuel's reign they were immune from
violence, and were again permitted to emigrate - an opportunity of
which the majority took advantage. Large numbers settled in
Holland, where their commercial
talent afterwards greatly assisted the Dutch in
their rivalry with the Portuguese.
The
Reformation never reached Portugal, but even here the critical
tendencies which elsewhere preceded Reform, were already at work.
Their origin is to be sought not so much in the Revival of Learning
as in the fact that the Portuguese had learned, on their voyages of
discovery, to see and think for themselves. The true scientific
spirit may be traced throughout the
Roteiros of D. Joao de
Castro (q.v.) and the
Colloquios of Garcia de Ortamen who
deserted books for experiment and manifested a new interest in the
physical world. But orthodox churchmen feared that even in Portugal
this appeal from authority to experience would lead to an attack
upon religious doctrines previously regarded as beyond criticism.
To check this dangerous movement of ideas, they demanded the
introduction of
the Inquisition into Portugal. The
agents of the " New Christians " in Rome long contrived, by lavish
bribery and with the support
of many enlightened Portuguese, to delay the preliminary
negotiations; but in 1536 the Holy Office was established in
Lisbon, where the first
auto-da fe was held in 1540, and in
1560 its operations were extended to India. It seems probable that
the influence of the tribunal upon Portuguese life and thought has
been exaggerated.
Autos-da fe were rare events; their
victims were not as a rule serious thinkers, but persons accused of
sorcery or Judaizing, nor
were they more numerous than the victims of the English
laws relating to witchcraft and
heresy. But the worst vices of
the Inquisition were the widespread system of delation it
encouraged by paying informers out of the property of the
condemned, and its action as a trading and landholding association.
Quite as serious, in their effects upon national life, were the
severe censorship to which all printed matter was liable before
publication and the control of education by the
Jesuits. Poetry and imaginative literature
usually escaped censure; but histories were mutilated and all
original scientific and philosophical work was banned. Portuguese
education centred in the national university of Coimbra, which had
long shown itself ready to assimilate new ideas; between 1537 and
1547
John III. persuaded
many eminent foreign teachers - among them the Scottish humanist
George Buchanan
and the French mathematician
Elie
Vinet - to lecture in its schools. But the discipline of the
university needed reform, and the task was entrusted to the
Jesuits. By 1555 they had secured control over Coimbra - a control
which lasted for two centuries and extended to the whole
educational system of the country. The effects of this change upon
the national character were serious and permanent. Portugal sank
back into the middle ages. The old initiative and self-reliance of
the nation, already shaken by years of disaster, were now
completely undermined, and the people submitted without show of
resistance to a
theocracy disguised as absolute monarchy.
Emanuel I. had been a fearless
despot, such as Portugal needed if its scattered
dependencies were to remain subject to the central government.
During his reign (1495-1521) the Church was never permitted to
encroach upon the royal about 1,080,000 in 1586. The process of
decay was hastened by frequent outbreaks of plague, sometimes
followed by famine; a contemporary manuscript estimates that no
fewer than 500 persons died daily in Lisbon alone during July,
August and September 1569, and in some other years the joint
effects of plague and famine were little less disastrous.
While the country was being drained of its best citizens, hordes
of slaves were imported to fill the vacancies, especially into the
southern provinces.' Manual labour was prerogative. He even sent
ambassadors to Rome to protest against ecclesiastical corruption,
as well as to checkmate the Venetian diplomatists who threatened
Europe with Ottoman
of fhe vengeance if the Portuguese
commercial monopoly were not relaxed. The Oriental magnificence of
these embassies, notably that of 1514, and the fact that a king of
Portugal dared openly to criticize the morals of the Vatican,
temporarily enhanced the prestige of the monarchy. But Emanuel I.
was the last great king of the Aviz dynasty. He had pursued the
traditional policy of intermarriage with the royal families of
Castile and Aragon, hoping to weld together the Spanish and
Portuguese dominions into a single world-wide Sebastianism " became
a religion; its' votaries were numbered by thousands, and four
impostors arose in succession, each claiming to be the
rei
encuberto, or " hidden king," whose
advent was so ardently desired (see
Sebastian).
There was no surviving prince of the Aviz dynasty except the
aged, feeble and almost insane Cardinal Prince Henry, who, as a
younger son of Emanuel I., now became king. Henry died on the 31st
of January 1580, and the throne was thus left vacant. There were
five principal claimants -
Philip II. of Spain; Philibert, duke of
Savoy; Antonio, prior of Crato; Catherine, duchess of Braganza; and
Ranuccio, duke of
Parma - whose
relationship to Emanuel I. is shown in the following table: -
Emanuel.
I I I 1 I John III., Isabel, Beatrice,
Louis, Ferdinand,
Alphonso, b. 150z, d. 1557, b. 1503, d. 1539, b. 150 4, d. 1538, b.
1506, d. 1545, b. 1507, d. 1534, b. 1509, d. 1540, m. Catherine of
Austria. m.
Charles V. m.
Charles III. of duke of
Beja. duke of Guarda. cardinal and Savoy. Iy. archbishop of
Philiberl Emmanuel,
Antonio, duke of Savoy. prior of Crato. (illegitimate).
empire ruled by the house of Aviz. His ambition narrowly missed
fulfilment, for Prince Miguel, his eldest son, was recognized
(1498) as heir to the Spanish thrones. But Miguel died in
infancy, and his
inheritance passed to
the Habsburgs. Frequent intermarriage, often so far within the
prohibited degress as to require a papal
dispensation, may possibly explain the
weakened vitality of the Portuguese royal family, which was now
subject to
epilepsy,
insanity and premature decay.
The decadence of the monarchy as a national institution was
reflected in the decadence of the cortes, which was rarely summoned
between 1521 and 1580. John III. (1521-1557) was a ruler of fair
ability, who became in his later years wholly subservient to his
ecclesiastical advisers. He was succeeded by his grandson
Sebastian (1557-1578), aged
three years. Until the king came of age (1568), his grandmother,
Queen Catherine, a fanatical daughter of Isabella the
Catholic, and his
great-uncle, Prince Henry, cardinal and inquisitor-general,
governed as joint regents. Both were dominated by their Jesuit
confessors, and a Jesuit, D. Luiz Gongalves da Camara, became the
tutor and, after 1568, the principal adviser of Sebastian.
The king was a strong-willed and weak-minded ascetic, who
entrusted his empire to the Jesuits, refused to marry, although the
dynasty was threatened with extinction, and
Disaster spent
years in preparing for a crusade against the
Al Kasr.
Moors. The wisest act of John III. had been his withdrawal of all
the Portuguese garrisons in Morocco except those at Ceuta, Arzila
and Tangier. Sebastian reversed this policy. His first expedition
to Africa (1474) was a mere
reconnaissance, but four
y ears
later a favourable opportunity for invasion arrived. A dethroned
sultan of Morocco, named Mulai
Ahmad (Mahommed XI.), offered to acknowledge Portuguese suzerainty
if he were restored to the throne by Portuguese arms, and Sebastian
eagerly accepted these terms. The
flower of his army was in Asia and his treasury
was empty; but he contrived to extort funds from the " New
Christians," and collected a force of some 18,000 men, chiefly
untrained lads, wornout veterans, and foreign free-lances. At
Arzila, where he landed, he was joined by Mulai Ahmad, who could
only
muster Soo soldiers.
Thence Sebastian sought to proceed overland to the seaport of El
Araish, despite the advice of his ally and of others who knew the
country. After a long
desert
march under an August sun, he took up an indefensible position in a
valley near Al Kasr al Kebir (q.v.). On the morrow (Aug. 1878) they
were surrounded by the superior forces
of Abd el Malek, the
reigning sultan, and after a brave resistance Sebastian was killed
and his army almost annihilated. So overwhelming was the disaster
that the Portuguese people refused to believe the truth. It was
rumoured that Sebastian still lived, and would sooner or later
return and restore the past greatness of his country.
Tentative and hardly serious claims were also put forward by
Pope
Gregory
XIII., as
ex officio heir-general to a cardinal, and
by
Catherine de' Medici, as a
descendant of Alphonso III. and Matilda of Boulogne.
5.
The " Sixty Years' Captivity ": 1581-1640. - The
university of Coimbra declared in favour of Catherine, duchess of
Braganza, but the prior of Crato was the only rival who offered any
serious resistance to Philip II. D. Antonio proclaimed himself king
and occupied Lisbon. The advocates of union with Spain, however,
were numerous, influential, and ably led by their spokesmen in the
cortes, Christovao de Moura and Antonio Pinheiro, bishop of Leiria.
The duke of Braganza was won over to their side, chiefly by the
promise that he should be king of Brazil if Philip II. became king
of Portugal - a promise never fulfilled. Above all, the Church,
including the Society of
Jesus, naturally favoured the
Habsburg claimant, who
represented its two foremost champions, Spain and Austria. In 1581
a Spanish army, led by the duke of Alva, entered Portugal and
easily defeated the levies of D. Antsonio at Alcantara. The prior
escaped to
Paris and appealed to
France and England for assistance. In 1582 a French fleet attempted
to seize the Azores in his interest, but was defeated. In 1589 an
English fleet was sent to aid the prior in a projected invasion of
Portugal, but owing to a quarrel between its commanders,
Sir Francis
Drake and Sir
John
Norris, the expedition was abandoned. D. Antonio returned to
Paris, where he died in 1594.
Meanwhile the victory of Alcantara left Philip II. supreme in
Portugal, where he was soon afterwards crowned king. His
constitutional position was defined at the Cortes of Thomar (1581).
Portugal was not to be regarded as a conquered or annexed province,
but as a separate kingdom, joined to Spain solely by a personal
union similar to the union between Castile and Aragon under
Ferdinand and Isabella. At Thomar Philip II. promised to maintain
the rights and liberties conceded by his predecessors on the
Portuguese throne, to summon the Cortes at frequent intervals, and
to create a Portuguese
privy council which should accompany the
king everywhere and be consulted on all matters affecting
Portuguese interests. Brazil and the settlements in Africa and Asia
were still to belong to Portugal, not to Spain, and neither in
Portugal nor in its colonies was any alien to be given lands,
public office, or jurisdiction. On these terms the political union
of the Iberian Peninsula was accomplished. It was the final stage
in a process of
accretion dating back to the beginnings of
the Christian reconquest in the 8th century.
Asturias had been united with Leon, Leon with
Castile, Castile with Aragon. All these precedents seemed to
indicate that Spain and Portugal would ultimately form one state;
and despite the strong nationalism which their separate language
and Lisbon.
|
b. 1537, d. 1554, m. Joanna of Spain.
Sebastian, 1554, d. 1578.
|
Philip 11. of
Spain.
|
Henry, Edward, b. 1512, d. 1580, b. 1515, d. 1545, cardinal and
duke of GuimarSes, king. m. Isabel of Braganza.
I 11 Catherine, Maria, m. duke of Braganza. m. duke of
Parma. 1 Ranuccio, duke of Parma.
history had inspired among the Portuguese, the union of 1581
might have endured if the terms of the Thomar compact had been
observed. But few of the promises made in 1581 were kept by the
three Spanish kings who ruled over Portugal - Philip II.
(1581-1598),
Philip
III. (1598-1621) and
Philip IV. (1621-1640). 1 The cortes was only
once summoned (1619), and the government of Portugal was entrusted
by Philip III. chiefly to
Francis duke of Lerma, by
Philip IV. chiefly to Olivares (q.v.). The kingdom and its
dependencies were also involved in the naval disasters which
overtook Spain. Faro in Algarve was sacked in 1595 by the English,
who ravaged the Azores in 1596; and in many parts of the world
English, French and Dutch combined to harass Portuguese trade and
seize Portuguese possessions. (See especially
Brazil;
India; Malay Archi Pelago.) Union with Spain had
exposed Portugal to the hostility of the strongest naval powers of
western Europe, and had deprived it of the power to conclude an
independent peace.
Insurrections in Lisbon (1634) and Evora (1637) bore
witness to the general
discontent, but until 1640 the Spanish ascendancy
The was
never seriously endangered. In 1640 war with France and a
revolution in
Catalonia
had taxed the
of 1640. military resources of Spain to the
utmost. The royal authority in Portugal was delegated to
Margaret of Savoy, duchess
of
Mantua, whose
train of Spanish and
Italian courtiers aroused the
jealousy of the Portuguese nobles, while the harsh rule of her
secretary of
state, Miguel de Vasconcellos de Brito, provoked the resentment
of all classes. Even the Jesuits, whose influence in Portugal had
steadily increased since 1555, were now prepared to act in the
interests of
Cardinal
Richelieu, and therefore against Philip IV. A leader was found
in John, 8th duke of Braganza, who as a grandson of the duchess
Catherine was descended from Emanuel I. The duke, however, was
naturally indolent, and it was with difficulty that his ambitious
and energetic Castilian wife, D. Luiza de Guzman, obtained his
assent to the proposed revolution. He refused to take any active
part in it; but D. Luiza and her confidential adviser, Joao
Pinto Ribeiro, recruited a powerful
band of conspirators among the disaffected nobles. Their plans were
carefully elaborated, and on the 1st of December 1640 various
strategic points were seized, the few partisans of Spain who
attempted resistance were overpowered, and a provisional government
was formed under D. Rodrigo da Cunha, archbishop of Lisbon, who was
appointed lieutenantgeneral of Portugal.
6.
The Restoration: 1640-1755. - On the 13th of
December 1640 the duke of Braganza was crowned as
John IV., and on the 19th of
January 1641 the cortes formally accepted him as king. The whole
country had already declared in his favour and expelled the Spanish
garrisons, an example followed by all the Portuguese dependencies.
Thus the " Sixty Years' Captivity " came to an end and the throne
passed to the house of Braganza. But the Portuguese were well aware
that they could hardly maintain their independence without foreign
assistance, and ambassadors were at once sent to Great Britain, the
Netherlands and
France. The struggle between the Crown and the parliament prevented
Charles I. from offering
aid, but he immediately recognized John IV. as king. Richelieu and
the
states-general of the Netherlands
despatched fleets to the Tagus; but commercial rivalry in Brazil
and the East led soon afterwards to a colonial war with the Dutch,
and Portugal was left without any ally except France.
The Portuguese armies were at first successful. D. Matheus
d'Albuquerque defeated the Spaniards under the baron of Molingen at
Montijo (May 26, 1644), and throughout the reign of John IV.
(1640-1656) they suffered no serious reverse. But great anxiety was
caused by a plot to restore Spanish rule, in which the duke of
Caminha and the archbishop of Braga were implicated; and especially
by the action of Mazarin, who had assumed control of French foreign
policy in 1642. At the congress of
Munster (1643) he refused to make the
independence of Portugal a condition of 1
Philip I., II. and
III. of
Portugal.
peace between France and Spain; and in a letter dated the 4th of
October 1647 he even offered the Portuguese Crown to the duke of
Longueville - an offer
which illustrates the weakness of John IV. and the dependence of
Portugal upon France.
John IV. was succeeded by his second son, Alphonso VI.
(1656-1683), who was then aged thirteen. During the king's minority
the queen-mother, D. Luiza, acted as regent. She prosecuted the war
with vigour, and on the 14th of January 1659 a Portuguese army
commanded by D. Antonio Luiz de Menezes, count of Cantanhede,
defeated the. Spaniards under D. Luiz de Haro at Elvas. In March
1659, however, the war between France and Spain was ended by the
treaty of the
Pyrenees;
and D. Luiz de Haro, acting as the Spanish plenipotentiary,
obtained the inclusion in the treaty of a secret article by which
France undertook to give no further aid to Portugal. Neither
Louis XIV. nor Mazarin
desired the aggrandisement of Spain at the expense of their own
ally; they therefore evaded the secret article by sending Marshal
Schomberg to reorganize
the Portuguese army (1660), and by helping forward a marriage
between
Charles II. of
England and
Catherine of Braganza, the sister
of Alphonso VI. This project had been already mooted by D. Luiza,
who had foreseen the restoration of the
Stuart monarchy, and had in 1650
welcomed the exiled princes
Rupert and
Maurice at the court of John
IV. The dowry to be paid by Portugal was fixed at £500,000 and the
cession to Great Britain of
Bombay and Tangier. In May 1663 the marriage was
celebrated, and thus Great Britain took the place of France as the
active ally of Portugal.
Meanwhile, on the 20th of June 1662, the regency had been
terminated by a palace revolution. Alphonso VI. declared himself of
age and seized the royal authority; D. Luiza retired to a convent.
The king was feeble and vicious, but had wit enough to leave the
Melhor conduct of affairs to stronger
hands. D. Luiz de
Sousa e Vasconcellos, count of Castello Melhor, directed the
policy of the nation while Schomberg took charge of its defence.
