Portugal

By 1500 three national clerico-military orders existed in Portugal: The Order of Christ, with its headquarters at Tomar; the Order of Santiago, based at Palmela; and the Order of São Bento de Avis, at Avis. Except for the Order of Christ, founded in 1319, they had their origins in the twelfth century and played major roles in the reconquest of Portugal from the Muslims. Each of the orders had members living a monastic life as well as warrior-monks living in the world and fighting the infidel. All members made vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. From the beginning, knights of Santiago could marry. However, it was not until 1496 that Pope Alexander VI allowed knights of the orders of Christ and Avis to do the same. By the dawn of the sixteenth century, the vows had been so diluted that the spiritual obligations of the knights were little more than those required of devout Christians.

By that time, the military orders had long since lost their original reason for existence. In the years since the reconquest, the orders had taken on new dimensions. In the sixteenth century, the immense wealth of the orders was used by the Portuguese monarchs to reward royal service. The granting of knighthoods in the orders had become an important tool of royal patronage. At the same time, these knighthoods were highly desired and were symbols of high social rank. Possession of commanderies in the order was even more prestigious as well as lucrative. Members showed great pride in wearing the habits of their respective orders with their distinctive crosses, and they included these insignia in their portraits. Acknowledgment of membership in one of the Portuguese military orders was frequently made in official documents and correspondence of the time. By 1551, when the papacy made King João III and his successors perpetual masters, governors, and administrators of the three Portuguese military orders, the number of new knights in each order had increased significantly, and the Order of Christ was the largest and most prestigious of the three.

Knights, along with their parents and grandparents, were expected to be noble, with no history of manual labor or artisan activity. They also had to be of "pure blood," that is to say, free from any Jewish or Muslim heritage. Background investigations of candidates were undertaken to ensure that these standards were met. By 1572, with the issuance of purity of blood statutes for the three military orders, membership also became desirable as a proof of this purity. During the next hundred years, the great majority of candidates with "New Christian" (converted Jewish) ancestry were denied entrance into the orders, although dispensations were provided for a select few. However, these exceptions ceased shortly after Prince Pedro seized the throne from his brother, King Afonso VI, in 1667. Dispensations became easier to obtain for defects of nobility, especially as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries progressed. Key provisos were that the service being rewarded by the crown be significant and personal and that the non-noble heritage not be grossly base. Since a knighthood in a military order automatically ennobled, membership was greatly desired by those commoners having pretensions to nobility.

The reformed statutes of all three orders, which went into effect in the late 1620s, also required that prospective members be of legitimate birth, have no pagan ancestry, be no younger than eighteen nor older than fifty years of age, and be in good health. Dispensations from these last requirements were usually easy to obtain. As master of all three orders, the king could grant dispensations to whomever he wished. Usually, he followed the advice of the Mesa Da Consciência E Ordens, which was the watchdog over the standards of the orders. This is the reason that a significant number of men who were awarded memberships, especially those lacking nobility or purity of blood, never received the necessary authorization to become knights. The award of membership in the order did not guarantee the actual receipt of knighthood.

As the years of Portuguese exploration and discovery brought into being a vast maritime empire, the crown was accustomed to use the military orders to reward services performed in North Africa, the Estado da India, West Africa, and on armadas, as well as on the Iberian Peninsula. As the Portuguese crown established a solid presence in America, Brazilian services also had to be acknowledged. Some of the earliest known Brazilian services rewarded with knighthoods in the military orders were those involving the capture of Rio de Janeiro from the French and its early settlement. The third governor-general of Brazil, Mem de Sá; his nephew, Estácio de Sá; and Cristóvão de Barros, son of Portuguese America's first provedor-mor da fazenda (chief treasury official), were awarded knighthoods in the Order of Christ in 1566. Salvador de Sá, another nephew of the governor-general, was awarded a knighthood in the Order of Santiago in 1574, after completing a three-year term as governor of Rio de Janeiro (1568–1571). His grandson, sixteen-year-old Salvador Correia de Sá E Benavides, was awarded a similar knighthood in 1618 while residing in Brazil. Both later transferred to the Order of Christ.

The French threat to Maranhão and Pará, the Dutch capture of the Brazilian capital of Bahia in 1624, and the Dutch wars in the rest of northeastern Brazil (1630–1654) provided opportunities for a growing number of Brazilian-born and longtime residents of Brazil to become knights in the orders of Christ, Santiago, and Avis. During the reign of King João IV (1640–1656), when some knights of the Order of Christ—most of them sugar planters—claimed that they were exempt from paying tithes on sugar because of the special relationship the Order of Christ had with Portuguese America, Brazilian residents, especially those with extensive properties, were allowed to become knights only of Santiago and Avis. After the controversy ended in 1658, a small percentage of these knights were allowed to transfer to the Order of Christ.

In the aftermath of the Dutch wars, the percentage of Brazilians who became knights in one of the three military order seems to have decreased. Those fighting hostile Indians or the runaway slaves resisting capture at Palmares and those opening up new territories were occasionally awarded such knighthoods. Memberships in the military orders were also used as dowries. A number of wealthy Brazilian merchants and sugar plantation owners without significant services of their own married women for these dowries. A handful of Brazilian Indians, as well as mulattoes, became knights in the military orders. But, because of the stigma of slavery, no blacks, even the few who were awarded knighthoods, actually became members. Most of the governors-general and viceroys were already knights and commanders in one of the three orders before they arrived in America. An increasing number of judges on the high court, governors of captaincies, and other important officials were also knights or were promised knighthoods for agreeing to serve in Brazil. As time went on, it was not unusual for the crown to hold out similar promises of knighthoods to lesser officials, surgeons, and officers in militias and garrisons as an encouragement to accept Brazilian service. Most of these men were not born in Brazil, although many developed close ties with the country.

The Order of Christ also played another role in Brazil, which it did not share with the orders of Santiago and Avis. The head of the Order of Christ had ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Portuguese America. While Prince Henry (the Navigator) was master, Pope Calixtus III, by the bull "Inter Caetera," of 13 March 1456, gave the Order of Christ spiritual jurisdiction over all regions conquered or to be conquered by the Portuguese. Beginning with Manuel I, who was master of the order before he became king in 1495 and continued to be so after his coronation, all kings of Portugal were also masters, governors, and administrators of the Order of Christ. With the discovery of Brazil by Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500, Portuguese America thus came under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Order of Christ.

See alsoCatholic Church: The Colonial Periodxml .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The best overall treatment of the Portuguese military orders is found in Fortunato De Almeida, História da igreja em Portugal, 4 vols. (1967–1971). For aspects of the social history of the military orders, see Francis A. Dutra, "Membership in the Order of Christ in the Seventeenth Century: Its Rights, Privileges, and Obligations," in The Americas 27, no. 1 (1970): 3-25. See also his "Blacks and the Search for Rewards and Status in Seventeenth-Century Brazil," in Proceedings of the Pacific Coast Council on Latin American Studies 6 (1977–1979): 25-35. The effects of the Dutch wars on the demands for rewards are discussed in Cleonir Xavier De Albuquerque, A remuneração de serviços da guerra Holandesa (1968). See also Francis A. Dutra, "Evolution of the Portuguese Order of Santiago, 1492–1600," in Mediterranean Studies 4 (1994): 63-72.

Additional Bibliography

Dutra, Francis A. Military Orders in the Early Modern Portuguese World: The Orders of Christ, Santiago, and Avis. Aldershit, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2006.

                                     Francis A. Dutra