https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4343-6130
![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The fifteenth-century royal chronicler Fernão Lopes describes a weather event on 24 October 1384 in which the future King João I of Portugal (1385–1433) failed to attack a strategic castle because of a tremendous storm that caused the army to lose its way in the dark and rendered the roads and river crossings impassable. The city of Lisbon flooded and there was considerable damage to buildings. The description of the storm and its aftermath is by far the longest description of weather for medieval Portugal. The aim here is to set this storm within the context of the late medieval crisis, placing it alongside the warfare, plague, papal schism, siege and hunger also described by Lopes, and exploring it in relation to research on late medieval climate change. Lopes’s chronicles are major sources for crisis in medieval Portugal, but this storm has not previously been considered within that context.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Lopes, Crónica de Dom João I: Primeira Parte, 317–19 [hereafter CJ1]. See Appendix for the English translation of this chapter, which comes from the complete new edition: Lopes, Chronicles, 3:337–39. I have been involved in this translation project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, since 2009 and would like to thank the whole team for their help and support (see the project website: https://fernaolopes.fcsh.unl.pt/). All data underlying the findings are available as part of the article and no additional source data are required.
2 Lopes, Crónica de D. João I: Segunda Parte, 12–13 [hereafter CJ2].
3 Lawrence-Mathers, Medieval Meteorology, chapters 7–8; Carvalho, “Vir sapiens dominabitur astris.”
4 CJI, 273. The longest other description of a storm (half a page) is in Lopes, Crónica de D. Fernando, 128 [hereafter CF].
5 Marques, Portugal na crise dos séculos XIV e XV; Moreno, “La crisis del siglo XIV en Portugal;” Duarte, “‘Tomar o pão dos coitados’;” Ferreira, “Recrutar, produzir, abastecer;” Rodrigues, “Black Death;” Silva, “A Peste Negra em Portugal.” Most recently, Silva et al., “Portugal 1300,” does consider the role of climate in early fourteenth-century Portugal, which may indicate a change of approach in the future.
6 The storm is not mentioned in the main study of the weather in medieval Portugal: Tavares, “Os sinais dos tempo.” There is much more interest in the weather in Castilian chronicles, probably because of the research of Isabel del Val Valdivieso in this area: Val Valdivieso, “The Problem of Precipitation in Castile;” Hidalgo, Uso e Influencia del Agua.
7 Campbell, “Nature as Historical Protagonist,” 283.
8 Classen, “Consequences of Bad Weather,” 19.
9 Brönniman, Pfister and White, “Archives of Nature.”
10 Camenisch, “Potential;” Trexler and Johns-Putra, “Climate Change.”
11 Ghosh, Great Derangement, 16 (and all of part 1).
12 Arnold, “Facing Floods.”
13 See also Classen, “Storms;” George, “Adversarial Relationships;” Reich, “Exciting Storms;” McCreesh, Weather in the Icelandic Sagas, chapters 8, 10–12.
14 Bauch and Schenk, “Teleconnections,” 15; van Bavel, et al., Disasters and History, 62 (and all of chapter 3); Schenk, “Learning from History.”
15 Dean, “Natural Encounters,” 549. For Italy, see also Nanni, “Facing the Crisis;” Alfani, “Impact of Floods.”
16 Arnold, “Rivers of Risk,” 121.
17 Zhang, River (which uses the concept of “drama” in the subtitle); Labbé, Castastrophes naturelles, 276–77, argues that medieval Europeans, unlike modern people, did not see disasters as a kind of theatrical drama.
18 Zhang, River; Schenk, “ … prima ci fu … ;” Kiss, Floods; Brown, “Ventus vehemens;” Galloway, “Storms.”
19 Cácegas, Primeira Parte da História de São Domingos, 1:368.
20 Studies of Lisbon do not discuss this storm: for example, A Nova Lisboa Medieval; Lisboa Medieval; Martins, Lisboa e a Guerra. There are brief mentions without analysis in Passos, Lisboa, 81, 87, 92, 143.
21 Benito, Díez Herrero, and Fernández de Villalta, “Magnitude and Frequency of Flooding;” Moreno et al., “Medieval Climate Anomaly in the Iberian Peninsula;” Corella et al., “1400-Years Flood Frequency Reconstruction for the Basque Country.”