The army, reinforced by British troops under the earl of Inchiquin
and by French and German volunteers or mercenaries, was led in the
field by Portuguese generals, who successfully carried out the
plans of Schomberg. On the 8th of June 1663 the count of Villa Flor
utterly defeated D. John of Austria, and retook Evora, which had
been captured by the invaders; on the 7th of July 1664 Pedro de
Magalhaes defeated the duke of Osuna at Ciudad Rodrigo; on the 17th of June 1665
the marquess of Marialva destroyed a Spanish army led by the
marquess of Carracena at the battle of Montes Claros, and
Christovao de Brito Pereira followed up this victory with another
at Villa Vigosa. The Spaniards failed to gain any compensating
advantage, and on the 13th of February 1668 peace was concluded at
Lisbon, Spain at last consenting to recognize the independence of
the Portuguese kingdom.The
signature of the
treaty of Lisbon had been preceded by another palace revolution.
Castello Melhor, hoping to secure further French support for his
country, had arranged a marriage between Alphonso VI. and Marie
Fran901se Elisabeth, daughter of Charles Amadeus of
Nemours, and grand-daughter of
Henry IV. of France. The marriage, celebrated in 1666, caused the
downfall both of Castello Melhor and of the king. Queen Marie
detested Alphonso and fell in love with his brother D. Pedro; and
after four months of a hated union she left the palace and applied
to the chapter of Lisbon
cathedral to annul her marriage on the ground
of non-consummation. D. Pedro imprisoned the king and assumed the
regency; on the 1st of January 1668 his authority was recognized by
the cortes; on the 24th of March the annulment of the queen's
marriage was pronounced and confirmed by the pope; on the 2nd of
April she married the regent. Castello Melhor was permitted to
escape to France, while Alphonso VI. was banished to
Terceira in the Azores. A
conspiracy to restore him
to the throne was discovered in 1674, and he was removed to Cintra,
where he died in 1683.
Pedro II., who had
acted as regent for fifteen years, now became king. His reign
(1683-1706) is a period of supreme importance in the economic and
constitutional history of Portugal. The goldfields of
Minas Geraes in
Brazil, discovered about 1693, brought a vast revenue in royalties
to the Crown, which was thus enabled to govern without summoning
the cortes to vote supply. In 1697 the cortes met for the last time
before the era of constitutional government. Even more important
was the change effected when the
Whig ministry of Great Britain sent John
Methuen to Lisbon to negotiate a commercial agreement. The Methuen
Treaty, signed on the 2 7th of December 1703, detached Portugal
from the French alliance, and made her for more than 50 years a
commercial and political
satellite of Great Britain. Its most
far-reaching provisions were those which admitted Portuguese wines
to the British market at a lower rate of duty than was imposed upon
French and German wines, in return for a corresponding preference
to English textiles. The demand for " Port " and " Madeira" was
thus artificially stimulated to such an extent that almost the
whole productive energy of Portugal was concentrated upon the wine
and cork trades. Other industries, including agriculture, were
neglected, and even food-stuffs were imported from Great Britain.
The disastrous economic results of the treaty were temporarily
concealed by the influx of gold from Brazil, the check upon
emigration from the
wine-growing northern provinces, and the military advantages of
alliance with Great Britain. Nor was the virtual abolition of the
cortes seriously felt at first, owing to the excellent internal
administration of Pedro II. and his minister the duke of
Cadaval.
Pedro II. had at first wished to remain neutral in the impending
struggle between
Philip V.
and the
archduke Charles,
rival claimants for the throne of Spain. But Queen Marie had died
in 1683, and in 1687 Cadaval had daughter of the elector-
palatine. Louis XIV. of
France, who had hoped through the influence of Queen Marie to
secure Portuguese support for his own grandson Philip V., realized
that this second marriage might thwart his policy, and strove to
redress the balance by creating a strong party at the court of
Lisbon. He so far succeeded that in 1700 Pedro II. recognized
Philip V. as king of Spain and in 1701 protected a French fleet in
the Tagus against the British. It was this incident that caused the
despatch of the Methuen mission and the renewal of the
Anglo-Portuguese alliance in 1703. On the 7th of March 1704 a
British fleet under
Sir George Rooke reached Lisbon,
convoying the archduke Charles and io,000 British troops, who were
joined by a Portuguese army under D. Joao de Sousa, marquess das
Minas, and at once invaded Spain.
(For the campaigns of 1704-13, see Spanish Succession, War Of The.)
In 1705 Pedro II. was compelled by failing health to appoint a
regent, and chose his sister, Catherine of Braganza, queen-
dowager of England. On the
death of the king (Dec. 9, 1706) Cadaval arranged a marriage
between his successor
John V.
(1706-1750) and the archduchess Marianna, sister of the archduke
Charles, thus binding Portugal more closely to the AngloAustrian
cause. The
strain of the war
was acutely felt in Portugal, especially in 1711, when the French
admiral DuguayTrouin sacked
Rio de Janeiro and cut off the Brazilian
treasureships. At last, on the 6th of February 1715, nearly two
years after the
treaty of Utrecht, peace between
Spain and Portugal was concluded at
Madrid.
Never was the Portuguese Crown richer than in the years
1715-1755; rarely had the kingdom prospered less. The commercial
and financial evils rife under the last kings of the Aviz dynasty
were now repeated. More gold had been discovered in
Matto Grosso,
diamonds in Minas Geraes. As in the 16th century immense quantities
of bullion were imported by the treasury, and were lavished upon
war, luxury and the Church, while agriculture and manufactures
continued to decline, and the countryside was depopulated by
emigration to Brazil. John V. was a spendthrift and a
bigot. He gave and
lent enormous sums to successive popes, and at the
bidding of
Clement XI.
he joined a " crusade " against the Turks in which his ships helped
to win a naval action off Cape Matapan (1717). For these services
he received the title of
Fidelissimus, " Most Faithful ";
"
Majesty " had already been
adopted by John IV. instead of the medieval "
Highness," and the new style was intended to
place the king of Portugal on an equality with his Most Christian
Majesty of France and his Most Catholic Majesty of Spain. John V.
was also empowered to create a multitude of new ecclesiastical
dignities, and the archbishop of Lisbon was granted the rank and
style of Patriarch
ex officio. To the
patriarchate was appended a Sacred College of 24 prelates, who were
privileged to officiate in the
scarlet robes of cardinals, while the patriarch wore the
vestments of a second
pope. Though regiments were disbanded, fleets put out of commission
and fortresses dismantled to save the cost of their upkeep, the
Crown paid nearly 10o,000 yearly for the maintenance of this new
hierarchy, and squandered untold wealth on the erection of churches
and monasteries. In the church of Sao Roque in Lisbon, the
decoration of a single
chapel
measuring 17 ft. by 12 ft. cost 225,00o; the expenditure on the
convent-palace of Mafra (q.v.) exceeded £4,000,000.
John V. was succeeded by his son
Joseph (
1 75 0 - 1 777). Five
years afterwards Portugal was overtaken by the tremendous disaster
of the Lisbon earthquake (see
Lisbon), which, as
Oliveira Martins
justly observes, was " more than a
cataclysm of nature; it was a moral
revolution." It brought the Restoration period to an end (1755).
Throughout that period the monarchy had occupied a precarious
position, dependent until' 1668 for its very existence, and after
1668 for its stability, on foreign support. Its policy had been
moulded to suit France or Great Britain, while its internal
administration had normally been directed by the Church. The cortes
had grown obsolete; the feudal aristocracy were become courtiers.
Once more, as in 1580, Portugal was governed by ecclesiastics in
the name of an absolute monarch; once more, as in 1580, the chief
strength of the ecclesiastical party was the Society of Jesus,
which still controlled the
conscience and mind of the nation and of its
nominal rulers, through the
confessional and the schools.
7.
The Reform of the Monarchy: 1755-1826. - The unity
of Portuguese history is hard to perceive in the years which
witnessed the rise and fall of the Pombaline regime, the reign of
the mad queen Maria, the Peninsular War and the subsequent
chaos of revolutionary intrigue. At
first sight it seems absurd to characterize this period of
despotism ending in war, ruin and anarchy as a period of reform.
Nevertheless, it is possible to trace through the apparent chaos an
uninterrupted movement from absolutism to representative
institutions. Pombal liberated the monarchy from clerical
domination, and thus unwittingly opened the
door to those " French principles," or democratic
ideas, which spread rapidly after his downfall in
1 777 .
The destruction of an obsolete political system, begun by Pombal,
was completed by the Peninsular War; while French invaders and
British governors together quickened among the Portuguese a new
consciousness of their nationality, and a new desire for political
rights, which rendered inevitable the change to constitutional
monarchy.
Two days after the accession of King Joseph, Sebastiao
Jose
de Carvalho e Mello, better known as the marquess of Pombal
(q.v.), was appointed secretary of state for foreign affairs and
war. In a few months he gained an ascendancy
ti ?
over the king's mind which lasted until the end of the reign, and
was strengthened by the courage and wisdom shown by Pombal at the
time of the great earthquake. His policy was to strengthen the
monarchy and to use it for the furtherance of a comprehensive
scheme of reform. Beginning with finance and commerce, he reversed
the bullionist policy of his predecessors and reorganized the
entire system of taxation. He sought to undo the worst consequences
of the Methuen treaty by the creation of national industries,
establishing a
gunpowder
factory and a sugar refinery in 1751, a silk industry in 1752,
wool, paper and
glass factories
after 1759. Colonial development was fostered, and the commercial
dependence of Portugal upon induced the king to marry Maria
Sophia de Neuberg, Great Britain
was reduced, by the formation of chartered companies, the first of
which (1753) was given control of the Algarve sardine and tunny
fisheries. The Oldembourg Company (1754) received a monopoly of
trade with the Portuguese colonies in the East; extensive
monopolist rights were also conceded to the Path and
Maranhao Company (1755) and
the
Pernambuco and
Parahyba Company (1759). In
Lisbon a chamber of commerce (
Junta do commercio) was
organized in 1756 to replace an older association of merchants, the
ilIeza dos homens de negocio, which had attacked the Path
Company; and in the same year the
Alto Douro Company was formed to control the
port-wine trade and to break the monopoly enjoyed by a
syndicate of British wine
merchants. This company met with strong opposition, culminating in
a rising at Oporto (February 1757), which was savagely
suppressed.
Both his commercial policy and his desire to strengthen the
Crown brought Pombal into conflict with the Church and the
aristocracy. In 1751 he had made all sentences passed by the
Inquisition subject to revision by the Crown. The liberation of all
slaves in
Para and Maranhao except
negroes (1755), and the creation of the Path Company, were
prejudicial to the interests of the Jesuits, whose administrative
authority over the Indians of Brazil was also curtailed. Various
charges were brought against the Society by Pombal, and in
September 1759, after five years of heated controversy (see
JEsuITs), he published a
decree of expulsion against all its members in
the Portuguese dominions. His power at court had previously been
strengthened by the so-called Tavora plot. The marquess and
marchioness of Tavora and their two sons, with the duke of Aveiro,
the count of Atouguia and other noblemen, were accused of
complicity in an attempt upon the life of King Joseph (September
1758). Pombal appointed a special tribunal to
judge the case; many of the accused, including
those already mentioned, were found guilty and executed; and an
attempt was made to implicate the Jesuits. Pombal's enemies
declared that he himself had organized the attack upon the king, in
such a manner as to throw suspicion upon his political opponents
and to gain credit for himself. This
accusation was not proved, but the history
of the Tavora plot remains extremely obscure. The expulsion of the
Jesuits involved Portugal in a dispute with Pope
Clement XIII.; in
June 1760 the papal
nuncio was
ordered to leave Lisbon, and diplomatic relations with the Vatican
were only resumed after the condemnation of the Jesuits by
Clement XIV., in July
1773.
His victory over the Jesuits left Pombal free to develop his
plans
fox reform. He devoted himself
especially to education and defence. A school of commerce was
founded in 1759; in 1760 the censorship of books was transferred
from an ecclesiastical to a lay tribunal; in 1761 the former Jesuit
college in Lisbon was converted into a college for the sons of
noblemen; in 1768 a royal printing-press was established; in 1772
Pombal provided for a complete system of primary and secondary
education, entailing the foundation of 837 schools. He founded a
college of art in Mafra; he became visitor of Coimbra University,
recast its statutes and introduced the teaching of natural science.
Funds for these reforms were to a great extent provided out of the
sequestrated property of the Jesuits; Pombal also effected great
economies in internal administration. He abolished the distinction
between Old and New Christians, and made all Portuguese subjects
eligible to any office in the state. Farreaching reforms were at
the same time carried out in the army, navy and
mercantile marine. In
1760 Admiral Boscawen had violated Portuguese
neutrality by burning four French ships off
Lagos; Pombal protested and the British government apologized, but
not before the military weakness of Portugal had been demonstrated.
Two years later, when the Family Compact involved Portugal in a war
with Spain, Pombal called in Count William of
Lippe-Biickeburg to reorganize the army, which
was reinforced by a British contingent under Brigadier-General
John Burgoyne, and
was increased from 5000 to 50,000 men. The Spaniards were at first
successful, and captured Braganza and Almeida; but they were
subsequently defeated at Villa Velha and Valencia de Alcantara, and
the Portuguese fully held their own up to the signature of peace at
Fontainebleau,
in February 1763. Towards the close of the reign, a long-standing
controversy with Spain as to the frontier between Brazil and the
Spanish colonies threatened a renewal of the war; but in this
crisis Pombal was deprived of power by the death of King Joseph
(Feb. 20, 1 777) and the accession of his daughter Maria I.
The queen was married to her uncle, who became king consort as
Pedro III. Pombal's dismissal, brought about by the influence of
the queen-mother Mariana
Victoria,
Maria L,
did not involve an immediate reversal of his policy.
Pedro
III. The controversy with Spain was amicably settled by the
treaty of San Ildefonso (1777); and further industrial and
educational reforms were inaugurated, chief among them being the
foundation, in 1780, of the
Royal Academy of Sciences. Queen Maria,
who had previously shown signs of religious mania, became wholly
insane after 1788, owing to the deaths of Pedro III. (May 1786), of
the crown prince D. Joseph, and of her
confessor, the inquisitor-general D. Ignacio
de San Caetano. Her second son, D. John, assumed the conduct of
affairs in 1792, although he did not take the title of regent until
1799. Meanwhile a two-
fold
reaction - on one side clericalist, on the other democratic - had
set in against the reforms of Pombal. D. John told
William
Beckford in 1786 that " the kingdom belonged to the
monks," and his consort Carlota
Joaquina, daughter of
Charles IV. of Spain, exercised a powerful
influence in favour of the Church. But new ideas had been
introduced with the new system of education, and the inevitable
revolt against absolutism had resulted in the formation of a
Radical party, which sympathized with the Revolution in France and
carried on an active propaganda through the numerous masonic lodges
which were in fact political clubs. D. John became alarmed, and the
intendant of
police in Lisbon, D. Diogo
Ignacio de Pina Manique, organized an elaborate system of espionage
which led to the imprisonment or exile of many harmless
enthusiasts.
From similar motives, a treaty of alliance with Spain was signed
at
Aranjuez in March 1
793; 5000 Portuguese troops were sent to assist in a Spanish
invasion of France; a Portuguese
squadron joined the British Mediterranean
with Spain, fleet. But in July 1795 Spain concluded a
peace with the French republic from which Portugal, as
Great the ally of Great Britain, was deliberately
excluded. In 1796 Spain declared war upon Great Britain, and in
1793 1806. 1 797 a secret convention for the
partition of Portugal was
signed by the French ambassador in Madrid, General Perignon, and by
the Spanish minister Godoy. D. John appealed for help to Great
Britain, which sent him 6000 men, under Sir
Charles Stuart, and a subsidy
of £ 200,000. Though Spain, through the influence of D. John's
father-in-law Charles IV., still remained neutral, a state of war
between Portugal and France existed until 1799. D. John then
reopened negotiations with
Napoleon, and Lucien
Bonaparte was sent to
dictate terms in Madrid. But D. John dared not consent to close the
harbours of Portugal against British ships. England was the chief
market for Portuguese wine and grain; and the long Portuguese
littoral was at the
mercy of the
British navy. Compelled to choose between fighting on land and
fighting at sea, D. John rejected the demands of Lucien Bonaparte,
and on the 10th of February 1801 declared war upon Spain. His
territories were at once invaded by a FrancoSpanish army, and on
the 6th of June 180r he was forced to conclude the peace of
Badajoz, by which he ceded the frontier fortress of Olivenza to
Spain, and undertook to pay 20,000,000 francs to Napoleon and to
exclude British ships from Portuguese ports. Napoleon was
dissatisfied with these terms, and although he ultimately ratified
the treaty, he sent General Lannes to Lisbon as his ambassador,
instructing him to humiliate the Portuguese and if possible to goad
them into a renewal of the war. The same policy was continued by
General Junot, who succeeded Lannes in 1804. Junot required D. John
to declare war upon Great Britain, but this demand was not
immediately pressed owing to the preoccupation of Napoleon with
greater affairs, and in October 1805 Junot left Portugal.
