Portuguese overseas expansion reached a zenith during the reign of King Manuel I (1495–1521), whose sobriquet, the Fortunate, celebrates the successes of his era. What had started as a commercially based enterprise turned into an imperial quest. The first trading posts usually straddled coastlines. The settlements had a fort as their nucleus; gradually buildings began to appear around it to support commercial activities. The demand for goods and services that these colonies made from the immediate hinterlands in which they were located grew to such a point that occupation of those areas became essential. Moreover, rivalry from other European powers was keen and meant that the Portuguese enclaves had to be more effectively defended than they could be by the strategic fortresses alone. Dutch and English forces made ever bolder attempts to take over the lucrative trade routes, forcing the Portuguese to build more elaborate defences and take more land around the trading ports.
The flowering of the Manueline empire was based on the steady achievements of the preceding century or more. The first arena of Portuguese overseas operation had been in North Africa at the beginning of the fifteenth century. To capture territory from the erstwhile rulers of Iberia, the Moors, was a mark of singular symbolic significance for the Portuguese crown. Patriotic fervour was at a high pitch, so that young members of the nobility were drawn to support a cause that would, in many cases, cost them their own lives. In 1415 a fleet of 200 ships carrying 20,000 troops set sail from Lisbon to capture Ceuta, strategically placed on the African shore across from Gibraltar. In the face of the invaders’ overwhelming military superiority, the Moorish inhabitants of the town gave in without resistance. The town was then fortified into a stronghold guarding the vital Straits of Gibraltar.
After this initial success, Dom Afonso V, known as the African, took his campaign right across Morocco, capturing Alcácer-Ceguer, Arsila and eventually Tangier itself (there had been an earlier attempt to take the town in 1437 which had failed). Portuguese African ambitions ended, some eighty years later, with the capture of Mazagão in 1514; the gradual decline of the North African domains which followed was underlined by the disastrous defeat of Dom Sebastião and the flower of the nobility at Alcácer-Quibir in 1578.
Meanwhile, under the stewardship of Prince Henry the Navigator, maritime expansion into the Atlantic had started another imperial venture, which would prove more lasting than the African conquests. At Sagres, in the Algarve, Prince Henry founded an academy dedicated to navigational science. Myth as much as scientific achievement consolidated the reputation of the school. As one historian has put it,
it was rumoured that far to the south on a lonely headland in Portugal, something strange was taking place. Ships were being launched into the Atlantic and were coming back with reports of unknown islands, of a huge coastline and of races of men no one had ever seen before.1
Prince Henry’s programme was ambitious and he managed it with an obsessive attention to detail. The pace he set was relentless; one achievement spurred him on to the next venture. Nevertheless, the Portuguese did not have it entirely their own way. Traditional enemies were on the trail. The Canary Islands, first declared to be Portuguese, were annexed by the Spanish by 1436. Greater success was achieved elsewhere: Madeira, the Azores and the Cape Verde Islands, as we have seen, were secured by the time of Prince Henry’s death in 1460. The first expedition along the West African coast had taken place in 1434, led by Gil Eanes. Each year under the guidance of Henry, the fleet penetrated further and further south, engaging on the way in trade and barter. After Prince Henry’s death, some of the exploration was done on a private-enterprise basis, with the state providing naval support, but later, by which time the fleet had reached Senegal and Sierra Leone, the crown once again had taken charge.
Just before the accession of King Manuel, Portuguese merchants had already reached the Niger delta and a flourishing trade in gold, ivory, slaves and spices extended along the length of the Gold Coast. The supply of gold became a major source of wealth for the crown, which imposed a rigid control over the trade. The navy was called upon to fend off raids from the Dutch and the English, who were far from content to leave such a prized trade to the Portuguese alone. An unsuccessful attempt to ‘civilize’ the Congo by introducing Portuguese customs and culture was one of the more bizarre imperial experiments of the 1490s. The Congolese king converted to Christianity, donned European dress and styled himself as ‘Dom João I’.
Meanwhile in the decade before King Manuel’s accession, the world’s horizons were opened up in both eastward and westward directions. In 1487 Bartolomeu Días rounded the Cape of Good Hope (which he called the ‘Cape of Storms’), raising the prospect of a direct sea route to India and the East Indies. Dom Manuel’s predecessor, King João II, had been prevented from launching an official expedition to India by the scepticism of his advisers in Lisbon; the cortes voted against the proposal. However, King João was not going to be stopped. In 1487, he secretly commissioned Pero da Covilhã and Afonso de Paiva to sail eastwards in search of the fabled kingdom of Prester John. Prester John was believed to be a Christian monarch who ruled in Ethiopia and would be an ally in the struggle against Islam. The alliance was considered crucial to opening up the trade route to India. Covilhã himself made straight for India, arriving a year later, in 1488. He went to Calicut, the centre of the spice trade, and also visited Goa. It was only five years later, in 1493, that he actually reached Abyssinia.2
Dom Manuel was even more determined than his predecessor to prove the sceptics wrong. He commissioned an expedition of three ships to set sail under the command of Vasco da Gama in 1497. Da Gama followed a westerly course from the Cape Verde Islands, making towards Brazil before he finally sailed south, around the Cape of Good Hope. In Mozambique, as Camões was famously to celebrate in his Lusiads, Da Gama was well received by the Sultan of Malindi, who provided him with a pilot to cross the Indian Ocean to Calicut. His mission, to secure the valuable spice trade for the Portuguese crown, was stoutly resisted by the Arab traders who had been in control of it over the ages. Da Gama persisted, trying to convince native rulers of the benefits of dealing with the foremost European nation.
