Early Portuguese History
The Story of Portugal possesses a peculiar interest from the fact that it is to its history alone that the country owes its existence as a separate nation. Geographically, the…
From: Unknown To: 1640 C.E.
Location: Portugal
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Portugal by Henry Morse Stephens, 1891.
The Story of Portugal possesses a peculiar interest from the fact that it is to its history alone that the country owes its existence as a separate nation. Geographically, the little kingdom is an integral portion of the Iberian peninsula, with no natural boundaries to distinguish it from that larger portion of the peninsula called Spain; its inhabitants spring from the same stock as the Spaniards, and their language differs but slightly from the Spanish.
Its early history is merged in that of the rest of the peninsula, and but for two great men, Affonso Henriques, the first king of Portugal, and John I., the founder of the house of Aviz, Portugal would not at the present day rank among the independent nations of Europe. The first of these monarchs created his dominions into a kingdom like Leon, Castile, and Aragon, and the latter encouraged the maritime explorations which gave the little country an individuality and national existence, of which it was justly proud. When Philip II. annexed Portugal in 1580, it was at least a century too late for the Portuguese to coalesce with the Spaniards. They had then produced Vasco da Gama and Alboquerque and other great captains and explorers, who had shown Europe the way to India by sea; and their tongue had been developed by the genius of Camoens and Sá de Miranda, from a Romance dialect, similar to those used in Gallicia, Castile, or Aragon, into a great literary language.
Conscious of its national history, Portugal broke away again from Spain in 1640, and under the protection of England maintained its separate existence during the eighteenth century. There was some probability of a union with Spain at the beginning of the present century, when, after the conclusion of the Peninsular War against Napoleon, certain statesmen began to point out the anomaly of the Iberian peninsula being divided into two separate kingdoms, but a generation of great historians and poets soon arose, who reminded the people of the days of Portuguese greatness and of the glories of the past, and made it impossible for the modern Portuguese to lose the consciousness of their individuality as a nation.
But, though the history of Portugal possesses its peculiar interest as showing how one small portion of the Iberian peninsula maintained a separate existence, it presents also many features of romantic incident, especially during the epoch when it was for a time the leading nation of Europe.
The extraordinary vigour shown by the inhabitants of this small corner of Europe during the latter half of the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth centuries is most remarkable. Not only were Portuguese navigators the first to creep down the west coast of Africa in small boats, in which modern sailors would hardly like to cross the English Channel, but they dared to double the Cape of Good Hope, and to sail across the Indian Ocean to India and Ceylon. Thence they ventured round the point of Singapore, and established themselves at Macao, from which centre they explored the coasts of China and Japan. In the other direction, to the west, they crossed the Atlantic and discovered and colonized Brazil.
Lisbon became the storehouse and centre of distribution for the products of the East, and attained to a height of wealth and luxury unrivalled since the days of ancient Rome. The history of the Portuguese "conquistadores" in India for the first hundred years after the discovery of the route round the Cape of Good Hope is one long romance; the vastness of their designs, the grandeur of their exploits, and the nobility of character of their great captains, combine to make a story of surpassing interest. And when it is remembered that the soldiers and sailors of these great discoverers and conquerors were inhabitants of the smallest country in Europe, their success seems the more extraordinary, and the interest in the story of the nation which trained the Portuguese heroes becomes the more absorbing.
As invariably happens during the heroic age of a nation's history, literature and the arts flourished at a time distinguished by military and naval prowess, and as Spenser and Shakespeare illustrated the Elizabethan age in England as much as Drake and Raleigh, the age of Vasco da Gama and Alboquerque in Portugal could boast also of Gil Vicente, Sá de Miranda and Camoens.
The abrupt fall of Portugal from the greatness and wealth of its heroic period to an insignificant place among the nations is as full of the great lessons which history teaches as the story of its growth. Just as the chivalry induced by the constant fighting with the Moors, and the inspiration to great deeds fostered by freedom and the good government of worthy kings, produced a race of heroes, so not less surely did the growth of luxury and absolutism, assisted by the narrow-mindedness of a dynasty of bigots, lose for Portugal the lofty place which her heroes had won for her. These are things well worth pondering upon and lessons well worth learning, for the great value of the study of history is in teaching such truths as these—truths which are eternal, while nations wax and wane.