By his
Berlin decree of the
21st of November 1806 Napoleon required all continental states to
close their ports to British ships. As Portugal again refused to
obey, another secret Franco-
The Spanish treaty was signed
at Fontainebleau on the 27th of October 1807, providing for the
partition
War. of Portugal. Entre-Minho-e-Douro was to be
given to
Louis II. of
Etruria in exchange for his
Italian kingdom; Algarve and Alemtejo were to form a separate
principality for Godoy; the remaining provinces were to be
garrisoned by French troops until a general peace should be
concluded. To give effect to these terms, General Junot hastened
westward across Spain, at the head of 30,000 French soldiers and a
large body of Spanish auxiliaries. So rapid were his movements that
there was no time to organize effective resistance. On the 2 9 th
of November D. John, acting on the advice of
Sir Sidney Smith, British
naval commander in the Tagus, appointed a council of regency and
sailed for Brazil, convoyed by Sir Sidney Smith's squadron. For a
detailed account of the subsequent military operations, see
Peninsular
War.
Junot, who was everywhere well received by the Portuguese
democrats, entered Lisbon at the end of November 1807. He assumed
command of the Portuguese army, divided
by the kingdom
into military governments, and, on the 1st of February 1808
announced that the Braganza
1807- dynasty had forfeited
its right to the throne. He him
August self hoped to
succeed D. John, and sought to conciliate the Portuguese by
reducing the requisition demanded by Napoleon from 40,000,000
francs to 20,000,000. But the action of the French troops in
occupying the fortresses of northern Spain provoked in May 1808 a
general rising in that country, which soon spread to Portugal. The
Spanish garrison in Oporto expelled the French governor and
declared for the Braganzas, compelling Junot to march towards the
north. He left Lisbon under the control of a regency, headed by the
bishop of Oporto, who applied to Great Britain for help, promoted
an insurrection against the French, and organized
juntas
(committees) of government in the larger towns. On the 1st of
August 1808 Sir Arthur
Wellesley, with 9000 British troops, landed
at Figueira da Foz. He defeated a French division at Rolica ("
Roleia ") on the 17th, and on the 21st won a victory over Junot at
Vimeiro ("Vimiera"). Fearing an attack by Portuguese auxiliaries
and the arrival of British reinforcements under Sir
John Moore, Junot signed
the convention of Cintra by which, on the 30th of August 1808, he
agreed to evacuate Portugal (see
Wellington). The regency appointed by D.
John was now reconstituted and in October Sir John Moore assumed
command of all the allied troops in Portugal. From Lisbon Moore
marched north-eastward with about 3 2,000 men to assist the Spanish
armies against Napoleon; his subsequent retreat to join
Sir David Baird
in Galicia, in January 1809, diverted the pursuing army under
Napoleon to the north-west, and temporarily saved Portugal from
attack.
In February Major-General
William Carr
Beresford was given command of the Portuguese army. Organized
and disciplined by British officers, the native troops played
by Soult, a gallant part in the subsequent campaigns. In
March 1809 the second invasion of Portugal began; Soult crossed the
Galician frontier and captured Oporto, while an
auxiliary force under
General Lapisse advanced from
Salamanca. On the 22nd of April, however,
Wellesley, who had been recalled after the convention of Cintra,
landed in Lisbon. On the 12th of May he forced the passage of the
Douro, subsequently retaking Oporto and pursuing Soult into Spain.
Valuable assistance had been rendered by the Portuguese generals
Antonio da Silveira and Manoel de Brito Mousinho - the first a
leader, the second an organizer.
After the battle of
Wagram
(July 6, 1809) the French armies in the Peninsula received large
reinforcements, and
by Marshal Massena, with 120,000 men,
was ordered to operate against Portugal. He crossed the frontier in
June 181 o and besieged Almeida, which capitu-
Apr
11811. lated on the 27th of August. Wellesley, who had now
become Viscount
Wellington, opposed his march south wards,
and won a victory at Bussaco on the 27th of September; but Massena
subsequently turned the position of the allied army on the Serra de
Bussaco, and caused Wellington to fall back upon the fortified
lines which he had already constructed at Torres Vedras. Here he
stood upon the defensive until the invaders should be defeated by
starvation. The
Portuguese troops cut Massena's communications; the peasants, under
instructions from Wellington, had already laid waste their own
farms, destroyed the roads and
bridges by which Massena might retreat, and
burned their boats on the Tagus. On the 5th of March 1811, after a
winter of terrible sufferings, Massena's retreat began; he was
harassed by the allied troops all the way to Sabugal, where the
last rearguard action in Portugal took place on the 3rd of April.
The invaders retired with a loss of nearly 30,000 men; Almeida was
retaken on the 6th; and the remainder of the war was fought out on
Spanish and French soil. The Portuguese troops remained under
Wellington's command until 1814, and distinguished themselves in
many actions, notably at Salamanca and on the Nivelle.
At the
congress of Vienna (1814-1815)
Portugal was represented by three plenipotentiaries, who were
instructed to press for the retrocession of Olivenza and to oppose
the restoration of French
Guiana, which the Brazilians had conquered in
1809. Neither object was attained; and this failure, which was
attributed to the lack of British support, hastened the reaction
against British influence which had already begun. Since 1808
Portugal had theoretically been governed by the regency
representing D. John. But as the regency was corrupt and unable to
co-operate with Wellington and Beresford, the British government
had demanded that Sir Charles Stuart (son of the Sir Charles Stuart
mentioned above) should be appointed one of its members. The real
control of affairs soon afterwards passed into the strong hands of
Stuart and Beresford; and while the war lasted the Portuguese
acquiesced in what was in fact an
autocracy exercised by foreigners. In 1815,
however, they desired to resume their independence. A further cause
of dissatisfaction was the mutual jealousy of Portugal and Brazil.
The
colony claimed as high a
political status as the mother-country, and by a decree dated the
16th of January 1815 it was raised to the rank of a separate
kingdom. Thenceforward, until 1822, the Portuguese
sovereignty was styled
the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves. The
importance of this change became apparent when Queen Maria I. died
(March 1816) and D. John succeeded to the united thrones as
John VI. The king refused to
leave Brazil, partly owing to the intrigues of Carlota Joaquina,
who hoped to become queen of an independent Brazilian kingdom. Thus
Portugal, which had been almost ruined by the war, was now
humiliated by the failure of her
diplomacy at
Vienna and by her continued dependence upon
Great Britain and Brazil. The resultant discontent found expression
in the cry of " Portugal for the Portuguese " and in the demand for
a constitution.
In 1817 a military revolt (
pronunciamento) in Lisbon
was crushed by Beresford, and the leader, General Gomes Freire de
Andrade, was executed; but on the 16th of August 1820, after
Beresford had sailed to Brazil to secure the return of John VI., a
second rising took place in Oporto. It soon spread southward. A new
council of regency was established in Lisbon, the British officers
were expelled from the army; Beresford, on his return from Brazil,
was not permitted to land; a constituent assembly was summoned.
This body suppressed the Inquisition and drew up a highly
democratic constitution, by which all citizens were declared equal
before the law and eligible to any office; all class privileges
were abolished, the liberty of the Press was guaranteed, and the
government of the country was vested in a single chamber, subject
only to the suspensive veto of the Crown. So extreme a change was
disliked by most of the powers and by many Portuguese, especially
those of the clerical party. Great Britain insisted on the return
of John VI., who entrusted the government of Brazil to his elder
son D. Pedro and landed in Portugal on the 3rd of July 1821. In
1822, on the advice of
D. Pedro, he swore to obey
the constitution (thenceforward known as the " constitution of 1822
"). But his younger son, D. Miguel, and the queen, Carlota
Joaquina, refused to take the oath; and in December 1822 sentence
of banishment was pronounced against them, though not enforced.
They had many supporters at home and abroad. French troops had
invaded Spain in the interests of
Ferdinand VII. (1823), and the French
government was prepared to countenance the absolutist party in
Portugal in order to check British influence there. Another
military revolt broke out in Traz-os-Montes on the 3rd of February
1823, its leader being the count of Amarante, who was opposed to
the constitution. D. Miguel appealed to the army to " restore
liberty to their king," and the army, incensed by the loss of
Brazil (1822), gave him almost unanimous support. At this juncture
John VI., vainly seeking for a
compromise, abrogated the constitution of
1822, but appointed as his minister D. Pedro de Sousa
Holstein, count (afterwards
duke) of Palmella and leader of the " English " or constitutional
party. These half-measures did not satisfy D. Miguel, whose
soldiers seized the royal palace in Lisbon on the 30th of April
1824. Palmella was arrested, and John VI. forced to take refuge on
the British
flagship in
the Tagus. But the united action of the foreign ministers restored
the king and reinstated Palmella; the insurrection was crushed; D.
Miguel submitted and went into exile (June 1824).
In Brazil also a revolution had taken place. The Brazilians
demanded complete independence, and D. Pedro sided with them. The
Portuguese garrison of Rio de Janeiro was overpowered; on the 7th
of September 1822 D. Pedro declared the country independent, and on
the 12th of October he was proclaimed constitutional
emperor. He took no notice of
the constituent assembly in Lisbon, which on the 19th of September
had ordered him to return to Portugal on pain of forfeiting his
right to inherit the Portuguese Crown. By the end of 1823 all
Portuguese resistance to the new regime in Brazil had been
overcome.
John VI. died on the 10th of March 1826, leaving (by will) his
daughter D. Isabel Maria as regent for Pedro I. of Brazil, who now
became Pedro
IV. of Portugal. A crisis was
evidently imminent, for Portugal would not tolerate an absentee
sovereign who was far more Brazilian than Portuguese. The
unsatisfied ambition of Carlota Joaquina and the hostility between
absolutists and constitutionalists might at any moment precipitate
a civil war. To conciliate the Portuguese, Pedro IV. drew up a
charter (known as the " charter of 1826 ") which provided for
moderate parliamentary government on the British model. To
conciliate the Brazilians, he undertook (by. decree dated May 2nd
1826) to surrender the Portuguese Crown to his daughter D. Maria da
Gloria (then aged seven); but this
abdication was made contingent upon her
marriage with her uncle D. Miguel, who was first required to swear
fidelity to the charter.
8. Constitutional Government. - The charter of 1826
forms the basis of the present Portuguese constitution and the
startingpoint of modern Portuguese history. That history comprises
four periods: (a) From 1826 to 1834 the clerical and absolutist
parties led by D. Miguel united every reactionary element
throughout the kingdom in a last unsuccessful stand against
constitutional government; (b) From 1834 to 1853 the main
problem for Portuguese statesmen was whether the constitution, now
accepted as inevitable, should embody the radical ideas of 1822 or
the moderate ideas of 1826; (c) From 1853 to 1889 there
was a period of transition marked by the rise of three new parties
- Progressive, Regenerator, Republican; (d) From 1889 to
1908 the Progressives and Regenerators monopolized the control of
public affairs, but the strength of Republicanism was not to be
gauged by its representation in the cortes. At the beginning of the
10th century the question whether the monarchy should be replaced
by a republic had become a living political issue, which was
decided by the revolution of October 5, 1910.
The charter was brought to Lisbon by Sir Charles Stuart in July
1826. The absolutists had hoped that D. Pedro would abdicate
unconditionally in favour of D. Miguel, and the council of regency
at first refused to publish the charter. They were forced to do so
(July 12) by a
pronunciamento issued by D. Joao Carlos de
Saldanha de Oliveira e Daun, count
The of Saldanha and
commander of the army in Oporto. Saldanha, a prominent
constitutionalist, threatened to march on Lisbon if the regency did
not swear obedience to the charter by the 31st of July. Amid wild
enthusiasm the charter was proclaimed on that day, and on the 3rd
of August Saldanha became head of a Liberal ministry. An absolutist
counter-revolution at once
broke out in the north. It was organized by the marquess of Chaves,
and supported openly by the Church and the Miguelite majority of
the army; secret assistance was also given by Spain. As civil war
appeared imminent, Canning despatched 5000 British troops under Sir
William
Clinton to restore
order, and to disband the troops under Chaves. By March 1827
Clinton and Saidanha had secured the acceptance of the charter
throughout Portugal.
In October 1826 D. Miguel also swore to obey the charter and was
betrothed to his niece D. Maria da Gloria (Maria II.). Pedro IV.
appointed him regent in July 1827 and in February 1828 he landed in
Lisbon, where he was received with cries of " Viva D. Miguel I.,
rei absoluto! " In March he dissolved the parliament which had met
in accordance with the charter. In April the
Tory ministry under
Wellington withdrew Clinton's division, which was the mainstay of
the charter. In May D. Miguel summoned a cortes of the ancient
type, which offered him the Crown; and on the 7th of July 1828 he
took the oath as king. Saldanha, Palmella, the count of Villa Flor
(afterwards duke of Terceira), and the other constitutionalist
leaders were driven into exile, while scores of their adherents
were executed and thousands imprisoned. Austria and Spain supported
D. Miguel, who was able to dispose of the vast wealth of Carlota
Joaquina; Great Britain and France remained neutral. Only the
emperor D. Pedro and a handful of exiles upheld the cause of Maria
II., who returned to Brazil in 1829.
The Azores, although the majority of their inhabitants favoured
absolutism, now became a centre of resistance to D. Miguel. In 1828
the garrison of Angra declared
The for Maria II., endured
a siege lasting four months, and finally took refuge in the island
of Terceira,
Wars. where it was reinforced by volunteers
from Brazil and constitutionalist refugees from England and France.
In March 1829 Palmella established a regency on the island, on
behalf of Maria II.; and D. Miguel's fleet was defeated in Praia
Bay on the 12th of August. Fortune played into the hands of
Palmella, Saldanha, Villa Flor and their followers in Terceira. In
1830 a Whig ministry came into office in Great Britain; the " July
revolution " placed
Louis Philippe on the throne of France;
Carlota Joaquina, the power behind D. Miguel's throne, died on the
7th of January. The fanaticism of the clerical and absolutist
parties in Portugal (collectively termed
apostolicos) was
enhanced by recrudescence of Sebastianism. Men saw in the brutal
boor D. Miguel (q.v.) a personification of the hero-king Sebastian,
whose second advent had been expected for two and a half centuries.
In the
orgy of persecution,
outrages were committed on British and French subjects; and a
French squadron retaliated by seizing D. Miguel's fleet in the
Tagus (July 1831). In Brazil, D. Pedro abdicated (April 1831); he
determined to return to Europe and conduct in person a campaign for
the restoration of Maria II. He was received with enthusiasm by
Louis Philippe. In Great Britain Palmella raised a loan of
2,000,000 and purchased a small fleet, of which Captain Sartorius,
a retired British naval officer, was appointed admiral. In February
1832 the " Liberators," as they were styled, sailed from Belleisle
to the Azores, with D. Pedro aboard the flagship. In July they
reached Portugal and occupied Oporto, but the expected
constitutionalist rising did not take place. The country was almost
unanimous in its loyalty to D. Miguel, who had 80,000 troops
against the 650o (including 500 French and 300 British) of D.
Pedro. But the Miguelites had no navy, and no competent general.
They besieged D. Pedro in Oporto from July 1832 to July 1833, when
the duke of Terceira and Captain
Charles Napier, who had succeeded
Sartorius, effected a daring and successful diversion which
resulted in the capture of Lisbon (July 24, 1833). Maria II.
arrived from France in September. The war went in her favour,
largely owing to the brilliant generalship of Saldanha and the
financial straits to which D. Miguel was reduced. In April 1834 a
Quadruple Alliance was concluded between France, Spain, Great
Britain and the government of Maria II. The allied army defeated
the Miguelites at Asseiceira on the 16th of May, and D. Miguel
surrendered at Evora-Monte on the 24th. By the convention of
Evora-Monte he was condemned to perpetual banishment from the
Peninsula. On the 24th of September D. Pedro died. During the few
months in which he acted as regent for his daughter, he had
transformed Portugal from a semi-feudal into a modern state.
Tithes, many hereditary
privileges and all monopolies were abolished; every convent was
closed and its property nationalized; the Jesuits, who had returned
after the death of Pombal, were again expelled; the charter of 1826
was restored.
