The Crown, the Court and the Casa da ndia

The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Worldformerly medieval iberian peninsula

Editors

Larry J. Simon (Western Michigan University)Gerard Wiegers (University of Amsterdam)Arie Schippers (University of Amsterdam)

Isidro J. Rivera (University of Kansas)Mercedes Garca-Arenal (cchs/csis)

VOLUME 60

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/memi

The Crown, the Court and the Casa da ndia

Political Centralization in Portugal 14791521

By

Susannah Humble Ferreira

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: Livro do Armeiro-Mor: Armas do Rei de Portugal, fol. 10 (1509). With kind permission of Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo.

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual Brill typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface.

issn 1569-1934isbn 978-90-04-27886-8 (hardback)isbn 978-90-04-29819-4 (e-book)

Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing.All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa.Fees are subject to change.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

To David Charlton Humble

Contents

Acknowledgementsix List of Abbreviationsx Names and Currencyxi

Introduction1

1 Spin Doctors of the Crown: The Chroniclers and Their Contexts17 Fernao Lopes, (Crnista Mor 143454)20 Gomes Eanes de Zurara, (Crnista Mor 145474)22 Dr. Vasco Fernandes de Lucena, (Crnista Mor 147497)26 Rui de Pina, (Crnista Mor 14971522)30 Duarte Galvo37 Joo de Barros and Damio de Gis39

2 From Royal Household to Royal Court: Patronage as a Political Strategy44 Political Utility of Large Households45 Limitation of Household Size46 New Monarch or King of the Roads?54 Reorganization and Expansion of the Royal Household58

3 Inquiry and Reform69 Return of the Exiles71 Expulsion of Jews and Muslims75 The Manueline Reforms79 Bureaucratization and Plural Appointments84 Re-routing the Court: Palaces and Itineraries92

4 Alms for the King101 Controlling the Episcopacy102 Hospitals and Confraternities108 The Order of Christ and the Conquest of Morocco (14951510)120

5 The Crown and Its Castles128 Castles and Councillors130 Changes to Warfare at the Turn of the Sixteenth Century140

viii

CONTENTS

North Africa142 Death of Ferdinand of Aragon147 Estado da ndia148

Conclusion157

Bibliography171 Index182

Acknowledgements

Over the many years that it has taken to bring this book to completion, I have received generous support from a number of organizations. I would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and The Johns Hopkins University for supporting the research for my doctorate. I am additionally grateful to the institutions in Portugal that supported my research: the Fundao Calouste Gulbenkian, Luso-American Foundation and the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal. I also appreciate the assistance that I received from the archivists at the Arquivo Nacional, Torre do Tombo.

This book has grown from a number of conversations, letters and unpub-lished insights of many important scholars in the field of Portuguese History: Professors A.H. Oliveira Marques, Sir Peter Russell, Joo Jos Alves Dias, Jos Custdio Vieira da Silva, Rita Costa Gomes, Joo Paulo Oliveira e Costa, Jos Pedro Paiva, Frank Dutra, David Higgs and Martin Elbl, among many others. I would also like to thank Dr. Sean Cunningham and Dr. Malcolm Mercer in the uk, and Professors John Marshall and Thomas Izbicki at Johns Hopkins, for their assistance with the Tudor comparison upon which this book about Portugal has been based. In addition, I am greatly appreciative of the candid feedback that I received from my colleagues at the summer works in progress seminars at the University of Guelph, to Ricardo Ferreira for his help in transla-tions and to Wendy Humble for her assistance in editing the text. Of course, all mistakes and oversights are my own.

I would like to make special mention of the ongoing mentoring and assis-tance given to me by Professor Ivana Elbl who first brought me into the fas-cinating world of late medieval Portugal and its overseas expansion. Finally I would like to express my full appreciation to my late Ph.D. supervisor, Professor A.J.R. Russell-Wood who shaped my original dissertation by asking probing questions and by putting me on the telephone to Oxford and Lisbon in search of the answers.

List of Abbreviations

ahcml Arquivo Histrico da Cmara Municipal de Lisboabl British Librarybnp Biblioteca Nacional de Portugalcartas de quitao Braamcamp Freire, Anselmo. Cartas de Quitao contained

in in Archivo Histrico Portuguez, 1-6. 19031907.iantt Instituto dos Arquivos Nacionais, Torre do Tombolm Listas de Moradias in D. Antnio Caetano de Sousa, Provas de

Histria de Genealogia da Casa Real Portuguesa, vol. 3, pp.2857, 217224, 440476. Coimbra, Atlntida, 1947.

scmvr Arquivo de Santa Casa da Misericrdia de Vila Real

Names and Currency

With a few exceptions, I have used the modern version of names and places in their original language (eg. Porto rather than Oporto and Manuel i rather than Emmanuel i). The glaring exception in this book has been the use of Ferdinand of Aragon, or Ferdinand ii and Isabella of Castile or Isabella i. Although the so-called Catholic Kings have been increasingly called by their Spanish names Fernando and Isabel by scholars, I have opted for the anglicized version in order to differentiate them from the many men and women named Fernando and Isabel in this book. A number of consorts are commonly referred to as Isabel of Portugal. I have reserved this name for the mother of Isabella i and referred to the consort of the Duke of Burgundy and daughter of Joo i as Isabel of Burgundy. I have called the daughter of Manuel i and consort of Charles v, the Infanta D. Isabel and as a further disambiguation referred to the first wife of Manuel as Isabel of Asturias to avoid further confusion. For clarity, I have dispensed with the customary title Dom or D. when referring to the kings of Portugal in favour of their number (eg. Manuel i instead of D. Manuel).

The discussion of currency and its value in this period is especially problem-atic because of the frequent minting of new coins and because of wild fluctua-tions in the value. Since my interest lies in money on the books, I have primarily used ris: the money of account in the Manueline period.

koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015|doi 10.1163/9789004298194_002

Introduction

Anyone who has walked the windswept cliffs of the Cape of St. Vincent has undoubtedly stood in awe of the force by which sea meets rock. From a ter-restrial standpoint, the Cape of St. Vincent marks the southwest corner of Europe and what was once thought to be the end of the known world. For medieval sailors, who skirted the Atlantic coastline, the cape was a natural obstacle in their journey to and from the Mediterranean: a danger point to be challenged only when favourable winds were gusting. The Cape of St. Vincent and the nearby promontory of Sagres have gained their fame in the historical imagination as the embarkation point of the Portuguese overseas expansion. For some time it was thought that Prince Henry the Navigator ran a sailing school here, teaching sailors to master the fickle winds and currents in prepa-ration for the voyage to Africa. From the cliffs, which rise seventy-five metres above the Atlantic Ocean, the tendency is to look south in the direction of the Guinea coast, explored by Portuguese mariners in the mid-fifteenth century.

Few are aware that the Cape of St. Vincent was also the site of a fierce naval battle which matched, in 1476, the fleet of a French corsair, Guillaume Coullon against merchant ships who had sailed from the port of Cadiz, in service of Isabella i of Castile. Rather than a random act of piracy, Coullon had been sent by the King of France to assist Afonso v of Portugal, in ousting Isabella i from her throne amid what is now referred to as the War of the Castilian Succession (147579). With so much scholarly attention focused on the voyages that pio-neered the sea route to India, one forgets that the Age of Discoveries was also a period of rapid political consolidation and competition. While chroniclers were eager to emphasize the glory of their royal patrons and tout their services to the faith and to the Holy See, they were reticent to acknowledge the political threat posed by their own Christian neighbours. And yet throughout the fif-teenth and sixteenth centuries, the threat that Portugal faced from the ruling houses of Castile and Aragon remained constant and very real.

Much of the research for this book is based on my Ph. D. dissertation, com-pleted more than a decade ago at The Johns Hopkins University, under the supervision of the late A.J.R. Russell-Wood. The dissertation was a comparison of the royal households of Henry vii of England (14851509) and Manuel i of Portugal (14951521) and examined the reasons behind the sudden growth of their courts in the years immediately following the sixteenth century.1

1 Susannah Charlton Humble, From Royal Household to Royal Court: A Comparison of the Development of the Courts of Henry vii of England of England and D. Manuel of Portugal. Ph.D. diss., The Johns Hopkins University, 2003.

Introduction2

Thecomparison of the strategies deployed by the two monarchs was useful. Historiographically the kings have received radically different treatment despite the fact that they were contemporaries and that they deployed similar strategies to consolidate political power. Henry vii, the progenitor of the illus-trious Tudor dynasty has been hailed as a New Monarch, alongside Louis xi of France (146183) and the Catholic Kings: Ferdinand ii of Aragon (14791516) and Isabella i of Castile (14741504), for having subdued the nobility and cen-tralized royal authority.2 By way of contrast, Manuel i has been accused of reversing the advantage achieved by his predecessor, Joo ii (148195) over the titled nobility and recklessly pursuing a program of crusade in Morocco at the expense of commerce in the Indian Ocean.3

But Manuel i and Henry vii had much in common and both ruled kingdoms undergoing fiscal and institutional reform. In 1952, W.C. Richardson detailed how Henry vii increased domestic revenues by diverting landed revenues from the exchequer to the Kings Chamber in the first years of the sixteenth century.4 Virgnia Rau, also writing in the early 1950s, outlined a series of reforms to the Casa dos Contos that streamlined the process of revenue collection in Portugal in these same years.5 When examined alongside the analyses later provided by the economic historian Vitorino Magalhes Godinho, these reforms seem to have translated into a significant increase in ordinary revenues by the second decade of the sixteenth century.6 These revelations temper the general assumption that Manuel Is enrichment came from the windfalls of the spice trade. Like Henry vii and other new monarchs, much of Manuel Is financial and political success came not from divine providence or, as his epithet o Venturoso and publicists would suggest, from good fortune. Rather it came through the political efforts and careful design of the king and his council: essentially through statecraft.

