Adoration, murders and revenge: nothing is lacking in this tragedy, not even an incredible posthumous coronation ... In this new episode of the Europe 1 Studio podcast "At the heart of History", Jean des Cars tells you about the heir's fatal relationship from the throne of Portugal in the 14th century, the Infante Peter, and the beautiful Inès de Castro.
At the end of the 14th century, a dead woman was crowned queen. In this new episode of the Europe 1 Studio podcast "At the heart of history", Jean des Cars tells you how the heir to the throne who became King of Portugal came to inflict such a hallucinating ceremony on this Court.
In 1361, Peter I, known as "the Cruel", King of Portugal for four years, completed the last phase of a revenge he had been preparing since January 7, 1355 and the savage assassination of his beloved, Inès de Castro, married secretly and who had given him three children.
He organizes a particularly macabre ceremony which takes place in several stages.
The coffin of Inès is first extracted from the church of Santa Clara, near the place of her assassination.
The remains are then transported at night in a long procession from the Convent of Santa Clara to the splendid Monastery of Alcobaça.
On the hundred kilometers of the course, bearers of torches light up the convoy.
The clergy and the people follow along, singing hymns and psalms.
On arrival in Alcobaça, the coffin is open.
Inès died six years earlier.
His body is in a very advanced state of decomposition and his face is perfectly unrecognizable, except for his blond hair, which has kept its shine.
She must now be adorned for her coronation, since it is the will of her husband Peter I.
She is dressed in a golden robe and a purple mantle before being seated on the throne.
The high and severe nave of the Alcobaça monastery is decorated for the occasion.
The king, who has put on the vestments of his coronation, places the crown on the head of the corpse.
He takes Ines' right hand and says: "You will be queen here as you would have been. Your sons, only because they are your sons, will become infants. Your innocent body will receive royal honors."
He then extends this hand so that the bishops and the Lords of the Court, summoned to attend this terrifying ceremony, kiss it as a sign of homage.
One can imagine the decomposed state of the flesh, even covered with lace, of poor Inès!
The dead woman is crowned queen.
But what really happened to cause the heir to the throne who became King of Portugal to inflict such a hallucinating ceremony on this Court?
The complicated relationship between Portugal and Castile
The story of Pierre and Inès goes back to the Middle Ages, in the period leading up to the Hundred Years War.
At that time, the kingdom of Portugal did not exist for a long time.
At the end of the 11th century, Alfonso VI, King of Castile, offered Henry of Burgundy the hand of his daughter Thérèse in exchange for her help to fight against the Moors, that is to say the Arabs.
We are then at the beginning of what is called "the Reconquista", this war which aimed to expel Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula.
Henry of Burgundy assures his authority over the county of Portugal.
It was his son, Alphonse 1er Henriques, a Burgundian therefore, who became the first king of an independent state: Portugal.
It should be noted that it was he who brought in monks observing the rule of Saint Bernard, trained at the abbey of Cîteaux in Burgundy.
For them, he had the great monastery of Alcobaça built, thus fulfilling a promise made during a victorious fight against the Moors in 1147. The first monks arrived in 1154 and the monastery was not completed until 1178. It was in the abbey church, of a sobriety of lines and decoration which contrasts with the flamboyant Gothic of the time, that will be located the episode of the coronation of the dead queen.
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Alfonso I pushed back the Moors beyond Lisbon, which will become the capital of the kingdom.
His son, Sancho I, attracts settlers to the country recently reclaimed from the Arabs.
Seventy years later, his grandson, Alfonso III, liberates the south of the country.
With the reconquest of the Algarve, the Portuguese territory is what we know today.
But the king must calm the animosity of the Castilian kingdom, jealous of the Portuguese expansion.
For this purpose, he married the daughter of the King of Castile.
It was their son Denis who made little Portugal a prosperous country.
There he promotes urban life, industry, trade, calls to his service a Genoese admiral to create a navy, and he founded the University of Lisbon in 1291. His successor is Alfonso IV the Brave, the father of our hero , Pierre.
Like all his predecessors, Alfonso IV was forced to fight against Castile, still just as jealous: he sent a fleet of three ships to explore the Canary Islands he wanted to colonize.
This is important because it is the first major Portuguese maritime expedition, but it will not prevent Castile from seizing the archipelago.
The king of Portugal nevertheless helps the king of Castile to reconquer the region of Tarifa in the south of the peninsula, in 1340. The same year, to strengthen this reconciliation, Alfonso IV will betroth his son Pierre, aged 20, to Constance , daughter of his old Castilian enemy.
Pierre falls in love with a follower of his wife!
When the Infanta Constance arrives at the Court of Lisbon, she is accompanied by a large suite.
But Pierre hardly notices her: he only has eyes for one of his ladies-in-waiting, Inès de Castro.
Like him, she is 20 years old, with green eyes and a swan neck.
She is dazzling!
The only image of Inès that has come down to us is an engraving made by an Englishman, William Skelton.
It is kept at the National Library of Madrid.
The young woman appears pretty, serene, with indeed beautiful eyes, a very long neck and above all a magnificent blond hair.
Her hair is distributed on either side of her face in two large masses.
They are adorned with several small bows that only emphasize their opulence.
Pierre immediately falls head over heels in love with the next one!
He nevertheless does his duty as a prince and marries Constance, but very quickly, he becomes Inès' lover.
Constance died in 1345, after giving birth to a boy, Ferdinand.
Finally free, Pierre announces to his father that he intends to marry Inès and to legitimize his bastards.