Maria II. was fifteen years old at her accession. She was twice
married - in December 1834 to Augustus, duke of Leuchtenberg, who
died four months afterwards; and in April 1836 to Ferdinand of
Saxe-Coburg, who received the title
of king consort in September 1837. Both the queen and the king
consort were strangers to Portugal, and could exercise little
control over the turbulent factions whose intrigues and
pronunciamentos made orderly government impossible. There
were three political parties: the Miguelites, who were still strong
enough to cause trouble; the Chartists, who advocated the
principles of 1826; the Septembrists, who advocated those of 1822
and took their name from the successful
coup d'etat of the
9th -T ith of September 1836. By this
coup d'etat the
constitution of 1822 was substituted for the charter of 1826; and a
Septembrist ministry under the Viscount Sft da Bandeira replaced
the Chartist ministry under Saldanha, Terceira and Palmella. A
counterrevolution, planned in the royal palace at Belem and hence
known as the
Belemzada, was frustrated in November 1836;
and in 1837 a Chartist insurrection was crushed after severe
fighting. This was known as the " War of. the Marshals, " from the
rank of the two Chartist leaders, Saldanha and Terceira. In 1839 a
moderate ministry took office, with Antonio Bermudo da Costa Cabral
as its real, though not its ostensible, head. A
pronunciamento by Costa Cabral led to the restoration of
the charter on the Toth of February 1842, and a Cabral government
was formed under the nominal leadership of Terceira. Costa Cabral,
who became count of Thomar in 1845, ruled despotically, despite
many insurrections, until May 1846, when a coalition of Miguelites,
Septembrists and Chartist malcontents drove him into exile. On this
occasion the rebellion - known as the " War of Maria da Fonte " -
proved formidable. Oporto was field by a revolutionary
junta, and Saldanha, who had become
prime minister,
persuaded the Quadruple Alliance to intervene. In June 1847 the
Oporto
junta surrendered, under promise of an
amnesty, to a combined British
and Spanish force, and the convention of Gramido (July 24, 1847)
ended the war. Saldanha was rewarded with a dukedom, and retained
office until June 1849. The dictatorial rule of his successor - the
returned exile, Thomar - provoked another successful rising on the
7th of April 1851. Thomar again fled from the country; Saldanha
again became prime minister, but at the head of a moderate
coalition. He remained in power during five years of unbroken peace
(1851-1856), and carried many useful reforms. The most important of
these was the so-called Additional Act of the 5th of July 1852,
which amended the charter of 1826 by providing for the direct
election of deputies, the decentralization of the executive, the
creation of representative municipal councils, and the abolition of
capital
punishment for political offences. Maria II. died on the T3th
of November 18J3, and was succeeded by her eldest son D. Pedro,
during whose ministry the king consort D. Ferdinand acted as
regent.
Under the brothers Pedro V. (1853-1861) and Luiz (1861-1889)
Portugal obtained a
respite
from civil strife. Both monarchs delegated the conduct of affairs
to their ministers, who constructed new railways, reformed the
educational system, and gradually improved the economic
ro
v. condition of the kingdom and its colonies. Pedro V.
came of age and assumed the government on the 16th of November
1855, in 1857 he married Princess Stephanie of
Hohenzollern. The
only political disturbance which marred the peace of his reign
arose out of the seizure of the "Charles et Georges," a French
slave-trader which was captured off Mozambique.
Napoleon III. sent a
fleet to the Tagus and demanded an
indemnity, which Portugal was compelled to
pay. In1860-1861
cholera
ravaged the whole kingdom, and especially the capital. The king
died of this disease on the nth of November 1861, and two of his
brothers, D. Ferdinand and D. John, died shortly afterwards. D.
Luiz was absent at the time, and his father D. Ferdinand again
became regent until his return, soon after which (1862) the new
king married Maria Pia, daughter of Victor Emanuel II. of Italy. In
1869 slavery was abolished in every Portuguese colony. In 1870 the
duke of Saldanha, the last survivor of the turbulent statesmen of
Queen Maria's reign, threatened an appeal to arms if the king would
not dismiss his minister, the duke of Louie, an advanced Radical
and freemason, whose influence, dating from the reign of Pedro V.,
was viewed with disfavour by Saldanha, as well as by more
conservative politicians. The king yielded; and Saldanha himself
became prime minister, retaining office until 1874, when, at the
age of 80, he was sent as ambassador to London. He had been by far
the most influential man in Portugal, and his death in 1876 was
followed by a regrouping of political parties.
The party of the Regenerators (
Regeneradores), formed
in 1852 out of a coalition of Septembrists and Chartists, had
already been disintegrated. Its more radical elepolitical ments,
known at first as the Historic Left, -were in parties. 1877
reorganized as the Progressives (
Progressistas). Its more
conservative elements carried on the tradition and retained the
name of the original Regenerators. Besides these two monarchist
parties - the Regenerators or Conservative right and the
Progressives or Constitutional left - a strong
Republican
party was formed in 1881. There were also the Miguelites,
active but impotent intriguers; and the advocates of Iberian union,
who became prominent in 1867, 1869, 1874, and especially in July
1872, when many wellknown politicians were implicated in a
fantastic conspiracy for the establishment of an Iberian republic.
Portuguese nationalism was too strong for these advocates of union
with Spain, whose propaganda was discredited as soon as any
national interest was seriously endangered. This was the case in
1872, when Great Britain claimed the southern part of
Delagoa Bay. The claim
was submitted to the
arbitration of M.
Thiers, the French president, whose successor,
Marshal Macmahon, delivered an award in favour of Portugal on the
19th of April 1875 (see
Delagoa Bay).
King Luiz died on the i 9th of October 1889, and was succeeded
by his son D. Carlos (q.v.). Colonial affairs had for some time
received close attention. In 1885 Portugal recog-
Colonial
nized the
Congo Free State, and admitted its
Affairs: sovereignty over the north bank of the Lower
Congo, although, in an unratified treaty of 1884, Great Britain had
recognized both banks of the river as Portuguese territory. In 1886
Germany, France and Portugal defined by treaty the limits of their
adjacent
spheres of influence, and on the
26th of March 1887 Macao, hitherto leased to Portugal, was formally
ceded by the Chinese government. In 1889 a
resolution unanimously adopted by both
chambers invited the ministry, of which
Jose de Castro was
president and Barros Gomes foreign minister, to press forward the
territorial claims of Portugal in East and Central Africa. Shortly
after the accession of King Carlos this active policy led to a
dispute with Great Britain (see Africa, § 5). A Portuguese force
under Major
Serpa Pinto
had invaded the
II., - Shire highlands in order to
forestall their
annexation by the British, and the British
government demanded
satisfaction. Public opinion rendered
compliance difficult until a British squadron was despatched to the
mouth of the Tagus, and the British minister presented an
ultimatum (Jan. r, 1890),
requiring the withdrawal of all Portuguese forces from the Shire.
Barros Gomes was then able to yield under protest; but disturbances
at once broke out in Lisbon and Oporto, and the ministry resigned.
A coalition government took office on the 14th of January, with
Serpa Pimentel as prime minister and J. HintzeRibeiro as foreign
minister. The king, in a letter to Queen Victoria, declined for the
time being to receive the Order of the Garter, which had just been
offered him, and on the 6th of February the government addressed a
circular letter to the powers, proposing to submit the issues in
dispute to a European conference. Meanwhile a Republican rising was
suppressed in Lisbon, and many suspected officers were degraded. On
the 10th of August an Anglo-Portuguese agreement was negotiated in
London, but the cortes refused to ratify it. The ministry therefore
resigned, and on the 14th of October Abreu e Sousa fomed a new
cabinet, which arranged with Great Britain a
modus vivendi
for six months, pending the conclusion of another agreement. The
British government was ready to make concessions, but more than one
collision took place between Portuguese troops in Manica and the
forces of the British
South Africa Company. The defeat of the
Portuguese was the chief cause of a serious military rising in
Oporto, which broke out on the 30th of January 1891. The
suppression of this rising so far enhanced the prestige of the
cabinet that the cortes forthwith approved the convention with
Great Britain; and the definitive treaty, by which Portugal
abandoned all claim to a trans-African dominion, was ratified by
the cortes on the 28th of May. Relations with Great Britain,
however, remained far from cordial until the celebration of the
fourth
centenary of
Vasco da Gama's voyage to India, afforded the opportunity for a
rapprochement in 1898.
The extravagant management of the railways guaranteed by the
state had entailed such heavy deficits that the payment of
Financial the
coupon
of the railway state loan, due on the
Crisis of 2nd of
January 1892 had to be suspended. Thus
1892. arose a
serious financial crisis, involving three changes of ministry. In
May the Portuguese government committed a formal act of
bankruptcy by issuing a
decree reducing the amount then due to foreign bondholders by
two-thirds. The bondholders' committees, supported by some of the
powers concerned, protested against this illegal action. A
compromise was at last arranged by Hintze-Ribeiro, who assumed
office in February 1893 as head of a Progressive government. His
cabinet promised only slightly better terms to the foreign
bondholders, but it relieved the financial tension in some degree;
and by coming to an agreement with Germany in East Africa and with
Great Britain in South Africa as to the delimitation of frontiers,
he minimized the risks of conflict with either country.
Portugal observed neutrality on the outbreak of the AngloBoer
War, but the permission it conceded to the British
consul at
Lourenco
Marques to search for
contraband of war among goods imported
there, and the free passage accorded to an armed force under
General Carrington from Beira through Portuguese territory to
Rhodesia, were vehemently
attacked in the Press and at public meetings. The award of the
Swiss arbitrators in the matter of the Delagoa Bay railway was
given in 1900 (see
Lourenco Marques). Portugal was
condemned to pay 15,314,000 francs
compensation; and this sum (less than was
expected) was immediately raised by loan from the Portuguese
Tobacco Company.
A law of the 8th of August 1901 regulated the conditions of
election to the lower house, thus ending a long series of
parliamentary reforms. The most important of these had provided for
the gradual extinction of the right of hereditary peers to sit in
the upper house (July 24, 1885), had reduced the number of deputies
and fixed the qualifications required for the exercise of the
franchise (March 28, 1895); and had abolished the elective branch
in the upper house (Sept. 25, 1895). These changes left untouched
the most serious evil in Portuguese
constt- public life.
The two great parties, Progressives and
tutional
Regenerators, were largely composed of professional
Changes, politicians whose votes were determined by their
1885-1901. private interests. Skilful manipulation of the
electoral returns enabled these two parties to hold office in
fairly regular rotation; hence arose the popular
nickname of
rotativos, applied to Progressives and Regenerators alike.
The same methods enabled them to obstruct the election of
Republican and Independent candidates.
Under such a system of government it was natural that economic
issues should still dominate Portuguese politics at the beginning
of the 10th century. Year by year
Republican- the
budget showed a deficit, and the
indebtedness
ism and of the state increased. A large
proportion of the
the Army. expenditure was unproductive,
corruption was rife in the public services, and the poverty of the
overtaxed peasant and
artisan classes gave rise to sporadic outbreaks
of violence. In 1902 the students at Coimbra and Oporto organized
an agitation against the proposed conversion of the gold debt; and
anti-clerical riots, followed by a strike, rendered necessary the
proclamation of
martial
law in Aveiro. In January 1903 an insurrection of peasants
armed with scythes took place at Fundao; the imposition of a new
market tax provoked riots at Coimbra in March; a serious strike of
weavers took place at Oporto in June. In the same year the general
distress was intensified
by the failure of the Rural and
Mortgage Bank of Brazil. In these
circumstances Republicanism rapidly gained ground. Its real
strength was masked by the system which enabled any ministry in
power to control the election of candidates to the cortes. In April
1806, for example, only one Republican deputy was returned,
although it was notorious that the Republican party could command a
majority in many constituencies. Though the army as a whole was
monarchist, certain regiments had become imbued with revolutionary
ideals, which were fortified by the unwise employment of soldiers
and sailors for the suppression of industrial disputes. During the
weavers' strike the cruiser " Rainha D. Amelia " was converted into
a temporary
prison, and at
Fundao, Aveiro and elsewhere troops had been ordered to fire on men
with whom they sympathized. In November 1902, while King Carlos was
in England, a military rising was organized in Oporto, but never
took place. On the 23rd of April 1903 a body of
cavalry and artillery mutinied in Lisbon and
proclaimed a republic; but they were overpowered and ultimately
transported to Mozambique. Such incidents, unimportant in
themselves, were symptoms of a dangerous state of public opinion,
which was debarred from expression in the cortes.
The constitution empowered the sovereign to veto any bill, to
dissolve or prorogue the cortes, and to govern by means of
ministerial decrees. The use of these extraordinary
The
Dic- powers would be a
breach of constitutional practice,
tatorship, but not of law. King Carlos had already been
1906-1908. criticized for alleged excessive interferences
in politics. An experiment in government by decree had been made in
May - October 1894; it was repeated in September 1905, when the
king consented to prorogue the cortes until January 1906 in order
to postpone discussion of the terms upon which the tobacco monopoly
was to be allocated. A general election, in February 1906, was
followed by three changes of ministry, the last of which, on the
19th of May, inaugurated the regime known in Portugal as the
dictadura or dictatorship. JoaoFranco, the new prime
minister, was conspicuous among Portuguese politicians for his
integrity, energy and courage; he intended to reform the national
finances and administration - by constitutional means, if possible.
The cortes, opened on the 6th of June 1906, was dissolved on the
14th; another election took place, preceded by an official
announcement that on this occasion all votes would be fairly
counted; and the
Franquistas or " New Regenerators "
obtained a majority. When the cortes met, on the 29th of September,
the opposition accused King Carlos of complicity in grave financial
scandals. It was admitted that he had borrowed largely from the
treasury, on the
security
of his civil list, and the Republican deputies accused him of
endeavouring to assign the tobacco monopoly to one of his own
foreign creditors, in settlement of the debt. Franco organized a
coalition in defence of the Crown, but in January 1907 business in
the cortes was brought to a standstill and many sittings ended in
uproar. The attacks on the king were repeated at the trial of the
poet Guerra Junqueiro, who was indicted for
lese-majeste.
All parties believed that the ministry would fall, and the
rotativos prepared once more to divide the spoils of
office, when, on the 2nd of May 1907, Joao Franco reconstructed his
cabinet, secured the dissolution of the cortes and announced that
certain bills still under discussion would receive the force of
law. His partisans in the press hailed the advent of a second
Pombal, and their enthusiasm was shared by many enlightened
Portuguese, who had previously held aloof from politics but now
rallied to the support of an honest
dictator. Backed by these forces, as well as
by the king and the army, Franco effected some useful reforms. But
his opponents included not only the Republicans, the professional
politicians and those officials who feared inquiry, but also the
magistracy, the district and municipal councils, and the large body
of citizens who still believed in parliamentary government. The
existing debt owed by D. Carlos to the nation was assessed at f
154,000. This sum was ostensibly paid by the transference to the
treasury of the royal yacht " Amelia " and certain palaces; but the
cost and upkeep of the " Amelia " had been paid with public money,
while the palaces had long been maintained as state property. These
transactions, though perhaps necessary to save the credit of the
sovereign at the least possible cost, infuriated the opposition.
Newspapers and
politicians openly advocated rebellion; Franco had recourse to
coercion. Seditious journals
were suppressed; gaols and fortresses were crowded with prisoners;
the upper house, which was hostile to the dictator, was deprived of
its judicial powers and reconstituted on a less democratic basis
(as in 1826); the district and municipal councils were dissolved
and replaced by administrative commissions nominated by the Crown
(Jan. I, 1908).
The ministerial press from time to time announced the discovery
of sensational plots against the king and the dictator. It is,
however, uncertain whether the assassination of King Carlos and the
crown prince (see
Carlos
I.),
Carlos. on the 1st of February 1908, was part of
a widely organized conspiracy; or whether it was the act of an
isolated band of fanatics, unconnected with any political party.
The republican press applauded the
murder; the professional politicians benefited
by it. But the
regicide
Buiga and his associates probably acted on their own initiative.
The immediate results were the accession of Prince Manoel or Manuel
(Emanuel II.) to the throne and the resignation of Franco, who
sailed for Genoa. A coalition ministry, representing all the
monarchist parties, was formed under the
presidency of Admiral Ferreira do Amaral.
The administrative commissions appointed by Franco were dissolved;
the civil list was reduced; the upper house was reconstituted. A
general election took place; in April the cortes met and the
balance of
power between Progressives and Regenerators was restored. On
the 6th of May 1908 D. Manoel swore to uphold the constitution and
was acclaimed king by the cortes. His uncle D. Affonso (b. 1865)
took a similar oath as crown prince on the 22nd of March 1910.
The failure of the dictatorship and the inability of the
monarchists to agree upon any common policy had discredited the
existing regime, and at the general election of August 1910 the
Republican candidates in Lisbon
1910. and Oporto were
returned by large majorities. On the 3rd of October the murder of a
distinguished Republican physician, Dr Miguel Bombarda,
precipitated the revolution which had been organized to take place
in Lisbon ten days later. The Republican soldiers in Lisbon, aided
by armed civilians and by the warships in the Tagus, attacked the
loyal garrison and municipal guards, shelled the Necessidades
Palace, and after severe street-fighting (Oct. 4th-6th) became
masters of the capital. The king escaped to Ericeira, and thence,
with the other members of the royal family, to
Gibraltar. Soon afterwards they travelled
undisturbed to England, where the king was received by the duke of
Orleans. Throughout Portugal
the proclamation of a republic was either welcomed or accepted
without further resistance. A provisional government was formed
under the presidency of Dr Theophilo Braga (b. 1843), a native of
the Azores, who had since 1865 been prominent among Portuguese men
of letters (see
Literature, below). The new government
undertook to carry out part of the Republican
programme before summoning a constituent
assembly to remodel the constitution. Among its most important acts
were the expulsion of the religious congregations which had
returned after 1834, the nationalization of their property, and the
abolition, by decree, of the council of state, the upper house and
all hereditary titles or privileges. The Republican programme also
included the separation of Church and State, and the concession of
local autonomy (on federal lines, if possible) to the provinces and
colonies of Portugal.
