King Denis of Portugal
The life story of one of Portugal's most influential early kings.
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 It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.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 Portuguese Portraits by Aubrey Fitz Gerald Bell, 1917.
King Dinis
(1261 - 1325)
Co’ este o reino prospero florece.
CAMÕES, Os Lusiadas.
Um Dinis que ha de admirar o mundo.
ANTONIO DE SOUSA DE MACEDO, Ulyssippo.
When Henry of the French House of Burgundy became Count of Portugal in 1095 he merely held a province in fealty to the King of Leon, but by his son, the great Affonso I’s victories over the Moors it almost automatically became an independent kingdom. The second king, Sancho I, who has so many points of resemblance to King Dinis, further established the new realm, and he and his successors continued to wrest territory from the Moors. In the reign of the fifth king, Dinis' father, Affonso III, the conquest of Algarve was completed, and the only remaining difficulty was the claim of the kings of Castille to this region.
Dinis, born on October 9, 1261, was but a few years old when he was sent to Seville to win the consent of his mother's father, the celebrated Alfonso the Learned, to waive his right to the latest Portuguese conquest. As the shrewd Affonso III had foreseen, he proved a successful diplomatist. Alfonso X, enchanted with the grave, courtly bearing of his little grandson, knighted him and sent him home with all his requests granted.
Thus it came about that when Dinis, to whom his father had given a separate household but a few months before, ascended the throne at the age of seventeen, he was the first king to begin to reign over Portugal with its modern boundaries, from the River Minho to Faro. Two centuries of great deeds had achieved this result two more were to pass before Spain was likewise entirely free of the Moorish invader and Dinis now in a reign of half a century (1279-1325) saw to it that the heroism and sacrifices of his ancestors had not been in vain.
His tutor had been a Frenchman, Ebrard de Cahors, who now became Bishop of Coimbra, and the fame of his grandfather Alfonso X was spread through the whole Peninsula. But, young as he was, Dinis at once made it clear that he intended to rule as the national King of Portugal and had resolution enough to withstand the Castilian influence of his mother and Alfonso X. His first care was to acquaint himself thoroughly with his kingdom, and he spent the great part of the first year of his reign in visiting the country, paying especial attention to the still almost deserted region of Alentejo.
But the first years of his reign were not entirely peaceful, for his younger brother Affonso laid claim to the throne. Dinis was born before the Pope had legitimised Affonso Ill's second marriage; Alfonso, two years his junior, afterwards: hence the partisans of the latter affected to consider Dinis illegitimate. The dispute was scarcely settled when Dinis married Isabel, daughter of Pedro III of Aragon, who proved so efficacious a mediator in the even more serious troubles at the end of his reign, and, after sharing his throne for forty-three years, is still venerated as the Queen-Saint of Portugal.
In his differences with Castile, Dinis was successful, both in peace and war, and it was a tribute to his character and authority that he was chosen as arbitrator between the claims of the kings of Castille and Aragon. At home he was confronted by a powerful secular clergy, by the excessive and growing wealth of the religious orders, and by an overweening nobility, while his newly conquered kingdom urgently required hands to till it and walls and castles for its defence. Dinis dealt with all these problems in a spirit of equal wisdom and firmness, upholding the rights of the throne and the rights of the people till he had welded a scattered crowd of individuals into a nation.
His quarrel with the clergy, who protested that the King had infringed their rights, was referred to Rome, and in 1289 a formal but not a lasting agreement was reached.
Two years later the King checked the ever-growing possessions of the religious orders by a law limiting their right to gifts and legacies. Their wealth was the result of the great part they had played during the long conflict against the Moors, but it naturally began to prove inconvenient to King and people in time of peace. The nobles were in like case, and Dinis showed the same resolution towards them and abolished certain of their privileges.
He could protect as well as check. When the Knights Templar were abolished by the Pope, Dinis secured an exception for Portugal and reorganised them as the Order of Christ in 1319. Indeed he was essentially a builder, not a demolisher. In 1290 he founded the University of Coimbra; in 1308 he renewed and consolidated the treaty between Portugal and England; in 1317 he invited to Portugal a Genoese, Manuel Pezagno, to organise his fleet and command it as Admiral.
He encouraged agriculture, calling the peasants the "nerves of the republic”' and passed many laws to ensure their security, so that in his reign men began to go in safety along the roads of Portugal, hitherto infested by brigands, and he divided grants of land among the poor of the towns. He planted near Leiria the pines which still form so delightful a feature of the country between that town and Alcobaça.
Some have called King Dinis a miser, others declare that in his reign there was a saying "liberal as King Dinis.” It is certain that he expended his money wisely, and, while no early king ever accomplished more for the land over which he ruled, he left a full treasury at his death. The charge of avarice perhaps arose from the charming legend which so well exemplifies the simplicity of those times.
The Queen was in the habit of distributing bread daily to a large number of poor, and Dinis, who perhaps would rather have seen them digging the soil, forbade the charity. Queen Isabel continued as before, and one morning the King met her as she went out with her apron full of bread.