Alfonso IV is furious!
He is opposed to this union because he considers it dangerous.
It is not so much Inès that it is about but of her two ambitious brothers, to whom she is very close ...
The Court is concerned that the Spanish party is winning out over Portuguese interests.
Pierre and Inès have nothing to do with the king's anger.
He exiles Inès?
It does not matter, she will take refuge near Coimbra, in a house near the monastery of Santa Clara-a-Velha, on the banks of the rio Mondego.
It is also called the convent by the river.
Pierre often comes to see her in this house.
It must be said that after Constance's death, he secretly married his mistress.
She gave him three children, Béatrice, Jean and Denis.
Although now married, they live like lovers, making dates at the foot of the Fountain of Lovers.
The great Portuguese poet Luis de Camoens will write, two centuries later, in a song of the Lusiades, the loves of Pierre and Inès, and the famous fountain of Santa Clara.
If Pierre cannot come and find Inès as often as he would like, he sends her letters which arrive by boat on the small canal which winds along his garden.
Alfonso IV orders the assassination of Inès
Alfonso IV is aware of his son's secret marriage.
He is exasperated by this clandestine union which prevents him from remarrying officially.
Pierre has only one son of Constance.
And for the king, the children of Inès do not count, they are bastards.
His heir must therefore remarry with someone worthy of his rank and who more firmly secures his descendants.
We must therefore get rid of Inès ...
Who will decide on the execution of the young woman?
Is it the king alone?
Was he pushed by his advisers?
The fact remains that three gentlemen of her Court kill her while Pierre is hunting, January 7, 1355. The three murderers stab her during her favorite walk on the banks of the Rio Mondego.
The attack is incredibly violent.
Inès is stabbed multiple times, then beheaded.
The house where she lived will now be called Quinta das Lagrimas, the Villa of Tears.
Inès is buried in the church of the monastery of Santa Clara, in a tomb that we know is temporary.
Pierre is desperate for the death of his great love and he is especially furious with his father.
He won the north of the country and went into rebellion against Alfonso IV for two years.
With the brothers of Inès, he puts the north of Portugal to fire and blood.
His mother, Beatrice, however succeeds in reconciliation.
Pierre promises to forgive the perpetrators of the assassination.
Alfonso IV died two years later.
As soon as he was proclaimed king under the name of Peter I, he was quickly nicknamed the "Justice" or the "Cruel" because, in reality, he had not forgiven anything.
He finds two of Inès' assassins, refugees in Castile, Pero Coelho and Diego Lopes Pacheco.
The new sovereign orders that they be brought back to Portugal.
He himself witnesses their torture in Santarem.
A real horror!
Pierre believes that in order to have attacked his wife with so much cruelty, they should not have a heart.
He therefore demands that it be torn from them during their lifetime, one by the chest, the other by the shoulders!
The third assassin, Alvaro Gonçalvès, who had taken refuge beyond the Pyrenees, is the only one to escape this atrocious end.
It was not until 1361 that Pierre carried out the last act of his vengeance: the exhumation and the spectacular posthumous coronation of Inès, which I told you at the beginning of this story.
The tombs of Inès and Pierre
When you enter the nave of the Santa Maria church in the Alcobaça monastery today, you are impressed by its breadth and incomparable purity.
The largest church in Portugal, impressive in its nudity.
No side chapels, a total counting.
In the transept, one is then all the more surprised by the two immense tombs which face each other, that of Inès and that of Peter I.
Indeed, after the terrible coronation ceremony, Peter I wanted his wife to have the most impressive and the most beautiful of burials.
Its sarcophagus rests on griffins with male heads.
They represent his assassins.
The recumbent Inès, sublimely beautiful and wearing her crown, is supported by six angels.
The four sides of the tomb are surmounted by a frieze bearing the arms of Portugal and the Castro family.
On the sides are evoked various scenes from the life of Christ.
At the feet of the recumbent, a composition, bubbling with characters, illustrates the Last Judgment.
The tomb is installed in the left branch of the transept.
Peter I wanted his own tomb to be located opposite that of his beloved in the right branch.
The recumbent is severe.
Below, on its side faces, the monument recounts the life of Saint Bartholomew, patron saint of the king.
The apse is occupied by a very beautiful rosette representing the Wheel of Fortune or rather, according to some, scenes from the life of Inès and Pierre, a theme which continues on the frieze of the tomb.
They are face to face so that on the Day of Judgment, eye to eye, they exchange a look of love before rising from their tombs to enter eternal life.
After the accomplishment of his vengeance, the reign of Peter I will be harsh.
It seems he held Portugal with an iron fist.
He never remarried.
A mistress will give him another son, named Joao, in 1357, the year of his accession to the throne.
He will join his white marble tomb opposite that of Inès ten years later.
This is the son he had with Constance of Castile, Ferdinand, who succeeds him under the name of Ferdinand I.
Will the children of Inès and Pierre be erased from the history of Portugal?
Bibliographic resources:
Philippe Jullian,
The dead queens of Portugal
(
Robert Laffont, collection "Love and the Crown", 1964)
Portugal, empire of the seas
(Translated from Italian, French version by Gilles Ortlieb, Robert Laffont, 1982)
Jean des Cars,
Tragic couples in history
(Perrin, 2020)
"At the heart of History" is a Europe 1 Studio podcast
Author and presentation: Jean des Cars
Production: Timothée Magot
Distribution and editing: Clémence Olivier
Director: Jean-François Bussière
Graphics: Karelle Villais