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chiefly by the Arabs. They began where the Arabs left off, | by penetrating far into the Atlantic. The long littoral of their country, with its fine harbours and rivers flowing westward to the ocean, had been the training-ground of a race of adventurous seamen. It was impossible, moreover, to expand or reach new markets except by sea: the interposition of Castile and Aragon, so often hostile, completely prevented any intercourse by land between Portugal and other European countries. Consequently the Portuguese merchants sent their goods by sea to England, Flanders, or the Hanse towns. The whole history of the nation had also inspired a desire for fresh conquests among its leaders. Portugal had won and now held its independence by the sword. The long struggle to expel the Moors, with the influence of foreign Crusaders and the military orders, had given a religious sanction to the desire for martial fame. Nowhere was the ancient crusading spirit so active a political force. To make war upon Islam seemed to the Portuguese their natural destiny and their duty as Christians.

It was the genius of Prince Henry the Navigator (q.v.) that co-ordinated and utilized all these tendencies towards exPrince pansion. Prince Henry placed at the disposal of Henry the his captains the vast resources of the Order of Navigator. Christ, the best information and the most accurate instruments and maps which could be obtained. He sought to effect a junction with the half-fabulous Christian Empire of "Prester John by way of the "Western Nile," i.e. the Senegal, and, in alliance with that potentate, to crush the Turks and liberate Palestine. The conception of an ocean route to India appears to have originated after his death. On land he again defeated the Moors, who attempted to re-take Ceuta in 1418; but in an expedition to Tangier, undertaken in 1436 by King Edward (1433-1438), the Portuguese army was defeated, and could only escape destruction by surrendering as a hostage Prince Ferdinand, the king's youngest brother. Ferdinand, known as "the Constant," from the fortitude with which he endured captivity, died unransomed in 1443. By sea Prince Henry's captains continued their exploration of Africa and the Atlantic. In 1433 Cape Bojador was doubled; in 1434 the first consignment of slaves was brought to Lisbon; and slave trading soon became one of the most profitable branches of Portuguese commerce. The Senegal was reached in 1445, Cape Verde was passed in the same year, and in 1446 Alvaro Fernandes pushed on almost as far as Sierra Leone. This was probably the farthest point reached before the Navigator died (1460). Meanwhile colonization progressed in the Azores and Madeira, where sugar and wine were produced; above all, the gold brought home from Guinea stimulated the commercial energy of the Portuguese. It had become clear that, apart from their religious and scientific aspects, these voyages of discovery were highly profitable. Under Alphonso V., surnamed the African (1443-1481), the Gulf of Guinea was explored as far as Cape St Catherine, and three expeditions (1458, 1461, 1471) | were sent to Morocco; in 1471 Arzila (Asīla) and Tangier were captured from the Moors. Under John II. (1481–1495) the fortress of São Jorge da Mina, the modern Elmina (q.v.), was founded for the protection of the Guinea trade in 1481-1482; Exploration under Diogo Cam (q.v.), or Cão, discovered the Congo in Alphonso V. 1482 and reached Cape Cross in 1486; Bartholomeu and John II. Diaz (q.v.) doubled the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, thus proving that the Indian Ocean was accessible by sea. After 1492 the discovery of the West Indies by Columbus rendered desirable a delimitation of the Spanish and Portuguese spheres of exploration. This was accomplished by the treaty of Tordesillas (June 7, 1494) which modified the delimitation authorized by Pope Alexander VI. in two bulls issued on the 4th of May, 1493. The treaty gave to Portugal all lands which might be discovered east of a straight line drawn from the Arctic Pole to the Antarctic, at a distance of 370 leagues west of Cape Verde. Spain received the lands discovered west of this line. As, however, the known means of measuring longitude were so inexact that the line of demarcation could not in practice be determined (see J. de Andrade Corvo in Journal

das Sciencias Mathematicas, xxxi. 147-176, Lisbon, 1881), the treaty was subject to very diverse interpretations. On its provisions were based both the Portuguese claim to Brazil and the Spanish claim to the Moluccas (see MALAY ARCHIPELAGO: History). The treaty was chiefly valuable to the Portuguese as a recognition of the prestige they had acquired. That prestige was enormously enhanced when, in 1497-1499, Vasco da Gama (q.v.) completed the voyage to India.