2 For a full discussion of New Monarchs see Arthur Joseph Slavin, The New Monarchies and Representative Assemblies; Medieval Constitutionalism or Modern Absolutism? (Boston: Heath, 1964); Steven Gunn, Politic history, New Monarchy and state formation: Henry vii in European perspective, Historical Research, 82 (2009): 380392.

3 Joo Jos Alves Dias, Isabel M.R. Mendes Drumond Braga and Paulo Drumond Braga, AConjuntura vol. 5, Joel Serro and Antnio Henrique R. de Oliveira Marques eds., Nova Histria de Portugal, Portugal do Renascimento Crise Dinstica, (Lisbon: Editorial Presena, 1998); Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

4 W. C Richardson, Tudor Chamber Administration (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1952).

5 Virginia Rau, A Casa dos Contos, (Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra, 1951).6 Vitorinho Magalhes Godinho, Finanas Pblicas e Estrutura do Estado, Dicionrio de

Histria de Portugal, vol. 3, 3233.

3Introduction

Due to the mesmerizing effect of the overseas expansion, Portuguese histo-rians have made few attempts to contextualize the reigns of Joo ii and Manuel i in the diplomatic history of Europe between 1480 and 1520. Here, the late Jean Aubin is a notable exception and many of the essays contained in Le Latin et lAstrolabe address Portugals relations with the rest of Europe. Building on an article written by Antnio Barata at the turn of the twentieth century, Aubin described the intrigue and diplomatic interference of Aragon and Castile that almost caused a civil war in Portugal in 1495 upon the death of Joo ii.7 Generally speaking, however, Portuguese historians have generally agreed with Jorge Borges de Macedo that following the War of the Castilian Succession that ended with the Treaty of Alcovas of 1479, Portugal largely withdrew from European politics in order to concentrate on the creation of its overseas empire.8

Captivated by Portugals leading role in the European overseas expansion, and deeply aware of the profound legacy of its empire, many historians have accepted this premise of disengagement. Economic historians, tracking the growth of the European spice trade provided data that could support a hypoth-esis that Portugal had refused to involve itself in the Habsburg-Valois conflicts because its commercial interests were more pressing.9 The weight of modern historiography, largely disinterested in the subject of motivations, left an

7 Jean Aubin, D. Joo ii devant sa succession, vol. 2, Le Latin et LAstrolabe (Paris: Centre Culturel Calouste Gulbenkian, 2000), 136138; Antnio Francisco Barata, Ultimos cinco annos do viver de D. Joo ii Archivo Histrico Portuguez, 3 (1905): 365371.

8 Jorge Borges de Macedo, Historia diplomtica portuguesa. Constantes e linhas de fora. (Lisbon, 1987), 5893; Pedro Soares Martinez, A Neutralidade Portuguesa desde o Sculo xvi Coloquio sobre Portugal e Paz (Lisbon, 1989), 8196.

9 See for example Vitorino Magalhes Godinho, Prix et monnaies au Portugal, 17501850, (Paris, A. Colin, 1955); , A economia dos descobrimentos henriquinos, (Lisbon, Livraria S da Costa, 1962); , Lconomie de lempire portugais aux XVe et XVIe sicles (Paris, S.E.V.P.E.N., 1969); Charles Verlinden, Navigateurs, marchands et colons italiens au service de a dcouverte et colonization portugaise sous Henri le Navigateur, Le moyen ge (1958): 46797. Manuel Nunes Dias, O capitalismo monrquico portugus, 14151549. Contribuio para o estudo das origens do capitalismo moderno (Coimbra: Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Coimbra, 1963); Commercial themes are prominent in C.R. Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 14151825, (London, Hutchinson, 1969); Anthony R. Disney, Twilight of the Pepper Empire: Portuguese trade in southwest India in the early seventeenth cen-tury, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978); C.H.H. Wake, The changing pattern of Europes pepper and spice imports, Journal of European Economic History 8 (1979): 361403; The volume of European Spice Imports at the beginning and end of the fifteenth cen-tury, Journal of European Economic History 15 (1986): 621635; A.J.R. Russell-Wood, A World on the Move: the Portuguese in Africa, Asia, and America, 14151808 (New York: St. Martins Press, 1993).

Introduction4

impression that the Portuguese crown sponsored voyages of exploration down the west coast of Africa because it knew it would one day grow rich by reaching India. According to this narrative, passed down to undergraduate textbooks and survey courses, the scope of the wealth that passed through Portugals counting house, the Casa da ndia, had been wholly predictable in the fifteenth century. Imbued with a mercantile mindset, the crowns policies in the early sixteenth century were portrayed as being single-minded and largely unaf-fected by political developments elsewhere in Europe.

In 1985, a seminal article written by Luis Filpe Thomaz entitled LIde Imperiale Manueline challenged this assumption. Thomaz argued that the actions of Manuel i were prompted, not by an interest in mercantile wealth, but by an imperialist ideology derived from the messianic prophecies found in the Book of Daniel. Heavily influenced by the Franciscan Order, Thomaz claimed that the king believed that he was heir to Daniels Fifth Empire. He alleged that this belief predicated Manuel Is expansion into Morocco and lay at the heart of incursions by the Portuguese into the Red Sea. Drawing on Manueline iconography and rhetoric from the period, Thomaz rightly ques-tioned the primacy of commerce among the motives behind the overseas expansion in the early sixteenth century.10

However, the depiction of Manuel i as a millenarian zealot obscures the prag-matism that characterized so much of his reign. Beneath the image of crusader-king that was purposefully cultivated by his chroniclers and publicists, was a monarch who like his contemporaries was deeply concerned about dynastic survival in a rapidly changing world. Neither Joo ii nor Manuel i could afford to disengage from European politics. As Ivana Elbl has aptly remarked, Portugals official stance of neutrality in the continental conflicts of the early sixteenth century, did not preclude vigorous negotiations with other European powers.11 Rather, Elbl demonstrated how marriage was used as a diplomatic strategy aimed at protecting Portugal in the uncertain years of the early sixteenth century. In his recent biography of Manuel i, Joo Paulo Oliveira e Costa also suggests that the king was not above reneging on his public claims of neutrality and may well have been offering covert support to the French in its war with Spain.12

10 Lus Filpe F.R. Thomaz, LIde Imperiale Manueline, La Dcouverte, le Portugale et LEurope ed. Jean Aubin (Paris: Centre Culturel Portugais, 1990).

11 Ivana Elbl, The Elect, The Fortunate and the Prudent: Charles v and the Portuguese Royal House, 15001529 in Young Charles v, ed. Alain Saint-Sans, ed. (New Orleans: University of the South, 2000), 87111.

12 Joo Paulo Oliveira e Costa, D. Manuel i 14691521: um Prncipe do Renascimento (Lisbon: Crculo de Leitores, 2007), 49.

5Introduction

Overshadowing the creation of Estado da ndiathe name given to Portugals seaborne empirewas the growing threat posed by Spain in the early sixteenth century. With the accession of Ferdinand of Aragon in 1479, Castile and Aragon had entered into a dynastic union that threatened the bal-ance of power, not only in the Iberian Peninsula but in Europe as a whole. In addition to formidable terrestrial forces, the union had brought together naval forces that dominated the western Mediterranean. Over the next three decades, Spain would cannibalize two of the three remaining kingdoms on the penin-sula. Granada whose long Mediterranean coastline was highly desirable was conquered between 1482 and 1492, while Navarre, which controlled the pas-sages of the Pyrenees, was conquered in 1512.

As a response, the Portuguese crown had, on at least two occasions re- militarized the castles along the Luso-Castilian frontier. But in addition, it sought to secure a better foothold in Morocco. The Portuguese had first con-quered Ceuta in 1415 when King Joo i (13851433) faced a temporary union of Castile and Aragon under Fernando i of Aragon (141216). Although Ceuta was technically overseas, the citadel lay a mere twenty kilometres from the Castilian mainland and guarded the Straits of Gibraltar. Political reorganiza-tion and a vacuum of power in the Muslim world allowed the Portuguese crown to conquer two more cities on the Straits: Alccer-Ceguer in 1458 and Tangier in 1471. The capture of Arzila in the same year had anchored Portugals position in the region. However, Spanish attempts to increase its influence in the early sixteenth century brought Manuel i to attempt a full-scale conquest of Morocco by first establishing a chain of coastal forts and launching a cam-paign against the city of Marrakech.13

The military security of the kingdom depended, to a large extent, on politi-cal consolidation. Despite Joo iis reputation as a New Monarch, his heavy-handed policies factionalized the nobility to the extent that they threatened the security of the kingdom. If the chronicles of Rui de Pina are to be believed, two separate conspiracies were mounted against Joo ii by leading members of the nobility. At the time of his death in 1495, controversy over the succession led Portugal to the brink of civil war. Under Manuel i, the crown attempted to bridge elite factions through a program of political patronage. Unlike his pre-decessor, the new king came to the throne with a great deal of personal wealth and other means at his disposal to reward his supporters. Far from random,

13 For an overview, see Weston F. Cook, The Hundred Years War for Morocco: Gunpowder and the Military Revolution in the Early Modern Muslim World, (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994).

