PORTUGAL
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PORTUGAL
exercised authority and levied taxes. They corre-
sponded to such generosity by reducing that great
territory to cultivation, and Alcobaga became the
mother of numerous daughter monasteries, while
its chart ulary served in early times as that of the
kingdom. The Abbot of Alcobaga had the post of
chief almoner and sat in the Royal Council and the
Cortes with the honours of a bishop. Fiu-thermore,
Alfonso Henriques, in 1132, established for the Augus-
tinian Canons the monastery of Santa Cruz at
Coimbra, which rivalled Alcobaga in its wealth and
social mission, and for the same order he built S.
Vicente in Lisbon, which is now the residence of the
Patriarch.
Sancho I (1185-1211) continued the work of recon- quest, and a large part of the Algarve fell into his hands, but a fresh invading wave of Moors from Africa ultimately pushed the Christian frontier back to the Tagus. In the intervals of peace allowed him, the king was active in building towns and settling his territory, thus deserving his name of "The Peo- pler", and, being a thrifty man, he amassed a large treasure. On his accession, he asked and obtained the papal confirmation of his title, which protected him against his Christian neighbours, and after some delay paid the tribute to the Holy See. This was continued bj' his immediate successors, but after- wards fell into abeyance. Sancho imitated his father's liberality to the Church and gave further endowments to bishoprics and abbeys; he likewise favoured the military Orders of the Temple of Hos- pitallers of Aviz, and of S. Thiagc, which, besides their pious works, supplied the best disciplined soldiers for the war against the Moors and garrisoned the frontier towns and castles. But he was a man of irascible temperament, and his superstition led him to keep a "wise woman" in his company whom he used to consult on his enterprises. His disputes with the clerg}' and the violent measures he dealt out to them are explained partly by his character and partly by the influence of his chancellor Julian, who had studied Roman Law at Bologna and aimed at increasing the royal authority. Sancho intervened in a question between the Bishop of Oporto and the citizens and ignored the interdict with which Innocent III punished his high-handed proceedings. He also came in conflict with the Bishop of Coim- bra, whom he imprisoned and treated with great cruelty.
Sancho persisted in invading the rights of the Church and in particular refused to recognize the ecclesiastical forum and clerical immunity from military service. Though he made some concessions before his death, the conflict he had opened lasted through the next two reigns, and for nearly a century the clergj^ and the Crown were involved in a struggle over the limits of their respective powers. All the early kings were wont to reward services b5' extensive grants of lands, and in these lands they gave up the royal jurisdiction. In time, so large a part of the country was held in mortmain, or had passed into the hands of the nobles, that the rest did not produce enough revenue to meet the increasing expenses of government. The mon- archs then tried to overcome the diflSculty by a revocation of grants, which naturally met with re- sistance from the nobility and clergy. Denis, though so generally favourable to the Church, employed a more equitable remedj' by prohibiting, in 1286, the purchase of real estate by clerics, but this and a stricter law of 1291 were found too severe and had to be modified. The evil was a great and growing one and, had there been no other cause of discord, would have sufficed to set the Crown and landowning cla.sses at i.ssue. .Alfonso II (1211-23) took care to obtain the confirmation of his title from the Holy See, and at the Cortes of Coimbra he sanctioned the concessions made by his father to the Church, whose
help he hoped to have when he came to annul the
large bequests of land which Sancho had made to his
children. In this he was disappointed, for the pope
intervened as arbiter, and Alfonso's sisters got their
legacies, but they all took the veil, and his brothers
never obtained the estates which had been left to
them.
This was a victory for the king, who now, on the advice of his chancellor, sent a commission of enquiry through the kingdom to ascertain the titles to land and either confirm or revoke them, as seemed to him just. So far he had kept on good terms with the clergy, but Alfonso's determination to increase the power of the Crown and fill his treasury aff'ected their immunities, and his action in a dispute between the Bishop of Lisbon and his dean showed that the king's attitude towards the Church had changed. By 1221 the old differences had appeared again, and in an acute form: Alfonso had seized church property, compelled ecclesiastics to plead before secular jus- tices and to serve in the wars. The learned and holy Archbishop of Braga convoked an assembly of prel- ates in which he accused the king of his breaches of faith and scandalous life. The latter met this by confiscating the goods of the prelate, who fled to Rome. Ilonorius dispatched three Spanish bishops to remonstrate with Alfonso, and, as this had no effect, they excommunicated him a year later. The pope then threatened to absolve the king's subjects from their allegiance and hand over the realm to any prince who eared to take it. A further papal Brief, in 1222, insisting on reparation, together with an at- tack of leprosy induced Alfonso to enter into negotia- tions for peace, and these were in progress when he died.
The reign of this excommunicated king witnessed a religious re\'ival which was rendered necessary by the general laxity of both clergy and laity. The Franciscans were introduced by the king's sister and, although they soon won the affection of the people, they were received with little cordiality on the part of the secular clergy and the other orders, who saw their pecuniary interests damaged. In a Bull of Gregory IX (1233) the pope complains of the hos- tility sho^Ti to the friars by bishops and clergy. At Oporto the bishop ordered them out of the city, sacked their convent, and burned it, but the citizens sided with them, and in the end they were able to return. The order soon spread over the country, convents were built for them, members of the royal family chose their churches as burial places, and the popes besto%ved bishoprics on friars and charged them with delicate missions. It was the custom for testators to leave a part of their property to the Church, and Bishop Sueiro of Lisbon promulgated a statute that one-third should be so bequeathed under pain of refusal of the sacraments and canonical burial. The citizens appealed to the pope against this vio- lence, and Honorius condemned it, and charged the superiors of the Dominicans and Franciscans to see that the practice was discontinued. The Dominicans had entered Portugal between 1217 and 1222, and, by virtue of their austere morals, poverty, and humility, they obtained a welcome second only to that given the Franciscans. Sancho II (1223-48) was still only a boy when he succeeded his father. His ministers bound him to make satisfaction for the material losses inflicted on the Church by Alfonso II, and to punish the guilty parties. They also promised that ecclesiastical privileges should be respected, but those responsible for the outrages of the last reign remained in power, and the king had small control over them.
The bishops showed as little desire for peace as the nobles, and vied with them in vexing the monasteries by their monetary exactions. With each succeeding year a state of anarchy increased over the kingdom.