The

While the Crown was thus acquiring new possessions, its authority in Portugal was temporarily overshadowed by the growth of aristocratic privilege. At the cortes of Evora (1433) King Edward had obtained the Monarchy enactment of a law declaring that the estates and the granted by John I. to his adherents could only be Nobles. inherited by the direct male descendants of the grantees, and failing such descendants, should revert to the Crown. After the death of Edward further attempts to curb the power of the nobles were made by his brother, D. Pedro, duke of Coimbra, who acted as regent during the minority of Alphonso V. (14381447). The head of the aristocratic opposition was the duke of Braganza, who contrived to secure the sympathy of the king and the dismissal of the regent. The quarrel led to civil war, and in May 1449 D. Pedro was defeated and killed. Thenceforward the grants made by John I. were renewed, and extended on so lavish a scale that the Braganza estates alone comprised about a third of the whole kingdom. An unwise foreign policy simultaneously injured the royal prestige, for Alphonso married his own niece, Joanna, daughter of Henry IV. of Castile, and claimed that kingdom in her name. At the battle of Toro, in 1476, he was defeated by Ferdinand and Isabella, and in 1478 he was compelled to sign the treaty of Alcantara, by which Joanna was relegated to a convent. His successor, John II. (1481-1495) reverted to the policy of matrimonial alliances with Castile and friendship with England. Finding, as he said, that the liberality of former kings had left the Crown " no estates except the high roads of Portugal," he determined to crush the feudal nobility and seize its territories. A cortes held at held at Evora (1481) empowered judges nominated by the Crown to administer justice in all feudal domains. The nobles resisted this infringement of their rights; but their leader, Ferdinand, duke of Braganza, was beheaded for high treason in 1483; in 1484 the king stabbed to death his own brother-in-law, Ferdinand, duke of Vizeu; and 80 other members of the aristocracy were afterwards executed. Thus John " the Perfect," as he was called, assured the supremacy of the Crown. He was succeeded in 1495 by Emanuel (Manoel) I., who was named "the Great" or "the Fortunate," because in his reign the sea route to India was discovered and a Portuguese Empire founded.

4. The Portuguese Empire: 1499-1580.-In 1500 King Emanuel assumed the title "Lord of the conquest, navigation and commerce of India, Ethiopia, Arabia and Persia," which was confirmed by Pope Alexander VI. in 1502. It was now upon schemes of conquest that the energy of the nation was to be concentrated, although the motives which called forth that energy were unchanged. "We come to seek Christians and spices," said the first of Vasco da Gama's sailors who landed in India: and the combination of missionary ardour with commercial enterprise which had led to the exploration of the Atlantic led also to the establishment of a Portuguese Empire. This expansion of national interests proceeded rapidly in almost every quarter of the known world. In the North Atlantic Gaspar and Miguel Corte-Real penetrated as far as Greenland (their "Labrador ") in 1500-1501; but these voyages were politically and commercially unimportant. Equally barren was the intermittent fighting in Morocco, which was regarded as a crusade against the Moors. In the South Atlantic, however, the African coast was further explored, new settlements were founded, and a remarkable development of Portuguese-African civilization took place in the kingdom of Kongo (see Angola).

1 Known as the lei mental, because it was supposed to fulfil the intention which John I. had in mind when the grants were made.

his predecessor. Command of the sea could not be maintained -least of all in the monsoon months-while the Portuguese fleets were based on Lisbon, which could only be reached after a six months' voyage; and experience had proved that almost every Portuguese factory required a fortress for its defence when the fleets were absent. Portugal, like every great maritime trading community from Carthage to Venice, discovered that the ideal of "sea power and commerce " led directly to empire. In 1510 Albuquerque seized Goa, primarily as a naval base, and in so doing recognized the fact that his country was committed to a policy of territorial aggrandisement. Other seaports and islands were conquered or colonized in rapid succession, and by 1540 Portugal had acquired a line of scattered maritime possessions extending along the coasts of Brazil, East and West Africa, Malabar, Ceylon, Persia, Indo-China and the Malay Archipelago. The most important settlements in the East were Goa, Malacca and Hormuz.