Introduction6

this patronage appears to have been attached to the expansion of the royal household which grew rapidly around the turn of the sixteenth century.

The relationship between the royal court and political centralization was the subject of the groundbreaking work by the sociologist Norbert Elias. His Court Society, first published in 1969 examined the early modern French court as the environment in which the monarch was able to assert its power over the nobility and secure their compliance.14 Over the past four decades, Elias model has received a fair amount of criticism. Few historians writing today would agree with his adversarial depiction of the crown and nobility, or with the absolute nature of the power won by the king. More support can be found for the ideas evinced by Sharon Kettering who illustrated the agency of elites and their active pursuit of opportunities that furthered their political interests.15 Both Elias and Kettering had examined the French court of the seventeenth century, but there is ample evidence that similar relationships existed in the late Middle Ages. In his examination of France between 1442 and 1559, J. Russell Major argued that kings and nobles effectively governed through the cultiva-tion and manipulation of vertical ties and political affinities.16

The vision of a symbiotic relationship between the kings and elite families of Portugal is furthered by Rita Costa Gomes in her important study on the Portuguese royal court in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.17 As Gomes has described, the medieval royal household had long been the centre of royal patronage. The sons of elite families were sent to the royal household to become criados or affiliates of the king and his heirs. Important offices within the household were given to men of influence and inherited by their off-spring.18 In her work, Gomes draws on some illustrative evidence from the reign of Manuel i, but her analysis of the late medieval court ends purposefully before the changes of the sixteenth century. The story of the Portuguese court in the renaissance court is then picked up by Ana Isabel Buescu.19 It is thechange between these two periods and the rapid expansion of the royal

14 Norbert Elias, The Court Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983).15 Sharon Kettering, Patrons, Brokers and Clients in Seventeenth-Century France (New York, 1986).16 J. Russell Major, Representative Institutions in Renaissance France 14421559 (Madison,

1960), 320; also Representative Government in Early Modern France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980).

17 Rita Costa Gomes, The Making of a Court Society: Kings and Nobles in Late Medieval Portugal, trans. Alison Aiken, (Cambridge, 2003) See also Humberto Baquero Moreno and Isabel Vaz de Freitas, A Corte de Afonso v (Gijn: Ediciones Trea, 2006).

18 Gomes, Making of a Court Society, 204290.19 Ana Isabel Carvalho Buescu, Na corte dos reis de Portugal: saberes, ritos e memrias: estu-

dos sobre o sculo xvi (Lisbon: Colibri, 2010).

7Introduction

household under Manuel i that is important because it illustrates the role that the court played in the creation of the early modern state. In recent years, stud-ies on statecraft have fallen by the wayside. But in their introduction to The Court as a Stage, the editors Steven Gunn and Antheun Janse remarked about the future of court studies claiming that it may be timely to think again about the ways in which the court drew together state formation.20

As Gomes has illustrated, the royal household had always been the nucleus of political society. What changed in the early sixteenth century was the scale of political patronage and the extent of the vertical ties, as the number of posi-tions at court grew almost exponentially. Connections between the royal house-hold to outside communities were created through strategic cross-appointments to office. In one way or another, many individuals were appointed to positions within the royal household at the same time as they were appointed to posi-tions elsewhere in the kingdom. On the occasions that the individual could not perform both functions concurrently, he would appoint a deputy to serve in the local office while he himself would serve at court. The officer would monitor the deputy from court and thereby act as a liaison between the court and country-side. As this book will argue, such cross-appointments occurred at every social level at court from members of the royal council to stable hands. The expansion of the royal household allowed for a greater number of locations to come under the direct control of the king and his emerging class of courtiers.

This strategy does not appear to have been unique to Portugal. Rosemary Horrox has demonstrated how Richard iii of England increased the size of his household between 1483 and 1485 to incorporate his retainers and Sean Cunningham has shown how this process was pursued even more vigorously under Henry vii.21 What set Portugal apart from other kingdoms in this period however, was its ability to pay for the massive expansion of the royal house-hold. In the early sixteenth century, the Portuguese crown accrued a great deal of wealth from both domestic and overseas revenues that allowed it to dramatically increase the size of its court in a short period of time. The Manueline Reforms enacted almost from the beginning of the reign, under-wrote many of the costs associated with the expansion of the household. By streamlining the process of revenue collection and by enhancing the legal authority of crown officials, Manuel i was able to increase the portion of revenues that made it into the central coffers. Under the guise of amending the

20 S.J. Gunn and A. Janse, The Court as a Stage: England and the Low Countries in the later Middle Ages (Woodbridge, uk; Rochester, ny: Boydell, 2006), 1.

21 Rosemary Horrox, Richard iii: A Study in Service (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Sean Cunningham, Henry vii (London: Routledge,2007).

Introduction8

royal chancery registers and local charters or forais, the crown was able to con-duct a review of all the royal patronage granted annually and cancel grants which its officers deemed ineligible. These reforms were markedly similar to the strategies employed by other kings such as Henry vii.

In its discussion of political strategy and the important context, the book covers the period between 1481 and 1521, but focuses mainly on the changes that occur in the reign of Manuel i. Although the financial position of Joo ii had improved considerably over the course of his reign, he had far fewer resources than his successor. The proceeds of sugar production from Madeira have been listed as an important overseas revenue, but until the accession of Manuel i it had been exempt from taxation by the crown. As Vitorino Magalhes Godinho has illustrated, the production of Madeiran sugar peaked from the mid-1490s to the early years of the sixteenth century.22 As Senhor of Madeira, Manuel i was entitled to a fifth of these profits which formed a considerable portion of annual revenues. After the establishment of the fortress of So Jorge da Mina in 1482, trade in gold and slaves also continued to grow, providing Manuel i with another significant stream of wealth.23

By 1510, it was clear that trade in the Indian Ocean was escalating as factors in the Estado da ndia began shunting spices and other luxury goods back to Europe. Following Vasco da Gamas pioneering voyage from Lisbon to India, a new Portuguese feitoria had been established in Cochin. Commercial treaties that fixed the price for both the purchase of pepper in India and its sale in Europe assured Italian, Flemish and Portuguese merchants of a profit. Between 1505 and 1515, the quantity of pepper and spices arriving in Lisbon skyrocketed and the crown established its effective monopoly on the European spice trade.24 All ships sailing from India were required to call in at Lisbon where they were immediately boarded by officials of the Casa da ndia. Wares were impounded while the ships were inspected and the cargoes were audited. Duties that were owed to the Portuguese crown were paid in kind to the offi-cials of the Casa da ndia before the ships were released and sent on their way.25

22 Vitorino Magalhes Godinho, A expanso quatrocentista portuguesa, (Lisbon: Publicaes Dom Quixote, 2008), 310.

23 For growth between 1476 and 1504, and particularly between 1481 and 1486 see Ivana Elbl, The Kings Business in Africa, in Money, Markets and Trade in Late Medieval Europe, (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 116; Anthony Disney, A History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire, vol. 2, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 89.

24 Donald Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. 1, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 119; Vitorino Magalhes Godinho, Ensaios. ii. Sobre Histria de Portugal (Lisbon: S da Costa, 1978), 251.

25 Disney, A History of Portugal, vol. 2, 1501.

9Introduction

The profits of the Casa da ndia had a direct impact on the Portuguese royal household and directly underwrote the costs of its expansion. One of the prob-lems that had always faced the crown was the fact that its debts were usually collected at source and few revenues actually made it to the Casa dos Contos. The Portuguese crown, until the reign of Manuel i, almost always faced a fiscal shortfall, paying its household servants last. But when the construction of the new Ribeira Palace in Lisbon was begun early in the reign, the royal apart-ments were set on top of the warehouses of the Casa da India. When the king was in residence in Lisbon, ships sailed into the harbor and unloaded their riches at the court. Spices, gemstones, gold, silver and luxury textiles were readily available to use at court: to decorate its great halls, to pay its servants and officials and to subsidize its courtiers.

But it would be a mistake to see the expansion of the royal court as the result of the profits raked in by the Casa da ndia. A significant growth in the number of fidalgos da casa real can be seen even before Vasco da Gama returned from Calicut. Rather it seems that the Portuguese crown, already committed to the strategy of expanding the court as a way of centralizing royal authority gradu-ally came to realize the important role that the Casa da ndia was beginning to play in royal finances. It was not until 1510 that overseas revenues out-stripped those of the kingdom. Until that point Manuel i and his ministers had to rely on domestic reform, bureaucratic reorganization and a system of cross-appointments to increase revenues so as to meet costs. This delayed recogni-tion explains why the affairs of the Estado da ndia seemed to be of secondary importance to Manuel is military thrust into Morocco. It was only after its failed attempt to conquer the Kingdom of Fez in 1515 that the crown shifted its attitude toward the Estado da ndia.