Bibliography. - I. Sources. - There are separate articles on the
Portuguese 15thand 16th-century chroniclers, G. E. de Azurara, J.
de Barros, D. de Goes, F. Lopes, J. Osorio da Fonseca, R. de Pina,
G. de Resende and L. de Sousa, and on the 19th-century historians,
A. Herculano and J. P. Oliveira Martins. The most important
collections of documents are
Colleccdo dos livros
ineditos, &c., ed. J. F.
Correa da Serra
(
I i vols., Lisbon, 1790-1804);
Quadro
elementar das relac es politicas e diplomatical de Portugal,
ed. first by the Viscount de Santarem (1856-1861) and afterwards,
under the title of
Corpo diplomatico portuguez, by L. A.
Rebello da Silva (vols. i.-iv.), J. J. da Silva Mendes Leal
(v.-ix.) and J. C. de Freitas Moniz (x., &c.). The
Colleccdo de tratados, &c. (30 vols., Lisbon,
1856-1879), was ed. successively by Viscount J. F. Borges de Castro
and J. Judice Biker; it was continued by the Royal Academy as the
Nova colleccdo de tratados (2 vols., Lisbon, 1890-1891).
See also
Portugaliae monumenta historica, ed. A. Herculano
and J. J. da Silva Mendes Leal (12 parts, Lisbon, 1856-1897); Diogo
Barbosa Machado,
Bibliotheca lusitana (4 vols., Lisbon,
1741-1759); Innocencio da Silva and (after vol. x.) P. W. de Brito
Aranha,
Diccionario bibliographico portuguez (Lisbon,
1858, &c.).
Periodicals containing valuable historical
matter are the
Archivo historico portuguez (Lisbon, 1903,
&c.), the
Boletim of the Lisbon Geographical Society
(1873, &c.), and
Portugalia (Oporto, 1898,
&c.).
2. General Histories. - The
Historia de Portugal, by J.
P. Oliveira Martins (2 vols., 4th ed., Lisbon, 1901), is a series
of brilliant impressionist studies. There is a popular illustrated
Historia de Portugal, by A. Ennes, M. Pinheiro Chagas and
others, in 37 parts (Lisbon, 1877-1883). See also H.
Morse Stephens,
Portugal,
4th ed., with additional chapter on the reign of D. Carlos, by
Martin Hume (London, 1908); E. MacMurdo,
History of
Portugal (2 vols., London, 1888-1889); H. Schaefer,
Geschichte von Portugal (5 vols., 2nd ed., Hamburg,
1874).
3. Special Periods. - A. Herculano's classic
Historia de
Portugal (4 vols., Lisbon, 1846-1853) covers the period up to
1279. H. da Gama Barros,
Historia da administracao publica em
Portugal nos seculos XII. a X V. (2 vols., Lisbon, 1895-1896)
is a scientific study of the highest value. For the
periods1415-1460and 1750-1777, see the authorities quoted under
Henry The Navigator, and Pombal. A critical bibliography for the
period1460-1580is given by K. G. Jayne, in
Vasco da Gama,
&c. (London, 1910). For later history, see L. A. Rebello da
Silva,
Historia de Portugal nos seculos XVII. e XVIII. (5
vols., Lisbon, 1860-1871); J. M. Latino Coelho,
Historia de
Portugal desde os fins do XVIII. seculo ate 1814 (3 vols., Lisbon, 1874-1891); the
authorities cited under
Peninsular War; S. J. da Luz Soriano,
Historia da guerraem Portugal (19 vols., Lisbon,
1866-1890); J. P. Oliveira Martins,
Portugal contemporaneo
(1826-1868), (2 vols., 4th ed., Lisbon, 1906); J. L. Freire de
Carvalho,
Memorias ... para ... a usurpacao de D. Miguel
(4 vols., Lisbon, 1841-1849); Sir C.
Napier,
An Account of the War .... between
D. Pedro and D. Miguel (2 vols., London, 1835); W. Bollaert,
The Wars of Succession of Portugal and Spain, from 1821 to
1840 (2 vols., London, 1870). (K. G. J.)
Literature The Portuguese language can be
most conveniently described in relation to the other languages of
the Peninsula (see
Spain:
Language). Portuguese literature is distinguished by the
wealth and variety of its lyric poetry, by its primacy in bucolic
verse and
prose, by the number
of its epics and historical books, by the relative slightness of
the epistolary element, and by the almost complete absence of the
memoir. Rich as its
romanceiro is, its volume is far less
than the Spanish, but the
cancioneiros remain to prove
that the early love songs of the whole Peninsula were written in
Portuguese, while the primitive prose redaction of
Amadis,
the prototype of all romances of
chivalry, was almost certainly made in
Portugal, and a native of the same country produced in the
Diana of Montemor (Montemayor)
the masterpiece of the
pastoral novel.
The Lusiads may be
called at once the most successful epic cast in the classical
mould, and the most national of
poems, and the great historical monuments and books of travel of
the 16th and 17th centuries are worthy of a nation of explorers who
carried the banner of the Quinas to the ends of the earth. On the
other hand Portugal gave birth to no considerable dramatist from
the time of
Gil
Vicente, in the 16th century, until that of Garrett in the
19th, and it has failed to develop a national drama.
Its geographical position and history have rendered Portugal
very dependent for intellectual stimulus and literary culture on
foreign countries, and writers on Portuguese literature are wont to
divide their subjects into periods corresponding to the literary
currents from abroad which have modified its evolution. To
summarize, the first literary activity of Portugal was derived from
Provence, and
Provencal taste ruled for
more than a century; the poets of the 15th century imitated the
Castilians, and the 16th saw the triumph of Italian or classical
influence. Spain again imposed its literary standards and models in
the 17th century, France in the 18th, while the Romantic movement
reached Portugal by way of England and France; and those countries,
and in less degree Germany, have done much to shape the literature
of the 10th century. Yet as regards the Peninsula, the literatures
of Portugal and Castile act and react on one another and if the
latter gave much, she also received much, for nearly every
Portuguese author of renown from 1450 until the 18th century,
except
Antonio
Ferreira, wrote in Spanish, and some, like Jorge de Montemor
and Manoel de Mello, produced masterpieces in that language and are
numbered .as Spanish
classics. Again, in no country was the victory
of the Italian Renaissance and the classical revival so complete,
so enduring.
But notwithstanding all its dependence on classical and foreign
authors, Portuguese literature has a distinct individuality which
appears in the romanceiro, in the songs named
cantares de
amigo of the cancioneiros, in the
Chronicles of
Fernao Lopes, in the
Historia tragico-maritima, in the plays of Gil Vicente, in
the bucolic verse and prose of the early 16th century, in the
Letters of
Marianna Alcoforado and, above all,
in
The Lusiads. Early Period. - Though no literary
documents belonging to the first century of Portuguese history have
survived, there is, evidence that an indigenous popular poetry both
Poetry sacred and profane existed, and while Provencal influences
moulded the manifestations of poetical talent for nearly two
hundred years, they did not originate them. The close relations
that prevailed between the reigning houses of Portugal, Provence
and Aragon, cemented by intermarriages, introduced a knowledge of
the gay science, but it reached Portugal by many other ways - by
the crusaders who came to help in fighting the Moors, by the
foreign prelates who occupied Peninsular sees, by the monastic and
military orders who founded establishments in Portugal, by the
visits of individual singers to court and baronial houses, but
chiefly perhaps by the pilgrims who streamed from every country
along the Frankish way to the far-famed shrine of Santiago de Compostela. Already by the
end of the 12th century the lyric poetry of the troubadours had
found cultivators in Portugal, and a few compositions which have
come down to us bear a date
slightly anterior to the year 1200. One of the earliest singers was
D. Gil Sanches, an illegitimate son of Sancho I., and we possess a
cantar de amigo in Galician-Portuguese, the first literary vehicle
of the whole Peninsula, which appears to be the work of Sancho
himself, and addressed to his concubine, A. Ribeirinha. The
preAlphonsine period to which these men belong runs from 1200 to
1245 and produced little of moment, but in 1248 the accession of
King Alphonso III., who had lived thirteen years in France,
inaugurated a time of active and rich production which is
illustrated in the Cancioneiro da Ajuda, the oldest collection of
Peninsular verse. The apogee of palace poetry dates from 1275 to
1280, when young King Diniz displayed his exceptional talents in a
circle formed by the best troubadours of his father Alphonso III.
and the veterans of his grandfather Alphonso II., whose song-book,
Cantigas de S. Maria, contains the choicest religious verse of the
age. Diniz, who had been educated by Amyeric of Cahors, proved himself the most fecund poetking
of his day, though the pleiad
of fidalgos forming his court, and the jograes who flocked there
from all parts, were fewer in number, less productive, and lacked
the originality, vigour and brilliance of the singers who versified
round Alphonso III.The principal names of the Dionysian period (1284-1325) which is
illustrated in the
Cancioneiro da Vaticana are the king
himself and his bastards D. Alphonso Sanches and D. Pedro, count of
Barcellos. Of the two last, the former sings of love well and
sincerely, while the latter is represented by love songs replete
with false sentiment and by some rather
gross songs of
maldizer, a form which,
if it rarely contains much poetical feeling or literary value,
throws considerable light on the society of the time.
The verses of Diniz, essentially a love poet, are conventional
in tone and form, but he can write pretty ballads and pastorals
when he allows himself to be natural. The Portuguese troubadours
belonged to all social classes, and even included a few priests,
and though love was their favourite topic they used every kind of
verse, and in
satire they hold
the
palm. In other respects they
are inferior to their Provencal masters. Speaking generally, the
cancioneiros form monotonous
reading owing to their poverty of ideas and
conventionality of metrical forms and expression, but here and
there men of talent who were poets by profession and better
acquainted with Provencal literature endeavoured to lend their work
variety by the use of difficult processes like the
lexaprem and by introducing new forms like the
pastorela and the
descort. It is curious to note
that no heroic songs are met with in the cancioneiros; they are all
with one exception purely lyrical in form and tone. The death of
King Diniz proved a severe blow to
troubadour verse, and the reign of his
successor Alphonso IV. witnessed a profound decadence of court
poetry, while there is not a single poem by a Portuguese author in
the last half of the 14th century, and only the names of a few
authors have survived, among them the Galicians Vasco Pires de
Camoens, an ancestor of Luiz de Camoens, and the typical lover
Macias. The
romanceiro, comprising romances of adventures,
war and chivalry, together with religious and sea. songs, forms a
rich collection of ballad poetry which continued in process of
elaboration throughout the whole of the middle ages,. but
unfortunately the oldest specimens have perished and scarcely any
of those existing bear a date anterior to the 15th century..
Epic poetry in
Portugal developed much later than lyric, but the
signal victory of the united Christian hosts
over the Moors at the battle of the Salado in 1340 gave occasion to
an epic by Alphonso Giraldes of which some fragments remain.
The first frankly literary prose documents appear in the 14th
century, and consist of chronicles, lives of saints and
genealogical treatises. The more important are the
Chronica
Early Prose,. breve do archivo national, the
Chronicas de
S. Cruz de Coimbra, the
Chronica da conquista do
Algarve and the
Livros dos Linhagens, aristocratic
registers, portions of which,, like the story of King Arthur, have
considerable literary interest.. All the above may be found in the
Portugaliae monumenta historica, scriptores, while the
Life of St Elizabeth of Portugal is included in the
Monarchia
lusitana; Romania has printed the following hagiographical
texts belonging to the same century - the
Vida de
Eufrosina, the
Vida de Maria Egypcia and the
Vida
de Sancto Amaro; the
Vida de Santo Eloy has appeared
in the
Instituto and the
Vida dos Santos Barlaao e Josafate has been issued
by the Lisbon Academy of Sciences.
Romances of chivalry belonging to the various cycles must have
penetrated into Portugal at an early date, and the
Nobiliario of the Conde D. Pedro contains the
genealogy of Arthur and the
adventures of Lear and
Merlin.
There exists a mid14th-century
Historia do Santo Graal,
and an unprinted
Josep' ab Aramadia, while, though the MS.
is lost, we have abundant evidence of the existence of a primitive
Portuguese prose redaction of
Amadis de Gaula anterior to
the present Spanish text. Furthermore, the
Livro de Esopo
published by Dr Leite de Vasconcellos also belongs to the period,
and there are other works in MS.
The 15th Century
In the reign of John I. the court became an important literary
centre, the king himself composed a
Livro de Montaria, so
far unedited, and his sons are rightly described as Camoens as "
inclyta geracdo, altos I of antes." King Edward (Duarte)
collected a
precious
library composed of the ancient classics, some translated by his
order, as well as medieval poems and histories, and he wrote a
moral treatise
Leal comselheiro, and hints on
horsemanship, or
Livro da ensinanra de bem cavalgar toda sella. His brother
D. Pedro also wrote a moral treatise
Da virtuosa
Bemfeitoria, and caused '
Vegetius's' militari and
Cicero's
De ofciis to be turned into Portuguese. This
travelled prince brought back from Venice a MS. of
Marco Polo, the gift of
the
Senate, and is still
remembered by the people through the story
Livro das viagens do
Infante D. Pedro o qual
andou ds sete partidas do mundo, reprinted almost yearly, of
which he is the hero. All the monarchs of the 15th century were
highly educated men and patrons of letters; indeed, even that
typical medieval knight Alphonso V. confesses, in his
correspondence with Azurara, that the sword avails nothing without
the pen. The age is noted for its chronicles, beginning with the
anonymous life of the Portuguese Cid, the Holy Constable Nuno
Alvares Pereira, told in charming infantile prose, the translated
Chronica da fundirao do moesteyro de Sam Vicente, and the
Vida Fernao Lopes (q.v.), the father of Portuguese history
and author of chronicles of King Pedro, King Ferdinand and King
John I., has been called by Southey the best chronicler of any age
or nation.
Gomes Eannes de Azurara
completed Lopes's chronicle of King John by describing the capture
of Ceuta, and wrote a chronicle of D. Pedro de Menezes, governor of
the town down to 1437, and a chronicle of D. Duarte de Menezes,
captain of Alcacer, but his capital work is the chronicle of the
conquest of Guinea (see Azurara).
Though not a great chronicler or an artist like Lopes,
Ruy de Pina is free
from the rhetorical defects of Azurara, and his chronicles of King
Edward and King Alphonso V. are characterized by unusual frankness,
and meritorious both as history and literature. All these three
writers combined the posts of keeper of the archives and royal
chronicler, and were, in fact, the king's men, though Lopes at
least seems rather the historian of a people than the
oracle of a monarch.
Garcia de
Resende appropriated Pina's chronicle of King John II., and
after adding a wealth of
anecdote and
gossip and casting the glamour of poetry over a
somewhat dry record, he reissued it under his own name. The taste
for romances of chivalry continued throughout the 5th century, but
of all that were produced the only one that has come down to us is
the
Estorea do Imperador Vespasiano, an introduction to
the Graal
Cycle, based on the
apocryphal
gospel of
Nicodemus.
The Constable D. Pedro of Portugal, son of the prince of that
name already referred to, has left some verses marked by. elevation
of thought and deep feeling, the
Satyra de felice e infelice
villa, and the death of his sister inspired his
Tragedia
de la rei g a Isabel; but he is best remembered by his
Coplas del contempto del mundo in the
Cancioneiro
Geral. Though he actually drafted the first in his native
tongue, all these poems are in Castilian, and D. Pedro is one of
the first representatives of those Spanish influences which set
aside the Provençal manner and in its place adopted a taste for
allegory and a reverence for
classical antiquity, both imported from Italy. It was to the
constable that the marquis de Santillana addressed his historic
letter dealing with the origins of Peninsular verse. The court
poetry of the reigns of King Alphonso V. and King John II., so far
as it survives, is contained in the lyrical collection known 'as
the
Cancioneiro Geral, compiled by Garcia de Resende and
printed in 1516. Nearly three hundred authors are there represented
by pieces in Portuguese and Castilian, and they include D. Joao
Manuel, D. Joao de Menezes, Joao Rodrigues de SA e Menezes, Diogo
Brandao, Duarte de Brito and Fernao da. Silveira. The literary
progenitors of the cancioneiro were the Spanish poets
Juan de Mena,
Jorge Manrique,
Garci-
Sanchez de Badajos and
Rodriguez del Padron,
and its main subjects. are love, satire and
epigram. The epic achievements of the
Portuguese in that century, the discoveries and the wars in Africa,
hardly find an
echo, even in the
verses of those who had taken part in them. Instead, an
atmosphere of
artificiality surrounds these productions, and the verses that
reveal genuine poetical feeling are very few. They include a lament
of Garcia de Resende on the death of Ignez de Castro which probably
inspired the inimitable stanzas dedicated to the same subject in
The Lusiads, the
Fingimento de Amores by Diogo
Brandao, the
Coplas of D. Pedro already referred to, and a
number of minor pieces. However, some names appeared in the
Cancioneiro Gerale which were to be among the foremost in
Portuguese literature,
e.g. Bernardim Ribeiro, Christovam Falcao,
Gil Vicente, and
SA de Miranda, who represent
the transition between the Spanish school of the i 5th and the
Italian school of the 16th century, the members of which are called
Os Quinhentistas. Ribeiro and Falcao, the introducers of
the bucolic style, put new life into the old forms, and by their
eclogues in
redondilhas, breathing the deepest and most
genuine feeling in verses of perfect harmony, they gave models
which subsequent writers worked by but could never equal.