Pedro Alvares Cabral, sailing to India, but steering far westward | 1509, found it necessary to modify the policy formulated by to avoid the winds and currents of the Guinea coast, reached Brazil (1500) and claimed it for his sovereign. João da Nova discovered Ascension (1501) and St Helena (1502); Tristão da Cunha was the first to sight the archipelago still known by his name (1506). In East Africa the small Mahommedan states along the coast-Sofala, Mozambique, Kilwa, Brava, Mombasa, Malindi-either were destroyed or became subjects or allies of Portugal. Pedro de Covilham had reached Abyssinia (q.v.) as early as 1490; in 1520 a Portuguese embassy arrived at the court of "Prester John," and in 1541 a military force was sent to aid him in repelling a Mahommedan invasion. In the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea, one of Cabral's ships discovered Madagascar (1501), which was partly explored by Tristão da Cunha (1507); Mauritius was discovered in 1507, Socotra occupied in 1506, and in the same year D. Lourenço d'Almeida visited Ceylon. In the Red Sea Massawa was the most northerly point frequented by the Portuguese until 1541, when a fleet under Estevão da Gama penetrated as far as Suez. Hormuz, in the Persian Gulf, was seized by Alphonso d'Albuquerque (1515), who also entered into diplomatic relations with Persia. On the Asiatic mainland the first trading-stations were established by Cabral at Cochin and Calicut (1501); more important, however, were the conquest of Goa (1510) and Ma-economic basis for a sudden development of literary and artistic lacca (1511) by Albuquerque, and the acquisition of Diu (1535) by Martim Affonso de Sousa. East of Malacca, Albuquerque sent Duarte Fernandes as envoy to Siam (1511), and despatched to the Moluccas two expeditions (1512, 1514), which founded the Portuguese dominion in the Malay Archipelago (q.v.). Fernão Pires de Andrade visited Canton in 1517 and opened up trade with China, where in 1557 the Portuguese were permitted to occupy Macao. Japan, accidentally discovered by three Portuguese traders in 1542, soon attracted large numbers of merchants and missionaries (sce JAPAN, § viii.). In 1522 one of the ships of Ferdinand Magellan (q.v.)-a Portuguese sailor, though in the Spanish service completed the first voyage round the world.

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To a superficial observer the prosperity of Portugal might well seem to have culminated during this period of expansion. Vast profits were derived from the import trade in the innumerable products of the tropics, of which Portugal was the sole purveyor in Europe. This influx of wealth furnished the

activity, inspired by contrast with the new world of the tropics. The 16th century was the golden age of Portuguese literature; humanists, such as Damião de Goes (q.v.), and scientists, such as the astronomer Pedro Nunes (Nonius), played conspicuous parts in the great intellectual movements of the time; a distinctive school of painters arose, chief among them being the so-called "Grão Vasco" (Vasco Fernandes of Vizeu); in architecture the name of King Emanuel was given to a new and composite style (the Manoeline or Manoellian), in which decorative forms from India and Africa were harmonized with Gothic and Renaissance designs; palaces, fortresses, cathedrals, monasteries, were built on a scale never before attempted in Portugal; and even in the minor arts and handicrafts-in goldsmith's work, for example, or in pottery-the influence of the East made itself felt. Oriental splendour and Renaissance culture combined to render social life in Lisbon hardly less brilliant than in Rome or Venice.

In order to understand the apparently sudden collapse of Portuguese power in 1578-1580 it is necessary to examine certain facts and tendencies which from the first rendered a catastrophe inevitable. Chief among these were the extent of the empire and its organization, the financial and commercial policy of its rulers, the hostility, often wantonly provoked, of the chief Oriental states, the depopulation of Portugal and the slave trade, the expulsion of the Jews, the growth of ecclesiastical influence in secular affairs, and the decadence of the monarchy.