The early history of the country, which took the name of Portugal from the county which formed the nucleus of the future kingdom, is identical with that of the rest of the Iberian peninsula, but deserves some slight notice because of an old misconception, immortalized in the title of the famous epic of Camoens, and not yet entirely eradicated even from modern ideas.
Portugal, like the rest of the peninsula, was originally inhabited by men of the prehistoric ages, whose implements are frequently dug up at the present day, and remains of the cave-dwellers have been found all over the province of the Alemtejo, and more especially in the great cave near Alter do Chao.
The most famous prehistoric monument is, however, the beautiful “Anta de Guimaraens," about the exact date of which Portuguese archaeologists are much exercised. These prehistoric people were conquered and exterminated by the first waves of the great Aryan race which has spread all over Europe. There seems to be no doubt that the Celts, the first Aryan immigrants, were preceded by a non-Aryan race, which is called by different writers the Iberian or the Euskaldunac nation, but this earlier race speedily amalgamated with the Celts, and out of the two together were formed the five tribes inhabiting the Iberian peninsula, which Strabo names as the Cantabrians, the Vasconians, the Asturians, the Gallicians, and the Lusitanians.
It is Strabo, also, who mentions the existence of Greek colonies at the mouths of the Tagus, Douro, and Minho, and it is curious to note that the old name of Lisbon, Olisipo, was from the earliest times identified with that of the hero of the Odyssey, and was interpreted to mean the city of Ulysses. The Celtic Iberians certainly possessed the elements of civilization, and from a very early period they had learnt to write, and it is a remarkable fact that the formation of the letters of their alphabet is traceable rather to Greek than Phoenician characters. This is the more remarkable, when it is remembered that the Phoenicians, and not the Greeks, are always mentioned in history as monopolizing the trade of Iberia.
The Carthaginians, though they had colonies all over the peninsula, established their rule mainly over the south and east of it, having their capital at Carthagena or Nova Carthago, and seem to have neglected the more barbarous northern and western provinces.
It was for this reason that the Romans found far more difficulty in subduing these latter provinces than they had in taking possession of the former, which the Carthaginians had already conquered. The Romans were at first satisfied with these provinces, which were ceded to them after the conclusion of the second Punic war, but eventually they began to spread over the hitherto neglected districts; and in 189 B.C Lucius Æmilius Paullus defeated the Lusitanians, and in 183 B.C. Gaius Calpurnius forced his way across the Tagus.
There is no need here to discuss the gradual conquest by the Romans of that part of the peninsula which includes the modern kingdom of Portugal, but it is necessary to speak of the gallant shepherd Viriathus, who sustained a stubborn war against the Romans from 149 B.C. until he was assassinated in 139 B.C. because he has been generally claimed as the first national hero of Portugal. This claim has been based upon the assumed identification of the modern Portugal with the ancient Lusitania, an identification which has spread its roots deep into Portuguese literature, and has until recently been generally accepted.
The first Portuguese writer who assumed the identity of Portugal with Lusitania was Dom Garcia de Meneses, Bishop of Evora, who wrote in the reign of John II. at the close of the fifteenth century, though the two terms had been used distinctively by early chroniclers, such as Lucas de Tuy in his "Chronicon Mundi," and Matthew de Pisano in his "Guerra de Ceuta." The mistaken notion was further developed in the days of the Renaissance and of the Revival of Learning, and became generally accepted by the close of the sixteenth century, and exaggerated by the very title of such books as the "Monarchia Lusitana" of Bernardo de Brito and the "De Antiquitatibus Lusitaniae" of the great antiquary Andrea de Resende. In fact, the Portuguese writers of that epoch delighted in calling Portugal by the classical name of Lusitania, and Camoens, the very greatest of them all, has, by the title of his famous epic, "Os Lusiadas" or "The Lusiads,” stamped the mistake permanently on Portuguese literature.
This false identification has had important historical consequences. Modern writers have on this supposition spoken of the Portuguese as a distinct branch of the Celtic population of the Iberian peninsula identical with the tribe of Lusitanians spoken of by Strabo. They have further identified them with the Lusitanians who struggled so gallantly against the Roman Republic under the leadership of Punicus and Viriathus; they have found passages in the Latin historians describing the Lusitanians, and have moralized upon the manner in which the characteristics of the ancient Lusitanians re-appear in the modern Portuguese. The identity of two nations must consist in proving their perfect succession in either race or territory, and in neither respect can the identity be shown in the present instance.