One of the aims of this book is to examine royal policy between 1479 and 1521 and re-evaluate the position held by the overseas expansion. The first chapter considers the royal chronicles of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as propaganda pieces. The Crnistas Mores who oversaw their production were not impartial authors or historians, but skillful politicians and publicists of the king. Their carefully crafted chronicles aimed to enhance the Avis Dynasty, for whom they wrote, and to elicit political concessions from the Pope. In the mid-sixteenth century, the humanist chroniclers Joo de Barros and Damio de Gis wrote to glorify the Portuguese Empire and to warn their audiences against the corruption that threatened it. While many of the details contained in their chronicles seem to relay an accurate description of events, some pas-sages need to be treated carefully since they are included to teach and edify their audience rather than provide historical accuracy. Yet chronicles written during a reign can help historians to understand the immediate concerns of

Introduction10

the king that commissioned them. When read critically, the chroniclers Rui de Pina and Duarte Galvo divulge their deep concern over Luso-Castilian rela-tions. Pinas silence on Bartholomew Diazs famous voyage around the Cape of Good Hope (148788) is equally revealing.

While acknowledging the continuities in structure and in strategy from pre-vious reigns, this book sees the reign of Manuel i and the years around the turn of the sixteenth century as a period of rupture, where the sudden influx of wealth into the hands of the Portuguese crown utterly transformed the envi-rons of the court. The second chapter examines the expansion of the Portuguese royal household and explains the reasons why growth occurred then. Prior to this point, household size fluctuated and could grow in times of weakness, but it was usually kept in check by the poverty of the kings of Portugal. To sustain a sizable household, the crown had to meet the costs associated with wages, stipends, food and lodging. These burdens could be heavy, especially when the household was on the move. Although kings had the ability to go into debt, payments could not be deferred indefinitely. In the late Middle Ages, the kings of Portugal faced serious opposition from the Cortes if they did not promise to live in moderation and periodically constrict the size of their households.

During his reign, Manuel i faced intense pressure to consolidate his author-ity. Wealthier than his predecessors, he was able to use gifts of household office, along with revenues from his own estates to patronize nobles and other elites. The royal household became the primary vehicle through which central-ization occurred. While the patronage of elites was an expensive undertaking, it was a symbiotic strategy that extended the authority of the king while strengthening the influence of those families who supported him. The chapter further explains the way in which the limitations placed on household size were permanently overcome by the Portuguese crown.

Both Joo de Barros and Damio de Gis felt that Manuel is greatest achieve-ment was the construction of Portugals overseas empire. This viewpoint is hardly surprising among a generation of writers whose own views of history had been shaped by the historians of the Roman Empire such as Sallust and Livy. But to a modern reader, the domestic achievements of the king, of which his chroniclers say nothing, are even more impressive. The third chapter thus treats the series of reforms implemented by the king and his councillors in an attempt to generate new revenues and reappropriate resources that could be used to finance and expand the royal household and a new bureaucratic administration that emanated from it. Although the Manueline reforms: including the creation of the Forais Novos, the Leitura Nova and the Ordenaes Manuelinas and the reforms of the fazenda are usually treated as distinct developments, this chapter considers them as a part of a cohesive crown policy

11Introduction

aimed at increasing fiscal revenues. It further relates the expansion of the court to political centralization by demonstrating that many of the bureaucratic per-sonnel and revenue agents were fidalgos and cavaleiros of the court.

The fourth chapter examines the circumstances that brought more ecclesi-astical authority into the hands of the king. During the reign of Joo ii, the immense power wielded by the Portuguese cardinal, D. Jorge da Costa, known better as the Cardinal of Alpedrinha, made it clear that the Portuguese crown had to gain full control over episcopal appointments. The promise that the Portuguese king could name his own bishops was secured in 1503, but only after the Cardinal of Alpedrinha had appropriated the two archdioceses of the kingdom for his family members.

By using a similar strategy to that which he used to co-opt the support of local officials, Manuel i expanded the royal chapel and further employed prel-ates as important members of the appellate court known as the Casa da Suplicao. Under the probable direction of his sister, the dowager queen, Leonor of Viseu, Manuel i also created the centralized confraternity, which evolved into the Santa Casa da Misericrdia. Though the details surrounding the foundation of this charitable organization are sparse, it would seem that the move was related to the mass conversion of thousands of Portuguese Jews in 1497. With a mandate for religious education, it seems probable that the misericrdias were seen, at least in part, as vehicles of conversion for commu-nities of Portuguese New Christians. The chapter also examines how these misericrdias and the centralized hospitals to which they were attached, sought to attract bequests from wealthy testators. It would appear that con-fraternities and hospitals in this period were more than just charitable insti-tutions. Rather, they were often affluent institutions that controlled generous endowments. The crowns attempt to gain control over local confraternities is thus related to its attempts to increase revenues.

The final chapter of the book examines the relationship between the expan-sion of the royal council and the consolidation of military force within Portugal. It concentrates on the period after 1509 when Ferdinand of Aragon gained a firm grasp over the regency of Castile. In this period, Manuel i seems to have concentrated his efforts on remilitarizing the castles along the Luso-Castilian frontier. Here the cross appointment of royal councillors with alcaides mores appears to have brought greater crown oversight to its border regions. At the same time, the crown fortified Portugals captaincies in Morocco and even attempted the full-scale conquest of the Kingdom of Fez. The aim of the chap-ter is to contextualize these developments amid the uncertainty of Portugals future in the War of the League of Cambrai (15081516). It was during this con-flict that Navarre, which like Portugal had also pledged neutrality, was annexed

Introduction12

to Spain. The chapter argues further that while campaigns in Morocco were glorified as crusades against the infidel, they served a dual purpose. Less than twenty miles from the Iberian Peninsula, across the straits of Gibraltar, Portuguese holdings in North Africa could be seen as another military frontan insurance policy against the territorial ambitions of Ferdinand of Aragon and of Spain.

Above all, the aim of this book has been to integrate the history of the king-dom of Portugal in the reigns of Joo ii and Manuel i with the history of the overseas expansion. While there are excellent works that cover Portugals domestic and imperial history in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, few have been able to integrate both strands with success. Anthony Disneys History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire, published in 2009, which tackles a much broader period, approaches the problem by dividing the history of the kingdom and the empire into two separate volumes.26 Many other works cover both cat-egories but rely on chapter subheadings to transition between the domestic and imperial themes.27 One exception has been Sir Peter Russells Prince Henry the Navigator which has successfully captured both strands in the biography of the famous prince.28 Another notable approach has been that of Ivana Elbl whose prosopographical work on the nobility has brought new understanding to the social and political environment that gave rise to the overseas expansion. Her extensive research into the chancery records of the fifteenth century has greatly influenced this much narrower study of the reigns of Joo ii and Manuel i.29

Bridging the gap between these two strands in the history has not been easy and has resulted in an uneven use of primary source material. The bulk of the original research for the book comes from an analysis of the extant household accounts found in the Ncleo Antigo collection of the Arquivo Nacional, Torre do Tombo in Lisbon. Many of the accounts survive only in fragmentary condi-tion. One particularly important set of documents were the accounts of the avenary which comprised document numbers 835 to 859 of the collection

26 Disney, A History of Portugal, vols 1 & 2.27 See for example Serro and Oliveira Marques, Portugal do Renascimento Crise Dinstica.

M.D.D. Newitt, A History of the Portuguese Overseas Expansion, 14001668 (London: Routledge, 2005), Oliveira e Costa, D. Manuel i; Jos Mattoso, Histria de Portugal, 8 vols. (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1993).

28 P.E. Russell, Prince Henry the Navigator: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).29 Ivana Elbl, The Overseas Expansion, Nobiity and Social Mobility in the Age of Vasco da

Gama, Portuguese Studies Review, 6 (199798); Status and Agency: Royal Grants to Portuguese Noblewomen, 143881 Portuguese Studies Review, 13, no. 1 (2005): 61114. These ideas are discussed more fully in The Way to Empire: Late Medieval Portugal and the Overseas Expansion (forthcoming).

13Introduction

which reported the consumption of animal feed for various months ranging from 1509 to 1521.30 Almost all of the years in this range were included and revealed a marked growth in the numbers of officials known as porteiros da cmara. These numbers when related to other indicators such as appoint-ments to the royal council, helped describe the remarkable growth of the royal household, especially after 1510.

The other important accounting documents, used to measure the growth of the royal household, are the records generally classified as the listas de mora-dias. In the mid-eighteenth century, the geneaologist and member of the Academia Real de Histria Portuguesa, D. Antnio Caetano de Sousa, pub-lished a number of these lists in the Provas section of his monumental Histria Genealgica da Casa Real. These documents ranged from 1405 to 1518 and a number of them were reprinted in Jorge Faros Receitas e Despesas da Fazenda Real (13841481).31 Only two lists transcribed by Caetano de Sousa relate to the period I am describing: that of 1484 and that of 1518. Three fragmentary docu-ments contained in the Nuclo Antigo supplement their information: document numbers 924, 139 and 140.32 A careful examination of these lists overturns the impression set forth by Jorge Borges de Macedo that Manuel i appointed more than four hundred men to the royal council during his reigna statistic that had already been brought into question by Jean Aubin.33 Although the size of the council certainly grew after 1510, its membership had only reached about thirty men in 1512 and reached a maximum of about sixty-five men by 151819. This point is an important one because a careful analysis of these sixty-five men who served as members of Manuel Is council can help to explain the reasons for the expansion of the household in the first place. Many of the other primary sources used in this book are simply fragments of relevant documents that continue to exist for the period. Admittedly, when compared to the docu-mentation that survives for England in this period, what survives is meagre, but it is with what we are left.

30 iantt, Ncleo Antigo, 835859.31 Antnio Caetano de Sousa, Histria genealgica da casa real portuguesa, Nova ed., 12

vols. (Coimbra, Atlntida, 1946); Jorge Faro, Receitas e despesas da Fazenda Real de 1384 a 1481: (subsdios documentais), (Lisbon, Portugal: Instituto Nacional de Estatstica, 1965).