Up to 1505 the Portuguese voyages to the East were little more than trading ventures or plundering raids, although a Almeida few "factories" for the exchange of goods were and Albu founded in Malabar. In theory, the objects of querque. King Emanuel's policy were the establishment of friendly commercial relations with the Hindus (who were at first mistaken for Christians "not yet confirmed in the faith," as the king wrote to Alexander VI.) and the prosecution of a crusade against Islam. But Hindu and Mahommedan interests were found to be so closely interwoven that this policy became impracticable, and it was superseded when D. Francisco d'Almeida (g.v.) went to India as first Portuguese viceroy in 1505. Almeida sought to subordinate all else to sea power and commerce, to concentrate the whole naval and military force of the kingdom on the maintenance of maritime ascendancy; to annex It is necessary to exclude Brazil from any survey of the Portuno territory, to avoid risking troops ashore, and to leave the guese imperial system, because the colonization of Brazil (q.v.) defence of such factories as might be necessary to friendly native was effected on distinctive lines. Otherwise the Imperial powers, which would receive in return the support of the Portu- whole empire was governed on a more or less uniform Organizaguese fleet. Almeida's statesmanship was to a great extent system, although it included communities of the most tion. sound. The Portuguese could never penetrate far inland; diverse nature-protectorates such as Hormuz and Ternate in the throughout the 16th century their settlements were confined Moluccas, colonies such as Goa and Madeira, captaincies under to the coasts of Asia, Africa or America, and the area they were military rule such as Malacca, tributary states such as Kilwa, able effectively to occupy was far less than the area of their fortified factories as at Colombo and Cochin. West of the Cape empire in the 20th century. A Chinese critic, quoted by Faria the settlements in Africa and the Atlantic were governed, as a y Sousa, said of them that they were like fishes, remove them rule, by officials directly nominated by the king. East of the from the water and they straightway die." It is thus absurd Cape the royal power was delegated to a viceroy or governor— to speak of a "Portuguese conquest of India "; in a land the distinction was purely titular-whose legislative and execucampaign they would have been outnumbered and destroyed tive authority was almost unlimited during his term of office. by the armies of any one of the greater Indian states. But The viceroyalty was created in 1505, and from 1511 the Indian their artillery and superior maritime science made them almost capital was Goa. Between 1505 and 1580 only four holders invulnerable at sea, and their principal military achievements of the office-Almeida (1505-1509), Albuquerque (1509-1515), consisted in the capture or defence of positions accessible from D. Vasco da Gama (1524) and D. João de Castro (1545-1548)— the sea, e.g. the defence of Cochin by Duarte Pacheco Pereira were men of marked ability and high character. All officials, in 1504, the defence of Diu (q v.) in 1538 and 1546. including the viceroy and naval and military officers, were usually Alphonso d'Albuquerque (qv.), who succeeded Almeida in appointed for no more than three years. Although few large

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up the Persian Gulf to Basra, and thence overland to Tripoli, for Mediterranean ports, and to Trebizond, for Constantinople. The other passed up the Red Sea to Suez, and thence to Alexandria, for Venice, Genoa and Ragusa. But by occupying Hormuz the Portuguese gained command of the Gulf route; and though they thrice failed to capture Aden (1513, 1517, 1547), and so entirely to close the Red Sea, they almost destroyed the traffic between India and Suez by occupying Socotra and sending fleets to cruise in the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb. In Malacca they possessed the connecting link between the traderoutes of the Far and Middle East, and thus they controlled the three sea-gates of the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea-the Straits of Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb and Malacca-and diverted the maritime trade with Europe to the Cape route.

salaries were paid, the perquisites attached to official positions | between India and Europe. One of these trade routes passed were enormous; at the beginning of the 17th century, for example, the captain of Malacca received not quite £300 yearly as his pay, but his annual profits from other sources were estimated at £20,000. Even judges were expected to live on their perquisites, in the shape of bribes. The competition for appointments was naturally very keen; Couto mentions the case of one grantee who received the reversion of a post to which 30 applicants had a prior claim.1 Such reversions could be sold, bequeathed, or included in the dowries of married women; the right of trading with China might be part of the endowment of a school; a monastery or a hospital might purchase the command of a fortress. In 1538 the viceroy, D. Garcia de Noronha, publicly sold by auction every vacant appointment in Portuguese Indiaan example followed in 1614 by the king. Hardly less disastrous than the system by which officials were chosen and paid was the influence exercised by the Church. Simão Botelho, an able revenue officer, was denied absolution in 1543 because he had reorganized the Malacca customs-house without previously consulting the Dominicans in that city. In 1560 a supposed tooth of Buddha was brought to Goa; the raja of Pegu offered £100,000 for the relic, and as Portuguese India was virtually bankrupt the government wished to accept the offer; but the archbishop intervened and the relic was destroyed.

Finance.

The empire in the East was rarely solvent. Almeida and Albuquerque had hoped to meet the expense of administration mainly out of the fees extorted for safe-conducts at sea and trading-licences, with the tribute wrung from native states and the revenue from Crown lands in India. But the growth of expenditure-chiefly of an unremunerative kind, such as the cost of war and missions-soon rendered these resources inadequate; and after 1515 the empire became ever more dependent on the spoils of hostile states and on subsidies from the royal treasury in Lisbon. Systematic debasement of the coinage was practised both in India, where the monetary system was extremely complex,2 and in Portugal; and owing to the bullionist policy adopted by Portuguese financiers little permanent benefit accrued to the mother country from its immense trade. Seeking for commercial profit, not in the exchange of commodities, but solely in the acquisition of actual gold and silver, and realizing that the home market could not absorb a tithe of the merchandise imported, the Lisbon capitalists sent their ships to discharge in Antwerp (where a Portuguese staple was established in 1503), or in some other port near the central markets of Europe. The raw materials purchased by Flemish, German or English traders were used in the establishment of productive industries, while Portugal received a vast influx of bullion, most of which was squandered on war, luxuries or the Church.