He returned two years later with half the crew he set sail with and one less vessel. It was said that the masts of the returning ships were sighted from the heights of Sintra entering the Tagus estuary. Da Gama was given a hero’s welcome. King Manuel sent word of his achievement around the courts of Christendom, boasting, in a letter of 12 July 1499, of the acquisitions of trading posts and rare cargoes of spices.3
Such was Dom Manuel’s enthusiasm for further exploration that within a short period he commissioned yet another fleet, this time of 13 ships, to secure the valuable Indian trade. The commander of this considerable flotilla was Pedro Alvares Cabral, a young nobleman. Cabral sailed westwards in early 1500 and reached the shores of Brazil, considered to be part of a larger island rather than part of a new continent. In commissioning Cabral’s venture, Dom Manuel was making up for lost ground when Portugal had failed to back the Genoese navigator Christopher Columbus in 1492, giving the Spanish a lead in westward exploration.
One of Cabral’s ships was sent back to Lisbon to announce the news of the discovery of this new land, already protected as Portuguese territory under the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas agreed in 1494 after Columbus’s earlier voyage. The Treaty, brokered by the pope, made everything west of longitude 370 degrees west of the Cape Verde Islands Spanish, and east of it Portuguese, although given the vagaries of contemporary cartography that was not an entirely clear demarcation. Although Cabral lost a number of ships on this expedition, he returned to Lisbon with a valuable haul of spices. The imperial trade was beginning to provide substantial returns for the Portuguese crown.
Protection of these overseas interests became the cornerstone of Portuguese foreign policy. The expansion eastwards continued apace — in 1503 the Seychelles were reached; Portuguese ships sailed along the Arabian coast to the Maldive Islands and to the coast of India itself. The Persian Gulf trade was secured by the taking of Ormuz. In 1505 Dom Francisco de Almeida was appointed the first viceroy of India. His principal duty was to secure the spice trade in the interests of the Portuguese crown.4
Almeida was succeeded by Afonso de Albuquerque, another one of the great colonial explorers and administrators. There was a certain rivalry between these early captains of India; Albuquerque took the view that the routes eastwards to Malacca needed to be fortified. He made Goa his principal base. He modelled it on Lisbon and it was soon endowed with fine public buildings and grand churches. Goa became the capital of the Eastern Empire. From earliest times, miscegenation (racial intermarriage) was encouraged, so that the metropolis spawned its own Indo-Portuguese population, whose cultural identity has remained distinct until the present. As Albuquerque understood, the security of Goa meant that Portuguese control of the sea routes to the Far East became a viable proposition. Malacca was reached by 1509, the Indonesian island of Sumatra at the same time. Four years later, in 1513, Jorge Alvares was the first Westerner to navigate the Chinese coast. By the middle of the century, Macao off the Pearl Estuary in southern China was leased;5 by 1571 the Jesuits were established at Nagasaki, and Japan, hitherto closed to foreign commerce, was now opened to Portuguese ships.
Dom Manuel attempted to maintain personal control over these expanding colonial territories. While the cascade of his numerous grand titles — Lord of the Seas, of Arabia, Persia and India — symbolized his imperial role, systematic reform of the administration at home was needed to ensure the proper regulation of trade and the accrual of the taxes and duties due to the crown. Cargoes of precious spices arriving on the waterfront at Lisbon needed to be efficiently transferred for storage in the royal palaces and warehouses. A price-fixing system, ensuring distribution to every part of Europe, was put in place but needed to be efficiently administered. A new class of public officials was drawn from the middle class, which in Lisbon included the Jews of the Baixa. They became pivotal in the business of empire, matching the actual achievements of the explorers, who were mainly drawn from the nobility. Their counterparts were employed in the factories abroad, beginning to create a vast body of colonial servants, some of whom did not return to Portugal at all but stayed overseas to found dynasties there. Top posts, such as governorships, remained royal appointments, ensuring that the king kept a personal grip on colonial policy.
