Portugal under the house of Avis
The House of Avis ruled Portugal from 1383 to 1580 , following the rule of the Burgundians .
Rise of the House of Avis and secure Portuguese independence
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After the death of Ferdinand I on October 22, 1383, the last ruler of Burgundy, his widow Leonore Teles de Menezes took power together with her lover, the Galician knight Juan Fernández Andeiro , Count of Ourém. Then came the revolution. The country resisted the unpopular Leonore and the pro-Castilian landed gentleman. Leonore was chased away by a revolt of the craft guilds in Lisbon after six weeks of rule; Johann von Avis , an illegitimate descendant of Peter I , killed her lover on December 6, 1383. At that time, Castile was dominated by the Portuguese high nobility, who hoped that John I of Castile would restore old privileges. On the side of Johann von Avís, on the other hand, stood mainly the lower nobility and the bourgeoisie and peasantry.
These events went down in Portuguese history as the revolution of 1383 . Castile invaded Portugal, the Cortes declared John of Avís on December 16, 1383 as regent and defender of the fatherland. The Castilians besieged him in Lisbon from March to September 1384 for six months, but then had to withdraw because of the plague. In March 1385, the Cortes were called to Coimbra to solve the problem of succession to the throne. They proclaimed Johann von Avis on April 6th as Johann I as the new king. Johann allied himself with England, and with English help he succeeded in decisively defeating Castile in the Battle of Aljubarrota on August 14, 1385 .
In the person of Nuno Álvares Pereira , Johann had a loyal and particularly capable military leader. Its victories and the victory of Johann at Aljubarrota meant that the Castilian attempts to conquer Portugal were finally repulsed. Pereira became a very popular figure in Portuguese history, and in 1918 he was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church . John I founded the new Avís dynasty , who ruled the country until 1580.
On the way to world power
John I is considered one of the greatest Portuguese kings. In 1386 he signed the Treaty of Windsor , with which Portugal and England were permanently allied. Formally, this alliance still exists today. In 1387 Johann I married Philippa , daughter of the Duke of Lancaster .
Expansion on the Iberian Peninsula was not possible. In 1415, John I therefore conquered Ceuta in Morocco from the Moors. With this he already determined the thrust for the later expeditions of his younger son Heinrich the Navigator . These expeditions formed the basis for Portugal's rise to become one of the largest colonial powers in the world. Heinrich the Navigator began to equip sea expeditions in 1419. Although he never traveled further than Tangier himself , he was nicknamed “the seafarer” because Portugal owed its great discoveries to his tireless work. Madeira was (re) discovered in 1419 and the Azores in 1427 and colonized by Portugal.
Johann I married his daughter Elisabeth (Isabel) to Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy . This marriage created advantageous trade contacts for Portugal with Flanders , the most up-and-coming economic power in Europe at the time. John I succeeded in becoming the progenitor of two Portuguese dynasties, because in addition to his legitimate descendants who make up the House of Avís, he also had an illegitimate son, Alfons, who became the first Duke of Braganza and the progenitor of the house that followed the intermezzo of the Habsburgs should rule Portugal from 1640.
Johann reformed the administrative system, the bourgeoisie became more involved in the administration and government of the country. Members of the high nobility who had supported John I of Castile's claims to the throne were expelled from the country, and their property was given to lower nobility and commoners. The king thus created a new and at the same time loyal class of nobility. Culturally, the country flourished under his government.
Johann I died in 1433 and was succeeded by Eduard (Dom Duarte, 1433–1438), who emphatically promoted the expeditions of his younger brother Heinrich the Navigator. Eduard was highly educated and went down in Portuguese history as the philosopher-king (o Rei-Filosofo), as he wrote his own philosophical work on the destiny of man ("the loyal adviser", "o Leal Conselheiro").
Edward's brief reign was unsuccessful. His predecessor John I was able to give large estates to the nobility and thus secured their support in the fight against Castile. Eduard now tried to win back at least part of these lands for the crown. In 1434 he issued a decree according to which the crown should automatically inherit all land as soon as a country gentleman died without a male heir. This decree brought him into conflict with the landed gentry. The attempt to conquer Tangier in Morocco from the Moors in 1437 failed. Heinrich the Navigator, who commanded the Tangier campaign, had to surrender to the overwhelming Arab forces. Part of the surrender provisions was that Portugal returned Ceuta to the Moors. To vouch for this determination, Prince Ferdinand , another of the king's younger brothers, was given hostage to the Moors. Eduard was now faced with the question of whether he should save his brother and thus give up the city of Ceuta or not. The king died of the plague as early as 1438, and Prince Ferdinand remained in captivity, in which he finally died in 1443. Calderón glorified his fate in 1662 in the novella The Steadfast Prince ( El principe constante ).