In theory the most lucrative branches of commerce, such as the pepper trade, were monopolies vested in the Crown; Commercial the chartered companies and associations of merchant Policy. adventurers, which afterwards became the pioneers of British and Dutch colonial development, had no counterpart in Portuguese history, except in the few cases in which trading concessions were granted to military or monastic orders. But the Crown frequently farmed out its monopolies to individual merchants, or granted trading-licences by way of pension or reward. These were often of great value; e.g. in 1612 the right of sending a merchant ship to China was valued at £25,000. Great loss was necessarily inflicted on native traders by the monopolist system, which pressed most hardly on the Mahommedans, who had been the chief carriers in Indian waters. Two great powers, Egypt and Turkey, challenged the naval and commercial supremacy of the Portuguese, but an Egyptian armada was destroyed by Almeida in 1509, and though Ottoman fleets were on several occasions (as in 1517 and 1521) despatched from Suez or Basra, they failed to achieve any success, and the Portuguese were able to close the two principal trade routes 1 Decadas, XII. i. 10.

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States.

During the critical period in which their empire was being established (c. 1505-1550) the Portuguese were fortunate in escaping conflict with any Oriental power of the first Relations rank except Egypt and Turkey; for the Bahmani with sultanate of the Deccan had been already disinte- Oriental grated before 1498, and the Mughals and Mahrattas were still far off. A coalition of the minor Mahommedan states was prevented by the great Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar, which comprised the southern half of the Indian Peninsula. Vijayanagar gave the militant Mahommedanism of Northern India no opportunity for a combined attack on the Portuguese settlements. After 1565, when the power of Vijayanagar was broken at the battle of Talikot, a Mussulman coalition was at last formed, and the Portuguese were confronted by a line of hostile states stretching from Gujarat to Achin; but by this time they were strong enough to hold their own. It is characteristic of their native policy that they had not only refrained from aiding Vijayanagar in 1565, but had even been willing to despoil their Hindu allies. In 1543 Martim Affonso de Sousa, governor of India, organized an expedition to sack the Hindu temples at Conjeveram in Vijayanagar itself, and similar incidents are common in Indo-Portuguese history. Albuquerque was almost the only Portuguese statesman who strove to deal justly with both Hindus and Mahommedans, to respect native customs, and to establish friendly relations with the great powers of the East. Apart from the rigorous restrictions imposed by his successors upon trade, the sympathies of the natives were estranged by the harshness and venality of Portuguese administration, by such barbarities as the wholesale mutilation of non-combatants in war-time, and by religious persecution. After the arrival of the Franciscan missionaries, in 1517, Goa gradually became the headquarters of an immense proselytizing organization, which by 1561 had extended to East Africa, China, Japan and the Malay Archipelago (see GOA: Ecclesiastical History). Wherever the Portuguese were supreme they endeavoured to obtain converts by force. The widespread resentment thus aroused was a frequent cause of insurrection, and between 1515 and 1580 not a single year passed without war between the Portuguese and at least one African or Asiatic people.

Depopu

Centuries of fighting against the Moors and Castilians had already left Portugal thinly populated; large tracts of land were uncultivated, especially in Alemtejo, and wolves. were still common throughout the kingdom. It was lation impossible, from the first, to garrison the empire with trained men. As early as 1505 one of Almeida's ships contained a crew of rustics unable to distinguish between port and starboard; soon afterwards it became necessary to recruit convicts and slaves, and in 1538 a royal pardon was granted to all prisoners who would serve in India, except criminals under sentence for treason and canonical offences. Linschoten estimates that of all those who went to the East not one in ten returned. The heaviest losses were due to war, shipwreck and tropical diseases, but large numbers of the underpaid or unpaid soldiers deserted to the armies of native states. It is impossible to give more than approximately accurate statistics of the resultant depopulation

See R. S. Whiteway, Rise of the Portuguese Power, &c. (London, of Portugal; but it seems probable that the inhabitants of the 1898), pp. 67-72.

kingdom decreased from about 1,800,000 or 2,000,000 in 1500 to

about 1,080,000 in 1586. The process of decay was hastened | while their children were deported to the island of St Thomas, by frequent outbreaks of plague, sometimes followed by famine; a contemporary manuscript estimates that no fewer than 500 persons died daily in Lisbon alone during July, August and September 1569, and in some other years the joint effects of plague and famine were little less disastrous.

