JOÃO III AND HIS FATED FAMILY

From about 1540 onwards the Portuguese Golden Age gradually lost its lustre. The change was apparent in many different spheres, including the economy, imperial expansion, individual rights, learning and the Arts. The royal house, accounted so fortunate in the time of King Manuel, was now struck by a succession of devastating family tragedies that eventually imperilled the survival of the nation itself. Portugal had entered what was becoming, compared with the recent past, a distinctly Tarnished Age.

The João III of the Tarnished Age has left to posterity a very different image from the João III of the Golden Age. A previously conscientious, relatively open-minded and quite intelligent monarch, who had generously patronised the Arts and education, by the 1540s had seemingly changed into a suspicious, indecisive and morbidly introspective recluse, increasingly captive to priestly influence. So negative was the later João's reputation that one of Portugal's most respected nineteenth-century historians dismissed him summarily as ‘an incompetent and malignant fanatic’. Part of the explanation for this transformation undoubtedly lies in the series of cruel misfortunes that overtook the royal family. When King Manuel died in 1521 he was survived by nine healthy legitimate children, varying in age from eighteen years to six months. Such a progeny seemed to guarantee the dynasty's long-term survival. João III also sired nine legitimate children; but there the parallel ceased – for tragically all preceded him to the grave.