Maia's Into The Moonlight

PEDRO AND INÊS – A Portuguese Medieval Love Story


Shakespeare wishes. On my trip to the north of Portugal I have been criss-crossing with one of the most beautiful love stories of the Middle Ages, which took place 200 years before Shakespeare’s fable of “Romeo and Juliet”. The Pedro and Inês love story is not only true but fully documented.

It started in 1340, when the heir to the throne of Portugal, Prince Pedro, was 20 years old.

His father, King Afonso IV, the 7th King of the newly created nation of Portugal, had secretly arranged by proxy the marriage of his son to Lady Constanza, a Castillian Princess. Pedro had not been consulted or informed of his arranged marriage because there had been an earlier episode of repudiation. When he was 14 and laid eyes on another Castillian Princess his father had planned to marry him to, he revolted and had the Princess returned to Spain. This time Pedro’s father had arranged that Lady Constanza arrive in Portugal as Pedro’s official wife and future Queen. The Prince was enraged with this “fait accompli”.

When Princess Constanza arrived, Pedro was smitten by one of her ladies-in-waiting, Inês de Castro. In the words of his chronicler, Inês was “...beautiful as a flower, blond as the sun, and extremely elegant.” Pedro fell madly, rapturously in love with her and they became inseparable lovers. The resulting scandal was such that the king ordered his son to stop seeing Inês. Pedro ignored his father’s demand and hid Inês in a castle away from the court.

This situation continued with the mounting disapproval of the King’s counselors, who began insinuating that the only solution was to kill Inês. Afonso IV resisted and instead exiled the young woman to Spain. The lovers were separated for two years, but Pedro, who had a deep romantic streak, stayed strongly connected to Inês through countless poems and love letters he wrote for her.

Princess Constanza died in 1345 while giving birth to a son. Poor Constanza, hers was an unhappy lot. Pedro immediately sent for Inês, ensconcing her in the Santa Clara convent in Coimbra, where Pedro thought she would be protected from the King and his counselors. The lovers met secretly at the nearby Quinta das Lágrimas – the Manor of Tears. Pedro insistently asked the King and the Pope for permission to marry Inês, but his requests were always denied.

With Princess Constanza’s death, Afonso IV’s advisors insisted on Inês’s demise so that Pedro would forget his obsession and consent to marry a princess who would ensure a peace treaty with the Kingdom of Castile.

Finally the King and three advisors planned her murder in all secrecy. They traveled to Coimbra, waited in hiding until the lovers, Inês and Pedro, bid farewell at the Fountain of Tears, and Pedro went off hunting. The assassins chopped her head off in the early morning of January 7, 1355.

Fountain of Tears

The death of his beloved Inês brought out Pedro’s dark side. He was profoundly altered by her murder and vowed to take revenge on her assassins. But he waited until he became King in 1357 upon his father’s death. The three murderers meanwhile fled Portugal, because they knew they would not be safe, and disappeared in Spain.

As soon as he became King Pedro I, with his heart black as tar, Pedro had Inês’s killers hunted down in Spain and brought back to Portugal. Two were found, but the third escaped to France. Pedro had the two men brought before him in the presence of his full court and had their hearts ripped out, one from the front, the other from the back. He then called for vinegar and bit into the still beating hot hearts of the assassins to inflict further insult.

The nobles of the court, the Pope and even Spanish Kings urged Pedro to re-marry, but he refused, saying that he needed time to honor Inês’s memory. Pedro had other ideas.

Seven years after Inês’s death, Pedro, claiming that he had married her in secret and that she was the true Queen of Portugal, had her body exhumed and, covered with a veil, sat on the throne next to his. The royal crown was placed on her head and Pedro ordered all the court nobles to kneel and kiss the dead Queen’s hand.

Pedro also had two magnificent stone sarcophagi sculpted, one for Inês and one for himself, and placed in the Monastery of Alcobaça. The tombs, his and Inês’s, were to be placed foot to foot so that when Judgment Day came and all souls would rise up, they would see each other before anything else.

Pedro took an interest in every symbolic message on the sarcophagi – down to the detail of having effigies of her assassins carved to support her sarcophagus, so they would bear the weight of their sin forever. The tombs, which can be seen today in the Monastery of Alcobaça, are wonderful. And to stand between them, looking from foot to foot, you almost wish you could be there on Judgment Day.

The effigy of one Inês’s murderers bearing the weight of his sin.

The Medieval depiction of the judgement of souls at the foot of Inês’s tomb.

The angels are to help Pedro and Inês rise up on Judgment Day.