In some cases the king contracted rather than commissioned an individual to advance his interests. From 1512 Jorge Lopes Bixorda was chosen in this way to forward exploration in Brazil. In the first decade of the new century, settlements were made in Pernambuco, Porto Seguro, São Vicente and mostly importantly Bahia (Salvador), which was eventually to become the colonial capital. Colonization of the littoral was helped by the preference of native Indians to live in the interior forests rather than on the coastal plains. Moreover, the land that was occupied by the Portuguese settlers was found to be fertile and the climate less severe than in Africa. Sugar, cereals and exotic fruit and vegetables began to be cultivated in the hinterland around the ports. Wood was a major trading commodity and was exported to Europe. The search for minerals was not, at first, productive. But eventually, when gold was discovered in Minas Gerais, a flourishing culture developed around the old towns with their baroque churches and central squares of stately town houses. In the meantime the slave trade became an important if lamentable source of income, based in the northern city of Bahia, which spawned impressive mercantile mansions.
To ensure the steady supply of wealth to the crown (which continued to collect up to 20 per cent tax on all transactions) Dom Manuel sent an annual flotilla to guard the coastal waters where marauders and armed pirates as well as European rivals waited to intercept Portuguese ships on their way to and fro from Europe. Over the period from 1516 to 1530 this policy kept the shipping routes clear and allowed colonization of the interior to proceed without interference. Occasionally even Dom Manuel made a mistake. His personal dislike of Ferdinand Magellan eventually drove Magellan to the Spanish court in 1517, where he found backing for his famous circumnavigation of the globe.6
Dom Manuel took steps to match his status as a leading European monarch by rebuilding his royal residence in Lisbon. He wanted to show, in an ostentatious manner, that Portugal was now the leading nation of Europe, rivalling not only Castile but countries in the north such as Holland and England. It was time to move out of the old palace perched on the Alfama down to the river front, the commercial centre of the thriving port. A considerable space was cleared right on the river’s edge in a square known as Terreiro do Paço (the present-day Praça do Comércio).7 The construction of the new palace — called the Paço da Ribeira — was started in 1500 and completed five years later in 1505. Records of the building project are incomplete; a ground plan has not survived. However, its somewhat austere appearance, remarked upon at the time by the Venetian secret agent Lunardo Masser in 1504, can be seen from contemporary drawings and etchings.8
From its inception the palace was understood to be part of a complex of buildings that would symbolize the new, cosmopolitan role that the Portuguese crown played on the world stage. The architect chosen to oversee the building was João de Castilho, who was involved in the building of the Hieronymite monastery at Belém where he had chosen to use the new patriotic, Manueline style. Lack of details in the surviving documents leads us to speculate about the decoration he might have chosen for the palace but it is likely that he would have kept to Renaissance forms and motifs such as the overlay of classical ornament with putti, military trophies and the portrait medallions of Roman emperors. There is a possibility that he may have used the grotteschi or classical ornamentation associated with the rediscovered Golden House of Nero or Domus Aurea in Rome, which remained popular in Portugal until the eighteenth century.9
Whilst the outside appearance was kept fairly simple and even austere, the inside was filled with luxurious furniture, decorations and paintings in the full cluttered style favoured in courts all over Europe. The scale of the complex was ambitious — with overlapping courtyards, great wings and internal patios forming a dense mass of building. Not only was the palace to serve as the king’s residence, but it had to function as an internationally prominent court where foreign diplomats could be received. Of even greater significance was the fact that it had become the administrative centre of the far-flung empire, the focal point for national and commercial interest.
The windows of the palace looked right on to the river; a chapel dedicated to St Thomas was installed within. The northern courtyard bordered the Casa da India, the centre for the administration and running of the eastern trade. Nearby was the Casa de Flandres, where the clerks supervised the onward export trade to the Portuguese factory at Antwerp. In other wings of the complex were the higher tribunal and the finance department. The money exchange and the military arsenal abutted the royal buildings.
Within the palace itself, the enormous wealth of the crown was most evident. According to some authorities, Dom Manuel revived an old tradition of commissioning portraits of his ancestors to line the corridors of the antechamber. Chinese ceramics (which the king much admired) and natural specimens from Africa and Asia were part of the royal collection. Although the inventory of the building’s contents made in 1522 is incomplete, Flemish paintings are shown as having been bought, as well as a considerable number of large tapestries. The tapestries, ordered from Tournai, were divided into 26 panels celebrating Vasco da Gama’s discovery of the sea route to India. Precise, detailed instructions were given about the subject matter of each panel. Dom Manuel’s commanding position, as king, was underlined by a scene that showed him giving da Gama his instructions as he set sail from the Tower of Belém. Although some of the historical detail in the panels was drawn from the illuminated manuscripts of the Conquest of India, which was in the royal library, the real purpose of the tapestries was to glorify, in a suitably majestic aesthetic, the achievement of the crown. They were there to bolster the image of the court as the leading centre of Europe to all the diplomats and foreigners who would be in attendance at the Ribeira Palace.10
The move of the royal residence to the river’s edge had considerable significance for the future development of the city. The centre of gravity had shifted from the medieval heights to the Baixa or lower flatland on the seaboard of the Tagus. Building spread westwards towards Santos where the king built another palace much admired by Francisco de Holanda.11 The aristocracy and merchant class, anxious to maintain a close proximity to the monarch, began to move into the same area, as did foreigners like Bernard Fechter, an aristocratic Danzig merchant who was in the shipping business. Portuguese fidalgo families such as the Teles de Melo, the Tavoras, the Alegretes and Marialvas all built houses along the river; some were placed in the Chiado just up the hill from Cais do Sodré. Whilst these were the residences of the grand old families — such as the Albuquerques — others belonged to merchants (including foreigners) who had grown affluent as the commercial importance of the city increased. While the physical face of the city was being transformed by its commercial activity, Lisbon still relied on agricultural support from its hinterland to remain fed.