The Celtic tribe of Lusitanians dwelt, according to Strabo, in the districts north of the Tagus, while the Lusitania of the Latin historians of the Republic undoubtedly lay to the south of that river though it was not used as the name of a province until the time of Augustus, when the old division of the peninsula into Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior was superseded by the division into Betica, Tarraconensis, and Lusitania. Neither in this division, nor in the division of the peninsula into the five provinces of Tarraconensis, Carthaginensis, Betica, Lusitania, and Gallicia, under Hadrian, was the province called Lusitania coterminous with the modern kingdom of Portugal. Under each division the name was given to a district south of the Tagus, and therefore not embracing the modern provinces of the Entre Minho c Douro, Trasos-Montes, and Beira.
It is important to grasp the results of this misconception, for it emphasizes the fact that the history of Portugal for many centuries is merged in that of the rest of the Iberian peninsula, and explains why it is unnecessary to study the wars of the Lusitanians with the Roman Republic, as is often done in histories of Portugal.
Like the rest of the peninsula Portugal was thoroughly Latinized in the days of the Roman Empire; Roman colonia and municipia were established in places suited for trade, such as Lisbon and Oporto, and commanding high-roads, such as Lamego and Viseu; Roman institutions were generally adopted, and the Latin language superseded the old Celtic dialects. The chief Portuguese towns, like those in the rest of the peninsula, were granted the "Jus Latinum" by Vespasian, and all the inhabitants became Roman citizens under the famous decree of Caracalla.
The influence of the mighty sway of Rome has left its traces all over the peninsula, and to as great degree in Portugal as in Spain. Portuguese law is based on the old Roman law, as well as the Portuguese language upon Latin; and many Portuguese institutions show the direct influence of Roman government. Notably is this the case with regard to municipal institutions; many Portuguese cities can boast of distinct existence ever since the Roman Empire, and the duumviri and boni homines of those days have their counterparts in the municipal government of the present day.
During these days of peace and prosperity Portugal also received the Christian religion, and welcomed it as cordially as France and Spain, and bishoprics were founded which still exist. In more material things the dominion of Rome has left its traces in the roads and bridges made by that race of engineers, in the beautiful remains at Leiria, and in the aqueduct and the ruins of the temple of Diana at Evora.
Peaceful existence under the sway of Rome continued until the beginning of the fifth century, when the Goths first forced their way across the Pyrenees. During the first barbarian occupation, the Suevi seized Gallicia and Tarraconensis, the Alans Lusitania and Carthaginensis, and the Vandals Betica or Andalusia. The irruption of the Visigoths changed this settlement; the Alans and the Vandals crossed to Africa, and the Suevi occupied Betica and Lusitania. The Visigothic Empire left but slight traces in Portugal, slighter even than in Spain, and the Portuguese nobility do not, like the Spanish, invariably lay claim to Gothic descent.
Ethnologically the Gothic element is very slight in Portugal, though the country passed under the rule of the Visigoths during the reign of Ataulphus, who married the sister of the Roman Emperor Honorius, and remained part of their dominion for three centuries. While the Roman rule left so many traces of its existence, and entirely modelled the language and civilization alike of Spain and Portugal, that of the Visigoths, which lasted nearly as long, left hardly any traces at all. The cause is to be found in the natural assimilation of a race in a low state of civilization to the status of a higher race. The number of Romans who actually settled in the peninsula must have been very small, yet the Celts adopted their language and civilization, while the conquering Visigoths, on the other hand, adopted the religion and civilization of the people they had conquered. The Visigothic power reached its zenith in the reign of Euric at the end of the fifth century, and afterwards steadily declined, being torn by internal dissensions, and especially by the great struggle between the nobility and the rulers of the Christian Church. It was the leaders of the latter party. Count Julian and Archbishop Oppus, who invited the Mohammedans from Africa into Spain, and in fighting against them, Roderick, the last Visigothic king, was killed near Xeres, at the battle of the Guadelete, in 711.
