John IV of Portugal

John IV (Portuguese: João,[1] pronounced [ʒuˈɐ̃w̃]; 19 March 1604 – 6 November 1656), nicknamed John the Restorer (Portuguese: João o Restaurador), was the King of Portugal whose reign, lasting from 1640 until his death, led to the Portuguese "restoration" of independence from Spanish rule. His accession established the house of Braganza on the Portuguese throne, and marked the end of the 60-year-old Iberian Union, by which Portugal and Spain shared the same monarch.

John IV
Portrait by Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1628.
King of Portugal
Reign1 December 1640 – 6 November 1656
Acclamation15 December 1640
PredecessorPhilip III
SuccessorAfonso VI
Duke of Braganza
Tenure29 November 1630 – 27 October 1645
PredecessorTeodósio II
SuccessorTeodósio, Prince of Brazil
Born(1604-03-19)19 March 1604
Ducal Palace of Vila Viçosa, Portugal
Died6 November 1656(1656-11-06) (aged 52)
Ribeira Palace, Portugal
Burial
Pantheon of the Braganzas
SpouseLuisa de Guzmán (m. 1633)
Issue
among others...		Teodósio, Prince of Brazil
Joana, Princess of Beira
Catherine, Queen of England
Afonso VI, King of Portugal
Peter II, King of Portugal
DynastyBraganza
FatherTeodósio II, Duke of Braganza
MotherAna de Velasco y Girón
ReligionRoman Catholicism
Signature

Before becoming king, he was John II, 8th Duke of Braganza. He was the grandson of Catherine, Duchess of Braganza,[2] a claimant to the crown during the Portuguese succession crisis of 1580. On the eve of his death in 1656, the Portuguese Empire reached its territorial zenith, spanning the globe.[3]

Early life
Portrait of D. John IV as an Infant; Pedro Américo, 1879.

John IV was born at Vila Viçosa and succeeded his father Teodósio II as Duke of Braganza[4] when the latter died insane in 1630. He married Luisa de Guzmán (1613–66), eldest daughter of Juan Manuel Pérez de Guzmán, 8th Duke of Medina Sidonia, in 1633. John was described as having blonde hair, and an average height.[5]

Reign

Accession
The Acclamation of the King John IV, Veloso Salgado, 1908.
Panel of glazed tiles by Jorge Colaço (1940), representing the acclamation of King John IV of Portugal, in 1640. Ponte de Lima, Portugal

When Philip II of Portugal (III of Spain) died, he was succeeded by his son Philip III (IV of Spain), who had a different approach to Portuguese issues. Taxes on the Portuguese merchants were raised, the Portuguese nobility began to lose its influence and government posts in Portugal were increasingly occupied by Spaniards. Ultimately, Philip III tried to make Portugal a Spanish province, meaning Portuguese nobles stood to lose all of their power.

This situation culminated in a revolution organized by the nobility and the bourgeoisie, executed on 1 December 1640, fifty-nine years after the accession of Philip II of Spain to the throne of Portugal. A plot was planned by several associates, known as the Forty Conspirators, who killed the Secretary of State, Miguel de Vasconcelos, and imprisoned the king's cousin, Margaret of Savoy, the Vicereine of Portugal, governing the country in the King's name. Philip's troops were at the time fighting the Thirty Years' War and also dealing with a revolution in Catalonia which severely hampered Spain's ability to quash the rebellion.

Within a matter of hours and with popular support, John, then the 8th Duke of Braganza, was acclaimed as King John IV of Portugal (as legend goes, with the persuasion of his wife) claiming legitimate succession through his grandmother Catherine, Duchess of Braganza.[6] The ensuing conflict with Spain brought Portugal into the Thirty Years' War as, at least, a peripheral player. From 1641 to 1668, the period during which the two nations were at war, Spain sought to isolate Portugal militarily and diplomatically, and Portugal tried to find the resources to maintain its independence through political alliances and maintenance of its colonial income.

Restoration War

His accession led to a protracted war with neighbouring Spain, a conflict known as the Portuguese Restoration War, which ended with the recognition of Portuguese independence in a subsequent reign (1668).[7] Portugal signed lengthy alliances with France (1 June 1641) and Sweden (August 1641) but by necessity its only contributions in the Thirty Years' War were in the field against Spain and against Dutch encroachments on the Portuguese colonies.

The period from 1640 to 1668 was marked by periodic skirmishes between Portugal and Spain, as well as short episodes of more serious warfare, much of it occasioned by Spanish and Portuguese entanglements with non-Iberian powers. Spain was involved in the Thirty Years' War until 1648 and the Franco–Spanish War until 1659, while Portugal was involved in the Dutch–Portuguese War until 1663. In Spain, a Portuguese invasion force defeated the Spanish at Montijo, near Badajoz, in 1644.

Imperial Recovery

Abroad, the Dutch took Portuguese Malacca (January 1641), and the Sultan of Oman captured Muscat (1650). Nevertheless, the Portuguese, despite having to divide their forces among Europe, Brazil and Africa, managed to retake Luanda, in Portuguese Angola, from the Dutch in 1648 and, by 1654, had recovered northern Brazil, which effectively ceased to be a Dutch colony.