The Drama
The history of the modern drama begins with religious plays,
followed at a later period by moralities, and thence, by an easy
transition, by the
farce. This
transition from the presentment of traditional types to the modern
play can be traced in the works of Gil Vicente, the father of the
Portuguese
theatre. His
first efforts belonged to the religious drama, and some of the more
notable had edification for their object,
e.g. the
Barca do Inferno, but even in this class he soon
introduces. the comic element by way of relief, and in course of
time he arrives at pure
comedy
and develops the study of character. For a detailed description and
criticism of his work, see Vicente.
In the various towns where he stayed and produced his plays,
writers for the stage sprang up, and these formed the Eschola.
Velha or school of Gil Vicente. To name the best known, Evora, the
city of culture, produced Affonso Alvarez, author of religious
pieces, Antonio Ribeiro, nicknamed "the Chiado," an unfrocked
friar with a strong satirical vein
who wrote farces in the Bazochian style,. and his brother Jeronimo
Ribeiro. In Santarem appeared Antonio Prestes, a
magistrate who drew from
his judicial experience but evinced more knowledge of folk-lore
than dramatic talent, while Camoens himself was so far influenced
by Gil Vicente, whose plays he had perhaps seen performed in
Lisbon, that in spite of his Coimbra training he never exchanged
the old forms for those of the classical comedy. His
Amphitryons is a free imitation of the Latin, yet
thoroughly national in spirit and cast in the popular redondilha;
the
dialogue is spirited,
the situations comic.
King Seleucus derives from
Plutarch and has a prose
prologue of real interest for
the history of the stage, while
Filodemo is a clever
tragi-comedy in verse with prose dialogues interspersed. Another
poet of the same school is Balthazar Dias, the blind poet, whose
simple religious
autos are still performed in the
villages, and are continually reprinted, the best liked being the
Auto of St Alexis,
and the
Auto of St Catherine. He is purely medieval in
subject and spirit, his lyrics are perfect in form and expression,
his diction thoroughly popular. One of the last dramatists of the
16th century belonging to the old school was Simao Machado, who
wrote the
Comedy of Diu and the
Enchantments of
Alfea, two long plays almost entirely in Spanish, and full of
digressions only made tolerable by the beauty of their lyrics.
Except Camoens, all these men, though disciples of Gil Vicente,
are decidedly inferior to him in dramatic invention, fecundity and
power of expression, and they were generally of humble social
position. Moreover the favour of the court was withdrawn on the
death of Gil Vicente, and this meant much, for there existed no
educated middle class to support a national theatre. At the same
time the old dramatists had to face the opposition of the classical
school, which appealed to the cultured, and the hostility of the
Inquisition, which early declared war on the popular plays on
account of their grossness, and afterwards through the index
prohibited altogether even the religious
autos, as it had
condemned the Italian comedies. The way was thus clear for the
Jesuits, who, with their Latin tragi-comedies or dramatized
allegories written to commemorate saints or for scholastic
festivals, succeeded for a time in supplanting both the popular
pieces of the old school and the plays modelled on the masterpieces
of
Greece and Rome. The old
dramatists came to write for the lower classes only, and though the
school lingered on, its productions were performed solely by
travelling companies at country fairs. Though we know that much has
perished, the four Indexes of the 16th century give some idea of
the rich repertory of the popular theatre, and of the efforts
necessary to destroy it; moreover, the Spanish Index of 1559, by
forbidding
autos of Gil Vicente and other Portuguese
authors, is interesting evidence of the extent to which they were
appreciated in the neighbouring country.
The movement commonly called the Renaissance reached Portugal
both indirectly through Spain and directly from Italy, with which
last country it maintained close literary relations throughout the
15th century. King Alphonso V. had been the pupil of Matthew of
Pisa and summoned Justus Balduinus to
his court to write the national history in Latin, while later King
John II. corresponded with
Politian, and early in his reign the first
printing-press got to work. In the next century many famous
humanists took up their
abode in
Portugal.
Nicholas Cleynarts taught the
Infant Henry, afterwards cardinal and king, and lectured on the
classics at Braga and Evora, Vasaeus directed a school of Latin at
Braga, and George Buchanan accompanied other foreign professors to
Coimbra when King John III. reformed the university. Many
distinguished Portuguese teachers returned from abroad to assist
the king at the same time, among them Ayres Barbosa from Salamanca,
Andre de Gouveia of the Parisian college of St Barbe, whom
Montaigne dubbed " the greatest principal of France,"
Achilles Estago and Diogo de
Teive.
At home Portugal produced
Andre de Resende, author of the
Historia da antiguidade da cidade de Evora and
De
antiquitatibus Lusitaniae, and Francisco de Hollanda, painter,
architect, and author of,
inter alia, the
Quatro
dialogos da pintura antiga. Moreover, women took a share in
the intellectual movement of the time, and the sisters Luisa and
Angela Sigea, Joanna Vaz and Paula Vicente, daughter of Gil
Vicente, constituted an informal female academy under the
presidency of the Infanta D. Maria, daughter of King Manoel. Luisa
Sigea was both an orientalist and a Latin poetess, while Publia
Hortensia de Castro, after a course of humanities, philosophy and
theology, defended theses
at Evora in her eighteenth year.
The Italian school was founded by SA de Miranda (q.v.), a man of
noble character who, on his return in 1526 from a six years' stay
in Italy, where he had foregathered with the leading writers of the
day, initiated a reform of Portuguese literature which amounted to
a revolu-
tistas. tion. He introduced and
practised the forms of the
sonnet, canzon,
ode,
epistle
in
oitava rim y and in tercets, and the epigram, and
raised the whole tone of poetry. At the same time he gave fresh
life to the national redondilha
metre (
medida velha) by his
Cartas or
Satiras which with his
Eclogues, some in Portuguese, others in Castilian, are his
most successful compositions. His chief
disciple, Antonio Ferreira (q.v.), a convinced
classicist, went further, and dropping the use of Castilian, wrote
sonnets much superior in form and style, though they lack the
rustic atmosphere of those of his master, while his odes and
epistles are too obviously reminiscent of
Horace. D. Manoel de Portugal, Pero de Andrade
Caminha, Diogo Bernardes, Frei Agostinho da Cruz and Andre Falcao
de Resende continued the erudite school, which, after considerable
opposition, definitely triumphed in the person of Luiz de Camoens.
The
Lima of Bernardes contains some beautiful eclogues as
well as
cartas in the bucolic style, while the odes,
sonnets, and eclogues of Frei Agostinho are full of mystic
charm. Camoens (q.v.) is, as
Schlegel remarked, an entire literature in himself, and some
critics rate him even higher as a lyric than as an epic poet. He
unites and fuses the best elements of the Italian and the popular
muse, using the forms of the one to express the spirit and
traditions of the other, and when he employs the
medida
velha, it becomes in his hands a vehicle for thought, whereas
before it had usually served merely to express emotions.
His
Lusiads, cast in the Virgilian mould, celebrates
the combination of faith and patriotism which led to the
discoveries and conquests of the Portuguese, and though the
Epic voyage of Vasco da Gama occasioned its
composition and formed the
skeleton round which it grew, its true subject
is the
peito illustre lusitano. Immediately on its
appearance
The Lusiads took rank as the national poem
par excellence, and its success moved many writers to
follow in the same path; of these the most successful was Jeronymo
Corte Real (q.v.). All these poems, like the
Elegiada of
Luis Pereira Brandao on the disaster of Al Kasr, the
Primeiro
cerco de Diu of the chronicler Francisco de Andrade, and even
the
AfTonso Africano of Quevedo, for all its futile
allegory, contain striking episodes and vigorous and well-coloured
descriptive passages, but they cannot compare with
The
Lusiads in artistic value.
The return of SA de Miranda from Italy operated to transform the
drama as well as lyric poetry. He found the stage occupied mainly
by religious plays in which there appeared no trace of the Greek or
Roman theatre, and, admiring what he had seen in Italy, he and his
followers protested against the name
auto, restored that
of
comedy, and substituted prose for verse. They generally
chose the plays of
Terence
as models, yet their life is conventional and their types are not
Portuguese but Roman-Italian. The revived classical comedy was thus
so bound down by respect for authority as to have little
chance of development, while its
language consisted of a latinized prose from which the emotions
were almost absent. Though it secured the favour of the humanists
and the nobility, and banished the old popular plays from both
court and university soon after Gil Vicente's death, its victory
was shortlived. Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos, who produced in the
Eufrosina the first prose play, really belongs to the
Spanish school, yet, though he wrote under the influence of the
Celestina, which had a great vogue in Portugal, and of
Roman models, his types, language and general characteristics are
deeply national. However, even if they had stage qualities, the
very length of this and his other plays, the
Ulisipo and
the
Aulegraphia, would prevent their performance, but in
fact they are novels in dialogue containing a treasury of popular
lore and wise and witty sayings with a moral object. So decisive
was the success of Jorge Ferreira's new invention, notwithstanding
its anonymity, that it decided SA de Miranda to attempt the prose
comedy. He modelled himself on the Roman theatre as reflected by
the plays of Ariosto, and he avowedly wrote the
Estrangeiros to combat the school of Gil Vicente, while in
it, as in
Os Vilhalpandos, the action takes place in
Italy. Antonio Ferreira, the chief dramatist of the classical
school, knew both Greek and Latin as well as Miranda, but far
surpassed him in style. He attempted both comedy and tragedy, and
his success in the latter branch is due to the fact that he was not
content to seek inspiration from
Seneca, as were most of the
tragedians of the 16th century, but went straight to the
fountain heads,
Sophocles and
Euripides. His
Bristo is but a youthful essay, but his second piece,
0 Cioso, is almost a comedy of character, though both are
Italian even in the names of the personages. Ferreira's real claim
to distinction, however, rests on
Ignez de Castro (see
Ferreira).
The principal form taken by prose writing in the 16th century
was historical, and a pleiad of distinguished writers arose to
narrate the discoveries and conquests in Asia, Africa and the
ocean. Many of them saw the achievements they relate and were
inspired by patriotism to record them, so that their writings lack
that serene atmosphere of critical appreciation which is looked for
if history is to take its place as a science. In the four decades
of his
Asia, Joao de Barros, the
Livy Century of his country, tells in
simple vigorous language the "deeds achieved by the Portuguese in
the dis
History. covery and conquest of the seas and lands
of the Orient." His first decade undoubtedly influenced Camoens,
and together the two men fixed the Portuguese written tongue, the
one by his prose, the other by his verse. The decades, which were
continued by Diogo do Couto, a more critical writer and a clear and
correct stylist, must be considered the noblest historical monument
of the century (see Barros). Couto is also responsible for some
acute observations on the causes of Portuguese decadence in the
East, entitled
Soldado practico. The word encyclopaedist
fits Damiao de Goes, a diplomatist, traveller, humanist and bosom
friend of Erasmus. One of the most critical
spirits of the age, his chronicle of King
Manoel, the Fortunate Monarch, which he introduced by one of Prince
John, afterwards King John II., is worthy of the subject and the
reign in which Portugal attained the apogee of its greatness. Goes
(q.v.) wrote a number of other historical and descriptive works in
Portuguese and Latin, some of which were printed during his
residence in the Low Countries and contributed to his deserved
fame. After twenty years of investigation at Goa, Fernao Lopes de
Castanheda issued his
Historia do descobrimento e conquista da
India pelos Portuguezes (Lisbon, 15521 554 and 1561), a book
that ranks besides those of Barros and Couto. Antonio Galvao, who,
after governing the Moluccas with rare success and integrity, had
been offered the native throne of Ternate, went home in 1540, and
died a pauper in a hospital, his famous treatise only appearing
posthumously. The
Tratado dos diversos. .. caminhos por onde a
pimenta e especiaria veyo da India ... e assim de todos os
descubrimentos ... que sao feitos em a era de 1560 has been
universally recognized as of unique historical value. Like the
preceding writers, Gaspar Correia or
Correa lived long years in India and embodied
his intimate knowledge of its manners and customs in the
picturesque prose of the
Lendas da India, which embraces
the events of the years 1497 to 1550. Among other historical works
dealing with the East are the
Commentarios de Affonso
d'Albuquerque, an account of the life of the great captain and
administrator, by his natural son, and the
Tratado das cousas
da China e de Ormuz, by Frei Gaspar da Cruz.
Coming back to strictly Portuguese history, we have the
uncritical Chronica de D. Joe - to III. by Francisco de
Andrade, and the Chronica de D. Sebastiao by Frei Bernardo
da Cruz, who was with the king at Al Kasr al Kebir, while Miguel
Leitao de Andrade, who was taken prisoner in that battle, related
his experiences and preserved many popular traditions and customs
in his Miscellanea. Bishop Osorio (q.v.), a scholar of
European reputation, wrote chiefly in Latin, and his capital work,
a chronicle of King Manoel, is in that tongue.
The books of travel of this century are unusually important
because their authors were often the first Europeans to visit or at
least to study the countries they refer to. They include, to quote,
the more noteworthy, the
Descobrimento de Frolida, the
Itinerario of Antonio Tenreiro, the
Verdadeira
informacao das terras do Preste Joao by Francisco Alvares,'and
the
Ethiopia oriental by Frei Joao dos Santos, both
dealing with Abyssinia, the
Itinerario da terra santa by
Frei Pantaleao de Aveiro, and that much-translated classic, the
Historia da vida do padre Francisco Xavier by Padre Joao
de
Lucena. Fernao Cardim in
his
Narrativa epistoler records a journey through Brazil,
and Pedro Teixeira relates his experiences in Persia. But the work
that holds the palm in its class is the
Peregrinagao which
Fernao
Mendes Pinto, the famous adventurer, composed in his old age
for his children's reading. While Mendes Pinto and his book are
typically Portuguese of that age, the
Historia
tragicomaritima, sometimes designated the prose epic of
saudade, is equally characteristic of the race of seamen
which produced it. This collection of twelve stories of notable
wrecks which befell Portuguese ships between 1552 and 1604 contains
that of the galleon " St John " on the
Natal coast, an event which inspired
Corte-Rears epic poem as well as
some poignant stanzas in
The Lusiads, and the tales form a
model of simple spontaneous popular writing.
The romance took many forms, and in two of them at least works
appeared which exercised very considerable influence abroad. The
Menina e moga of Bernardim Ribeiro, a tender pastoral
story inspired by
saudade for his lady-love, probably
moved Montemor or
Montemayor (q.v.) to write his
Diana, and may some fifty years later have suggested the
Lusitania transformada to Fernao Alvares do
Oriente, who, however, like
Ribeiro, owes some debt to Sannazaro's
Arcadia. To name the
Palmeirim
d'Inglaterra of Moraes (q.v.) is to mention a famous book from
which, we are told, Burke quoted in the House of Commons, while
Cervantes had long previously declared that it ought to be guarded
as carefully as the works of
Homer. Like most successful romances of chivalry,
it had a numerous progeny, but its sequels,
D. Duardos by
Diogo Fernandes, and
D. Clarisel de Bretanha by Gongalves
Lobato, are quite inferior. The historian Barros tried his youthful
pen in a romance of chivalry, the
Chronica do Imperador
Clarimundo, while in another branch, and a popular one in
Portugal, the Arthurian cycle, the dramatist Ferreira de
Vasconcellos wrote
Sagramor or
Memorial das proesas da
segunda Tavola Redonda.
A book of quite a different order is the
Co.ntos de proveito e
exemplo by Fernandes Trancoso, containing a series of
twenty-nine tales derived from tradition or imitated from Boccaccio
and others, which enjoyed deserved favour for more than a
century.