Some houses were reputed to be of great luxury, something which could attract royal disapproval if taken beyond the status of the king’s palace. One such residence was the Casa dos Bicos (on the site, as we have seen, of ancient Roman remains), where Brás de Albuquerque, the son of the famous viceroy, is said to have lived in a lavish style. Whether the story was exaggerated or not, a rumour had it that an African queen had a hoard of jewellery stored for her in the house. Similar ostentatious, nouveau riche features began to appear in decorative effects of other houses in the area.
Meanwhile, Dom Manuel assembled a court, which in scale and glamour matched the imperial status that he coveted for Portugal. The poet Garcia de Resende records in a flowery eulogy that the royal conclave might number as many as five thousand. No other court in Christendom, Resende says, can compare in magnificence and cultivation to the Portuguese. The king showered honours upon the aristocratic fidalgo families, whose coats of arms were emblazoned on the ceiling of the Sala dos Brasões, under the royal coat of arms, at Sintra Palace. The nobility and the merchant class of Lisbon, which included foreigners like the Florentine banker Lucas Giraldes, were prospering and began to look for ways of showing off their wealth and status by cultivating a lavish style of living, which included patronizing the arts on a grand scale. Dom Manuel set an example by gathering a glittering array of noblemen, commanders of fleets and merchants and mixing them with artists, musicians and writers at court. If the likes of Da Gama and Albuquerque represented the great men of action, Garcia de Resende, Bernadim Ribeiro, Francisco de Holanda and Gil Vicente represented men of letters and the arts. It was a heady mixture that resembled and was meant to resemble the Renaissance courts of the Italian princes. The imitation of the Italian princely style had been introduced by King João II, Dom Manuel’s immediate predecessor. He was a dedicated Italophile and encouraged a more foreign, sophisticated taste to develop among the aristocracy. Andrea Sansovino, the sculptor, was one of the outstanding Italian artists that he lured to Lisbon.
Of the artists and writers, Garcia de Resende was probably the most influential at court.12 He had been the personal confidant of King João II and became a favourite of Dom Manuel as well. Having the ear of two successive monarchs meant that Resende was in the position to set the tone for cultural life. He chose to do so in a highly cultivated, cosmopolitan manner so that the verse and music of the Portuguese court became accepted in the Spanish courts and further afield in Italy itself. His major literary effort was to gather an anthology of Portuguese verse of the previous hundred years, which, together with Gil Vicente, he produced in the celebrated Cancioneiro Geral. He also wrote, in a romantic vein, the famous trovas or moving verse on the subject of the death of the Spanish courtier Inês de Castro.13
Gil Vicente himself was a less cosmopolitan but no less talented artist than Resende.14 He hailed from the north of Portugal and the typical sound of the cantiga, the popular verse of the villages, was in his ears. If Vicente had had the upper hand in the composition of the Cancioneiro, this more populist, indigenous style might have been more pronounced in the collection. In any case Gil Vicente went on to express himself in many genres — from comic farce to serious religious works and allegories in the classical style. His characters too show the sweeping range of his imagination — from recognizably human types to gods and mythological beasts in the classical manner. Sometimes he uses dramatic personification — for example in his Triunfo do Inverno (1529) where the serra or mountain of Sintra makes an appearance as a character.
Vicente’s artistic impulse was to bring vernacular Portuguese into his dramatic and lyrical structures. That concern with the rhythms of early Portuguese has earned him a place in the canon of literary founders of the national culture. The coincidence of his literary intention and a political belief that the drift to Lisbon and the court was depopulating the countryside and undermining its traditional social structure adds a remarkably modern edge to his artistic expression. Nevertheless, Vicente did not fail to pay due respect to the crown — Sintra is described as a terrestrial paradise which was bestowed upon the kings of Portugal by Solomon himself. The House of Avis is thereby given a status usually reserved for the ancient monarchs of Persia and India.