Death and legacy

King John IV died in 1656 and was succeeded by his son Afonso VI. His daughter, Catherine of Braganza, married King Charles II of England.[2]

John was a patron of music and the arts, and wrote with considerable sophistication on music; in addition to this, he was a composer. During his reign he collected one of the largest libraries in the world, but it was destroyed in the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. Among his writings is a defense of Palestrina, and a Defense of Modern Music (Lisbon, 1649).[8] One famous composition attributed to him is a setting of the Crux fidelis, a work that remains highly popular during Holy Week amongst church choirs. However, no known manuscript of the work exists, and it was first published only in 1869, in France. On stylistic grounds, it is generally recognized that the work was written in the 19th century.[9]

In 1646, John IV proclaimed Mary, in her conception as the Immaculate Conception (the 'Immaculata'), the Patroness of Portugal by royal decree of the House of Braganza.[10] The doctrine had appeared in the Middle Ages and had been fiercely debated in the 15th and 16th centuries, but a bull issued in 1616 by Pope Paul V finally "[forbade] anyone to teach or preach a contrary opinion."[11] Three years later, in 1649, the iconography of the Immaculata was established by Francisco Pacheco (1564–1654), a Spanish artistic advisor to the Inquisition, based on Revelation XII:1.[12]

Marriages and descendants

John married Luisa de Guzmán,[13] daughter of Juan Manuel Pérez de Guzmán, 8th Duke of Medina-Sidonia. From that marriage several children were born. Because some of John's children were born and died before their father became king they are not considered infantes or infantas (heirs to the throne) of Portugal.

NameBirthDeathNotes
By Luisa de Guzmán (13 October 1613 – 27 February 1666; married on 12 January 1633)
Infante Teodósio8 February 163413 May 1653Prince of Brazil and 9th Duke of Braganza. Died young.
Ana de Bragança21 January 163521 January 1635 
Infanta Joana (Joan)18 September 163517 November 1653 
Infanta Catherine (Catarina)25 November 163831 December 1705Commonly known as Catherine of Braganza. Queen consort through marriage to Charles II of England.
Manuel de Bragança6 September 16406 September 1640 
Infante Afonso21 August 164312 September 1683Prince of Brazil and 10th Duke of Braganza. Succeeded him as Afonso VI, King of Portugal.
Infante Peter (Pedro)26 April 16489 December 1706Duke of Beja, Constable of the Kingdom, Lord of the Casa do Infantado and Regent of the Kingdom before succeeding his brother Afonso as Peter II, King of Portugal.
Illegitimate offspring
Maria de Bragança30 April 16447 February 1693Natural daughter.

See: Curse of the Braganzas

Ancestry

References
  1. Also rendered as Joam in Archaic Portuguese
  2. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Portugal" . Encyclopædia Britannica. 22 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 148.
  3. D.A. Brading (24 September 1993). The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots and the Liberal State 1492-1866. Cambridge University Press. p. 213. ISBN 978-0-521-44796-6.
  4. Dyer, Thomas Henry (1877). 1593–1721. p. 340.
  5. Sousa 1741, Vol VII, p. 238.
  6. Davenport, Frances Gardiner (2004). European Treaties Bearing on the History of the United States and Its Dependencies to 1648. The Lawbook Exchange. p. 324. ISBN 978-1584774228.
  7. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "John IV." . Encyclopædia Britannica. 15 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 444.
  8. John IV, King of Portugal (1965) [1649]. Ribeiro, Mário de Sampayo (ed.). Defensa de la musica moderna contra la errada opinion del Obispo Cyrilo Franco [Defense of modern music against the mistaken opinion of Bishop Cyrilo Franco]. Acta Universitatis Conimbrigensis (in Spanish) (reprint ed.). Portugal: University of Coimbra. ISBN 9789726160564. OCLC 258290532. View digitized copy of originai 1649 book
  9. Grove Dictionary of Music: Doubtful: Crux fidelis, 4vv, D-Dlb; ed. G. Schmitt, Anthologie universelle de musique sacrée (Paris, 1869); ed. J. Santos, A polifonia clássica portuguesa (Lisbon, 1937)
  10. Patronages of the Immaculate Conception
  11. Bartomomé Estebán Murillo and Nancy Coe Wixom, "The Immaculate Conception", The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Vol. 47, No. 7 (Sept, 1960), p. 163.
  12. Anna Jameson, Legends of the Madonna, Boston & New York, 1895, p. 14.
  13. Bourn, Thomas (1815). A Concise Gazetteer of the Most Remarkable Places in the World; with brief notices of the principal historical events ... connected with them, etc. p. 413.
  14. Stephens, Henry Morse (1903). The story of Portugal. G.P. Putnam's Sons. pp. 125, 279, 303. ISBN 9780722224731. Retrieved 11 July 2018.

Bibliography
  • Sousa, António Caetano de. História genealógica da Casa Real portuguesa (in Portuguese). VII. Lisbon: Silviana.
John IV of Portugal
Cadet branch of the House of Aviz
Born: 19 March 1604 Died: 6 November 1656
Regnal titles
Preceded by
Philip III		 King of Portugal and the Algarves
1640–1656		 Succeeded by
Afonso VI
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