On The Way To The Empire: The Portuguese Diplomacy Of The Late Middle Ages (original) (raw)
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Diplomatic correspondence and the information transmitted through letters of instruction, which gave diplomats the necessary support for the performance of their duties, have become a highly important subject in the study of medieval diplomacy. In documents of this type, we can find some quite remarkable and valuable information about what could or could not be said in diplomatic contexts, outlining the rituals, attitudes, and procedures that a diplomat was required to adopt in the course of his international mission. Together with the letters of instruction, diplomats also carried with them letters of credence (commonly known as credentials). These were the documents that the various monarchs gave to their legitimate representatives, and which were designed to be presented at the courts visited by each diplomatic mission. These letters were essential for guaranteeing the correct conduct of negotiations, since, besides presenting the diplomats and expressing the wish that they be afforded credence in their role, these documents also explained the purpose of their missions. Thus, letters of instruction and credence are fundamental tools that enable historians to complete the picture of external relations through the description that they provide of other aspects of communication and symbolic representation, which sometimes tend to go unnoticed in different types of documents. In order to better understand certain fundamental aspects of this analysis, we complemented the information obtained from the aforementioned documentation with data from other documentary sources that indicate some of the protocols that were used in dealings with princes and kings of other realms, as well as the specific characteristics that some of the royal counsellors should have.
e-journal of Portuguese History, vol. 17, n.1, 2019
Diplomatic correspondence and the information transmitted through letters of instruction, which gave diplomats the necessary support for the performance of their duties, have become a highly important subject in the study of medieval diplomacy. In documents of this type, we can find some quite remarkable and valuable information about what could or could not be said in diplomatic contexts, outlining the rituals, attitudes, and procedures that a diplomat was required to adopt in the course of his international mission. Together with the letters of instruction, diplomats also carried with them letters of credence (commonly known as credentials). These were the documents that the various monarchs gave to their legitimate representatives, and which were designed to be presented at the courts visited by each diplomatic mission. These letters were essential for guaranteeing the correct conduct of negotiations, since, besides presenting the diplomats and expressing the wish that they be afforded credence in their role, these documents also explained the purpose of their missions. Thus, letters of instruction and credence are fundamental tools that enable historians to complete the picture of external relations through the description that they provide of other aspects of communication and symbolic representation, which sometimes tend to go unnoticed in different types of documents. In order to better understand certain fundamental aspects of this analysis, we complemented the information obtained from the aforementioned documentation with data from other documentary sources that indicate some of the protocols that were used in dealings with princes and kings of other realms, as well as the specific characteristics that some of the royal counsellors should have. Keywords Letter of instruction; letter of credence; diplomacy; ambassador; protocol; Middle Ages Resumo A correspondência e troca de informações, através das cartas de instrução que davam o suporte necessário à atuação de um diplomata, constitui um tema da maior 1 A first version of this work was presented at Splendid
2019
EnglishDiplomatic correspondence and the information transmitted through letters of instruction, which gavediplomatsthe necessary support for the performance of their duties, have become a highly important subject in the study of medieval diplomacy. In documents of this type, we can find some quite remarkable and valuable information about what could or could not be said in diplomatic contexts, outlining the rituals, attitudes, and procedures that a diplomat was required to adopt in the course of his international mission. Together with the letters of instruction, diplomats also carried with them letters of credence (commonly known ascredentials). These werethe documents that the various monarchs gave to their legitimate representatives, and which were designed to be presented at the courts visited by each diplomatic mission. These letters were essential for guaranteeing the correct conduct of negotiations, since, besides presenting the diplomats and expressing the wish that they be...
Susana Oliveira, 2020
In June 1567, Elizabeth I sent Dr. Thomas Wilson on a diplomatic assignment to Lisbon. His mission was to present before the Portuguese king and his court the English Queen’s displeasure and firm protest against the Portuguese conduct at sea: she simply could not approve of Portugal’s ‘innovative’ policies, which included sinking English ships, seizing their cargo and imprisoning their crews. The fact that English privateers had been endangering the Portuguese economy and the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance for decades was an irrelevant coincidence of sea strategy, a matter that the English emissary would have to avoid at all costs. Therefore, significant political and economic complexities, as well as disagreements, underlined Wilson’s diplomatic mission. The English ambassador finally arrived in Lisbon on the 5th of October, after having endured a terrible storm at sea, only to admit himself directly in a hospital. There, he was visited by Ayres Cardoso, the Portuguese ambassador he had formerly met in London, who welcomed him on behalf of the King. In his letter to Cecil, Wilson mentions a second visitor, a man of the Inquisition, and his message of warning: “Well then, I caution you to conduct yourself piously and to not arise amongst us any schism.” Religious asymmetries distanced the two kingdoms even farther, while simultaneously emphasised the role of diplomacy in the establishment of a common ground of understanding, a bridge between two worlds. Based on Wilson’s mission to Lisbon, this paper explores the Anglo-Portuguese diplomatic correspondence and the exchange of ambassadorial missions between the courts of Portugal and England in the 16th century.
