Saint Nuno Álvares Pereira (1360–1431)

Birth at Cernache do Bonjardim

Nuno Álvares Pereira was born on 24 June 1360 at Cernache do Bonjardim, a locality in the municipality of Sertã, in central Portugal.^[8][9][10] He was the illegitimate son of Álvaro Gonçalves Pereira, Prior of the Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem in Portugal (the future Knights of Malta), and Iria Gonçalves do Carvalhal.^[11][12] His birth out of wedlock did not hinder his future: King Peter I of Portugal legitimized him by royal decree less than a year after his birth, opening to him access to an aristocratic education and knightly dubbing.^[13][14]

His grandfather, Gonçalo Pereira, had been Archbishop of Braga, Primate of Portugal — a sign of a family in which, even before him, the sword and the altar were already mingled.^[15] At about the age of thirteen, in 1373, Nuno entered the service of the court as page to Queen Eleanor Telles, and already took part, very young, in the defence of the kingdom against Castilian incursions.^[16][17]

Marriage to Leonor de Alvim

At sixteen, in 1376, his father had him marry Dona Leonor de Alvim, a wealthy widow a few years his senior, at Vila Nova da Rainha.^[18][19] Three children were born of this union: two sons, who died in infancy, and one daughter, Beatriz Pereira de Alvim, the sole survivor.^[20][21] The marriage lasted eleven years, until Leonor's premature death at the beginning of 1387 — a bereavement Nuno would overcome only by refusing, for the rest of his life, any remarriage.^[22]

The death of Ferdinand I and the succession crisis of 1383

In 1383, the death without male heir of King Ferdinand I of Portugal opened the gravest dynastic crisis in medieval Portuguese history. King John I of Castile, married to the Infanta Beatrice, Ferdinand's only daughter, claimed the Portuguese crown by marriage — which would have meant, for the kingdom, outright annexation by its powerful neighbour.^[23][24] Faced with this threat, part of the nobility and above all the towns rallied to John, Master of the military Order of Aviz, illegitimate son of King Peter I, proclaimed "regent and defender of the realm" and then king under the name of John I.^[25]

Nuno Álvares Pereira chose the camp of the Master of Aviz. This choice, which committed him at barely twenty-three years of age, would make him in less than two years the most feared military leader of the Iberian Peninsula.^[26]

Atoleiros, 6 April 1384: infantry stands up to cavalry

Appointed head of the Portuguese troops, Nuno won his first great victory at the Battle of Atoleiros, on 6 April 1384.^[27][28] There he innovated tactically: rather than charging a Castilian heavy cavalry vastly superior in numbers, he had his own horsemen dismount, drawn up in a compact square bristling with lances, a defensive arrangement still rare in the Iberian Peninsula at that date.^[29][30] The manoeuvre broke the Castilian assault and demonstrated, for the first time so clearly, that a disciplined popular resistance could defeat feudal chivalry.^[31]

Constable of the realm and the Battle of Aljubarrota (14 August 1385)

Buoyed by this success, John I appointed him Constable of Portugal — supreme commander of the armies — when he was only twenty-four or twenty-five years old.^[32][33] The summit of his military career came on 14 August 1385, at Aljubarrota: at the head of some 6,500 volunteers, mostly pikemen, allied English archers and an impoverished lesser nobility, he faced a Castilian army tens of thousands strong, French chivalry included.^[34][35]

Taking up and perfecting the tactic of Atoleiros — a defensive position on chosen ground, a square of pikemen, ditches and concealed stakes against cavalry — Nuno inflicted on the Castilians a total and definitive defeat.^[36] The battle put an end to the threat of annexation and sealed, in fact, the independence of Portugal and the legitimacy of the new Aviz dynasty.^[37][38]

The sword engraved "Maria"

A victorious knight, Nuno constantly refused to claim the merit of his victories for himself. According to the tradition reported by his biographers, the name of the Virgin Mary was engraved on the blade of his sword, and his personal banner bore the cross, the image of Mary and the knight-saints James and George.^[39][40] Pope Benedict XVI would take up this very trait exactly six centuries later, in the homily of his canonization:

"Although he was an excellent soldier and a great leader, he never permitted these personal talents to prevail over the supreme action that comes from God — imitating Our Lady, to whom he was deeply devoted and to whom he publicly attributed his victories." — Benedict XVI, canonization homily, Saint Peter's Square, 26 April 2009^[41]

After Aljubarrota, Nuno went on pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Assumar, which he found profaned and turned into a stable during the war; he cleaned it with his own hands and restored it to worship.^[42] Throughout his life as a soldier, he fasted on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays in honour of the Virgin.^[43]

A captain who spared the vanquished

His reputation rests not only on his victories, but on the conduct he maintained in winning them. Chroniclers and modern historians agree in stressing a trait rare for the age: Nuno treated his soldiers with solicitude, ensured dignified treatment of prisoners, and forbade civilian populations to be brutalized or harvests burned, a practice yet common in the military chevauchées of the 14th century.^[44] He established times of collective prayer for his men before and after battle, manifesting on the battlefield itself the Marian devotion that structured his whole life.^[45][46]

The title bestowed on him by a contemporary of the very first rank, the Infante Peter, Duke of Coimbra, regent of the realm and son of John I, sums up this twofold stature:

"Model of princes, example of lords and mirror of anchorites." — Infante Dom Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, quoted in the catalogue of the bibliographical exhibition of the National Library of Portugal for the 2009 canonization^[47]

Titles, counties and the end of the military career (1385–1415)

After Aljubarrota, John I rewarded his constable with the only three counties then existing in the kingdom: Count of Ourém, then Count of Barcelos and Count of Arraiolos.^[48][49] Nuno became one of the richest men in Portugal, but devoted a growing share of this fortune to pious works — in particular the foundation, from 1389, of the future Carmo convent in Lisbon, on lands bought back from his sister Beatriz Pereira and from Admiral Pessanha.^[50][51]

Between 1385 and 1411, he led repeated border campaigns against Castile, including a further victory at Valverde in October 1385.^[52] The peace of 1411 ended this long conflict. In 1415, he still took part, alongside the king and his sons including the Infante Henry (the future "Henry the Navigator"), in the capture of Ceuta on the Moroccan coast — his last military campaign.^[53][54]

Of his three children, only Beatriz Pereira de Alvim reached adulthood. Heiress to her father's immense fortune, she married Afonso, legitimized illegitimate son of King John I, who received in 1401 the title of Count of Barcelos and then, in 1442, that of first Duke of Braganza.^[55][56] From this union descends the House of Braganza, which would reign over Portugal from 1640 to 1910 and, through a cadet branch, over the Empire of Brazil until 1889.^[57]

By a rather rare twist of history, the holy constable who saved Portugal's political independence in the 14th century is thus, by blood, the direct ancestor of the dynasty that would restore it two and a half centuries later, in 1640, against a fresh Castilian attempt at annexation.

An unshaken fidelity to the late Leonor

On Leonor de Alvim's death, at the beginning of 1387, Nuno was only twenty-seven and stood at the summit of his military glory. He never remarried.^[58] This posthumous fidelity, rare in a great lord of that age in a society where remarriage was the norm, is the first visible sign of an inner evolution that would assert itself over the years.

Multiplied pious foundations

Alongside his military duties, Nuno financed the building of several religious edifices: the Saint George chapel at Aljubarrota, erected as early as 1388 on the battlefield in thanksgiving, and above all the great Carmo conventual complex in Lisbon, whose construction ran from 1389 to 1423 and where the Carmelites settled from 1397.^[59][60] He also financed other churches and convents, displaying a Eucharistic and Marian piety that his contemporaries already noted as exceptional in a war leader.^[61]

The mourning of his daughter and renunciation of the world

The death of his daughter Beatriz — occurring, according to some sources, as early as 1414 — dealt a further blow to Nuno's attachment to the affairs of this world.^[62] After the Ceuta campaign of 1415, he gradually distributed his lands and lordships to his grandchildren, methodically divesting himself of the immense patrimony accumulated in thirty years of war.^[63]