In a court where the pastoral mood was being linked to the philosophical, it is not surprising to find a penchant for the Virgilian eclogue, which could encompass the aesthetic with the social. Francisco de Sá de Miranda was the master of this genre. A native of Coimbra, he had travelled to Spain and Italy, meeting the Neapolitan classicist Sannazaro, whose Arcadia (1504) deliberately echoed Virgil, Horace and Ovid.15 Sannazaro’s writing celebrated, in a somewhat idealized way, the pastoral life. His work is replete with shepherds, in idyllic Arcadian settings, accompanied by fauns and nymphs. Sometimes these idealizations were based on marine images, something which reflected the maritime flavour of the incipient Portuguese national mood.
Sá de Miranda, who was courtly as well as cosmopolitan, took his classics seriously. After a bout in Dom Manuel’s glittering court, he retired in Horatian manner to his country manor in the Minho where he pursued his classical and literary studies, having a deep empathy with the works of Petrarch and Dante, among others. Like Gil Vicente, Sá de Miranda was also concerned with the independence of Portugal in a court where the Castilian influence threatened dominance. He also shared Vicente’s unease about the effect of the pull of Lisbon and the court on the traditional social order. There is a strong suggestion in his work that there is wholesomeness about life on the land which contrasts favourably with the artificial life of the city. Highly stylized and polished, Sá de Miranda also has his place in the development of the national culture.
The last of the prominent Manueline court writers was Bernardim Ribeiro.16 Sá de Miranda’s contemporary and friend, Ribeiro was very much the courtly poet, who lived in a tower of the old Moorish castle at Sintra. His first works appeared in the Cancioneiro Geral of Resende, but his most celebrated work, Menina e Moça, was only posthumously published in 1554. A contributor to the eclogue form, Ribeiro wrote in Latin, Hebrew and Castilian as well as in Portuguese. His interest in Hebrew and in all aspects of Jewish lore suggests that he may himself have been a new Christian or converted Jew. Adherence to Jewish culture was a dangerous proclivity in an increasingly intolerant religious climate.
Ironically, Ribeiro, like the other court poets, lamented the passing of an idealized, rustic existence. His work is permeated by nostalgia for a lost, Arcadian past; there is a deep melancholy that heralds the Portuguese penchant for regret or saudades. But in Ribeiro this lyrical whimsicality is underlined by a philosophical complexity, quite modern in its tone. For Ribeiro is much concerned with questions of identity; as an artist he recognizes a multiplicity of voices within himself and he searches for the ‘true’ expression of his vision. In this questioning Ribeiro appears very much like a predecessor of the modernists, presaging the mood and tone of twentieth-century writers Mario de Sá Carneiro and Fernando Pessoa. Ribeiro seems to be struggling with the concept of the subconscious centuries before it was defined; his novel is written in the female voice with a distinct psychological undertone. Influenced by the natural setting of the pastoral, the poet is a brooder who tries to make sense of the emotional and philosophical complexities of the human predicament. Dark and mysterious, Ribeiro’s mood matches the solitudes of the Sintra mountain where the ancient gods hold sway.
Francisco de Holanda may appear, as the dilettante in this group of heavyweight Manueline courtiers but his influence, as well as learning, always lightly worn, was considerable.17 Francisco was the son of António de Holanda, a heraldic adviser to the court who had come to Portugal from the Low Countries in the early years of Dom Manuel’s reign. Francisco was brought up close to the royal family and in particular was a friend of Prince Luís, with whom he shared a passion for horses. He himself became a favourite of Dom Manuel’s successor, King João III, providing miniaturist portraits and specially designed jewellery for the royal family. He was interested in classical art and all things Italian, especially after visiting Rome and catching the eye of the great Michelangelo himself.
Presiding over this rich literary culture, with its artistic interest in classical art and buildings, inclined Dom Manuel to a new sensitivity about buildings, whether they were royal palaces or national monuments. He embarked upon an ambitious programme of building during the course of which a new florid style of Gothic design, much later associated with his name, began to flourish. This so called Manueline style is not easy to define. It is an indigenous mixture of Gothic (which predominated in Portugal well into the period when Renaissance styles had already been established in other parts of Europe) and something more exotic and oriental. The contrast with Greek and Gothic are well caught in Sophia de Mello Breyner’s verse.
The Manueline Style
Not the Romanesque nave where the rule
Of seed rises from the earth
Nor the stalk of wheat
Of the Greek column
But the flower of encounters
That roaming and drift gather18
It was a style suited to embellishing and softening the decoration of solid ecclesiastical buildings or castles.
The elaborate sculpturing typical of ‘high’ Manueline (which evolved during the reign of Dom Manuel and indeed beyond it) typically depicted exotic animals as well as fauna and flora. Columns would be twisted and twined to imitate ‘natural’ movement; arches would be adorned with mouldings in the form of nautical cables. Ribs of plain pointed arched vaulting are supplemented by heavy liernes in round or square relief; intertwining mariner’s knots give bulk to decorative cables. Tritons, sea nymphs and mermaids are used for graphic illustration. Niches and turrets twist and turn in elaborate baroque patterns over doorway lintels. The overall effect is of elaborate embellishment, bordering on the extravagant.
