Birth of a Portuguese Princess (Who Married Her Nephew) on 25 July, 1746

It was on this day 273 years ago that the Infanta Maria Francisca Benedita of Portugal was born in Lisbon. She was the last born of the children of the then heir to the Portuguese throne, the Infante José, Prince of Brazil, and his Spanish Bourbon wife.

Now pay attention, good reader, because the story might get confusing.

After José became king in 1750, his only surviving children were 4 daughters: Maria Francisca (b. 1734), Maria Ana (b. 1736), Maria Dorotea (b. 1739) and Maria Benedita herself. The middle 2 girls never married, but the eldest and youngest ended up contracting incestuous marriages. Maria Francisca, now heiress presumptive to the throne and titled Princess of Brazil, married her paternal uncle, the Infante Pedro, in 1760. They had 6 children, including 2 surviving sons. The elder of them was the Infante José, Prince of Beira. When he was 15, in 1777, he was married off to his 30-year-old youngest aunt, Maria Benedita. Three days later, King José died, Maria Francisca succeeded as Queen Maria I, and young José became heir to the throne as Prince of Brazil, thus making his wife/aunt Princess of Brazil.

Got that?

Unfortunately, there would never be any children. Maria Benedita miscarried twice, and then her much-younger husband died in 1791. The Queen, already mentally unstable, was completely undone by the death of her beloved eldest son. She was declared insane in 1792 and her younger son, the Infante João, became Prince Regent for the rest of her reign, which ended on her death in 1816.

Maria Benedita, now Dowager Princess of Brazil, was also much affected by her husband/nephew’s death. She lived quietly for the rest of her long life, devoting herself to good works. In 1808, when the court was evacuated to Rio de Janeiro in the midst of the Napoleonic wars, she went along and remained in Brazil until her brother, now King João VI, returned to Lisbon in 1821. In her final years, she founded a military hospital for veterans at Runa, which still exists and where there is a museum in her honour in her former rooms.

Maria Benedita died in Lisbon on 18 August, 1829.

It was on this day 329 years ago, 22 October 1689, that the future John V, King of Portugal and the Algarves, was born in Lisbon.

John was the eldest surviving son of Peter II and Maria Sofia of Neuburg; their first-born son had died in the cradle. Maria Sofia died when John was only 10, plunging him into an extended period of melancholy. He revived only when his paternal aunt, Catherine of Braganza, the widow of Charles II, returned to Portugal from England and took charge of his upbringing. He experienced great grief again when Catherine died in 1705.

John V succeeded his father in 1706, aged only 17. It was his good fortune to come to the throne just as the great river of recently discovered Brazilian gold began to flow across the Atlantic into the royal coffers. John spent it lavishly, mostly on the church. Voltaire said of him that when he wanted to build, he built a convent, and when he wanted a mistress, he took a nun. The great philosophe did not exaggerate. John built the giant convent-palace of Mafra outside of Lisbon, and he fathered 3 illegitimate children by 3 different nuns. His great preoccupation was to increase Portugal’s standing as a Catholic power. To that end, he lobbied long, hard, and successfully, for Lisbon’s archbishopric to be raised to a patriarchate, and also for his own title to be changed, by papal decree, to “His Most Faithful Majesty, the King of Portugal and the Algarves.”

To his great credit, John V also built the Lisbon aqueduct, the largest one built since Roman times. It has assured Lisbon’s water supply ever since.

Among John V’s legitimate children by his wife, Maria Anna of Austria, sister of the emperors Joseph I and Charles VI, were the future kings Joseph I and Peter III, as well as Barbara, queen consort of Spain.

As princesses go, Maria Sofia von Neuburg was a very insignificant one at the time of her birth in 1666.  Her father, Duke Philipp Wilhelm, though a member of the illustrious house of Wittelsbach, was merely the Duke of Neuburg, a very small state on the banks of the Danube in southern Germany.  Other branches of the family ruled the larger, richer states of the Palatinate and Bavaria.  In fact, they were very nearly sovereigns, except that that they nominally owed allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna.  Diminishing Maria Sofia’s prospects even further, she was not even an heiress.  Women could not inherit the duchy, and in any case she was only one of seventeen children.

