Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-wg55d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-08T23:20:19.138Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 9 - How the king ordered the wife of Afonso André to be burnt, and concerning other acts of justice he ordered to be carried out

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 December 2023

Amélia P. Hutchinson
Affiliation:
University of Georgia
Juliet Perkins
Affiliation:
King's College London
Philip Krummrich
Affiliation:
Morehead State University, Kentucky
Get access

Summary

Who has heard of the kind of punishment the king inflicted on the wife of Afonso André, an honourable merchant who lived in Lisbon?

It was customary, when kings visited cities, for the merchants and other citizens to joust with the men from the Royal Court as part of the festivities. Whilst Afonso André was jousting in the Rua Nova, the king, who was present, having been informed with certainty that Afonso André's wife was deceiving him, deemed that the time was right to find her and catch her while she was in the very act. With great stealth and the help of spies she was seized, together with the man who was incriminated with her. The king had her burnt and him beheaded.

Afonso André, who was still jousting, was told of this as soon as he finished and he made his way to the king to complain about what he had done to him. When the king saw him, and before Afonso André could speak, he asked to be rewarded by the latter for what he had ordered to be carried out, explaining that he had taken revenge against Afonso André's cheating wife and the one who cuckolded him, and furthermore he knew better what she was than Afonso André himself.

What are we to say of Maria Roussada, a married woman whose husband had forced her to sleep with him – an act which was at that time termed as roussar (to rape) – for which deed he deserved to die?

He already had sons and daughters by her, and they both loved each other dearly. When the king heard her being called by such a name, he asked why that was. So he found out how it had all been and that they had both agreed to get married in order to avoid that deed being made public. To enforce justice, the king had the husband hanged, and his wife and children followed behind wailing.

When the king was in Braga, the pleas of those that were with him were of no avail to save the life of Álvaro Rodrigues de Grade, an honourable and well-born squire from the Minho province, who had cut the hoops of a poor farmer's vat of wine. No sooner did the king find this out than he ordered his head to be cut off.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Chronicles of Fernão Lopes
Volume 1. The Chronicle of King Pedro of Portugal
, pp. 86 - 88
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×