Samuel Usque, a Lisbon Jew,
deserves a place to himself for his
Consolagam as tribulagoes
de Israel, where he
exposes the persecutions endured by his countrymen in every age
down to his time; the book takes the dialogue form, and its diction
is elegant and pure. The important part taken by Portuguese
prelates and theologians at the
Council of Trent stimulated religious
writing, most of it in Latin, but Frei Bartholomeu dos Martyres,
archbishop of Braga, wrote a
Cathecismo da doutrina
Christa, Frei Luiz de Granada a
Compendio de Doutrina
Christa and
Sermoes, all in Portuguese, and other
notable
pulpit orators include
Diogo de Paiva de Andrade, Padre Luiz Alvares, Dom Antonio Pinheiro
and Frei Miguel dos Santos, who preached at the
obsequies of King
Sebastian.
Among the moralists of the time three at least deserve the title
of masters of prose style, Heitor Pinto for his
Imagens da vida
Christa, Bishop Arraez for his
Dialogos, and Frei
Thome de Jesus for his noble devotional treatise
Trabalhos de
Jesus, while the maxims of Joanna da Gama, entitled
Ditos
da Freira, though lacking depth, form a curious psychological
document. The ranks of scientists include the cosmographer Pedro
Nunes (Nonius), a famous mathematician, and the botanist Garcia da
Orta, whose
Colloquios dos simples e drogas was the first
book to be printed in the East (1563), while the form of
Aristotelian scholastic philosophy known as
Philosophia
conimbricensis had a succession of learned exponents. As,
however, their vehicle was Latin, a mere mention must suffice, and
for the same reason only the title of a notable book by Francisco
Sanches can be given, the
De nobili et prima universali
scientia quod nihil scitur. In 1536 Fernao de Oliveira
published the first Portuguese grammar, and three years later the
historian Barros brought out his
Cartinha Para aprender a
ler, and in 1540 his
Grammatica. Magalhaes Gandavo
printed some rules on
orthography in 1574. Nunes de Ledo also
produced a treatise on orthography in 1576 and a work on the
origins of the language in 1605, and Jeronymo Cardoso gave his
countrymen a Latin and Portuguese dictionary.
The 17th Century
The gigantic efforts put forth in every department of activity
during the 16th century led to the inevitable reaction. Energy was
worn out, patriotic '
os' Seiscen-- ardour declined into
blind nationalist vanity, and
rhetoric conquered style. From a literary as
from
Lyric a political point of view the 17th century
found
Poetry. Portugal in a lamentable state of decadence
which dated from the preceding age. In 1536 the Inquisition began
its work, while between 1552 and 1555 the control of higher
education passed into the hands of the Jesuits. Following the
Inquisition and the Jesuits came two other obstacles to the
cultivation of letters, the censorship of books and the Indexes,
and, as if these plagues were not enough, the Spanish domination
followed. Next the taint of Gongorism appeared, and the extent to
which it affected the literature of Portugal may be seen in the
five volumes of the
Fenix renascida, where the very titles
of the poems suffice to show the futilities which occupied the
attention of some of the best talents. The prevailing European
fashion of literary
academies was not long in reaching Portugal,
and 1647 saw the foundation of the
Academia dos Generosos
which included in its ranks the men most illustrious by learning
and social position, and in 1663 the
Academia dos
Singulares came into being; but with all their pedantry,
extravagances and bad taste, it must be confessed that these and
similar corporations tended to promote the pursuit of good
literature. In
bucolics
there arose a worthy disciple of Ribeiro in
Francisco Rodrigues Lobo,
author of the lengthy pastoral romances
Corte na aldea and
Primavera, the songs in which, with his eclogues, earned
him the name of the Portuguese
Theocritus. The foremost literary figure of
the time was the encyclopaedic
Francisco Manoel de
Mello (q.v.), who, though himself a Spanish classic, .strove hard
and successfully to free himself from subservience to Spanish forms
and style. Most of the remaining lyricists of the period were
steeped in Gongorism or, writing in Spanish, have no place here. It
suffices to mention Soror Violente do Ceo, an exalted mystic called
" the tenth muse," Bernarda Ferreira de Lacerda, author of the
Soledades de Bussaco, the
Laura do Anfrizo of
Manoel Tagarro, the
Sylvia de Lizardo of Frei Bernardo de
Brito, and the poems of Frei Agostinho das Chagas, who, however, is
better represented by his
Cartas espirituaes. Satirical
verse had two notable cultivators in D. Thomas de Noronha and
Antonio Serrao de Castro, the first a natural and facile writer,
the second the author of
Os Ratos da Inquisicao, a
facetious poem composed during his incarceration in the dungeons of
the Inquisition, while Diogo de Sousa Camacho showed abundant wit
at the expense of the slaves of Gongorism and Marinism.
The. gallery of epic poets is a large one, but most of their
productions are little more than rhymed chronicles and have almost
passed into oblivion. The
Ulyssea of Gabriel Pereira de
Castro describes the foundation of Lisbon by Ulysses, but,
notwithstanding its
plagiarism of
The Lusiads and
faults of taste, these ten cantos contain some masterly descriptive
passages, and the
ottava rima shows a harmony and
flexibility to which even Camoens rarely attained; but this praise
cannot be extended to the tiresome
Ulyssipo of Sousa de
Macedo. The
Malaca conquistada of Francisco de SA de
Menezes, having Alphonso d'Albuquerque for its hero, is prosaic in
form, if correct in design. Rodriguez Lobo's twenty cantos in
honour of the Holy Constable do him no credit, but the
Viriato
tragico by that travelled soldier Garcia de Mascarenhas has
some vigorous descriptions, and critics reckon it the best epic of
the second class.
In point of style the historians of the period are laboured and
rhetorical; they were mostly credulous friars who wrote in
isto,y. their cells, and no longer, as in the 16th
century, t? travellers and men of action who described
what they had seen.
Frei Bernardo de Brito began his ponderous Monarchia
Lusitana with the creation of man and ended it where he should
have begun, with the coming of Count Henry to the Peninsula. His
contribution is a mass of legends destitute of foundation or
critical sense, but both here and in the Chronica de
Cister he writes a good prose. Of the four continuers of
Brito's work, three are no better than their master, but Frei
Antonio Brandao, who dealt with the period from King Alphonso
Henriques to King John II., proved himself a man of high
intelligence and a learned, conscientious historian.
Frei Luiz de Sousa, a typical monastic chronicler, although he
had begun life as a soldier, worked up the materials collected by
others, and after much
labor limae produced the
panegyrical
Vida de D. Frei Bartholemeu dos martyres, the
Historia de S. Domingos, and the
Annaes d'el rei D.
Joao III. His style is lucid and vivid, but he lacks the
critical sense, and the speeches he puts into the mouths of his
characters are imaginary. Manoel de Faria y Sousa (q.v.), a
voluminous writer on Portuguese history and the arch-commentator of
Camoens, wrote, by an
irony of
fate, in Spanish, and Mello's classic account of the Catalonian War
is also in that language, while, by a still greater irony, Jacinto
Freire de Andrade thought to picture and exalt the Cato-like
viceroy of India by his grandiloquent
Vida de D. Joao de
Castro. Other historical books of the period are the valuable
Discursos of Severim de Faria, the
Portugal
restaurado of D. Luis de 1Vlenezes, conde de Ericeira, the
ecclesiastical histories of Archbishop Rodrigo da Cunha, the
Agiologio lusitano of Jorge Cardoso and the
Chronica
da Companhia de Jesus by, Padre Balthazar Telles. The last
also wrote an
Historia da Ethiopia, and, though the travel
literature of this century compares badly with that of the
preceding, mention may be made of the
Itinerario da India por
terra ate' a ilha de Chipre of Frei Gaspar de S. Bernardino,
and the
Relacdo do novo caminho atraves da Arabia e Syria of Padre Manoel
Godinho.
In the 17th century the religious orders and especially the
Jesuits absorbed even more of the activities and counted for more
in the public affairs of Portugal than in the preceding age. The
pulpit discharged some of the functions of the modern press, and
men who combined the gifts of
oratory and writing filled it and distinguished
themselves, their order and their country. The Jesuit
Antonio Vieira,
missionary, diplomat and voluminous writer, repeated the triumphs
he had gained in
Bahia and
Lisbon in Rome, which proclaimed him the prince of Catholic
orators. His 200 sermons are a mine of learning and experience, and
they stand out from all others by their imaginative power,
originality of view, variety of treatment and audacity of
expression. His letters are in a simple conversational style, but
they lack the popular locutions,
humour and individuality of those of Mello.
Vieira was a man of action, while the oratorian Manoel Bernardes
lived as a recluse, hence his sermons and devotional works,
especially Luz
e Calor and the
Nova Floresta,
breathe a calm and sweetness alien to the other, while they are
even richer treasures of pure Portuguese. Perhaps the truest and
most feeling human documents of the century are the five epistles
written by Marianna Alcoforado (q.v.) known to history as the
Letters of a Portuguese Nun. Padre Ferreira de Almeida's translation
of the
Bible has considerable
linguistic importance, and philological studies had an able
exponent in Amaro de Roboredo.
The popular theatre lived on in the
Comedias de Cordel,
mostly anonymous and never printed its existence would hardly be
known were it not for the pieces which were placed on the Index.
The popular
autos that have survived are mainly religious,
and show the abuse of
metaphor and the conceits which derive from
Gongora. All through this century Portuguese dramatists, who
aspired to be heard, wrote, like Jacintho Cordeiro and Mattos
Fragoso, in Castilian, though a brilliant exception appeared in the
person of Francisco Manoel de Mello (q.v.), whose witty
Auto do
fidalgo aprendiz in redondilhas is eminently national in
language, subject and treatment. Until the Restoration of 1640 the
stage remained spellbound by the Spaniards, and when a court once
more came to Lisbon it preferred Italian
opera, French plays, and
zarzuelas to
dramatic performances in the
vernacular, with the result that both
Portuguese authors and actors of repute disappeared.
The 18th .Century
The first part of the 18th century differs little from the
preceding age except that both affectation and bad taste tended to
increase; but gradually signs appeared of a literary revolution,
which preceded the political and developed into the Romantic
movement. Men of liberal ideas went abroad, chiefly to France, to
escape the stupid tyranny that ruled in Church and state, and to
their exhortation and example are largely due the reforms which
were by degrees inaugurated in every branch of letters. Their names
were among others Alexandre de Gusmao, the Cavalheiro de Oliveira,
Ribeiro Sanches, Correa da Serra, Brotero and Nascimento. They had
a forerunner in Luiz Antonio
Verney, who poured
sarcasm on the prevailing methods of education,
and exposed to good effect the extraordinary literary and
scientific decadence of Portugal in an epoch-making work, the
Verdadeiro methodo de estudar. From time to time literary
societies, variously called academies or arcadias, arose to
co-operate in the work of reform. In 1720 King John V., an imitator
of Louis XIV., established the academy of history. The fifteen
volumes of its
Memorias, published from 1721 to 1756, show
the excellent work done by its members, among whom were Caetano de
Sousa, author of the colossal
Historia da Casa Real
portugueza, Barbosa Machado, compiler of the invaluable
Bibliotheca Lusitana, and Soares da Silva, chronicler of
the reign of King John I.
The Royal Academy of Sciences founded in 1780 by the 2nd duke of
Lafoes, uncle of Queen Maria I., still exists, though its
Royal output and influence are small. Its chief
contribuLions to knowledge were the
Diccionario da lingua
portugueza, still unfinished, and the
Memorias
(1788-1795), and it included in its ranks nearly all the learned
men of the last part of the 18th century. Among them were the
ecclesiastical historian Frei Manoel do Cenaculo, bishop of Beja,
the polygraph Ribeiro dos Santos, Caetano do Amaral, a patient
investigator of the origins of Portugal, Joao Pedro Riberio, the
founder of modern historical studies, D. Francisco Alexandre Lobo,
bishop of Vizeu, whose essays on Camoens and other authors show
sound critical sense and a correct style, Cardinal Saraiva, an
expert on ancient and modern
history and the voyages of his countrymen, and Frei Fortunato de S.
Boaventura, a historical and literary critic.
In 1756
Cruz e Silva, with the
aid of friends, established the
Arcadia Ulysiponense, " to
form a school of good sayings and good examples in eloquence and
poetry." The most considered poets of the day joined the Arcadia
and
Lyric individually wrote much excellent verse, but
they Latin authors were the models they chose, and Gargao, the most
prominent Arcadian, composed the
Cantata de Dido, a
gem of
ancient art, as well as some charming sonnets to friends and
elegant odes and epistles. The bucolic verse of Quita, a
hairdresser, has a tenderness and simplicity which
challenge comparison with
Bernardim Ribeiro, and the
Marilia of
Gonzaga contains a celebrated collection of
bucolic-erotic verse. Their conventionality sets the lyrics of Cruz
e Silva on a lower plane, but in the
Hyssope he improves
on the
Lutrin of
Boileau. After a chequered existence, internal
dissensions caused the dissolution of the Arcadia in 1774. It had
only gained a partial success cause the despotic rule of Pombal,
like the Inquisition before im, hindered freedom of fancy and
discussion, and drove the Arcadians to waste themselves on
flattering the powerful. In 1790 a New Arcadia came into being. Its
two most distinguished members were the rival poets
Bocage and
Agostinho de Macedo. The only
other poet of the New Arcadia who ranks high is Curvo Semedo; but
the Dissidents, a name bestowed on those who stood outside the
Arcadias, included two distinguished men now to be cited, the
second of whom became the
herald of a poetical revolution. No Portuguese
satirist possessed such a complete equipment for his office as
Nicolao
Tolentino, and
though a dependent position depressed his muse, he painted the
customs and follies of the time with almost photographic accuracy,
and distributed his attacks or begged for favours in sparkling
verse. The task of purifying and enriching the language and
restoring the cult of the Quinhentistas was perseveringly carried
out by Francisco Manoel de Nascimento (q.v.) in numerous
compositions in prose and verse, both original and translated.
Shortly before his death in Paris he became a convert to the
Romantic movement, and he prepared the way for its definite triumph
in the person of Almeida Garrett, who belonged to the
Filintistas, or followers of Nascimento, in opposition to
the
Elmanistas, or disciples of Bocage.
Early in the 18th century the spirit of revolt against despotism
led to an attempt at the restoration of the drama by authors sprung
from the people, who wrote for spectators
. as coarse as
they were ignorant of letters. Its centres were the theatres of the
Bairro Alto and Mouraria, and the numerous pieces staged there
belong to low comedy. The
Operas portuguezas of
Antonio
Jose da Silva, produced between 1733 and 1741, owe their name
to the fact that
arias, minuets and
modinhas were
interspersed with the prose dialogue, and if neither the plots,
style, nor language are remarkable, they have a real comic force
and a certain originality. Silva is the legitimate representative
in the 18th century of the popular theatre inaugurated by Gil
Vicente, and though born in Brazil, whence he brought the
modinha, he is essentially a national writer. Like Silva's
operas, the comedies of Nicolao Luiz contain a faithful picture of
contemporary society and enjoyed considerable popularity. Luiz
divided his attention between heroic comedies and comedies
de
capa y espada, but of the fifty-one ascribed to him, all in
verse, only one bears his name, the rest appeared anonymously. His
method was to choose some Spanish or Italian play, cut out the
parts he disliked, and substitute scenes with dialogues in his own
way, but he has neither ideals, taste nor education; and, except in
Os Maridos Peraltas, his characters are lifeless and their
conventional passions are expressed in inflated language.
Notwithstanding their demerits, however, his comedies held the
stage from 1760 until the end of the century.
Meanwhile the Arcadia also took up the task of raising the tone
of the stage, but though the ancients and the classic writers of
the 16th century were its ideals, it drew immediate inspiration
from the contemporary French theatre. All its efforts failed,
however, because its members lacked dramatic talents and, being out
of touch with the people, could not create a national drama.
Gargao (q.v.) led the way with the
Theatro Novo, a
bright little comedy in
blank verse, and followed it up with
another,
Assemblea ou partida; but he did not persevere.
Figueiredo felt he had a mission to restore the drama, and wrote
thirteen volumes of plays in prose and verse, but, though he chose
national subjects, and could invent plots and draw characters, he
could not make them live. Finally, the bucolic poet Quita produced
the tragedies
Segunda Castro, Hermione and two others, but
these imitations from the French, for all the taste they show, were
stillborn, and in the absence of court patronage, which was
exclusively bestowed on the Lisbon opera, then the best equipped in
Europe, Portugal remained without a drama of its own.
Sacred eloquence is represented by Fr. Alexandre Palhares, a
student of Vieira, whose outspoken attack on vice in high places in
a
sermon preached before Queen
Maria led to his exile from court. The art of letter-writing had
cultivators in Abbade Costa, Ribeiro Sanches, physician of
Catherine II. of
Russia, Alexandre de Gusmao, and
the celebrated Cavalheiro de Oliveira, also author of
Memorias
politicas e literarias, published at
the Hague, whither he had fled to escape the
Inquisition. Philological studies were pursued with ardour and many
valuable publications have to be recorded, among them Bluteau's
Vocabulario Portuguez, the
Reflexoes sobre a lingoa
portugueza and an
Arte poetica by
Francisco Jose Freire, the
Exercicios and
Espirito da lingoa e eloquencia of
Pereira de Figueiredo, translator of the
Vulgate, and Viterbo's
Elucidario, a
dictionary of old terms and phrases which has not been superseded.