32 iantt, Ncleo Antigo, nos. 139, 140, 924.33 Jorge Borges de Macedo, Nobreza na Epoca Moderna in Joel Serro ed. vol. 3, Dicionario

de Historia de Portugal, 153; Aubin, La Noblesse Titre sous D. Joo iii Inflation ou Fermeture? in vol.1, Le Latin et Lastrolabe, vol. 1, 37183.

Introduction14

Much of the research for this book comes from the collection of Chancelarias Rgias in the Torre do Tombo. When I first began working with the chancery registers, searches relating to official appointments and grants were facilitated by the eighteenth century indices entitled Proprios and Communs com-piled for each reign. Just as I was finishing my doctoral thesis in 2003, a project undertaken by researchers of the Centro de Estudos Damio de Gis, under the direction of Artur Teodoro de Matos, compiled a digital database of the chancery registers for the reign of Manuel i that included summaries of each document. The advantage of this database over the eighteenth century indices was that it allowed researchers to search for cross references, a feature that greatly facilitated the research into cross-appointments. Although I was unable to use this tool in the research and writing of the original dissertation, it has been invaluable to the research of this book and has revealed many of the ver-tical ties that emanated from the royal household.

The book also uses genealogical sources including the aforementioned opus by D. Antnio Caetano de Sousa and Anselmo Braamcamp Freires Brases da Sala de Sintra which describes many of the important genealogical connec-tions among families tied closely to the court.34 As one would expect, the fami-lies that Freire examines are those central to the court of Manuel i, given the fact that the coats of arms that he describes were painted on the ceiling of the Sala de Brases between 1517 and 1518.35 But additionally, I was able to draw on a number of modern studies about the noble families of Portugal in the Vasco da Gama era.36

Finally, and perhaps at times hypocritically, the book draws on the chroni-cles that narrate the events in the reigns of Joo ii and Manuel i. The relation-ship between Rui de Pina and the events that he describes in his Crnica de D. Joo ii is complex. Pina was extremely politically active in the period that he later wrote about and he describes events about which he clearly had first-hand knowledge. Given his role as a diplomat for Joo ii, in charge of control-ling the kings image, it is probable that he was already compiling information about his masters reign during his lifetime. But in 1504 when the chronicles of

34 Anselmo Braamcamp Freire and Luiz de Bivar Guerra, Brases da sala de Sintra, 3 vols. (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 1996).

35 Jos Custdio Vieira de Silva. Paos Medievais Portugueses, (Lisbon: ippar, 2002), 23336.

36 Elbl, Nobiity and Social Mobility; Joo Paulo Oliveira e Costa ed., A Nobreza e a Expansao: Estudos biogrficos (Cascais: Patrimonia, 2000); Joo Paulo Oliveira e Costa and Vtor Luis Gaspar Rodrigues eds., A Alta Nobreza e a Fundaao do Estado da ndia (Lisbon: Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2004).

15Introduction

the reign of Joo ii were finally published, Pina was writing for a different mas-ter with a markedly different relationship to the events related in the work. Therefore, the Crnica de D. Joo ii was much closer to a primary source about the reign of Joo ii than the chronicles that emerged in the same period, such as those of the Crnica de D. Duarte or the Crnica de D. Afonso Henriques, by Galvo that emerged in the following year. It was however a less straight- forward rendering of events that the Livro de Apontamentos compiled by Joo iis secretary, lvaro Lopes de Chaves.37

The chronicles of Joo de Barros and Damio de Gis should be considered much more as secondary sources. These men were indeed alive during the reign of Manuel, both of them born within a few years of the kings accession. However, they were only loosely participants in the events that they described, although both of them were members of the court by the end of their reigns. The histories that they wrote were written thirty and forty years after the death of Manuel i and in very different circumstances. Still, the proximity of their lives to the events that they described makes them useful sources of informa-tion about some events as they transpired. When read critically, with an eye to their purpose and an understanding of their bias, they provide information that cannot be found elsewhere.

37 Alvaro Lopes de Chaves et al., Livro de apontamentos (14381489): cdice 443 da Coleco Pombalina da B.N.L, (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional Casa Impr. Nacional, Casa da Moeda, 1983).

Figure1 Dr. Vasco Fernandes de Lucena presenting his translation of Quintus Curtius History of the Life of Alexander the Great to Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy.with kind permission of the bibliothque nationale de france, mss. fr. 22547, f. 1

koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015|doi 10.1163/9789004298194_003

chapter 1

Spin Doctors of the Crown: The Chroniclers and Their Contexts

Housed in the Bibliothque Nationale de France is a fifteenth century manuscript fragment of Quintus Curtius History of the Life of Alexander the Great. One of its illuminations depicts its translator, Dr. Vasco Fernandes de Lucena, presenting a volume to Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy (146777).1 Lucena, a fascinating character, has been the subject of disagreement among Portuguese historians and French literary scholars. But a composite picture of his life can give us insight into what it meant to study and write history at the turn of the sixteenth century.2 As an active lobbyist for Portuguese interests, Dr. Vasco Fernandes de Lucena had devoted most of his life to international diplomacy: serving as a delegate at the Council of Basel in 1435, at the court of Pope Nicholas v (144755) in 1450 and as an influential member of the household of the Duchess of Burgundy, Isabel of Portugal from 1461 until perhaps around 1473. About this time, he returned to Portugal to take up the office of Crnista Mor, the chief historian of the realm, but in spite of holding this position for more than a quarter of a century, he never authored a single work.3

Dr. Vasco Fernandes de Lucena was not, however, inactive as a historian. In 1468, he appears to have been translating history for political ends: to augment the prestige of King Afonso v of Portugal (143881), whose crusade in Morocco and expanding empire could be likened to the achievements of Alexander the Great. Since 1453, the year in which the Ottomans had captured Constantinople, the political appetite for religious warfare had grown considerably and in 1464, the Duke of Burgundy had supported Afonso Vs campaigns in North Africa. The illumination of Lucena and Charles the Bold, tinctured into the frontispiece of Curtius history of the famed king of Macedon, was likely a gentle prompt, entreating Charles the Bold to follow in his fathers footsteps. (See Figure 1) On at least two occasions, Lucena travelled to the Holy See to pledge obedience to the pope. In the oration of 1485, he recounted the deeds of all of the kings of Portugal

1 bnf, Mss fr. 22547, f. 1.2 See Charity Cannon Willard, Isabel of Portugal and the French Translation of the Triunfo

de las Doas , Revue belge de philologie et dhistoire 43, no. 3 (1965).3 Joaquim Verissimo Serro, Histria Breve da Historiografia Portuguesa, (Lisbon: Editorial

Verbo, 1962), 5961.

chapter 118

in order to showcase the achievements of his own sovereign, King Joo ii (148195). Through Lucena, one can see how History formed part of contemporary political discourse.

The success of the Portuguese Crnistas Mores was such that their works still form the narrative framework for the history of Golden Age Portugal centuries later. But the primacy that they ascribed to certain themes: political legitimacy, crusade and the search for the searoute to India needs to be reevaluated by historians who seek to understand the political dynamics of the period. As historian Gabrielle Spiegel first pointed out in 1975, chroniclers of the Middle Ages saw political utility in their work; they wrote about the past in order to comment on and influence the present.4 Though carefully researched and written in close temporal proximity to the events they recounted, many of the histories are not simple iterations of the past. To the writers of the fifteenth and sixteenth century, the accuracy of historical detail was much less important than the moral lessons that could be drawn from historical example. Thus popes, princes and statesmen carefully studied and translated the histories of classical writers such as Livy, Cicero and Quintilian. And in the translations that they produced and in their chronicles of more recent times, they recognized not only the power to teach, but also the power to persuade. Overt political messages, packaged in history, were well received by an alert audience that had been educated by allegory and steeped in legacy.

Recently, Richard Kagan has argued that royal historians of the early modern period devoted even more energy to the political uses of history than their medieval predecessors. Endowed with greater resources, the kings of Golden Age Spain and Portugal were able to commission official histories that legitimized their reigns. By their chroniclers, ruling dynasties were imbued with the noblest of intentions. Controversial political actions were justified and many unsavoury episodes were (as much as possible) glossed over. As Kagan wrote, it can be useful to compare the official historians to the slick fasttalking press officers who surround todays democratic political leaders and engage in what is colloquially known as spin, selective but still accurate readings of the evidence relating to a particular happening or event.5

It is important for us to remember that these chroniclers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were not only writers and historians, but statesmen. The details that have survived about the life of Dr. Vasco Fernandes de Lucena are

4 Gabrielle Spiegel, Political Utility in Medieval Historiography: A Sketch History and Theory 14 (1975): 31425, reprinted in The Past as Text, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 8398.

5 Richard Kagan, Clio and the Crown, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 5.

19Spin Doctors of the Crown

scant; but they suggest that he was a man who mingled in the elite circles of renaissance Italy and was known to the greatest humanists of the age including Poggio Bracciolini and Guarino da Verona. In addition Lucena had held a long and illustrious diplomatic careerfrom 1435 until 1499in the service of four successive kings of Portugal. During this time he worked alongside other statesmen and chroniclers including: Ferno Lopes who served from (14341454), Gomes Eanes de Zurara (14541473) and Rui de Pina (14991522). In fact, much of the enduring fame and unity ascribed to the Avis Dynasty, which ruled Portugal from 1385 until 1580, may be owed to the diplomacy, skill and longevity of Lucena.

