Inês de Castro

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Tomb of Inês de Castro, ca.1360, Alcobaça

Inês de Castro (Portuguese: iˈneʃ dɨ ˈkaʃtɾu; also Dona Inês de Castro , Castilian : Inés de Castro ; in old documents also: Enes de Castro or de Crasto (sic!); * Around 1320 in Galicia ; † January 7, 1355 in Coimbra ) was a Galician noblewoman, lover and wife of the future King of Portugal, Dom Pedro I. She was executed on the orders of his father, King Afonso IV . Her tragic life is probably the most famous love story in Portugal and has served as the basis for a number of literary adaptations.

Life

Inês Pires de Castro was born the natural daughter of the powerful and wealthy Galician nobleman Pedro Fernandes de Castro, Lord of Lemos , and the Aldonça Lourenço de Valadares; her mother was Portuguese. Inês himself was a great-granddaughter of Sancho IV of Castile and came to Portugal in 1340 in the entourage of the Castilian princess Constança Manuel . Constança Manuel, a great-granddaughter of King Ferdinand III. of Castile, had to marry the Portuguese heir to the throne Dom Pedro for political reasons. Inês was a lady-in-waiting of Constança and a second cousin of Dom Pedro. She is said to have been a woman of very unusual and (especially for her southern European environment) eye-catching beauty, she was very slim, had reddish-gold hair and a strikingly graceful, long, so-called ' gooseneck ', which is why she is nicknamed the Portuguese colo de garça gave (literally: " heron neck"). Pedro fell in love with the beautiful Inês on the spot.

King Alfonso IV and the Portuguese court disapproved of Dom Pedro's extramarital relationship for moral and diplomatic reasons, and in 1344 the king tried to remove Inês from his reach by banishing her to her aunt Dona Teresa de Albuquerque's castle on the Castilian border. But the distance did not affect the love between Pedro and Inês, and they were still in contact.

The situation changed on November 13, 1345 when Constança Manuel died after the birth of her third child, Fernando , heir to the throne . However, Alfonso IV forbade Pedro to marry Inês, instead he wanted to remarry his son to another woman from the royal family - which the latter refused. Against the express orders of his father, Pedro had Inês come back and spent ten happy years with her in Coimbra , where Inês lived in the old palace of the former Queen Santa Isabel , near the Santa Clara monastery . She gave him three sons and a daughter: 1346 Afonso (who died shortly after birth), 1347 Beatriz, 1349 João and 1354 Dinis.

Pedro now had a son with his deceased wife as well as with Inês de Castro potential heirs. Since King Alfonso IV himself had considerable problems with illegitimate descendants of his own father, he and his advisors at court feared that Inês de Castro or her family might try to oust the legitimate heir to the throne in favor of their children. The Portuguese nobility, however, was at least partly concerned with their own influence and interests when they rejected the Inês de Castro. Because the de Castro family was considered powerful and influential in Castile - whether this influence was so great that it represented a real threat that could have endangered Portugal's independence is doubtful and not proven. Conversely, however, Dom Pedro is said to have tried to interfere in Castilian politics, especially since Inês' brothers are said to have awakened hopes for the Castilian throne in him.

The murder of Inês de Castro , painting by Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro , around 1902

There were also rumors (or fears) that Pedro had secretly married Inês, which the latter initially denied, but later confirmed in the so-called Cantanhede Declaration (see below).

Alfonso IV finally called a Privy Council, on which he accused Inês of high treason and even pronounced the verdict against her. On January 7, 1355, when Crown Prince Dom Pedro was on the hunt, three of his men broke into the country house near Coimbra where Inês was living, and beheaded her there in the presence of their children. According to tradition, these three murderers were Pêro or (Pedro) Coelho, Álvaro Gonçalves, and Diogo Lopes Pacheco.

Upon his return from the hunt, Crown Prince Pedro found his murdered lover and her severed head. Inês de Castro's remains were first buried in the nearby Santa Clara Monastery.