The most striking Lisbon buildings commissioned by Dom Manuel in the new style were the Monastery of Jerónimos at Belém and the nearby Tower of Belém.19
The site of the Hieronymite monastery had already been chosen for a chapel — the Ermida do Restelo — by Prince Henry the Navigator. Its association with maritime exploration was thus already established by the time Dom Manuel decided to erect an impressive monument to celebrate Vasco da Gama’s great voyage. The work was put under the mastership of Diogo Boitac in 1502; he was succeeded by João de Castilho. But the most prominent sculptor to work at Belém was Nicolau Chanterene, the French artist who more than anyone else was influential in bringing the Renaissance style to Portuguese architecture. Although not much damaged by the 1755 earthquake, the monastery was clumsily restored in the nineteenth century, a fate shared by Pena chapel in Sintra. From its inception it was built to impress, as is recorded by a later French visitor to the city.
This monastery was commissioned by a Portuguese king, the very same in whose reign the Indies were discovered. No building could match its magnificence; the church in the shape of a cross is grandiose, and neither marble, nor gold, nor rich paintings were spared in its construction. The friars are lodged in a comfortable fashion that could be considered excessive.20
The most elaborate part of the building is the south portal, the work of João de Castilho. The façade is covered with statues crowned by a niche bearing the cross of the Order of the Kings of Christ. Prince Henry himself stares out from the central pillar. Two large windows are found to either side and there is an elaborate roof balustrade. The relief shows scenes from the life of St Jerome. Dom Manuel himself and his second wife, Dona Maria, are found on the west portal, which is somewhat blocked in by the connection of bridges to the more modern part of the building.
Some of the richest architectural features are to be found in the interior courtyard and cloisters. Carved stonework and network vaulting are particularly striking. The spiral decoration, niches and pillars are by Castilho, whilst the transepts, in High Renaissance style, are by Jeróme de Rouen, another Frenchman working in the royal service. King Manuel’s tomb is in the chancel, in a classical style. The cloister is the most richly and elaborately decorated part of the monastery. The two-level galleries surround a square, each side measuring some 55 metres. The ground-level galleries have groined vaulting; wide arches with tracery rest on slender columns. Gothic and Renaissance styles are mingled; the first floor by Castilho is more delicate.
In contrast to the filigree exuberance of Jerónimos is the robustly square Tower of Belém nearby, now on the land’s edge but originally right in the sea, built by Francisco de Arruda but embellished with what Fernando Pessoa called ‘beautiful lacework’.21 The tower was conceived as part of the monastery complex, acting as first line of defence for both the monastery and Lisbon harbour. It was completed in 1521 and dedicated to St Vincent, patron of the city. Its bastion-like appearance (reflecting its defensive function) is softened by the balconies or loggias adorning the façade. The design shows some sophistication in the balancing of the circular casement sentry boxes (capped by domes, which add an exotic, Moorish feel to the building) with the open windows in the walls and the turrets, visible from every angle of vision. Richly carved niches, one facing seaward and dedicated to the Virgin, mark the façade. The external columns are topped with armillary spheres and magazines and store rooms remind us again of the defensive function of the tower and its symbol as an emblem of power and authority. An oratory links that military function to the religious quest to conquer Islam, ironic in the light of its florid, oriental touches, which include an echo of the shape of the hulls of caravels that were anchored in the river. Knotted hawsers and decorative cables add to the maritime effect of this example of high Manueline style. The writer Aquilino Ribeiro called it a ‘stone ship’ which told travellers they had reached the shores of Europe.22 More than any other building, the tower is a symbol of Lisbon’s connection with and command of the sea.
At Sintra, the king turned his attention to the royal palace, founded by King João I on the very site of the walis or Moorish governor’s residence in the heart of the old village. A long scholarly dispute has raged over the ages about the authenticity of the Moorish features of the palace.23 Although there is little doubt that King João built the palace on the site of a previous residence, the extent to which any remaining Moorish part of the building was absorbed into the new palace has never been authentically established. At any rate, what is clear from expert attention to details of the building and, especially, its ceilings is that Moorish methods of construction were used.24 It is likely that this work was undertaken by Mudejar workmen — that is, from Moors who stayed to live under the Christian kings of Portugal and who were often confined to artisanal work. Ornate wooden ceilings, structures added at a much later period, were still executed according to Arabic techniques. Dom Manuel added an entire wing to the palace on the eastern side, fitting both the needs of his expanded family and containing salons and galleries worthy of his imperial pretensions. The works began in 1508 and detailed costs were kept by the builder, one André Gonçalves. The first distinctly Manueline feature is the decorative archway of the carriage entry which runs between Don Manuel’s additions and the older parts of the palace. Arched internal doorways within follow the Moorish style.