The ducal palace in Neuburg. Credit: Mendli at German Wikipedia – own work of Mendli, Originally from de.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1728849

Things began to look up for Maria Sofia and her siblings when their relative the Elector Palatine died sonless in 1685 and Duke Philipp Wilhelm succeeded him.  The family duly moved to the Palatine capital at Heidelberg.

Following on from last week’s post about the house, today we visit the beautiful gardens of the Palacio Fronteira in Lisbon.

The most famous part of the gardens is undoubtedly the tile-lined water tank.

The water tank at the Palacio Fronteira, Lisbon, in April, 2016.

The upper walk is known as the Gallery of Kings, after the busts of Portugal’s monarchs set in the niches of the blue-tiled wall.

The Leal Senado building in Macau isn’t quite as iconic as the ruins of the church of São Paulo, but it comes close.  The square in front of it is perhaps more famous.

  Senado Square in Macau as seen from a window on the upper floor of the Leal Senado building, 2014.

The building itself is a handsome Portuguese baroque-style edifice.  Nowadays a busy thoroughfare runs directly in front of it, which you have to cross to get to the square, and vice-versa.

The Basilica da Estrela with its elegant white façade is my favourite church in Lisbon — no small compliment in a city that fancies itself a second Rome.

The façade of the Basilica da Estrela in western Lisbon with tram #28 at bottom right.

If you’re starting from central Lisbon, it’s quite easy to find.  Just get on the famous #28 tram, heading westwards.  The terminal stop is right in front of the Basilica, as you can see in the photo above.

Wandering in Porto last spring, I came across this antiquarian bookshop, Livraria Moreira da Costa.  As the sign says, it was founded in 1902.

Livraria Moreira da Costa, an antiquarian bookshop in Porto.

I can’t resist any kind of bookshop, but especially not a secondhand one, and certainly not an antiquarian one.  As I discovered on closer inspection of the shop window, Moreira da Costa is in fact the last-named kind of bookshop.

Antiquarian titles in the window of Moreira da Costa.

On this day in 1689 was born one of the longest-reigning kings of Portugal, Dom João V, or John V.

He was not yet 18 when he succeeded to the throne on the death his father, Dom Pedro II, in 1706.  His mother having died years before, he was close to his aunt, Caterina, the Dowager Queen of England, known to English speakers as Catherine of Braganza.  He relied heavily on her advice until her sudden death within a year of his father’s.

Catherine of Braganza, Dowager Queen of England.

Dom João married an Austrian archduchess and reigned until he was struck down by a stroke in 1750, when he was succeeded by his eldest son Dom José.   Dom João interests us here at Versailles Century because he was a great builder and patron of the arts.

The Versailles Century (1682-1789) played out all over the world, thanks in large part to the colonial empires of the European powers, particularly Spain and Portugal.  The latter’s easternmost possession, Macau, is home to the beautiful St. Joseph’s Church.

Macau’s most famous church is of course St. Paul’s, of which only the iconic facade remains.  Most visitors to Macau see (or are taken to see) no other church.

The world-famous ruined facade of St. Paul’s, the iconic sight of Macau.

The victim of a catastrophic fire in 1834, St. Paul’s had also previously been the home of the first European institution of higher learning in the Far East, St. Paul’s College.

Hotel: Pestana Palacio do Freixo, also known as the Pousada do Porto.

Address: Estrada Nacional 108, 4300, Campanha, Porto, Porto e Norte, Portugal (about 4km from the centre of Porto).

Website: http://www.pestana.com/en/hotel/freixo-palace/

Rating: Excellent.

The most famous facade of the Palacio do Freixo.

I stayed at the Palacio for one night at the beginning of April, 2016.  Run by Pestana Hotels, the Palacio is classified as a national monument, and is also a member of Portugal’s national association of pousadas.

Reception: The check-in process was very smooth.  As soon as I entered the lobby, I was ushered to a comfortable chair in front of the reception desk in a chamber next to the Moorish lobby.  Although the formalities took only a few minutes, I was served a small glass of port.  The young man who had first greeted me at the door also showed me to my room.  This was a nice touch and probably necessary because the layout of the Palacio is complicated.

Flower arrangement in the Moorish lobby. Reception is to the left.