Out of grief, despair and anger, Pedro unleashed a campaign of revenge and had villages looted in various provinces of Portugal between Douro and Minho , in Tràs-os-Montes and in the Beira . However, he soon had to realize that he could not do anything against his father or undo what had happened. For this reason, through the mediation of Queen Beatrice, he concluded an agreement in August 1355, according to which Pedro submitted to his father and both solemnly vowed to forget what had happened and to let it rest. The courtiers who had advised Alfons to kill the Inês nevertheless fled to Castile.

Alfonso IV died in 1357 and Dom Pedro ascended the throne himself. At first there was no feared act of revenge. Pedro I, however, developed close ties with Castile and obtained the extradition of two of the three murderers: Pêro Coelho and Álvaro Gonçalves were executed in Santarém . King Pedro held a banquet while he was being executed , and legend has it that he wanted one person's heart to be torn out through his chest while he was alive, and that of the other from behind through his back; however, the chronicler Fernão Lopes reports that the executioner dissuaded the king from this idea because of the difficulty of such an execution. The third murderer Diogo Lopes Pacheco was able to flee to France and the king is said to have forgiven him on his deathbed.

According to Fernão Lopes, Pedro I took the so-called Declaração de Cantanhede ( Declaração de Cantanhede ) on June 12, 1360 in the church of Cantanhede . According to this, he had secretly married Inês de Castro seven years earlier during the reign of his father (around 1353). The religious ceremony was Dom Gil, the former dean of the Cathedral of Guarda been held. This declaration was officially announced on June 18th in Coimbra by Dom João Afonso, Count of Barcelos , an assembly of prelates , nobles and people. It was attested by the same Dom Gil, who was now bishop of Guarda Cathedral, and by one of the king's servants, Estevão Lobato. With this, Pedro I. declared the three children from his relationship with Inês de Castro to be legitimate and legitimate.

Tomb of Inês de Castro in the Alcobaça monastery

On Pedro's orders, two magnificent tombs made of white sandstone were created for him and Inês, which were erected in the transept of the monastery church of Alcobaça . The sarcophagi are among the most outstanding examples of Gothic sculpture in Europe. Inês de Castro wears a crown on her head, so she was posthumously portrayed as the legitimate Queen of Portugal (see pictures). Inês' body was transferred from Santa Clara in Coimbra to Alcobaça in 1361 or 1362. Pedro followed in 1367.
Originally the two sarcophagi stood side by side, with their feet facing east ( sunrise ) in the first chapel of the south transept , which was dedicated to Saint Benedict ( São Bento ). In the 1780s, however, the arrangement of the tombs was changed, one placed one opposite the other. In 1956 they were brought into their current position (2018), Dom Pedro in the south transept and Inês de Castro in the north, again facing each other. Ever since the sarcophagi were brought into this opposite position in the 18th century, the legend has arisen that Pedro had them set up so "so that the two lovers can look each other straight in the eyes at the resurrection on the last day " ( «possam olhar -se nos olhos quando despertarem no dia do juízo final » ).
Unfortunately, in 1810, as a result of the Napoleonic Wars on the Iberian Peninsula , the grave monuments were severely damaged by French soldiers who beat the fine stone carvings with rifle butts.

Legends

After a historically unproven, but famous and widespread legend, Pedro will after his accession to the contract are granted, the body of Inês from the Monastery of Santa Clara, where it rested only five years in the cathedral of Coimbra to transfer to to have them solemnly crowned. Two throne chairs had been set up, one for the dead woman and the other for Dom Pedro. The dead Inês was dressed in the coronation robes, covered with jewels, on her head she wore the royal crown. The entire court, which presumably knew about the conspiracy and the death sentence against Inês, had to pay homage to her as the rightful Queen of Portugal, and one by one had to kiss her hand.
However, this ghostly scene has not been historically proven; it is said to have emerged as a legend in Castile only from the 16th century.

