"Demonstrações de benquerença”

A prática da misericórdia na guerra (Portugal nos séculos XIV e XV)

Abstract

Between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, recommendations on merciful exercises circulated in Christian kingdoms based on a significant and heterogeneous set of texts, such as chronicles, moralizing treatises and legal works. In Portugal, specifically, the intensification of care practices occurred mainly as a result of the wars against Christians in Castile and against the Moors in North Africa, added to the great plague, famine resulting from agricultural crises and frequent natural catastrophes. The wars, in particular, aggravated poverty, imposing a generalized rise in prices, which motivated unity and mutual aid. Taking this phenomenon in the Portuguese kingdom as a starting point, the objective of this article is to present, above all, the acts of mercy and assistance to the neighbor in war, namely in the Fernandine wars against Castile and in the wars against the Moors, from the chronicles, edifying treatises and legal works.