22 Brown, “Ventus vehemens,” 35, suggests that storms like that of 1362 could have been one in two hundred-year events. Climate change is seen as beneficial to the Portuguese economy in Rodrigues, “Black Death,” 56. Silva, “Peste Negra,” especially chapters 4, 10–11, argues that drought exacerbated the Portuguese fourteenth-century crisis.
23 Farelo, “Recursos hídricos;” Veloso, “Água na cidade de Coimbra;” Trindade, “Água nas cidades portuguesas;” Gonçalves, “Sistemas de circulação de água;” Estrela, “Fontes e chafarizes;” Di Berardino, “Water and Sanitation Management.” For the River Tagus, which had to flood annually to maintain regional fertility, see Beirante, “O Tejo;” Pereira and Martinez, “Estuário do Tejo.”
24 Boissellier, “Ambiente,” 33; Guimarães and Amorim, “História ambiental em Portugal,” 48.
25 For the decline in maintenance of comparable regions in late medieval England, see Galloway, “Storms;” Rippon, “Adaptation.”
26 Labbé, Catastrophes, especially chapters 5 and 6.
27 For two historical approaches, compare Costa Gomes, D. Fernando, and Coelho, D. João I. For pioneering studies of Lopes’s approach to writing history and its relationship to fiction, see Amado, Fernão Lopes; Blackmore, “Fernão Lopes;” Marcos de Dios, “Fernão Lopes;” Sussekind, “Fernão Lopes.”
28 Russell, “On the Sources of Fernão Lopes.”
29 For more on these events and their contexts, see Monteiro, Martins and Faria, “Another 1415;” Sumption, Divided Houses; Baleiras, “Portugal, 1385?”
30 CJI, 223.
31 For all this section: Amado, Fernão Lopes, 51–58; Parkinson, “Fernão Lopes;” Maleval, Fernão Lopes, 21–34, 43–47; Saraiva, Fernão Lopes, 7–22; Monteiro, Fernão Lopes, 71–107, 117–23; Earle, “Narrative Structures;” Costa Gomes, “Alfarrobeira.”
32 CJI, 308.
33 Especially Ventura, Messias de Lisboa. See also Rebelo, Concepção do poder.
34 CJI, 316; Amado, Passado e o presente, 99–110.
35 Amado, Fernão Lopes, 59–66.
36 Őstenberg, “Defeated by the Forest.” Livy’s (d. 17 CE) history of Rome was particularly influential; Lopes cites Livy in the final chapters of CJ2. For an overview of classical works available in late medieval Portugal, see Silva, “Peste Negra,” 103–18.
37 According to CJI, 301, the fleet tried to leave on 21 October but was prevented from doing so because of the weather. It succeeded in leaving only on the 28th.
38 CJ1, 284.
39 For the idea that a flood enabled the delineation of geo-political space, see Valdaliso Casanova, “‘Fasta’,” 189n6. The porch of the Dominican priory was a site for news and announcements throughout Lopes’s chronicles.
40 CJ1, 201.
41 CJ1, 253.
42 For example, CJ1, chapter 152, and CJ2, chapter 6.
43 Amado, Fernão Lopes, 220–23; Zierer, “Forças diabólicas e cristãs.”
44 CJ2, chapter 65. For other examples, see also chapters 160–61 and 175 of the same chronicle.
45 CJ1, 288. For the idea that descriptions of floods were exempla, see Valdaliso Casanova, “‘Fasta’,” 204; for exemplum collections as sources for disasters, see Berlioz, Catastrophes. For analysis of the sermon in chapter 151, see Maleval, Fernão Lopes, 178–84; Amado, Fernão Lopes, 211–23.
46 Moreno, Batalha de Alfarrobeira; Costa Gomes, Making of a Court Society; Farelo, “Oligarquia camerária de Lisboa.”
47 See for example, the letters preserved in a copy of King Duarte’s commonplace book: Livro dos Conselhos, 43–49, 61–63, 72–73, 116–38, which show that there was a lack of consensus even within the royal family about campaigning in Morocco.
48 The dates of the seven ages in chapter 163 suggest Lopes wrote that section in 1443, in the middle of Duke Pedro’s regency. See Maleval, Fernão Lopes, 45–46.