As statesmen, the Crnistas Mores wrote from an excellent vantage point. They held the ear of the king and had unfettered access to the royal archives and registers of the chancery. In their histories many of the chroniclers covered kings whom they had served. Ferno Lopes wrote two chronicles of the reign of Joo i, while Zuraras works highlighted the contributions of his patron, the illustrious Infante D. Henrique, known to posterity as Prince Henry the Navigator. Rui de Pina had participated in many of the events that he chronicled, including the trial of the Duke of Bragana. Many of the events contained in the early chapters of the Crnica de Dom Afonso v were witnessed and carried out by Dr. Vasco Fernandes de Lucena, and it seems plausible that he authored, or at least contributed to this part of the long chronicle. While some histories were composed from the the direct experience of the chroniclers, others were reconstructed from archival sources from the distant past. Examples include the chronicles of the early kings that were drafted by Rui de Pina and the Crnica de Dom Pedro by Ferno Lopes. Here, the material in many of these chronicles appears to be nothing more than a backdrop to their focal works and an attempt to establish linear connections to the past. The exception is the Crnica de D. Afonso Henriques, written by another eminent historiandiplomat at the court, Duarte de Galvo. The publication of this chronicle in 1505 is more than just an attempt to fill in the gaps of the past. In his chronicle, Galvo establishes justifies D. Afonso Henriques secession from the kingdom of Leon and in doing so defends his right to rule an independent kingdom. His work, along with physical monuments built in the same period serve to create a foundation myth for Portugal.

The proximity of the chroniclers to the events that they recounted does not ensure an honest rendering of events as they occurred. Given their positions as diplomats and councillors, it is hardly likely that the Crnistas Mores were even faithful to events as they remembered them. Official historians such as Dr. Vasco Fernandes de Lucena, were politicians whose main function was to craft an image of the past in order to influence the future: whether it be to legitimize the rule of a king with a tenuous claim to the throne, secure proprietary rights to the

chapter 120

overseas territories or justify the execution of a powerful magnate. When read with this purpose in mind, the chronicles can provide a great deal of information to the modernday historian. On certain subjects, they can provide specific details about many events for which primary source records no longer exist. Importantly, they can give us insight about the political priorities of the time in which they were written. But in order to untangle credible fact from unreliable information one has to sift through the motives of the authorall the while paying careful attention to the political context in which they were produced.

Fernao Lopes, (Crnista Mor 143454)

The first Crnista Mor, Ferno Lopes was appointed to office in 1434, during the reign of Duarte i (14338). Duarte i and his siblingsnotably the Infante D. Pedro, Prince Henry the Navigator and Isabel, Duchess of Burgundywere avid literary and artistic patrons. Dubbed the nclita Gerao, or illustrious generation, they were credited with bringing humanism to Portugal. It should be pointed out, however, that their commissions were not altogether altruistica fact that is not surprising given the fact that Duarte i and the Infante D. Pedro ruled as Portugal experienced its demographic (and probably economic) nadir.6 Rather, the Inclita Gerao invested heavily in artistic works that furthered the prestige of the newly founded dynasty. The chronicles of Ferno Lopes and his contemporaries aimed to justify and legitimize the reign of Joo i in the face of the knowledge that there were stronger claimants to the throne. In this way the chronicles written by Ferno Lopes and his successors mirror the royal mausoleums constructed at the Monastery of Santa Maria de Batalha in the same period. As Bernardo de Vasconcelos e Sousa has claimed, the chronicles can be viewed as monuments as well as documents.7

It would appear that the primary task conferred on Ferno Lopes was to provide a firm foundation for the Avis Dynasty based on lineage as well as on the concept of legitimate rule as it was understood in the period. Duarte Is father, Joo i was the bastard son of King Pedro i (135767) and the Master of the Military Order of Avis. After the death of his halfbrother King Fernando i (136783), Portugal entered into a succession crisis which led to civil war and invasion from Castile. Amidst the chaos, the Master of Avis, with military support from England, seized the throne and styled himself Joo i. In the meantime,

6 Armindo da Sousa and Jos Mattoso, A Monarquia Feudal, vol. 2, Histria de Portugal, (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1993), 334.

7 Bernardo Vasconcelos e Sousa, Medieval Portuguese Royal Chronicles: Topics in a Discourse of Identity and Power, e-Journal of Portuguese History 5 (2007).

21Spin Doctors of the Crown

however, there remained legitimate claimants to the Portuguese throne: the daughter of Fernando i, the Princesa Beatriz who died childless in 1420 and Joo Is halfbrothers the Infantes Joo and Dinis, both of whom died in 1397 but who had offspring of their own. For years, these pretenders represented a threat to the descendants of the Avis Dynasty.

Evidently, Duarte i sought to compensate for this weakness through a program of propaganda designed to enhance his status. Among the first generation of Portuguese to receive a humanist education, Duarte i and his siblings recognized the value of history, not only as a moral guide, but as a political tool. The chronicles written by Ferno Lopes covered the reigns of three kingsKing Pedro i (135767), King Fernando i (136783) and King Joo i (1383/851433), whose chronicle was written in two parts. Together, they comprise four parts of a single story, crafted to justify Joo is rise to power.8 In the Crnica de Dom Pedro, Lopes subtly but pointedly questioned the veracity of the marriage between Pedro i and Ins de Castro, undoubtedly as a way to challenge the claims of their heirs to the Portuguese throne.9 The author also, in the penultimate chapter of the chronicle, drew attention to the close relationship between Pedro i and his illegitimate son, describing how he procured for the future Joo i, the mastership of Avis.10 In the Crnica de D. Fernando, Lopes presented much of the background that led to the succession crisis of 13835. But it is in the first part of the Crnica de D. Joo i, that Ferno Lopes makes his most forceful point about the legitimacy of the Avis Dynasty. In Chapter xix, Part i, he described the manner in which the merchants and people of Lisbon convinced the Master of Avis to ally with England and take up arms against the regent, Leonor Teles. Here, Lopes cleverly substitutes the concept of political legitimacy based on lineage for the classical idea of authority coming from the people.11

Within Ferno Lopes chronicles, significant attention is given to the alliance forged between England and Portugal that had begun during the reign of Pedro i as part of Portugals entry into the Hundred Years War. Within the chronicles, the friendship of the two kingdoms was cemented in the marriage of Joo i to the daughter of Englands regent John of Gaunt. That Philippa of Lancaster, mother of Duarte i and the Inclita Gerao, was the granddaughter of King Edward iii of England was a point continually emphasized, and served

8 Ferno Lopes and Derek W. Lomax, The English in Portugal, 13671387: extracts from the chronicles of Dom Fernando and Dom Joo (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1988), introd, vviii. See also Verssimo Serro, Histria Breve da Historiografia Portuguesa, 2745.

9 Lopes, Crnica de D. Pedro, cap. xxix.10 Ibid., cap. xliii.11 Lopes, Crnica de D. Joo i cap. xix.

chapter 122

as a further reminder that Duarte i and his successors were legitimate descendants of the Plantagenets.

Apart from the concerns over legitimacy, there appears to be another purpose to the chronicles of Ferno Lopes, begun in 1434. In the same year, Duarte I promulgated a new law, called the Lei Mental in the Cortes of Santarm, The Lei Mental was the official enactment of a law that had apparently been put into practice during the reign of Joo i which affected the transmission of property bestowed on elites. Following the Battle of Aljubarrota in 1385, which had brought Joo i to power, the crown had been forced to buy its support among the nobility by granting out numerous privileges and lands. The Lei Mental, which instituted the principle of primogeniture, was envisioned as a clawback by which all lands and privileges that had not been inherited by a legitimate male relative were to revert to the crown. Within this context, the chronicles of Ferno Lopes were likely meant to be a narrative justification andclarification of the lands and privileges which were confiscated and re distributed by Joo i after the Battle of Aljubarrota (1385).

Ferno Lopes has been widely regarded as a gifted writer and historian who was one of the first to approach his subject matter through the research of primary source material.12 Like many of the Crnistas Mores who would succeed him, Lopes served as Guarda Mor of the Torre do Tomboor keeper of the royal archives. In this position, which he had held since 1418, Lopes had unrestricted access to all of the chancery registers which recorded the charters emitted by the crown.13 But it should be remembered that not only did this position give him access to the sources that he needed, it also gave him a monopoly on such information which could not be easily checked or verified by others. Thus, although Lopes may seem modern insofar as he derived information through historical autopsy, one should not assume that he treated his subject matter with the same balance and armslength professionalism expected of modern historians.

Gomes Eanes de Zurara, (Crnista Mor 145474)

Ferno Lopes continued as Crnista Mor until 1454 when he was replaced by Gomes Eanes de Zurara, who would serve in this position for a further

12 Verissimo Serro, Historia Breve da Historiografia Portuguesa, 2745.13 Avelino de Jesus da Costa, La Chancellerie Royale Portugaise jusqau milieu du XIIIe

sicle, Revista Portuguesa de Histria 15 (1975), 14369; and A Chancelaria Real Portuguesa e os seus Registos, de 1217 a 1438, Revista da Faculdade de Letras: Historia, 13 (1996), 71101.