The aim of this text is to review the research undertaken in Portugal on the question of the medieval royal chancellery and diplomacy and their relationship with the study of royal bureaucracy. In this sense, we characterize the lines of development that are to be noted in the research undertaken into political societies and royal power based on the records of the royal chancellery in the last thirty years. Initially, we focus our attention on the relationship established between the royal chancellery and diplomacy and later we highlight the main themes and problems studied under the scope of the social history of institutions. Finally, we refer to the use of prosopography as a method applied to the study of medieval Portuguese elites. Key-words: royal chancellery and diplomacy; royal power; political elites; historiography; Portugal; Middle Ages.
2009
The aim of this text is to review the research undertaken in Portugal on the question of the medieval royal chancellery and diplomacy and their relationship with the study of royal bureaucracy. In this sense, we characterize the lines of development that are to be noted in the research undertaken into political societies and royal power based on the records of the royal chancellery in the last thirty years. Initially, we focus our attention on the relationship established between the royal chancellery and diplomacy and later we highlight the main themes and problems studied under the scope of the social history of institutions. Finally, we refer to the use of prosopography as a method applied to the study of medieval Portuguese elites.
Prince Pedro of Portugal's Diplomacy in the Fifteenth-Century Monarchical State: A Baronial Pursuit?
Anales de la Universidad de Alicante: Historia Medieval, 2015
In 1438 Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, was second-in-line to the Portuguese throne. The death of his elder brother Duarte had left the royal seat vacant and Pedro, a middle-aged, powerful magnate was elected as regent for Duarte’s son Afonso, the boy of six to whom the crown fell. First as the co-regent and then single-handedly, Pedro governed over Portugal and its elites during a decade marked in turn by contentment and upheaval, as much as by courtly struggles between aristocratic factions. In 1449, amidst accusations of lese-majesty and of favouring his own, Pedro would meet a bitter end in the field of battle, at the hands of his young nephew, King Afonso V, seemingly manipulated by an influential clique of enemies to the regent. This paper will examine Pedro of Coimbra and some of the men surrounding him during his political career (c. 1416 to 1449), in particular those employed as «diplomats» in foreign service. It will trace three different stages in Pedro’s trajectory — as a prince in the making, as the king’s counsellor, and finally as regent of the Portuguese kingdom — in order to question the extent to which a leading magnate of the fifteenth century was able to project his political influence in tandem with, or in reaction to, royal power. Ultimately, the paper highlights the co-existence, and indeed the overlap, between royal and non-royal diplomatic ambitions and the strains and challenges that it caused in the politics and diplomacy of Portugal in this period.
Diplomatic Relations:: Portugal and the Others
2011
And yet, we know that they made strategic decisions concerning the best alliances at any given time, we know they assessed carefully the support and protection from and to their neighbouring kingdoms, we are aware that they consulted qualified legal experts before sending envoys in missions which today we would classify, unhesitatingly as diplomatic missions, and that there were formal meetings between kings, and between these and emperors, and between their representatives and those of the remaining powers, including the spiritual one. We know that such meetings were well prepared, though we know nothing on how they actually happened, or on what was going on in the backstage. We also have a very limited view of how formal these relations and meetings were, or of how formal it was considered that they should be, as well as of the means used in to influence and infiltrate the course of events, on the negotiations and their evolution. These questions have worried most of the historians currently engaged in this type of study and that has been one of the strongest reasons for resorting to prosopographical and historical philological analysis, as well as to the study of the conditions of document production, increasingly reliable in the task of probing, in accurate form, the meanders and mechanisms of these negotiations and their agents. Historians have not always been so prudent in their manner of dealing with the reality of eight hundred years ago. In the nineteenth century, very much in line with what French, Italian and German contemporaries were doing', the Visconde de Santarém did not hesitate to entitle his work, Quadro elementar das relações políticas e diplomáticas de Portugal com as diversas potências do mundo desde o princípio da monarquia até aos nossos dias 2. He drew his "elementary" scheme into eighteen volumes, for which it seemed as natural to him to use the term "political and diplomatic relations" for the "beginning of the monarchy" as for the time in which he was writing, and for which it seemed as appropriate to use the concept of "world powers" for the political reality of the twelfth century as for the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This work by the Visconde de Santarém did have certain virtues, nonetheless. It called attention to the existence of certain long-lasting currents in diplomatic relations, which had existed since the origins of Portugal, and it tried to place these relations within a political web which brought together what had happened to and in Portugal within a vast network on a "European" scale, including them in a broad