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Private Properties, Seigniorial Tributes, and Jurisdictional Rents: The Income of the Queens of Portugal in the Late Middle Ages

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Women and Wealth in Late Medieval Europe

Part of the book series: The New Middle Ages ((TNMA))

Abstract

The Kingdom of Portugal emerged in the twelfth century as a result of the territorial and political development of a previous county of the Kingdom of Leon. Since then and until the last decade of the fifteenth century, there were thirteen queens-consorts in this realm. Most of them came from other kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula (table 11.1) and their marriages tended to be a result of war and peace negotiations between Portugal and a neighbor contender or ally. Some of the marriage contracts were settled in battlefields to avoid war; others were negotiated to assure an alliance against a mutual enemy. Even the union between Philippa of Lancaster (queen, 1387–1415) and João I of Portugal (king, 1383–1433), which might seem a singular case at first sight, fits entirely in this scenario. Philippa was the daughter of a famous character of the fourteenth-century history of England, John of Gaunt, who called himself “King of Castile and Leon,”1 and claimed the Castilian throne for himself and his wife, Constance of Castile. With this marriage, he wanted to grant the support of his Portuguese son-in-law to his pretensions while João I expected to enlarge the boundaries of his kingdom and to secure its autonomy.2

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Notes

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Authors
  1. Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues
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  2. Manuela Santos Silva
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Theresa Earenfight

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© 2010 Theresa Earenfight

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Rodrigues, A.M.S.A., Silva, M.S. (2010). Private Properties, Seigniorial Tributes, and Jurisdictional Rents: The Income of the Queens of Portugal in the Late Middle Ages. In: Earenfight, T. (eds) Women and Wealth in Late Medieval Europe. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230106017_12

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