49 CJ1, 78.
50 Gutiérrez García, “Arthurian Literature in Portugal.” King Duarte had copies of the “Livro de Tristam,” “Livro de Galaaz,” and “Merlim” in his library: Livro dos Conselhos, 207.
51 Goodman Wollock, “Medieval England and Iberia,” 11; Russell, English Intervention.
52 Torras, “Brotherly Love and Filial Obedience,” 30–44.
53 Saraiva, Fernão Lopes, 42. For the poor behaviour of the English, see CF, 465–67.
54 Gutiérrez García, “Arthurian Literature in Portugal;” Aguiar, “Crónicas de Zurara;” Costa Gomes, “Zurara and the Empire;” Hutchinson, “European Relations,” chapter 5.
55 See Classen, “Consequences of Bad Weather,” 5, 13, for references, and Saunders, Forest of Medieval Romance, chapters 3 and 6.
56 For Portuguese forest and seashore imagery, see the origin stories of the Haro and Marinho families as translated by Rita Costa Gomes in Constable, Medieval Iberia, 418–20, and also the wild weather and forested seashores in a romance of c. 1400, which may reflect Anglo-Portuguese cultural contact: Anonymous, Sir Torrent of Portingale.
57 Classen, “Storms;” Reich, “Exciting Storms.” See also Saunders, Forest; Auerbach, Mimesis, chapter six.
58 Maleval, Fernão Lopes, 193–96; Amado, Passado, 115.
59 For this idea, see Aguiar, “Crónicas;” Zierer, “Modelos educativos.”
60 King Duarte, Leal conselheiro, 48–57.
61 Pedro de Coimbra, Livro da vertuosa benfeytoria. Pedro’s Letter from Bruges of 1426, in which he advised Duarte on a range of policies, survives in Duarte’s Livro dos Conselhos, 27–39.
62 Pedro de Coimbra, Livro dos oficios.
63 CJ1, 21. Lopes’s translation differs slightly from Pedro’s in Livro dos Oficios, 18, which Amado, Fernão Lopes, 55–56, suggests might imply political estrangement between the two men, as there is evidence of previous exchanges of translations. However, Lopes may have deliberately chosen parentes (relatives/kin) rather than amigos to translate Cicero’s amici (friends). This may be another hint towards the audience of his chronicles: the families of those who took part in the events. For a close analysis of this important prologue and Lopes’s concept of the truth, see Blackmore, “Fernão Lopes.”
64 CJ1, 22.
65 Boia, Weather in the Imagination, 124; Davis, Periodization and Sovereignty. For examples of modern moralizing and imaginative writing, including by climate scientists, see Chakrabarty, Climate of History. For the role of religion and belief in modern disasters, see Bankoff, “In the Eye of the Storm.” Schipper, “Religion and Belief Systems,” argues strongly that it is a mistake to omit belief systems from analysis of modern hazard risk and resilience. What does not seem to be studied much today is how belief systems impact the recording of disaster response and experience.
66 Boia, Weather, 146, and also much of chapters 3–6.
67 For the idea that descriptions of disasters could denote a hoped-for return to moral order and social concord, see Labbé, Catastrophes, 151–52.
68 Labbé, “Toute chose se desnature,” and Catastrophes, 114–24.
69 For the idea of retrospective diagnosis of crisis, see Hoffman, “Thoughts.”
70 See Izdebski et al., “Realising Consilience,” for a useful model.
71 See Olivera Serrano, “Conde D. Enrique Manuel (c.1343–1414).”
72 For Lourenço Vicente, Archbishop of Braga (d.1397), and Gonçalo de Teles Meneses (d.1403), Count of Neiva, see Costa Gomes, Making of a Court Society, 90, 158.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Iona McCleery
Iona McCleery is Associate Professor in Medieval History at the University of Leeds where she has worked since 2007. McCleery researches the history of food, medicine, and healing miracles, especially in Portugal and its early empire. She is editor of The Cultural History of Medicine in the Middle Ages (Bloomsbury, 2021), to which she also contributed an essay on food and medicine. She is one of the team of translators working since 2009 on the five-volume English edition of the chronicles of Fernão Lopes (Tamesis, 2023). This essay relates to that project, and also to McCleery’s emerging work on health and the environment.