On the façade of the new wing are six windows, three on each floor, overlooking the entrance court. The windows are all broadly similar in design, though details of decoration vary on each. Their Manueline features are immediately visible, which include fine frames in twisted, ornate form, but the windows also exhibit clear links with the earlier Moorish-style windows in the older western block. Each of the Manueline windows has two round-headed lights and a framing stand on corbelled-out bases at the side. The capitals are formed of wreaths of twisted foliage; on the lower floor one has twisted around it two branches, out of which grow the cusps. Decorative flowers are found engraved on them, sometimes in square shapes, sometimes round. Branches also intertwine on the sides, supporting three dramatic finials, capped with turban-shaped tops. While distinct in their exuberant naturalistic and exotic additions, the windows nevertheless have the same shape as the earlier Moorish ones and do not feel out of place when viewed with them.25
There are many Manueline features in this part of the building. A number of doorways are in the florid style; at the end of a passage, a doorway has a half-octagonal head with curved sides. The door leading into the Sala dos Cisnes is also Manueline. Inside other rooms, such as the Sala das Duas Irmãs (the Hall of Two Sisters), there is evidence that the older structure was embellished at the time of Dom Manuel. Two rows of columns and arches have been inserted below the ceiling. The arches are rounded and lack mouldings; the thin supporting columns are also round with eight-sided bases. The great hall of the Sala dos Brasões was completed at the end of King Manuel’s reign.26
Portugal’s imperial role depended upon a highly centralized administration based upon the personal direction of the crown. Both King João II and Dom Manuel ruled as absolutist monarchs, personally controlling the affairs of state through coteries of trusted advisers. These coteries, which could be drawn from the lower nobility or even the burgher classes, owed their position entirely to royal favour. Privileges granted to them by the crown included the lordship of manors and estates, in some cases exemption from certain taxes or rights to hunt or produce specified goods for the expanding court. The military orders (Knights Templar and Hospitaller) were bound to provide service to the crown, particularly in the defence of Lisbon and other important civic centres. Much of the regulation of affairs of state — the famous ordinances which Dom Manuel revised — was directed to commercial affairs, ensuring that the crown’s source of wealth was duly protected. Foreigners, like the Italian merchants, were accorded important rights and given due recognition at court. Until the time of the Inquisition, the Jews too were respected for their part in the wealth-creating culture of the great seaport of Lisbon. These foreign communities played an essential part in a country which simply did not have a middle class of sufficient number (in contrast to the Italian city-states like Venice and Genoa or Holland) to sustain the businesses of a flourishing Lisbon.27
The most important and well-known account of Lisbon during the mid-sixteenth century is given in the chronicle of Damião de Góis.28 Góis was a historian who had also seen diplomatic service in different parts of Europe. He had studied at the University of Louvain where he met Erasmus in 1512. Góis was an adherent of the new humanism that was the prevailing intellectual climate of the European centres of learning and that would underpin the scientific and philosophical advances of the early modern period. After his diplomatic career, Góis returned to Lisbon, with his Dutch wife, and settled down in a house near the castle. He was appointed to the job of Royal Historian at the Torre do Tombo, eventually institutionalized into the national archives. However, his last years were not to be tranquil. Long suspected of heresy, he was hauled before the Inquisition, convicted and imprisoned in Batalha. He died a few years later in suspicious circumstances, possibly a murder victim.
Góis makes clear from the start of his description that he is out to justify the description of Lisbon as ‘Queen of the Seas’, principally because of its worldwide connections with the opening up of the West African trade and the discovery of India.29 A respectful classicist, he delves into the history of the name of the city as it was used by Varro, Asclepiades Mirlianus, Strabo and Pliny the Elder. Following André de Resende’s lead, he declares ‘Olisiponem’ as the correct Latin spelling of Lisbon and accepts the legend linking the city’s foundation to Ulysses.30
Nor is Góis wary of considering other local legends — like that of the Triton who inhabited a cave at the foot of the steep cliffs near the Cabo da Roca. Fuelling stories of this kind was a useful prelude to establishing Lisbon as a mythical as well as a real place; a city of symbolic glory which would match its commercial greatness. After setting out the various legends, he takes his reader on a tour of the city, noting all the important buildings in and around the city walls.
Although Góis’s account is hyperbolic and he is overboastful about Lisbon’s monuments in comparison with those of other European cities, we learn a great deal from him about churches, public buildings and the extent of the city’s spread. His account confirms that by the sixteenth century the centre of gravity had irreversibly moved down from the heights of the medieval city to the riverside at the Terreiro do Paço. This huge open space, opening towards the sea, signifies a new stage in the urban psychology of the city. From the central square, the expansion of the city was in a westward direction, through Santos towards Belém. Along this stretch of coast suburban villas of ‘admirable elegance and delight’31 are sprinkled along the coast. They could be seen from the festively decorated royal barges that occasionally sailed along the coast, crammed with courtiers in glittering dress, entertained by musicians. Further out is the hermitage of São Julião (at Carcavelos) and the fort at Cascais.
