Читать книгу The Story of the Nations: Portugal - H. Morse Stephens - Страница 13

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NO better ruler than Diniz, or Denis, could be found for a country which, after centuries of war, needed to have a period of peace and quiet. He was a poet, and loved literature; he was a great administrator, and loved justice; he was a statesman, and avoided foreign wars; he was a far-seeing man, and prepared for the extension of Portuguese energies beyond the sea by encouraging commerce; and, above all, he saw the need of agriculture and of the arts of peace to take the place of incessant wars, and in every respect he nobly earned the sobriquet of the “Ré Lavrador,” or “Denis the Labourer.” From all these points of view his reign is of vast importance in the history of Portugal, for it marks the development of the people into an independent nation, but, like all peaceful reigns of quiet progress, it is not signalized by many striking events.

The civil war, which Diniz had waged with his father, was followed on his accession to the throne by a fierce struggle between Diniz and his brother Affonso, who disputed his legitimacy, which ended in a compromise. He then married, in 1281, Donna Isabel, daughter of Pedro III. of Aragon, who was canonized in later years for her pure and unselfish life. His reign is only marked by one war with Sancho IV. and Ferdinand IV. of Castile and Leon, which was terminated in 1297 by a treaty of alliance, according to the terms of which Ferdinand IV. married Constance, daughter of Diniz, while Affonso, the heir to the throne of Portugal, married Beatrice of Castile, the sister of Ferdinand, but his reputation none the less stood very high in the peninsula, as is shown by his being chosen in 1304 to act as joint arbitrator with the King of Aragon between Ferdinand of Castile and his cousin, Ferdinand of Lacerda. Still more interesting are the king’s relations with Edward I. of England, with whom he exchanged many letters, chiefly on commercial subjects, and with whom he made a treaty of commerce in 1294. He had much correspondence also with Edward II., and in particular he agreed with the English king in 1311 that the Knights Templars had been greatly maligned. When that famous order was suppressed by Pope Clement V. in compliance with the wishes of Philip le Bel of France, Dom Diniz took a course which demonstrated his political wisdom. He recollected the great services which the military orders had formerly rendered to Portugal, and bore in mind their influence and power, and he therefore founded the Order of Christ in conjunction with Pope John XXII. in 1319, and invested it with all the property of the Templars, thus at once obeying the Pope and avoiding a serious disturbance at home. He showed the same wisdom with regard to the knights of Santiago in Portugal, whom he persuaded Pope Nicholas IV. to release from the control of the Grand Master of the Order in Castile, and to establish on an independent footing.

These few lines touch on every important event, in regard to foreign affairs, which occurred during the long reign of Dom Diniz, but they give no idea of the progress of Portugal during this period of nearly fifty years. Agriculture was greatly encouraged by the monarch, who founded agricultural schools and homes for farmers’ orphans, and established model farms. He did much by showing honour to agricultural pursuits to raise them in the consideration of his nobility, and he attempted to wean his people in general from the notion that war was the only occupation fit for a free man. He undertook several important agricultural experiments himself, established farmers in the still barren province of the Alemtejo, paid special attention to the cultivation of vines in the north, and planted the great pine forest of Leiria by which he hoped to reclaim the sandy regions in that neighbourhood. He was also a great builder, and did much to improve the three royal cities of Lisbon, Coimbra, and Santarem, in which the Court used to reside, and he built the towns of Salvaterra and Villa Real. In administrative matters, the feudal system, under which the country districts were ruled was left almost untouched, as were the charters and franchises of the greater cities and towns, and the only important measures passed by the Cortes in 1286 and 1291 were still more stringent laws of mortmain directed against the Church than that passed in 1250. It was in the administration of justice that the greatest reforms were introduced. The period of great chancellors, who were statesmen rather than lawyers, which commenced with Julião, and included Gonçalo Mendes, Vicente, and Estevão Annes, was over, and a new class of chancellors was appointed. These men were invariably ecclesiastics, and looked forward to a bishopric, as the reward of their services. They were essentially lawyers, learned in the Roman law, which they had studied at Padua and Bologna; and applying the maxims of their studies to the common law of Portugal, which was largely founded on Visigothic ideas, they began to build up a system of Portuguese law, of which the importance became visible later. Diniz did not venture to abolish the feudal courts, though he checked their abuses, and among other reforms, he appointed royal “corregidors” in every city and town belonging to the Crown in lordship, who were to act as judges of appeal from the feudal and city courts, as well as to take charge of the police. His wise encouragement of commerce appears in his commercial treaty with England, and by his establishment of a royal navy, commanded by a new official, entitled the “Almirante Mor,” or Lord High Admiral, which office was first granted to a distinguished Genoese sailor, Emmanuel Pessanha.

But the greatest qualification of Dom Diniz for the sovereignty of a country, which had at last got time to learn the arts of peace and to become civilized, was his affection for literature and his encouragement of education. It was Diniz, who, in 1300, founded the first Portuguese university at Lisbon, which after many changes between that city and Coimbra, found its permanent home in the latter city, and became the centre of literary influence in Portugal. The king was also a poet of exquisite taste, and in the number, beauty, and variety of his songs he proved himself the greatest poet of his Court. Educated by Aymeric d’Ebrard of Cahors, whom he made Bishop of Coimbra, he shows in his poems the influence of the troubadours, and not of the trouvères who had thronged his father’s Court. He had inherited poetic feeling and power of expression from his father, Affonso III., who was no mean poet, and who is said to have written a powerful “sirvente” against Alfonso X., but his father had during his long residence at Paris been impressed with the poetry of northern France, and had invited trouvères only to his Court. Dom Diniz, both by education and feeling, belonged to a different school, and preferred the softer themes and methods of the troubadours. With the Courts of Love which he introduced into Portugal came the substitution of the Limousin decasyllabic for the national octosyllabic metre, and the ancient forms were lost in the intricacies of the “ritournelle.” But the best service done by Diniz and his poetic courtiers was in developing the Portuguese dialect into a beautiful and flexible literary language. The king went further; as he grew older, he threw off the trammels of Provençal forms, and perceiving the beauty of his people’s lyrics, he wrote some quaint and graceful “pastorellas” inspired by their influence, which are full of poetic life and truth. The effects of the influence of Dom Diniz, in the words of a recent writer on Portuguese literature, “pervade the whole of Portuguese poetry; for not only was he in his ‘pastorellas’ the forerunner of the great pastoral school, but by sanctifying to literary use the national storehouse of song, he perpetuated among his people, even to the present day, lyric forms of great beauty.”[5] Literary excellence and the growth of a national poetry form the natural sequel of the attainment of national independence; and it is interesting to observe that the king, who peacefully consolidated the Portuguese kingdom, was the founder of Portuguese literature. Camoens happily hits off in a couple of stanzas the characteristics of his reign.