"What have you there?” said King Dinis.
"Roses” said the Queen.
"Let me see them,” said King Dinis.
And behold the Queen's apron was filled with roses.
In the matter of buildings King Dinis not only fortified many towns with castles and walls, but founded numerous churches and convents. The traveller in Portugal even now can scarcely pass a day without coming upon something to remind him of the sixth King of Portugal. The convent of Odivellas, the cloisters of Alcobaça, the beautiful ruins of the castle above Leiria are but three of many instances which show how King Dinis' work survives even in the twentieth century.
It was said of him that
Whatever he willed
Dinis fulfilled.
But he nearly always wrought even better than he knew. He realised no doubt that Portugal was an all-but-island, especially when the relations with Castille were unfriendly; but he could scarcely foresee that of his pinewoods would be built the "ships that went to the discovery of new worlds and seas"; that a future Master of his new Order of Christ would devote its vast revenues to the great work of exploring the West Coast of Africa, the work which bore so important a share in transforming Europe from all that we connect with medievalism to all that is modern; that his embryo fleet would grow and prosper till Portugal became the foremost sea-power; or that the treaty with England would still be bearing fruit six centuries after his death.
The University, too, lasted and became one of the glories of Portugal, and a source of many of her greatest men in the sixteenth century. Since the sixteenth century, after being several times moved from Coimbra to Lisbon and from Lisbon to Coimbra, it has been fixed in the little town on the right bank of the Mondego and remains one of the most treasured possessions of modern Portugal.
The quality that explains how so many of King Dinis' institutions endured and prospered marvellously in succeeding centuries was thoroughness, the conviction that any work, however humble, if thoroughly done must bear excellent fruit, and a certain solidity which finds little satisfaction in feeding beggars precariously, but great satisfaction in setting them to work on the land.
Perhaps, then, it may come as a surprise that King Dinis was also a poet, one of the greatest of Portugal's early poets. We have nearly one hundred and fifty poems under his name. He may not have written them all, some may have been composed by the palace jograes, but he showed his good taste and inclination for the national and popular elements in writing or collecting not only poems in the Provencal manner, then on the wane in Portugal, but that older, indigenous poetry which is the most charming feature of early Portuguese literature.
And King Dinis' poems are among the most charming of all. Here is one of his quaint popular songs, the fascination of which is only faintly discernible in translation:
Friend and lover mine
Be God our shield!
See the flower o' the pine
And fare afield.
Friend and lover, ah me!
Be God our shield!
See the flower on the tree
And fare afield.
See the flower o' the pine
Be God our shield!
Saddle the colt so fine
And fare afield.
See the flower on the tree
Be God our shield!
The bay horse fair to see
And fare afield.
Saddle the little bay
Be God our shield
Hasten, my love, away,
And fare afield.
The horse so fair to see
Be God our shield!
My friend, come speedily
To fare afield.
It was King Dinis' affection for his illegitimate son, Dom Affonso Sanchez, also a poet, that brought trouble on the latter years of his reign. His eldest son and the heir to the throne, Alfonso, jealous of the regard, the lands, and privileges bestowed upon Dom Affonso Sanchez, afraid perhaps that the King might devise a way of leaving him the throne, rose in rebellion in 1320 and advanced through Minho to Leiria and Coimbra, ravaging the country as he came. The King, now nearly sixty years old, set out against him and several engagements were fought: it was not till 1322 that Queen Isabel succeeded after strenuous exertions in bringing about peace.
The reconciliation was but temporary. Dom Alfonso Sanchez retired to Spain, but returned, and the Prince Affonso rose in arms again in 1323. Again Queen Isabel, going from one to the other, exerted herself to make peace. King Dinis, his anger now thoroughly roused, was not easily appeased. Finally he agreed to increase the Prince's income, and, much against his will, to part once more from Dom Alfonso Sanchez.
Not many months after this settlement King Dinis fell ill at Lisbon, where he had been born, and which he made the real centre of his kingdom (his instinct unfailing in this as in other matters concerning the future greatness of his country). Prince Affonso was summoned from Leiria, and a sincere reconciliation followed. The Queen watched day and night by her husband's bedside, and to her his last words were spoken when on January 7, 1325, one of the greatest of Portugal's kings died. He was buried according to his wish in the Convent of Sao Dinis de Odivellas, which he had founded near Lisbon.
Three hundred years after his death it was still the custom in Portuguese law-courts for a prayer to be said for his soul; and if we consider how far-reaching, how immense were the results of the measures taken by this strong-willed, wise, and energetic ruler, we may conclude that the custom might well be continued in the twentieth century. Humane and affable (conversavel, the quality of so many great men), he won the personal love of his people and gave them immediate prosperity, but he also, apparently, saw deep into the future.
Bell, Aubrey Fitz Gerald. Portuguese Portraits. B.H. Blackwell, 1917.
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