The history of the Mohammedans in the Iberian peninsula has been treated in another volume of this Series, and it is only necessary to note here that under the wise and tolerant rule of the Ommeyad sultans, the rich plains alike of Spain and Portugal maintained the prosperity which they had enjoyed under the Roman emperors and the Visigothic kings, and that the old Roman colonia and municipia retained their Roman self-government, and Lisbon and Oporto increased in wealth and commercial importance. Though the Arabs were fanatical conquerors, the Ommeyads were enlightened rulers, and the Christian religion was protected, though not encouraged, as long as the Christian bishops refrained from active exertions against the Mohammedans. In Portugal also, owing to its distance from Cordova, the duties of government were granted almost entirely to the Mosarabs, as the numerous native converts to Islam were called, men who felt the importance of keeping the adherents of the two prevailing religions from coming to blows.
But this peaceful state of things was not to last; the Iberian peninsula, which had remained prosperous under Romans, Visigoths, and Mohammedans, was to suffer centuries of fierce war, war which was to devastate its fields and destroy its cities, but from which its people were to develop into a race of hardy and chivalrous warriors.
The people of the peninsula under the rule of foreign sovereigns had become soft and weak, occupied only in accumulating wealth, in which to live in comfort and luxury. Architectural remains of the first thousand years of the Christian era show to what a pitch of comfort the people had attained, but the easy conquests of the Visigoths and the Moors prove that they had become enervated by luxury. During the next five hundred years a different state of things was to appear. The land and the cities alike of Spain and Portugal were to be ravaged and destroyed in terrible wars, and a race of soldiers, bred in all the laws and customs of chivalry, was to arise—a race which, after finding no further exercise for its energies at home, was to extend its power to India and to the New World, as yet unknown, across the Atlantic. Whether it were better to spend lives of luxurious ease or to become warriors was a question not asked of the people of the Iberian peninsula; they had no choice in the matter; but it must not be forgotten in watching the gradual development of this race of warriors in one part of the peninsula, in Portugal, that it was, when formed, to do great things for Europe and for the advancement of a higher civilization than that of the stormy centuries in which it arose.
Towards the close of the tenth century as the Ommeyad caliphate grew weaker, the Christian princes of Visigothic descent, who dwelt, in the mountains of the Asturias, began to grow more bold in their attacks on the declining power; and in 997 Bermudo II., king of Gallicia, won back the first portion of modern Portugal from the Moors by seizing Oporto and occupying the province now known as the Entre Minho e Douro. At the beginning of the eleventh century, the great Moorish caliphate finally broke up, and independent Mohammedan emirs established themselves in every large city, against whom the Christian princes waged incessant and successful wars. In these wars the Celtic inhabitants of the peninsula took but little part; the Moorish armies consisted of Mohammedans, the descendants of the fierce soldiers of Abder-Rahman and a few Mosarabs, while the Christian armies consisted only of the feudal chivalry of the northern mountains.
In each army different customs prevailed; the strength of the Moors lay in their perfect military discipline and absolute obedience to their generals; that of the Christians in the new impulse to valour given to each individual knight by the laws of chivalry. On neither side was personal ambition without an incentive; Moorish generals hoped to become emirs, Christian knights, feudal counts. The finest soldiers of both armies were foreigners to the peninsula, being on the one side Africans, on the other either of Gothic descent or else the flower of the chivalry of northern Europe, which went to win its spurs in the wars against the unbelievers, and especially admired and followed the Cid, Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar. Between these two contending bands of warriors the unfortunate Celtic inhabitants of the middle zone of the peninsula were crushed; those of the mountains of the north were by feudal custom obliged to take up arms to follow their lords, and after a century or two those of the centre by the force of necessity became warriors also, and proceeded to drive the Moors back to Africa.
The eleventh century was at first marked by great Christian successes, especially in the west of the peninsula. In 1055 Ferdinand "the Great," king of Leon, Castile, and Gallicia, invaded the Beira; in 1057 he took Lamego and Viseu; and in 1064 Coimbra, where he died in the following year. He arranged for the government of his conquests in the only way possible under the feudal system, by forming them into a county, extending to the Mondego, with Coimbra as its capital.