Trade.

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and there left to survive as best they might. In 1496 Emanuel I. desired to wed Isabella, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, but found that he was first required to purify his kingdom of the Jews, who were accordingly commanded to leave Portugal before the end of October 1497. But in order to avoid the economic While the country was being drained of its best citizens, dangers threatened by such an exodus, every Jew and Jewess hordes of slaves were imported to fill the vacancies, especially between the ages of 4 and 24 was seized and forcibly baptized into the southern provinces.' Manual labour was (19th March): "Christians" were not required to emigrate. The Slave thus discredited; the peasants sold their farms and In October 20,000 adults were treated in the same way. These emigrated or flocked to the towns; and small hold-" New Christians or "Maranos," as they were called, were ings were merged into vast estates, unscientifically cultivated forbidden to leave the country between 1498 and 1507. In by slaves and comparable with the latifundia which caused so April 1506 most of those who resided in Lisbon were massacred many agrarian evils during the last two centuries of the Roman during a riot, but throughout the rest of Emanuel's reign they republic. The decadence of agriculture partly explains the were immune from violence, and were again permitted to prevalence of famine at a time when Portuguese maritime emigrate an opportunity of which the majority took advantage. commerce was most prosperous. The Portuguese intermarried Large numbers settled in Holland, where their commercial talent freely with their slaves, and this infusion of alien blood profoundly afterwards greatly assisted the Dutch in their rivalry with the modified the character and physique of the nation. It may be Portuguese. said without exaggeration that the Portuguese of the "age of discoveries" and the Portuguese of the 17th and later centuries were two different races. Albuquerque, foreseeing the dangers that would arise from a shortage of population in his colonies, had encouraged his soldiers to marry captive Brahman and Mahommedan women, and to settle in India as farmers, shopkeepers or artisans. Under his rule the experiment was fairly successful, but the married colonists afterwards became a privileged caste, subsisting upon the labour of their slaves, and often disloyal to their rulers. Intermarriage led to the adoption, even by the rich, and especially by women (see GOA), of Asiatic dress, manners and modes of thought. Thus in the East, as in Europe, slavery reacted upon every class of the Portuguese.

The banishment, or forcible conversion, of the Jews deprived Portugal of its middle class and of its most scientific traders and The Perse- financiers. Though the Jews had always been cution of compelled to reside in separate quarters called the Jews. Juderías, or Jewries, they had been protected by the earlier Portuguese kings. Before 1223 their courts had received autonomy in civil and criminal jurisdiction; their chief rabbi was appointed by the king and entitled to use the royal arms on his seal. Alphonso V. even permitted his Jewish subjects to live outside the Juderías, relieved them from the obligation to wear a distinctive costume (enforced in 1325), and nominated a Jew, Isaac Abrabanel (q.v.), as his minister of finance. In culture the Portuguese Jews surpassed their rulers. Many of them were well versed in Aristotelian and Arabic philosophy, in astronomy, mathematics, and especially in medicine. Three Hebrew printing-presses were established between 1487 and 1495; both John II. and Emanuel I. employed Jewish physicians; it was a Jew-Abraham Zacuto ben Samuel-who supplied Vasco da Gama with nautical instruments; and Jews were employed in the overland journeys by which the Portuguese court first endeavoured to obtain information on Far Eastern affairs. The Jews paid taxes on practically every business transaction, besides a special poll-tax of 30 dinheiros in memory of the 30 pieces of silver paid to Judas Iscariot; and for this reason they were protected by the Crown. For centuries they were also tolerated by the commons; but the other orders-ecclesiastics and nobles-resented their religious exclusiveness or envied their wealth, and gradually fostered the growth of popular prejudice against them. In 1449 the Lisbon Juderías were stormed and sacked, and between 1450 and 1481 the cortes four times petitioned the Crown to enforce the anti-Jewish provisions of the canon law. John II. gave asylum to 90,000 Jewish refugees from Castile, in return for a heavy poll-tax and on condition that they should leave the country within eight months, in ships furnished by himself. These ships were not provided in time, and the Jews who were thus unable to depart were enslaved, 1 In the north, which had been relatively immune from wars agriculture was more prosperous and the peasants more tenacious of their land; hence the continuance of peasant proprietorship and the rarity of African types between the Douro and the Minho.

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Jesults.