23Spin Doctors of the Crown

twenty years. Zurara seems to have been first employed as an assistant to Lopes, completing in 1449 a third part to the chronicle of Joo i entitled Chronica delrei D. Joo i de Boa-memoria, e dos reis de Portugal o decimo. Terceira parte, em que se conta a tomada de Ceuta. This history, as its title suggests, was an account of the conquest of the Moroccan city of Ceuta by the Portuguese in 1415.

Zuraras four chronicles: the Tomada da Ceuta; the Crnica do Descobrimento e Conquista de Guin (1453); the Crnica de Dom Pedro de Meneses (1463) and the Crnica de Dom Pedro de Meneses (1467) represent a thematic shift from the works of Ferno Lopes insofar as they cover the subject of Portugals expansion overseas. The first two chronicles also marked the arrival of a new patron, Duarte is brother, Prince Henry, the Navigator. After the premature death of Duarte i in 1438, the kingdom had been inherited by his sixyearold son, Afonso v. For the next eleven years a powerstruggle had ensued: first among the dowager queen, Leonor of Aragon and the kings uncle the Infante D. Pedro. Later, after being dismissed as regent, the Infante D. Pedro turned on the young king himself who had allied with the Count of Ourm. Civil war culminated in the Battle of Alfarrobeira (1449) which resulted in the defeat and death of the Infante D. Pedro.

This tumultuous period saw the political rise of Prince Henry who, by 1449, wielded significant influence in Portugal and considerable privileges overseas. As a means of supplementing the meagre estates and revenues that Prince Henry had received as the Duke of Viseu, he had been granted a number of revenues and privileges derived from overseas estates. In 1420, Prince Henry had been named by Joo i, the lay administrator of the Order of Christ which eventually gave him spiritual jurisdiction over all new lands discovered by Portugal. In 1443, during the regency of the Infante D. Pedro, Prince Henry secured a monopoly on naval expeditions down the West African coast, to the south of Cape Bojador, with terms that even excluded the Portuguese crown from sending ships there.14 After the discovery of the archipelagoes of Madeira in 1419 and the Azores in 1427, Prince Henry had acquired the rights to all of them piecemeal. By 1456, he would gain the rights to the Cape Verde Islands as well.15 After his death, in 1460, these islands would be passed as a senhorio to his heirs.

The Tomada de Ceuta and the Descobrimento e Conquista de Guin were written to celebrate the achievements of Prince Henry, both in terms of his personal involvement and in his role as a patron of overseas expeditions. Although the Tomada de Ceuta formed the third part of the chronicle of the life

14 Russell, Prince Henry, 198.15 Ibid., 81108, 34553.

chapter 124

of Joo i, the work centred on the prowess of Prince Henry who had participated in the capture of Ceuta in his youth. Zuraras work was instrumental in framing the Princes actions and the campaign as a whole, as a crusade against the Marinid Sultanate in Morocco. The Descobrimento e Conquista de Guin (1453) was an account of the discovery and colonization of the Atlantic Islands as well as the voyages down the West African coast, up until 1448. Like the Tomada da Ceuta, it lauded the achievements of Prince Henry and couched the exploratory voyages down the Guinea coast, up until 1448, in terms of religious warfare waged in service of the Holy See.16

These first two chronicles of Zurara were completed in a period of renewed enthusiasm for religious warfare. Ottoman advances in the Mediterranean had prompted the Papacy to overcome the divisions that had plagued it since the Council of Basel. In 1452, Pope Nicholas v (14471455) issued the bull Dum Diversas, which gave the Portuguese the right to invade and conquer states that were occupied by the enemies of Christ. The bull was significant insofar as it allowed the Portuguese to assert themselves in the Canary Islands that had been claimed by Castile in this period and sanctioned the trade in slaves. It is important to point out that the Dum Diversas was conceded in a period of renewed tensions between Castile and Portugal, where Castile was viewed by Portugal as infringing upon its monopoly on exploration. Despite Dum Diversas, in 1453 a Castilian fleet sailed as far as the Guinea coast where it was defeated in battle by Portuguese forces. In the following year, King Juan ii of Castile (140654) complained to Afonso v about the incident and expressed his intent to pursue claims to the region. Fortunately Juan iis death in 1454 meant that such a challenge did not occur.17 But, to no surprise, the Portuguese crown petitioned Nicholas v, securing in 1455 the bull Romanus Pontifexa bull which gave further international recognition to the rights granted to the Portuguese and allowed them to punish transgressors of the monopoly in the same manner as heretics.18 Romanus Pontifex was also novel in the fact that it specifically named Prince Henry, alongside the Portuguese crown, as the recipient

16 A.C. de C.M. Saunders Depiction of Trade as War as a Reflection of Portuguese Ideology and Diplomatic Strategy in West Africa, 14411556, Canadian Journal of History 17 (1982): 219220.

17 Ibid., 22324.18 Romanus Pontifex, in European Treaties bearing on the History of the United States and its

Dependencies to 1648, Frances Gardiner Davenport, editor, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1917, Washington, D.C., at 2026; Ivana Elbl, The Bull Romanus Pontifex (1455) and the Early European Trading in SubSaharan Atlantic Africa, Portuguese Studies Review, 17 (2009): 60.

25Spin Doctors of the Crown

of these concessions. In all likelihood, this specific naming of the prince was owed to the publicity provided by Zurara and others.

In the past, historians have examined the chronicles of the fifteenth century as discrete works written by individual authors. Such treatment ignores the cohesiveness of the works and their collective mission to project dynastic unity. But it would appear that the writing and packaging of Portugals history drew cooperation from a number of royal officials who may have edited and built on the works of one another. In all likelihood, the crnistas formed a type of historical atelier or workshop, overseen by the Crnista Mor. This arrangement would explain why Zurara began Tomada de Ceuta while Ferno Lopes was still in office and also explain the existence of an anonymous account, drafted in 1419, of the reigns of Portugals first seven kings.19 The designation mor, when applied to an office holder such as a porter (porteiro-mor) or castellan (alcaide-mor), implies that they are the chief officer. In the case of the Crnista Mor, the epithet mor suggests that this official had oversight over other crnistas and clerks. In an atelierlike structure, the Crnista-Mor would likely have been responsible for the most skilled and visible component of the project while apprentices and assistants would have been given less important tasks. In all probability, Ferno Lopes had a number of individuals working under himnot only Zurara and the anonymous chronicler of the first seven kings. Another historian, by the name of Afonso de Cerveira, appears to have been active during the 1440s writing a chronicle relating to the deeds of the Infante D. Pedro. After 1449, Cerveiras manuscript was apparently delivered to Zurara (the author having died or fallen from favour), who reworked it into the Descobrimento e Conquista de Guin.20

Around the time that Zurara was replacing Ferno Lopes, Frei Joo Alvares, another figure closely connected to the Inclita Gerao, composed a history entitled the Tratado da vida e dos feitos do muito vertuoso Senhor Infante D.Fernando. Written between 1451 and 1456, the work celebrated the feats of the youngest son of Joo i, the Infante D. Fernando. This unfortunate prince was captured after the defeat of the Portuguese at Tangier in 1437 and held hostage in Arzila and Fez before dying in captivity in 1443. Alvares, who had been the secretary of the Infantes household, had also accompanied his master into captivity, but was later ransomed in 1448 by the Infante D. Pedro. He was commissioned to write the chronicle by Prince Henry and also seems

19 A. de Magalhes Basto, Estudos: Crnistas e Crnicas Antigas. Ferno Lopes e a Crnica de 1419 (Coimbra: 1959).

20 Verssimo Serro, Histria Breve da Historiografia Portuguesa, 63; Zurara, Crnica do Descobrimento e Conquista da Guin, cap. lxxxiv.

chapter 126

to have travelled to the court of Isabel of Burgundy at some point before 1460.21

Dr. Vasco Fernandes de Lucena, (Crnista Mor 147497)

Evidence of collaboration among scholars is best evidenced by the career of Dr. Vasco Fernandes de Lucena. Lucena first appeared in Portugal in 1435, after migrating from Andalucia with his two brothers, Afonso and Rodrigo. The fact that both of his brothers were physicians (whose numbers were few in this period) suggests that the family was related to Martin de Lucena, a Jew who had converted to Christianity with his children in 1391 and eventually served as physician to Juan ii of Castile.22 Such illustrious connections might explain how the recent immigrants so quickly came into the service as chief physicians of the Portuguese royal family. Mestre Afonso de Lucena served as the fisico of Isabel, Duchess of Burgundy and Dr. Rodrigo de Lucena served the Infantes D. Pedro and D. Fernando before going on to serve Joo ii.23 Certainly by the 1450s, Vasco Fernandes de Lucena appears to have wielded considerable political influence and was able to recover his brothers property after the Battle of Alfarrobeira and restore him, by 1451 to the good graces of Afonso v.

As previously mentioned, Vasco Fernandes de Lucena was a member of the delegation sent to the Council of Basel in 1435. The fact that he was made part of this embassy at what must have been a young age and so soon after his arrival in Portugal further suggests that he or his family had already forged connections outside of Portugal. It can be no coincidence that another Lucena, Juan Ramirez de Lucena, would serve as chronicler and diplomat to Ferdinand of Aragon. In 1435, the mandate of the delegation was to obtain papal sanction for further expansion into North Africa and Lucena gained notoriety by defending the practice by which soldiers in Ceuta were granted plenary indulgences for their service: a practice that had been vigorously challenged by Castile.24

21 Verssimo Serro, Histria Breve da Historiografia Portuguesa, 613. See also Verissimo Serrao Frei Joao Alvares in Historia e Antologia de Literatura Portuguesa, Sculo xv, 9 (1999), 11.