A little outside of today's Coimbra near the monastery of Santa Clara lie in an old garden property, the Quinta das lágrimas , two sources: the "source of love" ( Fonte dos amores ) and the "source of tears" ( Fonte das lágrimas ). Both the happy romance and the drama of the murder of Inês are said to have taken place here. Only a small wall remains of the former stately building, which was provided with a neo-Gothic window arch in the 19th century . This historic and at the same time romantic place is still a popular meeting place for couples in love who swear eternal love here, just as many newly married couples step in front of the graves in the monastery of Alcobaça on the day of their wedding to repeat their promise of loyalty.

family

Inês had three (surviving) children with Pedro I of Portugal, who were later recognized by the king as legitimate heirs to the throne and therefore all carried the title of Infante of Portugal:

  • Beatrice (around 1347–1381), ⚭ 1373 Sancho Alfonso of Castile, Lord of Albuquerque
  • João (Johann) (1349–1397), Duke of Valencia de Campos
  • Dinis (Dionysius, Denis) (1354–1397), ⚭ 1372 Joan of Castile, mistress of Cifuentes

Literary arrangements and settings

Inês de Castro, engraving by Alfredo Roque Gameiro (1864–1935), in: História de Portugal , 1899

The romantic-tragic life of Inês de Castro, especially in Portugal itself, but also beyond, has repeatedly inspired numerous literary adaptations to this day, which, however, often took some liberties with regard to historical reality.

  • The first author who processed the material literarily was Garcia de Resende with his Trovas à Morte de Inês de Castro , in his Cancioneiro Geral (1516).
  • Luís de Camões gave the material of the legend a lyrical version in the third song of his verse epic The Lusiads ( Os Lusíadas , 1572, Canticle III, 118 to 135), and spread the legend about the Quinta das Lágrimas with its two sources.
  • António Ferreira created the first adaptation for the stage with his tragedy A Castro ( or: Tragédia de Inês de Castro) , which was only published after the author's death in 1587 and which was also very successful in Spain.
  • In Paris in 1723 the tragedy Inès de Castro by Antoine Houdar de la Motte staged at the Théâtre-Français and was a great success.
  • The English writer Anna Eliza Bray wrote a historical horror novel on the subject in 1830 under the title The Talba or Moor of Portugal.
  • 29 operas were written about the life of Inês de Castro, on 21 different textbooks. The best known is Giuseppe Persiani's opera Ines de Castro, based on a text book by Salvatore Cammarano and Giovanni E. Bidera, premiered in Naples in 1835, with Maria Malibran in the title role. Today the young Swiss composer Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini composed an opera on this subject, which was premiered under the title Wut at the Erfurt Theater (September 9, 2006 ).
  • Ezra Pound processed the legend about Inês de Castro in XXX, among other places. Singing his cantos.
  • In 1986 the Portuguese writer Agustina Bessa-Luís published her novel Adivinhas de Pedro e Inês .
  • Hugo Loetscher turned the material into a play. It was published in Portuguese under the title O amor assassinado (2001).

literature

  • Maria João Martins: Mulheres Portuguesas , Vol. I, Vega & Multilar, 1994, (Portuguese)

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Maria João Martins: Mulheres Portuguesas , Vol. I, Vega & Multilar, 1994, (Portuguese) p. 10.
  2. ^ Maria João Martins: Mulheres Portuguesas , Vol. I, Vega & Multilar, 1994, p. 10.
  3. ↑ Maria João Martins: Mulheres Portuguesas , Vol. I, Vega & Multilar, 1994, p. 10 u. 11.
  4. ↑ Maria João Martins: Mulheres Portuguesas , Vol. I, Vega & Multilar, 1994, p. 10 u. 11.
  5. ^ Maria João Martins: Mulheres Portuguesas , Vol. I, Vega & Multilar, 1994, p. 11.
  6. ^ Maria João Martins: Mulheres Portuguesas , Vol. I, Vega & Multilar, 1994, p. 11.
  7. ^ Maria João Martins: Mulheres Portuguesas , Vol. I, Vega & Multilar, 1994, p. 11.
  8. ^ Maria João Martins: Mulheres Portuguesas , Vol. I, Vega & Multilar, 1994, p. 11.
  9. ↑ Original wording (in old Portuguese) of the document from June 18, 1360 on: Wikisource , viewed April 27, 2018
  10. ^ Maria João Martins: Mulheres Portuguesas , Vol. I, Vega & Multilar, 1994, p. 11.
personal data
SURNAME Castro, Inês de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Castilian nobles
DATE OF BIRTH around 1320
PLACE OF BIRTH Galicia
DATE OF DEATH January 7, 1355
Place of death Coimbra