Profession in Carmel, 15 August 1423

The choice of date is no accident: it was on 15 August 1423 — the anniversary both of his 1376 marriage and, in the liturgical calendar, the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin to whom he attributed all his victories — that Nuno Álvares Pereira, aged sixty-three, made profession at the Carmo convent he had himself founded and endowed.^[64] There he became, under the Carmelite constitutions of the time, a semi-frater — a "half-brother" lay brother charged with the humblest tasks of the convent, wearing not the full habit but a simple tunic and a brown serge cape.^[65][66]

The cauldron of the poor

At the convent gate, Brother Nuno himself distributed soup to the poor of Lisbon from a great copper cauldron — the same one that had served, for years, to prepare his soldiers' campaign rations.^[67] Porter and almoner of the community, he welcomed the city's destitute each day, offering them, in the words of the testimony preserved by the Order of Carmel, "wise and loving counsel, coins, clothing or food which he had himself begged from the rich to give to the poor."^[68]

"He lived in prayer, penance and charity, begging alms for more than seven years." — Notice of the Carmelite Order of Portugal on the religious life of Frei Nuno de Santa Maria^[69]

He did not forget his former companions-in-arms: the chronicles report that he still walked the streets of Lisbon seeking out sick veterans or those fallen into destitution, himself worrying over the absence, at the convent gate, of beggars he was accustomed to meeting there.^[70]

The great captain become the humblest of the brothers

The contrast between the constable victorious at Aljubarrota, count of three lordships and one of the richest men in the realm, and the lay brother sweeping the cloister and begging his bread, deeply struck his contemporaries. For Benedict XVI, this contrast was precisely the exemplary value of the man: proof that holiness does not require flight from temporal responsibilities, but their exercise in a spirit of radical humility.

"He exercised his life of faith and prayer in contexts apparently unfavourable to it, as proof that in any situation, even military or in war time, it is possible to act and to put into practice the values and principles of Christian life." — Benedict XVI, canonization homily, 26 April 2009^[71]

Death and burial

The sources agree on the year 1431 but diverge on the exact day of Brother Nuno's death, illustrating the critical work of source authentication to which medieval Portuguese sources still lend themselves. Popular tradition and a substantial part of the devotional literature place his death on 1 November 1431, All Saints' Day, surrounded by King John I and the infantes.^[72][73] Other historical works, relying on the liturgical calendar and the conventual registers, retain rather 1 April 1431, Easter Sunday that year — a date part of recent historiography considers the most firmly established.^[74][75]

Whatever the precise date, Frei Nuno de Santa Maria died at the Carmo convent at the age of seventy, after more than seven years of religious life.^[76][77] His remains, long kept at the Carmo, were transferred on 14 August 1951 — the anniversary date of Aljubarrota — to the church of the Santo Condestável, at Campo de Ourique, in Lisbon.^[78][79]

An unbroken popular devotion

The cult of the "Santo Condestável" never died out after his death. The diocesan process for his beatification was introduced as early as 1894, on the basis of a reputation for holiness continuous since the 15th century.^[80] Pope Benedict XV recognized the immemorial cult and beatified Nuno Álvares Pereira on 23 January 1918 by the decree Clementissimus Deus, fixing his liturgical feast on 6 November.^[81][82]

The miracle of Guilhermina de Jesus (2000)

Ninety years elapsed between the beatification and the canonization. The miracle retained by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints occurred at Ourém — the very town whose county Nuno had received in 1385. On 29 September 2000, Guilhermina de Jesus, cook in a medieval restaurant set in Ourém castle, was struck in one eye by boiling oil while frying fish; the doctors judged the loss of sight irreversible.^[83] In the night of 7–8 December 2000, at the end of a second novena of prayers by her family and friends, she inwardly prayed to Blessed Nuno, kissed his image — and suddenly recovered her sight, which she at once verified by switching on the television.^[84]