22 Norman Roth, Conversos, Inquisition, and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain (Madison, Wis.; London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), 181.

23 Humberto Baquero Moreno, A Batalha de Alfarrobeira. (Lisbon: Loureno Marques, 1973), vol. 2, 1044.

24 Ibid., vol. 2, 843.

27Spin Doctors of the Crown

While in Italy, Lucena appears to have befriended Poggio Bracciolini, a celebrated humanist who first exposed Lucena to the classical writers Quintilian and Cicero. Bracciolinis translations from Greek to Latin would be used by Lucena for his own translations into the vernacular.25 When he returned to Portugal, Lucena was commissioned by the regent, the Infante D. Pedro, to translate important classical works, including Cicero and Pliny the Younger to be used for the education of the young Afonso v. Under Lucena, classical histories were political and didactic works that presented certain behaviors for emulation. During this period, Lucena continued to perform diplomatic functions and played a key role in negotiations between the Infante D. Pedro and Afonso Vs mother, Leonor of Aragon. He was also sent to the court of Juan ii of Castile to try to help negotiate the release of the Infante D. Fernando. A true politician, Lucena appears to have walked a careful line in the events leading up to the battle of Alfarrobeira. His success in this effort can be seen in the fact that he was sent to Nicholas Vs jubilee in Rome in 1450 as an ambassador after the pope had censured Afonso v for his actions at Alfarrobeira.26

Although we have no details about Lucenas visit to Rome, it would appear that he was an influential lobbyist for Prince Henry and the crowns overseas interests. In 1448, just prior to the completion of Zuraras Tomada de Ceuta, Lucenas old friend Bracciolini, the papal secretary, had sent a letter to Prince Henry commending him on his contribution to the crusade.27 When the bull Romanus Pontifex was issued in 1455, the bull contained a summary of the historical exploits of Prince Henry. Interestingly, Lucena had left Portugal in 1453 on some unknown mission and did not resurface in Portugal until he was named as Zuraras successor as Crnista Mor. One would assume that he returned to Rome to continue in his role as lobbyist for Prince Henry and the Portuguese crown in this important period. Certainly Pope Nicholas v as a humanist intent on surrounding himself with humanist learning would have been interested in Lucenas skills as a translator.

If Lucena served the crown by orally publicizing the overseas expansion, the Portuguese crown seemed equally intent upon promoting their history in writing. To announce its achievements to a wider audience Afonso v commissioned the Master of Grammar at court, Mateus Pisano, to translate Zuraras Tomada de Ceuta into Latin. Pisano eventually completed the work, entitled De Bello Septensi in 1460. There is some evidence to suggest that the project was meant

25 Nuno Espinosa Gomes de Silva, Humanismo e Direito em Portugal no sculo xvi. (Lisbon, 1964), 114.

26 Baquero Moreno, A Batalha de Alfarrobeira, vol. 2, 84346.27 Saunders, Depiction of Trade as War, 221.

chapter 128

to extend beyond the translation of the Tomada de Ceuta and it would appear that the crown intended for Pisano, handpicked from among a number of writers, to translate all the chronicles for wider dissemination.28 Unfortunately, Pisanos death in 1466 prevented his completion of the ambitious project.

Meanwhile in 1461, Dr. Vasco Fernandes de Lucena travelled to the court of Burgundy, where his brother, Mestre Afonso served as the physician to the Duchess.29 Between 1461 and 1468, he delved into historical studies once again, translating Xenophons Cyropedia and Quintus Curtius Life of Alexander from Latin into French, evidently for the education of the future Duke Charles the Bold. There has been debate among scholars as to whether the translator of these works was indeed the same Dr. Vasco Fernandes de Lucena who had translated classical works at the court of Afonso v and the future Crnista Mor of Portugal. It would seem that the skills, intellectual profile and connections are such that it appears implausible that they would be two different men.30 The likeliest explanation is that in this period, Dr. Vasco Fernandes de Lucena was a member of Portugals historical atelier whose role was to serve as an ambassador to Rome and to Burgundy. In the 1460s he may well have been the mouthpiece for Zuraras later chronicles, the Crnica de Dom Pedro de Meneses, (1463) which extolled the virtues of the first captain of the city of Ceuta and the Crnica de Dom Duarte de Meneses (1467) which publicized the capture of the Moroccan city of Alcer Ceguer by the Portuguese in 1458. Episodes from these chronicles, formally or informally relayed may well have contributed to the decision of Duke Philip the Good to assist the Portuguese in their North African campaigns in 1464.

This diplomatic role was almost certainly assisted by Isabel, Duchess of Burgundy who up until her death in December, 1471 remained committed to the glorification of the Avis Dynasty, among other projects. As the daughter of Philippa of Lancaster and Joo i, she had seen first hand how her mother had been able to participate in diplomatic affairs involving England, even though she was queen of Portugal. The Duchess of Burgundy was no less active, intervening directly in the aftermath of the Battle of Alfarrobeira, sending an

28 Cladia Cravo and Cladia Teixeira, Mateus de Pisano, De Bello Septensi, Humanitas 50 (1998), 649.

29 Verissimo Serro, Histria Breve da Historiografia Portuguesa, 5961.30 There is confusion over a Vasco and Fernando de Lucena who were enrolled at the

University of Paris/Louvain in 1454. These may have been sons of Dr. Vasco Fernandes Lucena as he was married to Dona Violante Alvim by this time. See Charity Cannon Willard, Isabel of Portugal and the French Transation of the Triunfo de las Donas, Revue belge de philology et dhistoire, 43 (1963): 965.

29Spin Doctors of the Crown

ambassador to Portugal and rescuing three of her nieces and nephews: Infante D. Pedros children. As a member of the Inclita she recognized the value of artistic patronage in service of politics. As the royal pantheon was being constructed at the Monastery of Batalha, she sent works of art by Flemish painters to decorate the chapels of her parents and her brothers.31 When she herself died in 1471, it was Dr. Vasco Fernandes de Lucena who wrote her epitaph. After the death of Gomes Eanes de Zurara in April 1474, it seems that Dr. Vasco Fernandes de Lucena was called upon to succeed him as Crnista Mor, and he seems to have returned to Portugal at this time. In his company was the Italian scholar Frei Justo Baldino who was commissioned to translate the rest of Lopes chronicles into Latin in order that they might be distributed more widely.32

It is entirely plausible that Lucenas mandate was to bring the chronicles of Duarte i and Afonso v to completion. Although these histories were ultimately completed by Lucenas successor, Rui de Pina, there are a number of indications that they were begun by someone else. The Crnica de D. Afonso v, attributed to Pina is remarkable, not only because of its length of more than two hundred chapters encompassing a fortythree year reign, but also because the work has two areas of focus. Well over half of the chronicle is devoted to the regency period and functions as an apology of the Battle of Alfarrobeira, while the final part of the work explains the events surrounding the War of the Castilian Succession. Although Manuel Lopes de Almeida connects the first part of the chronicle to Zurara in both themes and style, Lucenas influence can also be seen here.33 During the regency, Lucena had served as the chief emissary between the Infante D. Pedro and Queen Leonor of Aragon before she was ousted from power. Moreover, Lucenas affiliation with the household of the Infante D. Pedro also explains why, in Chapter cxxiv, the Infante was treated with extreme sympathy, while the Duke of Bragana and Count of Ourm were portrayed as the instigators of the political conflict. Additionally, Chapter cxxix recounts the diplomatic intervention of Lucenas other patron, the Duchess of Burgundy after the Battle of Alfarrobeira. Although Lucena may not have been the one putting the pen to parchment, his involvement in the overall project seems likely. It would seem, then, that rather than a single authored work, a number of hands may have produced the chronicles of the fifteenth

31 Charity Cannon Willard, The Patronage of Isabel of Portugal in June Hall McCash, The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women (Athens, Ga.; London: University of Georgia Press, 1996), 3123.

32 Saul Antnio Gomes, D. Afonso v: o africano (Lisbon: Temas e Debates, 2009), 186.33 M. Lopes de Almeida, introd. to Rui de Pina, Crnicas, vxxiii.

chapter 130

century. As opposed to the humanists of the sixteenth century who sought personal glory through the production of singleauthored works, the collective goal of the fifteenth century chroniclers was to bring prestige to the dynasty.

Rui de Pina, (Crnista Mor 14971523)

The completion of the Crnica de D. Afonso v was partly delayed by the longevity of the kings reign which lasted until 1481. Prior to the kings death, it would have been undignified, unconventional and perhaps politically risky to issue the chronicle, despite the fact that the manuscript may have been already well developed. But at the time of Zuraras death in 1474, the business of writing and translating history was made even more difficult by the onset of the War of the Castilian succession (147579). Although the war itself lasted only four years, the aftermath kept diplomats like Dr. Vasco Fernandes de Lucena and Rui de Pina scrambling for a number of years.

Another death in 1474that of King Enrique iv of Castile, brought two female claimants to vie for the crown. Both women had close connections to Portugal. Juana, who was dubbed the Excelente Senhora by the Portuguese, was the daughter of Enrique iv and Joana of Portugal, sister to Afonso v. Isabelline propaganda challenged her legitimacy and in Castile she was spuriously called La Beltraneja amid allegations that her father was Beltrn de Cueva, a leading nobleman at Enrique ivs c