The Reformation never reached Portugal, but even here the critical tendencies which elsewhere preceded Reform, were already at work. Their origin is to be sought not The so much in the Revival of Learning as in the fact that Inquisition the Portuguese had learned, on their voyages of and the discovery, to see and think for themselves. The true scientific spirit may be traced throughout the Roteiros of D. João de Castro (q.v.) and the Colloquios of Garcia de Ortamen who deserted books for experiment and manifested a new interest in the physical world. But orthodox churchmen feared that even in Portugal this appeal from authority to experience would lead to an attack upon religious doctrines previously regarded as beyond criticism. To check this dangerous movement of ideas, they demanded the introduction of the Inquisition into Portugal. The agents of the "New Christians" in Rome long contrived, by lavish bribery and with the support of many enlightened Portuguese, to delay the preliminary negotiations; but in 1536 the Holy Office was established in Lisbon, where the first auto-da-fé was held in 1540, and in 1560 its operations were extended to India. It seems probable that the influence of the tribunal upon Portuguese life and thought has been exaggerated. Autos-da-fé were rare events; their victims were not as a rule serious thinkers, but persons accused of sorcery or Judaizing, nor were they more numerous than the victims of the English laws relating to witchcraft and heresy. But the worst vices of the Inquisition were the widespread system of delation it encouraged by paying informers out of the property of the condemned, and its action as a trading and landholding association. Quite as serious, in their effects upon national life, were the severe censorship to which all printed matter was liable before publication and the control of education by the Jesuits. Poetry and imaginative literature usually escaped censure; but histories were mutilated and all original scientific and philosophical work was banned. Portuguese education centred in the national university of Coimbra, which had long shown itself ready to assimilate new ideas; between 1537 and 1547 John III. persuaded many eminent foreign teachers-among them the Scottish humanist George Buchanan (q.v.) and the French mathematician Elie Vinet-to lecture in its schools. But the discipline of the university needed reform, and the task was entrusted to the Jesuits. By 1555 they had secured control over Coimbra-a control which lasted for two centuries and extended to the whole educational system of the country. The effects of this change upon the national character were serious and permanent. Portugal sank back into the middle ages. The old initiative and self-reliance of the nation, already shaken by years of disaster, were now completely undermined, and the people submitted without show of resistance to a theocracy disguised as absolute monarchy.

Emanuel I. had been a fearless despot, such as Portugal needed if its scattered dependencies were to remain subject to the central government. During his reign (1495-1521) the Church was never permitted to encroach upon the royal

prerogative. He even sent ambassadors to Rome to protest against ecclesiastical corruption, as well as to checkmate the Venetian Decadence diplomatists who threatened Europe with Ottoman of the vengeance if the Portuguese commercial monopoly Monarchy. were not relaxed. The Oriental magnificence of these embassies, notably that of 1514, and the fact that a king of Portugal dared openly to criticize the morals of the Vatican, temporarily enhanced the prestige of the monarchy. But Emanuel I. was the last great king of the Aviz dynasty. He had pursued the traditional policy of intermarriage with the royal families of Castile and Aragon, hoping to weld together the Spanish and Portuguese dominions into a single world-wide

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Sebastianism became a religion; its votaries were numbered by thousands, and four impostors arose in succession, each claiming to be the rei encuberto, or "hidden king," whose advent was so ardently desired (see SEBASTIAN).

There was no surviving prince of the Aviz dynasty except the aged, feeble and almost insane Cardinal Prince Henry, who, as a younger son of Emanuel I., now became king. Henry died on the 31st of January 1580, and the throne was thus left vacant. There were five principal claimants-Philip II. of Spain; Philibert, duke of Savoy; Antonio, prior of Crato; Catherine, duchess of Braganza; and Ranuccio, duke of Parma-whose relationship to Emanuel I. is shown in the following table:

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John,

b. 1537, d. 1554, m. Joanna of Spain.

Sebastian,

b. 1554, d. 1578.

empire ruled by the house of Aviz.

The

Antonio, prior of Crato. (illegitimate).

