Chapter 7 - Pela Lei e Pela Grei
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A suitor for Infante Afonso -
Catherine of York
In 1494, João II made a royal visit to London to meet with the King of England,
Henry VII of the House of Tudor. In an effort to uphold the traditional
Anglo-Portuguese Alliance that has been stipulated a century earlier in the
Treaty of Windsor, João requested a marriage to be arranged between Infante Afonso (the future Afonso VI) and one of the daughters of Henry’s predecessor Edward IV of the House of York,
Catherine. Henry later agreed in order to pursue stronger ties with his Portuguese counterpart, and the two were married a year later. They would eventually bear six children:
- Infante João (b. September 25, 1498 - d. March 9, 1499) - died in infancy
- Infante Duarte (b. September 27, 1500) - third in line to the Portuguese succession after João II and Infante Afonso, succeeded as Duarte II upon Afonso’s death in (REDACTED)
- Infanta Joana (b. March 14, 1503)
- Infanta Isabel (b. November 10, 1507)
- Infante Miguel (b. June 10, 1509)
- Infante Fernando (b. November 4, 1513)
- The Beja Conspiracy and the aftermath -
By 1496, fifteen years into his reign, the 41 year old King João II began to move away towards decentralized feudalism, starting a long process towards developing Portugal into a centralised modern state. Following the Bragança and Viseu conspiracies nearly a decade earlier, the influence and the traditional rights and privileges that was once enjoyed by the nobility and the clergy began to fade, and the mentality of upholding tradition, balance and harmony began to transform into one that upholds development, progress, and the humanities.
The rising centralization and curbing of privileges were welcomed by many as a result of João II’s charisma and vigor to forge a stronger kingdom, but still, not everyone supported his policies. The last notable opposition was led by Infante Manuel, the Duke of Beja, as he grew bitter against João and tried one last time to stem the tide against this trend. In February of 1496, Manuel began to scheme a plot with some of the surviving families that participated in the Viseu conspiracy to assassinate Infante Afonso and pressure João II to back down on centralizing the domains, and then shortly poisoning and succeeding him as king upon the event of his death. Fortunately, with only little support given to Manuel, the malicious plot was discovered by João and Manuel attempted to flee in disguise to Aragon, where he died in a fatal horse-riding accident near the town of
Tordesillas in Castile a month later [1]. By this time, any notable opposition to João II’s policies was extinguished, with the remaining opposition variously submitting to the king in fear of retribution. It is now the royal branch of the House of Avis that is now the most prominent.
An alleged portrait of a young Infante Manuel, Duke of Beja (1469-1496) in a religious painting commissioned by him
After crushing the Beja conspiracy, João sought to put the administration of the country back on track. In creating the modern state, laws play a fundamental role, especially for those who write and enforce it under the king. In the early years of the Kingdom, Portuguese jurists were trained under the Bolognese school and insisted that the rule of the king is supreme, universal and binding. Built upon the foundations of Roman and Byzantine law, the role of lawyers of government has greatly expanded, and so with the amount of royal legislation that had to be codified, beginning with the Afonsine Ordinances (
Ordenações Afonsinas) of 1446 under Afonso V's reign.
One of the title pages of the copies of the Johannine Ordinances, c. 1600
A session of the
cortes would be held in Lisbon a year later in 1497 to rectify the power of the king, and a set of laws that legitimizes the newfound power that is vested upon the king called the Johannine Ordinances (
Ordenações Joaninas) was promulgated, which imposes among the most prominent changes:
- Stripping the nobility of several privileges, landed estates, major tax exemptions and the ability to gain certain titles
- Grant titles and land only to a select few members of the royal branch of the family.
- Court proceedings are to become more standardized and closely regulated with the appointment of officials loyal to the crown, giving the various courts like the Royal Court (Casa da Suplicação) and the Civil Court (Casa do Cível) more authority and reputation,
- Beginning the slow process of integrating the laws of Galiza and Leão into the main Portuguese law, working with the Galician junta and the Leonese cortes
The comarcas of Portugal, Galiza and Leão as of 1490
During this time, Portugal is divided into 6
comarcas, or provinces that are represented by judicial circuits - Trás-os-Montes, Entre-Douro-e-Minho, Beira, Estremadura, Alentejo and the titular Kingdom of the Algarves. Galiza, however maintained its traditional provincial structure and Leão was reorganized into 4
comarcas after the Leonese noble revolt of 1486 - Astúrias, Leão, Baixo Leão [2] and Huelva. The
comarcas would be presided over a superior magistrate of the king’s choice known as
corregedores, exercising royal authority, both administrative and judicial, with a focus on appointing and confirming representatives by merit and not relying on the
fidalgos, and the laws of the lay and ecclesiastical magnates and privileged municipalities were becoming superseded with the law of the crown. By the beginning of the 16th century, the
corregedores would be a formidable figure, with his entourage and assistants accommodated in the towns where the court is held, and to show that the king’s law is supreme above everything else, despite the occasional grievances by the nobility and clergy of the increasing intrusiveness of an increasingly reliable and effective royal administration. The growing acceptance of royal law in Portugal can be seen in public notaries known as
tabeliães, with an average of 1 per 250 people at the time.
- Standardizing Taxation -
Another critical part of centralizing the kingdom was increasing the crown’s capacity to levy taxes on a continuing basis. Before the taxation reforms, most of Portugal’s regular revenues came from the royal patrimony, with little difference between the monarch’s personal income and the receipts of the state. For the military and royal marriages, loans were used, but to repay, this required taxes. Traditionally, imposing taxes requires the consent of the great men of the kingdom, as well as the consent of the
concelhos’ representatives in the
cortes, and only lasts in a limited duration for a specific purpose. João II would eventually change this, as he knew he needed to have a flow of revenue in order to build tall and maintain the empire as it expands. In other words, he had the initiative to establish a system of regular and permanent taxation, like in France and England.
The Portuguese national taxation system consists of
sisas and customs duties.
Sisas were payable by all subjects without exception and imposed on any goods bought and sold, except for gold, silver, horses, arms and bread. In the 1481
cortes of Évora, João II made it clear that the impositions of
sisas would be a permanent one, going hand-in-hand with the repeal of major tax exemptions for the nobility and clergy following the 1497
cortes of Lisbon.
Another major boost was customs duties, collected at customs houses at Portuguese ports and frontier crossings across the border with Castile. As goods began flowing in from Brazil, Guinea, Arabia, India, Malacca, Sunda and Celudão, it became transformed into the main source of revenue for the crown, and became more important than the
sisas. As a consequence of trade and the increasing export of exotic goods back to Portugal, customs revenue was greatly boosted and became a signature part of the kingdom’s capitalist economy as part of the “Portuguese Miracle.”
[1] Instead of Infante Afonso dying in a horse-riding accident OTL, It would be the OTL Manuel I who gets the treatment instead.
[2] Lower Leon. This will be the TTL Portuguese name for the Extremadura region in Spain from now on.