The inner city area is still full of orchards and gardens; springs and running water can be found everywhere. Many buildings retain interior open spaces in the Moorish style. Góis singles out several ‘sumptuous’32 buildings for special mention. They are almost all façades of empire — the Public Granary, the New Customs House, the Ceuta and India Houses and the War Armoury. The Public Granary contains two wings with numerous internal arched galleries. It can be regarded as the granary of the nation and the ‘pantry of Lusitania’.33 The New Customs House is a magnificent building which extends right to the edge of the river. On the shore side it has an ornately decorated colonnade. Its great central courtyard bustles with markets of every description from those selling fish to others with sweets and rare spices, all showing up the spending power of the city dwellers. The India House nearby may justly be described as an opulent emporium, crammed as it is with aromas, precious stones, silver and gold. The War Armoury has numerous parts to it; its walls are adorned with fine art. This labyrinth is crammed full of weaponry, including 40,000 suits of armour for the infantry and 3000 pieces of cavalry gear. All these buildings reflect the imperial power that Portugal has become and the opulence that its overseas enterprise has brought to the capital.34
A less flowery account of Lisbon was published in the same year by Cristovão Rodrigues de Oliveira. He has a penchant for statistics, recording the fact that the city had 80,000 inhabitants, 432 streets, 89 alleys and 62 built-up complexes. He observes that sometimes development depended upon the sale of strategic sites by particular landlords. An example was in the Bairro Alto where the astrologer and surgeon Guedelha Palanciano owned much of the land. But Oliveira records five streets crossing in a north–south direction, even in this confined area.35 Nor did this teeming city lack its social problems. Deaths from killing were a frequent occurrence, as they were in many other contemporary European cities; criminals were condemned to a frightful life at prisons such as the Galé prison, described later by Charles Dellon.
This earth-bound Galé is built on the banks of the river and consists of two large apartments, one above the other. Both are full; the condemned sleep on benches covered with blankets. Their hair is cut and they are given a shave once a month. They wear workers’ blouses and a cap made of blue cloth. They are also given a coat made of black serge wore for warmth during the day and used as a blanket at night.36
The prisoners’ plight has, of course, to be seen in context of a low standard of living for most citizens. Cramped accommodation, lack of hygiene and decaying infrastructure all combined to make life unpleasant for the lower classes. Sometimes it was their sheer poverty that led to a lack of utilities. A visiting Frenchman records at a later date:
They [the Lisbonites] have an awful way of sleeping. They lie down naked with no shirts, men and women, girls and boys in the same room. At night, because they don’t have any beds they spread blankets and sheets on the floor, as many as necessary for the people present, and in the morning they put it all away, folding the blankets and sheets in a small room and the house is in order. At noon, they do the same thing for the siesta.37
During these years, the two Iberian nation-states of Portugal and Castile were being drawn closer together by dynastic ties. King Manuel himself had married three times to Spanish princesses. King João III, his son, married into the family of Emperor Charles V. Despite the tenacious independence fostered by the early Afonsin monarchs, these alliances encouraged the movement towards integration of the two major Iberian kingdoms. At the court, if not in the countryside, a cultural cosmopolitism also contributed to the unifying trend. Both Iberian languages were spoken by the upper classes; dynastic connections between aristocratic houses crossed the borders. It was also the case that common interests brought the two nations together. After the settlements in the Atlantic on the one hand (Treaty of Tordesillas, 1494) and in the East Indies on the other (Treaty of Saragosa, 1529) the overseas rivalry between Spain and Portugal ceased to be significant. Instead a common stance against increasing pressure from other European maritime nations — Holland, France and England created a need for mutual defence. The Reformation and the accompanying Inquisition added to a common cultural identity. In 1580 Filipe II, the son of Emperor Charles, succeeded to the throne of Portugal and a united kingdom was established.
The earlier cosmopolitanism of the court was even more evident during the Spanish or Filipan period, as it is known. Figures like the diplomat and writer Francisco de Melo (1608–1666), bilingual and well known in Spain, became pivotal players. Eulogies of the city, such as that of Luís Mendes de Vasconcelos, continued to be published.38 Mendes de Vasconcelos was a soldier and diplomat of the new cosmopolitan breed and he encouraged the Spanish king to consider the idea of moving the capital to Lisbon on the grounds of its strategic position in terms of trade with the New World. His vision was never realized. At the same time aristocratic residences began to spill out of the central area towards Benfica in the west and Campo Pequeno in the north. Over the whole period the number of religious institutions continued to grow, from 21 at the beginning to over 87 by the early eighteenth century. Lisbon was admired by many Spanish visitors, including the dramatist Molina, who rated it among the wonders of the world.39 Nevertheless, a sense of the distinct nature of the Portuguese nation never completely faded. The Portuguese monarchy was restored in 1640 under the House of Bragança. After the restoration of the Portuguese monarchy, buildings became even more sumptuous, although the old, medieval lines of the streets remained largely intact. It is in the panoramas of the city from the river that we see it in its full, architectural splendour.40