The healing, judged by the doctors to have no scientific explanation, was examined by a Vatican medical board in April 2008 and then by a theological commission in May of the same year.^[85] On 3 July 2008, Benedict XVI promulgated the decree recognizing the authenticity of the miracle; on 21 February 2009, in consistory, he set 26 April 2009 as the date of the canonization.^[86][87]

The canonization of 26 April 2009

On 26 April 2009, in Saint Peter's Square, Benedict XVI canonized Nuno de Santa Maria Álvares Pereira together with four other blesseds — Arcangelo Tadini, Bernardo Tolomei, Gertrude Comensoli and Caterina Volpicelli.^[88] In his homily, the Pope presented at length the figure of the new Portuguese saint as a particularly timely model:

"I am glad to point this exemplary figure out to the whole Church", for having lived Christian values "especially if [they] are placed at the service of the common good and the glory of God." — Benedict XVI, canonization homily, Saint Peter's Square, 26 April 2009^[89]

The case of Nuno Álvares Pereira illustrates an age-old question of Catholic moral theology: how can a man devoted to the profession of arms attain the heroicity of the virtues required for canonization? The Catholic tradition, formulated notably by Saint Thomas Aquinas in his doctrine of just war, never taught a principled incompatibility between legitimate armed service and holiness, provided the cause is just, the authority legitimate, the intention right and the means proportionate — four conditions Portuguese tradition attributes precisely to the defence of national independence led by Nuno.^[90]

This same path — the exercise of temporal, sometimes military, authority lived in a spirit of Christian humility and charity — had already led to the altars a French king of the preceding century, Saint Louis IX, and would be illustrated anew, in that same year 1431, by another liberator of her people, Saint Joan of Arc. The three figures share one conviction: the legitimacy of a just national cause in no way dispenses from prayer, humility and, at life's evening, radical renunciation of worldly glory.

The canonization process of Nuno Álvares Pereira never had to rule on the morality of his military campaigns themselves — the war of 1383–1385 being unanimously recognized by Portuguese historiography as a defensive war against an attempted annexation — but on the heroicity of his theological and moral virtues, especially his charity towards prisoners and civilian populations, his justice towards his own soldiers, and the radical humility of his final years in Carmel.^[91][92]

Patron of the Portuguese infantry and scouting

Saint Nuno de Santa Maria is the patron of the Portuguese infantry, whose regiments celebrate his feast on 6 November, as well as of Portuguese Catholic scouting.^[93] The Portuguese army and the Carmelite Order jointly maintain his memory, in a dual military and religious filiation rare among modern saints.

The Santo Condestável in public space

Statues, avenues, parishes and a line of national memory bear his name throughout Portugal. His remains have rested since 1951 in the church of the Santo Condestável in Lisbon, while the great Gothic Carmo convent he founded — partly ruined by the 1755 earthquake — remains one of the emblematic monuments of the Portuguese capital, now an archaeological museum.^[94]

A saint for a time of crisis

Benedict XVI's homily stressed the universal, and not merely national, scope of this holiness:

"The seventy years of his life belong to the second half of the 14th century and the first half of the 15th. He was characterized by an intense life of prayer and absolute trust in divine help." — Benedict XVI, canonization homily, 26 April 2009^[95]

Seven centuries after Aljubarrota, the universal Church retains of Nuno Álvares Pereira less the undefeated victor of twenty years of war than the Carmelite lay brother, begging his bread at the gate of the convent he had founded at the height of his glory.

• Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) — the Doctor whose doctrine of just war illuminates the compatibility between the profession of arms and holiness.
• Saint Louis (1214–1270) — another medieval ruler canonized for exercising temporal authority in a Christian spirit.
• Saint Joan of Arc (1412–1431) — liberator of her people who died in the same year as Nuno Álvares Pereira.
• Saint Vincent Ferrer (1350–1419) — preacher contemporary with the Western Schism, whose life overlaps the same troubled period in the history of the Church and the Iberian Peninsula.