The first count of Coimbra was Sesnando, a recreant Arab vizir, who had advised Ferdinand to invade his district and had assisted in its easy conquest. He had married a Christian, and was ready to defend his new religion and the dominions he held under the Christian king with all the more vigour from the knowledge that the Moorish emirs and walis to the south regarded him as an apostate. But though Sesnando's county of Coimbra was the great frontier county of Gallicia, and the most important conquest of Ferdinand "the Great," it was not thence that the kingdom which was to develop out of his dominions was to take its name. Among the counties of Gallicia was one called the "comitatus Portucalensis,” because it contained within its boundaries the famous city at the mouth of the Douro, known in Roman and Greek times as the Portus Cale, and in modern days as Oporto, or "The Port." This county of Oporto or Portugal was the one destined to give its name to the future kingdom, and was held at the time of Ferdinand's death by Nuno Mendes, the founder of one of the most famous families in Portuguese history.
Ferdinand "the Great" was succeeded in his three kingdoms of Castile, Leon, and Gallicia, by his three sons, Sancho, Alfonso, and Garcia, the last of whom received the two counties of Coimbra and Oporto a fiefs of Gallicia, and maintained Nuno Mendes and Sesnando as his feudatories. Under them were many feudal barons, who held their lands on condition of military service. It is fortunately not necessary to enter into the history of the wars between the sonsof Ferdinand; it is enough to say that the second them, Alfonso of Leon, eventually united all his father's kingdoms in 1073, as Alfonso VI.
The successes of the Christians aroused the stubborn resistance of the Moors; a fresh wave of fanaticism passed ever the Mohammedans of Africa and of the peninsula, and a new dynasty, that of the Almoravides arose, which subdued the various emirs and walis who had usurped the government of various portions of the old Ommeyad caliphate and once more united the Moorish power. The new dynasty collected great Moslom armies, and in 1086 Yusuf Ibn Teshfin routed Alfonso utterly at the battle of Zalaca, and reconquered the peninsula up to the Ebro. In this battle all the chivalry of the Moors and Christians was engaged, and among the latter was Sesnando, Count of Coimbra, followed by his knights. Alfonso tried to compensate for this defeat and his loss of territory in the east of his dominions by conquests in the west, and in 1093 he advanced to the Tagus and took Santarem and Lisbon, and made Sueiro Mendes count of the new district. But these conquests he did not hold for long; the Almoravides were in the full flush of success, and their armies were made almost irresistible by the fresh fanaticism inspired into them.
Their conquests in the east of the peninsula after the battle of Zalaca were followed by rapid successes in the west In 1093 Seyr, the general of the Almoravide caliph Yusuf, took Evora from the Emir of Badajoz; in 1094 he took Badajoz itself, and killed the emir; and retaking Lisbon and Santarem forced his way up to the Mondego. To resist this revival of the Mohammedan power, Alfonso summoned the chivalry of Christendom to his aid. Among the knights who joined his army eager to win their spurs, and win dominions for themselves were Count Raymond of Toulouse and Count Henry of Burgundy. To the former, Alfonso gave his legitimate daughter Urraca and Gallicia; to the latter, his illegitimate daughter Theresa, and the counties of Oporto and Coimbra, with the title of Count of Portugal.
The history of Portugal now becomes distinct from that of the rest of the peninsula, and it is from the year 1095 that the history of Portugal commences. The son of Henry of Burgundy was the great monarch Affonso Henriques, the hero of his country and the founder of a great dynasty. Up to this time it has been impossible to separate the history of Portugal from that of Spain, but it has been necessary to point out the fact that the history of the two countries had been hitherto identical, in order to dissipate the common error that the Spaniards and Portuguese belong to distinct races. The fact that the history of Portugal does not begin until such a comparatively recent date teaches another important lesson, that the nations of modern Europe must not be looked upon as having been complete entities from the earliest times, but in some instances owe their distinct nationality at the present day to fortuitous circumstances.
In 1095 a powerful county of Portugal was formed: its growth to a kingdom and the extension of its dominions by conquests from the Moors will now have to be studied, as well as its difficulty in maintaining its independence among the other nations of the peninsula, before it can be seen as the leading nation of the world, in the van of the march of European civilization.
Stephens, Henry Morse. Portugal. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1891.
About TOTA
TOTA.world provides cultural information and sharing across the world to help you explore your Family’s Cultural History and create deep connections with the lives and cultures of your ancestors.