Finally the best literary critic and one of the most correct prose
writers of the period is Francisco Dias Gomes.
The 19th Century
and After. - The I 9th century witnessed a general revival of
letters, beginning with the Romantic movement, of which the chief
exponents were Garrett (q.v.) and Herculano (q.v.), both of whom
had to leave Portugal on account of their political liberalism, and
it was inaugurated in the xxii. 6 all lacked creative power. The
principal Greek and field of poetry. Garrett read the masterpieces
of contemporary foreign literature during his exiles in England and
France, and, imbued with the national spirit, he produced in 1825
the poem
Camoes, wherein he broke with the estab-
M o vement: lished rules of composition in verse
and destroyed
Poetry. the authority of the Arcadian
rhymers. His poetry like that of his fellow
emigre, the
austere Herculano, is eminently sincere and natural, but while his
short lyrics are personal in subject and his longer poems
historical, the verse of Herculano is generally subjective and the
motives religious or patriotic. The movement not only lost much of
its virility and genuineness, but became ultra-Romantic with A. F.
de Castilho (q.v.), whose most conspicuous followers were Joao de
Lemos and the poets of the collection entitled
0 Trovador;
Soares de Passos, a singer for the sad; the melodious Thomas
Ribeiro, who drew his inspiration from Zorilla and voiced the
opposition to a political union with Spain in the patriotic poem
D. Jayme. Mendes Leal, a king in the heroic style, Gomes
de Amorim and Bulhão Pato, belong more or less to the same school.
On the other hand Jose Sim p es Dias broke with the Romantic
tradition in which he had been educated, and successfully sought
inspiration from popular sources, as his
Peninsulares
proves.
In 1865 there arose a serious and lengthy strife in the
Portuguese
Parnassus,
which came to be known as the Coimbra
The question, from
its origin in the university city. Its immediate cause was the
preface which Castilho contributed to the poem
Mogidade of
Pinheiro Chagas, and it proclaimed the alliance of poetry with
philosophy. The younger men of letters regarded Castilho as the
self-elected pontiff of a mutual-praise school, who, ignorant of
the literary movement abroad, claimed to direct them in the old
paths, and would not tolerate criticism. The revolt against his
primacy took the form of a fierce war of
pamphlets, and led ultimately to the
dethronement of the blind
bard.
The leaders in the movement were
Anthero de Quental and Dr Theophilo
Braga, the first a student of German philosophy and poetry, the
second a disciple of Comte and author of an epic of humanity,
Visao dos tempos, whose immense work in the spheres of
poetry, criticism and literary history, marred by contradictions,
but abounding in life, cannot be judged at present. In the issue
literature gained considerably, and especially poetry, which
entered on a period of active and rich production, still unchecked,
in the persons of Joao de
Deus and
the Coimbrans and their disciples. The
Campo de fibres contains some of the
most splendid short poems ever written in Portuguese, and an
Italian critic has ventured to call Joao de Deus, to whom God and
women were twin sources of inspiration, the greatest love poet of
the 19th century. Simplicity, spontaneity and harmony distinguished
his earlier verses, which are also his best, and their author
belongs to no school but stands alone. A preponderance of
reflection and foreign influences distinguish the poets now to be
mentioned. Anthero de Quental, the chief of the Coimbrans,
enshrined his metaphysical neo-Buddhistic ideas overshadowed by
extreme
pessimism, and
marked the stages of his mental evolution, in a sequence of
finely-wrought sonnets. These place him in the sacred circle near
to Heine and Leopardi, and, though strongly individualistic, it is
curious to note in them the influence of Germanism on the mind of a
southerner and a descendant of the Catholic navigators of the 16th
century.
Odes modernas, written in youth, show " Santo
Anthero," as his friends called him, in revolutionary, freethinking
and combative
mood, and are
ordinary enough, but the prose of his essays,
e.g.
Considerations on the Philosophy of Portuguese Literary
History, has that peculiar refinement, clearness and
conciseness which stamped the later work of this sensitive thinker.
A subtle irony pervades the
Rimas of Joao Penha, who links
the Coimbrans with Guerra Junqueiro and the younger poets. Partly
philosophical, partly position,
A Morte de D. Joao; in
Patria he evoked in a series of dramatic scenes and lashed
with satire the kings of the Braganza dynasty, and in
Os
Simples he interprets in sonorous stanzas the life of
country-folk by the light of his powerful imagination and
pantheistic tendencies. The
Claridades de Sul of Gomes
Leal, a militant anti-Christian, at times recall Baudelaire, and
flashes of genius run through
AntiChristo, which is alive
with the
instinct of
revolt. The
So of the invalidish Antonio Nobre is
intensely Portuguese in subjects, atmosphere and rhythmic
sweetness, and had a deep influence. Cesario Verde sought to
interpret universal nature and human sorrow, and the Parnassian
Gongalves Crespo may be termed a deeper, richer Coppee. His
Miniaturas and
Nocturnos have been re-edited by
his widow, D. Maria Amalia Vaz de Carvalho, a highly gifted critic
and essayist whose
personality and
cercle call to
mind the 18th-century poetess, the Marqueza. de Alorna. The French
symbolists found an enthusiastic
adept in Eugenio de Castro. Antonio Feijo and
Jose de Sousa Monteiro have written verse remarkable by its form,
while perhaps the most considered of the later poets are
Antonio Correa de
Oliveira and Lopes Vieira. Many other genuine bards might be
mentioned, because the Portuguese race can boast of an unceasing
flow of lyric poetry.
Garrett took in hand the reform of the stage, moved by a desire
to exile the translations on which the playhouses had long
subsisted. He chose his subjects from the national history, and
began with the
Auto de Gil Vicente, in which he
resuscitated the founder of the theatre, and followed this up with
other prose plays, among which the
Alfageme de Santarem
takes the palm; finally he crowned his labours by
Frei Luiz de
Sousa, a tragedy of fatality and pathos and one 'of the really
notable pieces of the century. The historical bent thus given to
the drama was continued by the versatile Mendes Leal, by Gomes da
Amorim and by Pinheiro Chagas, who all however succumbed more or
less to the atmosphere and machinery of ultra-Romanticism, while
the plays of Antonio Ennes deal with questions of the day in a
spirit of combative liberalism. In the social drama, Ernesto
Biester, and in comedy Fernando Caldeira, also no mean lyric poet,
are two of the principal names, and the latter's pieces,
A
Mantilha da Renda and
A Madrugada, have a delicacy
and vivacity which justifies their success. The comedies of
Gervasio Lobato are marked by an easy dialogue and a sparkling wit,
and some of the most popular of them were written in collaboration
with D. Joao de Camara, the leading dramatist of the day, one of
whose pieces,
Os Velhos, has been translated and staged
abroad. To Henrique Lopes de
Men -
donga, scholar, critic and poet, we
owe some strong historical plays as well as the piece written with
Lobato, which made a big
hit. The
playwrights also include Julio Dantas, and Dr Marcellino Mesquita,
author of
Leonor Telles and other historical dramas, as
well as of a powerful piece,
Den' supremo. Herculano led
the way in the historical romance by his
Lendas e
narrativas and
0 Monasticon, two somewhat laboured
productions, whose progenitor was
Walter Scott; they still find readers
for their impeccable style. Their most popular successors have been
A Mocidade de D. Joao V. and
A ultimo corrida de
touros reaes em Salvaterra by Rebello da Silva, and
Urn Anno na Corte by the statesman, Andrade
Corvo, the first and the last superior books. The novel shares with
poetry the predominant place in the modern literature of Portugal,
and
Camillo
Castello Branco, Gomes Coelho and Eqa de Queiroz are names
which would stand very high in any country. The first, a wonderful
impressionist though not perhaps a great novelist, describes to
perfection the domestic and social life of Portugal in the early
part of the 10th century. His remarkable works include
Arnor de
Perdirao, Amor de Salvarao, Retrato de Ricardina, and the
series entitled
Novellas do Minho; moreover some of his
essays in history and literary criticism, such as
Bohemia do Espirito, rank
only next to his romances. Gomes Coelho, better known as
Julio
Diniz, records his experiences of English society in Oporto in
A Familia ingleza, and for his romantic
idealism he has been dubbed
British; Portuguese critics have accused him of imitating
Dickens.
naturalistic, Junqueiro began with the ironical com His stories,
particularly
As Pupillas do Snr. Reitor, depict country
life and scenery with loving sympathy, and hold the reader by the
charm of the characters, but Diniz is a rather subjective
monotonous writer who lacks the power to analyse, and he is no
psychologist. Ega de Queiroz (q.v.) founded the Naturalist school
in Portugal by a powerful book written in 1871, but only published
in 1875, under the title
The Crime of Father Amara; and two of his great
romances,
Cousin Basil
'' and
Os Maias, were written during his occupancy of
consular posts in England.
The Relic conveys the
impressions of a journey in Palestine and in parts suggests his
indebtedness to Flaubert, but its
mysticism is entirely new and individual;
while the versatility of his talent further appears in
The
Correspondence of Fradique Mendes, where acute observation is
combined with brilliant satire or rich humour. The later portion of
The City and the Mountains, for the truth and beauty of
its descriptive passages, is highly praised, and many pages are
already quoted as classic examples of Portuguese prose. Among other
novelists are Oliveira Marreca, Pinheiro Chagas, Arnaldo Gama, Luis
de Magalhaes and Teixeira de Queiroz, the last of whom is almost as
distinctly national a writer as Castello Branco himself.
Years of persevering toil in archives and editions of old
chronicles prepared Herculano for his
magnum opus, the
Historia de Portugal. The
Historia da Origem e Estabeletlstory. cimento da Inquisicdo em
Portugal followed and confirmed the position of its author as
the leading modern historian of the Peninsula, and he further
initiated and edited the important series
Portugaliae Monumenta
historica. The Visconde de Santarem, and Judice Biker in
geography and diplomatics,
produced standard works; Luz Soriano compiled painstaking histories
of the reign of King Joseph and of the Peninsular War; Silvestre
Ribeiro printed a learned account of the scientific, literary and
artistic establishments of Portugal, and Lieut.-Colonel Christovam
Ayres was the author of a history of the Portuguese army. Rebello
da Silva and the voluminous and brilliant publicists, Latino Coelho
and Pinheiro Chagas, wrote at second hand and rank higher as
stylists than as historians. Gama Barros and Costa Lobo followed
closely in the footsteps of Herculano, the first by a
Historia
da Administragao publica em Portugal nos Seculos XII. a XV.,
positively packed with learning, the second by a
Historia da
Sociedade em Portugal no Seculo XV. Though he had no time for
original research, Oliveira Martins (q.v.) possessed psychological
imagination, a rare capacity for general ideas and the gift of
picturesque narration; and in his philosophic
Historia de
Portugal, his sensational
Portugal contemporaneo, Os
Filhos de D. Joao and
Vida de Nun' Alvarez, he
painted an admirable series of portraits and, following his master
Michelet, made the past live again. Furthermore the interesting
volumes of his
Bibliotheca das Sciencias Sociaes show
extensive knowledge, freshness of views and critical independence
and they have greatly contributed to the education of his
countrymen.
Ramalho Ortigao, the art critic, will be remembered principally
for the
Far pas, a series of satirical and humorous
sketches of Portuguese society which he wrote in collabora-
Criticism. L ion with
Queiroz. Julio Cesar Machado and Fialho de Almeida made their mark
by many humorous publications, and, in the domain of pure literary
criticism, mention must be made of Antonio Pedro Lopes de Mendonga,
Rebello da Silva,
Dr Joaquim de Vasconcellos, Mme
Michaelis de Vasconcellos, Silva Pinto, the favourite disciple of
Castello Branco, and of Luciano Cordeiro, founder of the Lisbon
Geographical Society, whose able monograph,
Soror
Marianna, vindicated the authenticity of the
Letters of a
Portuguese Nun and showed Marianna Alcoforado to be their
authoress. Excellent critical work was also done by Moniz Barreto,
whose early death was a serious loss to letters.
. In scientific literature hardly a single department lacks a
name of repute even outside Portugal. The press has accompanied the
general progress, and ever since Herculano founded and wrote in the
Panorama, the
leading writers have almost without exception made both name and
livelihood by writing for the papers, but as pure journalists none
has excelled Antonio Rodriguez Sampaio, Antonio Augusto Teixeira de
Vasconcellosand Emygdio Navarro.
The leading Portuguese orators of the 19th century, with the
exception of Malhao, were not churchmen, as in the past, but
politicians. The early days of parliamentary rule produced Manoel
Fernandes Thomas and Manoel
oratory. Borges Carneiro, but
the most brilliant period was that of the first twenty-five years
of constitutional government after 1834, and the historic names are
those of Garrett, Manoel da Silva Passos, and the great
tribune and
apostle of liberty, Jose Estevao Coelho de
Magalhaes. The ill-fated Vieira de Castro excited the greatest
admiration by his impassioned speeches in the Chamber of Deputies
during the 'sixties; the nearest modern counterpart to these
distinguished men is the orator Antonio Candido Ribeiro da
Costa.
Bibliography. - The corner-stones are the
Bibliotheca
Lusitana of Barbosa Machado and the
Diccionario
bibliographico portuguez, by Innocencio da Silva, with Brito
Aranha's supplement; while the
Bibliotheca Hispana Nova of
Nicolao Antonio (1783-1788) may also be referred to. Subsidiary to
these are the
Manual bibliographico portuguez of Dr Pinto
de Mattos, the admirable
Catalogo razonado de los Autores
portugueses que escribieron en Castellano, compiled by Garcia
Peres (1890), and such publications as Figaniere's
Catalogo dos
Manuscriptos portugueses no Museu Britannico (1853). The only
full general history of the literature comes from the prolific pen
of Dr Theophilo Braga (second and revised edition in 32 vols.). The
volumes positively bulge with information and contain much acute
criticism, but their value is diminished by frequent and needless
digressions and by the fantastic theorizings of their author, a
militant Positivist. Of one-volume books on the same subject, Dr
Braga's
Curso da Historia da Litteratura portugueza and
his
Theoria da Historia da Litteratura portugueza (3rd
ed., 1881) may be recommended, though the plainer
Historia da
Litteratura portugueza, by Dr Mendes dos
Remedios (3rd ed., 1908) has the considerable
advantage for foreign students of including a large number of
selected passages from the authors named. See also the
Chrestomathia archaica of J. J. Nunes (1905). Among
foreign studies the palm must be given to the " Geschichte der
portugiesischen Litteratur " by the eminent scholar, Mme lIichatlis
de Vasconcellos, in the
Grundriss der rom. Philologie of
Grober (1893-1894). Among general critical studies are Costa e
Silva's
Ensaio biographico-critico and the masterly work
of
Menendez y Pelayo,
Historia de las ideas estaticas Espana. Coming to special
periods, the student may consult, for the cancioneiros, Mme
Michaelis de Vasconcellos,
op. cit., and her great edition
of the
Cancioneiro da Ajuda (1904); also H. R. Lang,
Das Liederbuch der Konigs Denis von Portugal (1894). Lopes de Mendonga
treats of the literature of the 16th and 17th centuries in articles
in the
Annaes das sciencias e letras; and the
Memorias
de litteratura portugueza printed by the Lisbon Academy of
Sciences (1792-1814) contain essays on the drama and the Arcadia,
but the 19th century has naturally received most attention. For
that period, see Lopes de Mendonga,
Memoiras da litteratura
contemporanea (1855); Romero Ortiz,
La Literatura
portugueza en el siglo XIX. (1869), containing much undigested
information; and Maxime Formont,
Le Mouvement poetique
contemporain en Portugal, an able sketch; but the soundest
review is due to Moniz Barreto, whose " Litteratura portugueza
contemporanea " came out in the
Revista de Portugal for
July 1889. Students of the modern novel in Portugal should refer to
the essays of J. Pereira de Sampaio ("
Bruno ")
A Geracao Nova (1886).
Portugal still lacks a collection equivalent to Rivadeneyra's
Biblioteca de autores espanoles, contenting itself with
the Parnasso lusitano (6 vols., 1826) and a Corpus
illustrium poetarum lusitanorum qui latine scripserunt
(1745-1748), and though much has been accomplished to make the
classics more available, even yet no correct, not to say critical,
texts of many notable writers exist. The Cancioneiro de
Ajuda by Mme Vasconcellos, is the perfection of editing, and
there are diplomatic editions of other cancioneiros, e.g. Il
Canzoniere portoghese della Bibliotheca Vaticana, by E. Monaci
(1875), of which Dr Braga hurriedly prepared a critical edition;
Il Canzoniere portoghese Colocci-Brancuti by E. Molteni
(1880), and the Cancioneiro Geral (1846). The
Romanceiro portuguez of V. E. Hardung is incomplete. (E.
PR.)
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