The son and heir to the throne King Alfonso V (1438–1481) was six years old at the time of his accession to the throne. The reign fell initially to the king's widow Eleanor . But after a year this was ousted by Peter , the Duke of Coimbra, a younger brother of King Edward and thus uncle of King Alfonso V.
The reign of the Duke of Coimbra did not conform to King Edward's testamentary provisions. Still, Peter managed to get the Cortes to approve her twice. Even after Alfonso was declared of legal age in 1446, the Duke of Coimbra did not give up the reign and strengthened his position by marrying his daughter to the young king. The king then allied himself with the Duke of Braganza, who led the aristocratic opposition in the country against the centralization tendencies promoted by Prince Regent Peter. His mother also supported the young king and ensured him the support of Aragon . Alfonso V succeeded in defeating his uncle and father-in-law in the battle of Alfarrobeira in 1449; the Duke of Coimbra fell in battle.
Alfonso V was then the undisputed ruler of the country. However, he had to pay for this victory by strengthening the position of the nobility, represented especially by the Duke of Braganza. The further reign of Alfonso was marked by the attempt to regain the lost influence. In 1451 he succeeded in meeting his sister Leonore with the Roman-German King Friedrich III. to marry from the House of Habsburg .
During this time, Henry the Navigator's discoveries continued. In 1440, a trading post was opened on the West African island of Arguim , and Portugal began trading in slaves. In 1456 Cape Verde was discovered and left to the Christ Order , the former Templars, for settlement in the name of Portugal. In 1460 Heinrich reached Guinea ; he died that same year.
Portugal tried to exclude rivals from the colonial expansion into Africa. For this Portugal was dependent on the Pope. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Portugal was the only European power to support the Turkish crusade proclaimed by the popes. Because of the death of Pope Kalixtus III. in 1458 the crusade never took place.
The results achieved were so significant that they had to be secured for Portugal with the help of the Pope. On March 13, 1456, Pope Kalixt III transferred. in his bull Inter cetera the order of Christ the entire spiritual power over "all areas south of Cape Bojador and Cape Nun, over Guinea to the Indians as well as over the islands in the Atlantic". This bull was the ecclesiastical counterpart to the bull Romanus pontifex of January 8, 1455, in which Pope Nicholas V gave the Portuguese King Alfonso V, his uncle Henry the Navigator and their successors the countries, ports, islands and seas Africa including the patronage over the churches, the trade monopoly (except for the trade in war materials), the exclusive right of navigation in these waters and the right to lead infidels into slavery.
Inter cetera confirmed the privileges granted to the Order of Christ by Alfonso V on June 7, 1454 as well as all the privileges granted to the Portuguese by the predecessors of Pope Kalixt III. conferred rights and privileges. With this letter, the Pope gave the Order of Christ the proper spiritual jurisdiction as well as the rule and authority in spiritual matters over "all acquired and those still to be acquired" territories. This far-reaching privilege enabled the Order to exercise ecclesiastical jurisdiction in India as well .
Alfonso V conquered Tangier in Morocco in 1471. Thereupon he extended his royal title to confirm his claim to the North African territories. It was now called rei de Portugal e do Algarve, Senhor de Septa, Senhor d'Alcacere em Africa ; this earned him the nickname "the African".
In order to continue the Portuguese explorations on the African coast despite limited financial means, King Alfonso leased the right to travel to Africa in the name and on behalf of the Portuguese crown. In this five-year contract, the wealthy Portuguese merchant Fernão Gomes undertook not only to pay the lease, but also to explore the African coast for another 100 Legoas every year, i.e. almost 620 km. The starting point was today's Sierra Leone . At the same time he was given a number of rights that allow him to derive income from the Guinea trade. Fernão Gomes hired outstanding seafarers and had a total of four voyages. His ships reached the equator and in 1475 reached Cape Santa Catarina, about 4 ° south latitude.
In 1474 King Henry IV of Castile died .
Alfons V then actively intervened in the struggle for the Castilian throne. Once he had courted the hand of Princess Isabella, the later regent Isabella the Catholic , a sister of the late Henry IV, but after these plans were dashed, he became engaged to Johanna , the daughter of Henry IV, and now supported their claims to the throne against Isabella.
In the Battle of Toro in 1476, Portugal was defeated by the Catholic Kings; the Portuguese claims to the throne of Castile were thus repulsed. Alfons V went to Nancy in France, where he - in vain - tried to King Louis XI. to move to intervene on his side against Castile. Heavily depressed by the defeat of Toro, he toyed with the idea of abdicating and not returning to Portugal from France, but instead going on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem , but was able to do so by King Louis XI. be persuaded to return to his country. In the Peace of Alcáçovas, Alfonso V had to give up all claims to the Castilian throne and the Canary Islands for himself and his wife, but received freedom of action in North Africa from Spain. In the last years of his life, the king was increasingly depressed and ailing, wanted to abdicate again, but died of the plague beforehand.