His ambition narrowly missed fulfilment, for Prince Miguel, his eldest son, was recognized (1498) as heir to the Spanish thrones. But Miguel died in infancy, and his inheritance passed to the Habsburgs. Frequent intermarriage, often so far within the prohibited degress as to require a papal dispensation, may possibly explain the weakened vitality of the Portuguese royal family, which was now subject to epilepsy, insanity and premature decay. The decadence of the monarchy as a national institution was reflected in the decadence of the cortes, which was rarely summoned between 1521 and 1580. John III. (1521-1557) was a ruler of fair ability, who became in his later years wholly subservient to his ecclesiastical advisers. He was succeeded by his grandson Sebastian (1557-1578), aged three years. Until the king came of age (1568), his grandmother, Queen Catherine, a fanatical daughter of Isabella the Catholic, and his great-uncle, Prince Henry, cardinal and inquisitor-general, governed as joint regents. Both were dominated by their Jesuit confessors, and a Jesuit, D. Luiz Gonçalves da Camara, became the tutor and, after 1568, the principal adviser of Sebastian. The king was a strong-willed and weak-minded ascetic, who entrusted his empire to the Jesuits, refused to marry, although the dynasty was threatened with extinction, and Disaster of spent years in preparing for a crusade against the Al Kasr. Moors. The wisest act of John III. had been his withdrawal of all the Portuguese garrisons in Morocco except those at Ceuta, Arzila and Tangier. Sebastian reversed this policy. His first expedition to Africa (1574) was a mere reconnaissance, but four years later a favourable opportunity for invasion arrived. A dethroned sultan of Morocco, named Mulai Ahmad (Mahommed XI.), offered to acknowledge Portuguese suzerainty if he were restored to the throne by Portuguese arms, and Sebastian eagerly accepted these terms. The flower of his army was in Asia and his treasury was empty; but he contrived to extort funds from the "New Christians," and collected a force of some 18,000 men, chiefly untrained lads, wornout veterans, and foreign free-lances. At Arzila, where he landed, he was joined by Mulai Ahmad, who could only muster 800 soldiers. Thence Sebastian sought to proceed overland to the seaport of El Araish, despite the advice of his ally and of others who knew the country. After a long desert march under an August sun, he took up an indefensible position in a valley near Al Kasr al Kebir (q.v.). On the morrow (Aug. 4, 1578) they were surrounded by the superior forces of Abd el Malek, the reigning sultan, and after a brave resistance Sebastian was killed and his army almost annihilated. So overwhelming was the disaster that the Portuguese people refused to believe the truth. It was rumoured that Sebastian still lived, and would sooner or later return and restore the past greatness of his country.

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Tentative and hardly serious claims were also put forward by Pope Gregory XIII., as ex officio heir-general to a cardinal, and by Catherine de' Medici, as a descendant of Alphonso III. and Matilda of Boulogne.

5. The "Sixty Years' Captivity": 1581-1640.-The university of Coimbra declared in favour of Catherine, duchess of Braganza, but the prior of Crato was the only rival who offered any serious resistance to Philip II. D. Antonio proclaimed himself king and occupied Lisbon. The advocates of union with Spain, however, were numerous, influential, and ably led by their spokesmen in the cortes, Christovão de Moura and Antonio Pinheiro, bishop of Leiria. The duke of Braganza was won over to their side, chiefly by the promise that he should be king of Brazil if Philip II. became king of Portugal-a promise never fulfilled. Above all, the Church, including the Society of Jesus, naturally favoured the Habsburg claimant, who represented its two foremost champions, Spain and Austria. In 1581 a Spanish army, led by the duke of Alva, entered Portugal and easily defeated the levies of D. Antonio at Alcantara. The prior escaped to Paris and appealed to France and England for assistance. In 1582 a French fleet attempted to seize the Azores in his interest, but was defeated. In 1589 an English fleet was sent to aid the prior in a projected invasion of Portugal, but owing to a quarrel between its commanders, Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Norris, the expedition was abandoned. D. Antonio returned to Paris, where he died in 1594.

Meanwhile the victory of Alcantara left Philip II. supreme in Portugal, where he was soon afterwards crowned king. His constitutional position was defined at the Cortes of Thomar (1581). Portugal was not to be regarded as a conquered or annexed province, but as a separate kingdom, joined to Spain solely by a personal union similar to the union between Castile and Aragon under Ferdinand and Isabella. At Thomar Philip II. promised to maintain the rights and liberties conceded by his predecessors on the Portuguese throne, to summon the Cortes at frequent intervals, and to create a Portuguese privy council which should accompany the king everywhere and be consulted on all matters affecting Portuguese interests. Brazil and the settlements in Africa and Asia were still to belong to Portugal, not to Spain, and neither in Portugal nor in its colonies was any alien to be given lands, public office, or jurisdiction. On these terms the political union of the Iberian Peninsula was accomplished. It was the final stage in a process of accretion dating back to the beginnings of the Christian reconquest in the 8th century. Asturias had been united with Leon, Leon with Castile, Castile with Aragon. All these precedents seemed to indicate that Spain and Portugal would ultimately form one state; and despite the strong nationalism which their separate language and

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