After the death of Alfonso V in 1481, his son, King John II (Dom João II), "the strict" or "the perfect", came to power. This managed to restore the royal power against the nobility. Thus the nobles were deprived of the right to exercise their own jurisdiction in their domains. The king persecuted opponents of this policy with great severity. The dukes of Braganza and Beja-Videu, cousins of the king and leaders of the aristocratic opposition, were executed in 1483. In 1484 the king personally killed an unpopular brother-in-law during a conversation. The Bishop of Évora was also sentenced to death. John II took large estates in favor of the crown, which finally established itself as the dominant power in the country.
In terms of foreign policy, the king continued the course of expansion. In 1482, the São Jorge da Mina fortress was founded on the Gold Coast (now Ghana ), thereby diverting the gold and slave trade from West Africa from the unfavorable Trans-Saharan caravan routes. The income of the crown doubled. Diogo Cão conducted an expedition to the Congo , Bartolomeu Diaz circled the Cape of Good Hope in 1488 . The sea route to India was thus found. Through the mediation of the Pope, Portugal and Spain concluded the Treaty of Tordesillas , with which the Portuguese and Spanish zones of influence in America and Africa were defined.
The reign of John II marks a milestone in the development of Portugal into a centralized, absolutist state geared towards royal power. During his entire reign, the king convened the Cortes only four times, otherwise he ruled completely independently.
The reign of John II is also a time of missed opportunities for Portugal. With the marriage of his son and heir to the throne Johann with Isabella, daughter of the Catholic kings of Spain, the prospect of a large Iberian empire under Portuguese leadership existed. The death of the heir to the throne in 1491 then prevented these plans. John II is also the Portuguese king who refused to help Christopher Columbus to find the western route to India, so that he discovered America in Spanish service.
After the death of the heir to the throne, Johann II remained without legitimate male descendants and therefore considered making his favorite son his successor out of an illegitimate connection. In his will he determined the next living male member of the house of Avís to be his successor, Emanuel , a brother of his wife and grandson of King Edward.
Emanuel the lucky one
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Emanuel I was given high honors by Johann II early on, so he became Duke of Viseu and Beja and Grand Master of the Order of Christ. After the Crown Prince's death in 1491, he was then appointed heir to the throne.
In 1495 Emanuel I took over the reign that lasted until 1521. Through the flourishing trading empire, he became the richest ruler in Europe. In 1498 Vasco da Gama opened the sea route to India.
The discoverer Vasco da Gama was followed by the conquerors, first Francisco de Almeida , then Afonso de Albuquerque , who was appointed governor of Portuguese India . To safeguard the very lucrative trade in India, they set up a number of bases - trading establishments and military bases - and advanced beyond India further east as early as the early 16th century. In 1503 all activities were centralized in the Casa da Índia , which developed into the central authority for the administration of the new overseas territories and served as a central trading point or clearing house for all areas of overseas trade.
Between 1503 and 1505 Duarte Pacheco Pereira secured the Portuguese presence in India by force of arms and thus laid the first foundations for the development of the Portuguese overseas region in Asia. In 1510 Afonso de Albuquerque occupied Goa , which quickly developed into the most important Portuguese trading post in India. In 1511 Afonso conquered the Malaysian Malacca , which controlled the Malakka Strait and thus the route to China and the Spice Islands, the Moluccas . The Portuguese also established trading bases there. Portugal thus brought the lucrative spice trade under its control; The Arabs' previous monopoly of trade in spices was broken. Lisbon developed into an important trading center for spices and other goods from Asia.
Pedro Álvares Cabral discovered Brazil in 1500 and took possession of it for Portugal. The Portuguese were the first European colonial power to reach the Chinese Empire : a Portuguese trading base in Macau was founded in 1557. Timor became Portuguese in 1513 , Hormuz followed in 1515. Emanuel I conquered other parts of Morocco in 1513–1515 .
Domestically, Emanuel I finally prevailed against the landed gentry.
The Jewish question was a central domestic problem. Jews had been in the country since the 6th century, i.e. before the Christian era and before the founding of the Kingdom of Portugal. In 1492 the Catholic kings expelled the Jews from Spain. 60,000 of them fled to Portugal. In the negotiations with Spain that led to the king's marriage to Isabella, daughter of the Catholic kings, in 1497, Spain pushed through the expulsion of the Portuguese Jews. In 1496 Emanuel I also drove out the Portuguese Jews. However, Jews who were baptized were allowed to stay. In 1504 and 1506 there were anti-Jewish pogroms in Lisbon against these so-called "New Christians" (Cristãos-Novos) .
After the heir to the throne died in Spain in 1497, Isabella, wife of Emanuel I, was designated heiress to the Catholic kings. Their son Miguel was entitled to all three kingdoms.
But Isabella died in childbed and Miguel, the designated heir to the throne, was a toddler. It is true that Emanuel remarried a daughter of the Catholic kings, the Infanta Maria . The heiress was her older sister Johanna the Mad , through whose marriage with Philip the Fair Spain finally fell to the Habsburgs. Emanuel I also established family ties with the new ruling family. After the death of Mary, he married Eleonore , a sister of Charles V, in his last marriage . His son and heir to the throne also married a sister of Charles V.
Portugal experienced a cultural boom under Emanuel I, the so-called "golden age". The country's overseas activities bore fruit, with large amounts of gold flowing from the colonies to the motherland. Since overseas trade was a royal monopoly and the new colonies were declared crown property, the king himself benefited from this wealth. Emanuel used it to build fantastic buildings in the “Manueline style” named after him. He also reformed the legal, educational and health systems.
The last rulers from the house of Avís
In 1521 Emanuel I died. The throne fell to his son from his second marriage to the Infanta Maria, who was known as Johann III. ( Dom João III ) ascended the throne.
The "Jewish problem" remained the most important domestic policy issue even under his government. Johann III. established the Inquisition in 1531 to investigate the religious practices of the "New Christians", i.e. the Jews who had been baptized in order to be able to stay in Portugal. In the next 200 years, 1,454 people were sentenced to death by the Inquisition. In 1540, Johann III. the Jesuits to settle in Portugal.
In 1524, Luís de Camões , the greatest Portuguese poet, was born. He wrote the national epic Os Lusíadas (German: Die Lusiaden ). At the Badajoz Congress in 1524, Spain recognized the Portuguese claim to Brazil. In 1532 Portugal founded the first permanent settlement in Brazil, the king granted large areas of land in Brazil as fiefs ( donatárias ) and thus promoted the development of the country, in 1545 Salvador da Bahia became the capital of Brazil. Under Johann III. were Aden , Diu , Celebes and Muscat conquered. In 1529 he left the Philippines to Spain and secured the Moluccas for Portugal. Macao, a permanent Portuguese trading post in China, was founded in 1557.
Finally, under the successor of John III, King Sebastian , a catastrophe occurred, as a result of which Portugal itself was temporarily united with Spain in personal union.
The throne fell when King John III. 1557 died of his grandson Sebastian, son of the already deceased Hereditary Prince Johann.
When his grandfather the king died, Sebastian was three years old; the father and hereditary prince Johann had died shortly before. The regency initially took over to his grandmother Katharina, the widow of Johann III. and sister of Charles V. The reign was then by Cardinal Heinrich I , Archbishop of Lisbon, a brother of John III. and thus great-uncle of King Sebastian.
In 1568 Sebastian took over the government personally at the age of 15. His goal was to conquer a large North African empire for Portugal. A succession dispute in the Sultanate of Fez seemed to offer a favorable opportunity. Sebastian gathered an army of 18,000 men and invaded Morocco in 1578. The battle of Alcácer-Quibir ( al-Qasr al-Kabir ) in Morocco was a catastrophe for the Portuguese.
The army of Sultan Muley Abd-el Melik defeated the Portuguese, King Sebastian was killed in battle, his body was lost on the battlefield. Another 8,000 Portuguese, including most of the Portuguese nobles, died in the battle. 15,000 Portuguese, including 100 high Portuguese nobles, were captured. The Portuguese nobility had to pay large sums of money as a trigger.
Sebastian died childless. Therefore, the former regent, Cardinal Heinrich, took over the throne himself as the last male member of the house of Avís. When Cardinal Heinrich passed away childless after two years, the Avís dynasty died out with him.
The Habsburgs, too, aimed their marriage policy at the unification of the Iberian Peninsula. Charles V wrote to his sister Katharina as early as 1557, after his resignation as Roman emperor and Spanish king, when he was already living in seclusion in the monastery of San Jerónimo de Yuste, to ask for the Portuguese in the event of the "early death of King Sebastian without an heir" To claim the throne for their common grandson Don Carlos , the son of King Philip II of Spain, who was married to a daughter of Catherine. Katharina agreed, but the agreement failed due to resistance from the Portuguese nobility.
Heinrich I also dealt intensively with the question of the succession to the throne. After much hesitation, he decided to appoint the Spanish King Philip II as heir to the throne.
The personal union of Portugal with Spain began in 1580 and lasted until 1640.
See also
- Timeline of the history of Portugal
- List of kings of Portugal
- List of queens of Portugal
- Portuguese colonies
Individual evidence
- ↑ P. Feige: Johann 12 . In: Lexikon des Mittelalters , Vol. 5 (1991), Col. 502f.