Ferdinand the Holy Prince
Ferdinand the Holy Prince, sometimes called the "Saint Prince" or the "Constant Prince", was an infante of the Kingdom of Portugal. He was the youngest of the "Illustrious Generation" of 15th-century Portuguese princes of the House of Aviz, and served as lay administrator of the Knightly Order of Aviz.
In 1437, Ferdinand participated in the disastrous Siege of Tangier led by his older brother Henry the Navigator. In the aftermath, Ferdinand was handed over to the Marinid rulers of Morocco as a hostage for the surrender of Ceuta in accordance with the terms of a treaty negotiated between the rulers of Portugal and Morocco by Henry. At first, Ferdinand was held in relative comfort as a noble hostage in Asilah, but when it became apparent that the Portuguese authorities had no intention of giving up Ceuta, Ferdinand's status was downgraded; he was transferred to a prison in Fez, where he was subjected to much harsher incarceration conditions by his jailers. Negotiations for his release continued intermittently for years, but they came to naught, and Ferdinand eventually died in captivity in Fez on 5 June 1443.
A popular cult quickly developed in Portugal around the figure of "the Holy Prince", strongly encouraged by the House of Aviz. Ferdinand remains a "popular saint" by Portuguese tradition, neither beatified nor canonized by the Catholic Church.
Early life
Ferdinand was the sixth surviving child and youngest son of King John I of Portugal and his wife Philippa of Lancaster. Ferdinand and his brothers Edward of Portugal, Peter of Coimbra, Henry the Navigator and John of Reguengos, plus sister Isabella of Burgundy and half-brother Afonso of Barcelos, constitute what Portuguese historians have traditionally labelled the 'illustrious generation'.Ferdinand was born in Santarém on 29 September 1402, the feast day of St. Michael, a saint to whom he would remain affectionately attached. He had a complicated birth and would remain a sickly child throughout much of his youth. Relatively sheltered because of his illnesses, Ferdinand had a quiet and very pious upbringing, a favorite of his English mother, from whom he acquired a preference for the Sarum Rite of Salisbury in the religious liturgy of masses he attended.
Master of Aviz
Ferdinand was too young to participate in the 1415 Conquest of Ceuta led by his father, John I, in which his older brothers distinguished themselves and were knighted. As the youngest of many sons, Ferdinand did not obtain a substantial endowment from his father, only the Lordship of Salvaterra de Magos and a lifetime grant of Atouguia in 1429.In 1434, after the death of his father and the administrator João Rodrigues de Sequeira, Ferdinand was appointed lay administrator of the Knightly Order of Aviz by his brother King Edward of Portugal. Ferdinand was also offered the titular office of cardinal by Pope Eugene IV, but turned it down. Despite his piety, Ferdinand had no intention of pursuing a clerical career.
Siege of Tangier
In 1436, dissatisfied with his meager domains, Ferdinand asked his brother King Edward for permission to go abroad to seek his fortune in the service of a foreign king. Ferdinand's request prompted the reluctant Edward to endorse a plan, long promoted by his brother Henry the Navigator, to launch a new Portuguese campaign of conquest against Marinid Morocco. As a bachelor, Ferdinand made out a will naming Edward's second son, the Infante Ferdinand as his heir before departing.In August 1437, the Portuguese expeditionary force, under the leadership of Henry the Navigator, set out to seize Tangier. Ferdinand brought his household and Aviz knights with him, choosing as his personal banner an emblazoned image of the Archangel St. Michael. The Tangier campaign proved to be a disastrous fiasco. Henry impetuously launched a series of assaults on the walls of Tangier with no success, while allowing his siege camp to be encircled by a Moroccan army rushed north by the Wattasid strongman Abu Zakariya Yahya al-Wattasi, governor of the Marinid palace of Fez. The Portuguese besiegers, now besieged and unable to break out, were starved into submission.
To preserve his army from destruction, Henry the Navigator signed a treaty in October 1437 with the Moroccan commanders. It called for the restoration of Ceuta in return for allowing to his army to withdraw intact. By the terms of the treaty, Henry handed his younger brother Ferdinand over to the Moroccans as a hostage for the delivery of Ceuta. It was later reported that Henry personally volunteered to go as hostage instead of Ferdinand, but that his war council forbade it.
Hostage in Asilah
Ferdinand was formally a hostage of Salah ibn Salah, the Marinid governor of Tangier and Asilah. Ferdinand was allowed to bring along a private entourage of eleven household servants into captivity with him. This included his secretary Frei João Álvares; his household governor Rodrigo Esteves; his wardrobe keeper Fernão Gil; his confessor, Frei Gil Mendes; his physician mestre Martinho ; his chaplain Pero Vasques; his head cook João Vasques; his chamberlain João Rodrigues ; his quartermaster João Lourenço; his hearth-keeper João de Luna; and his pantry keeper Cristóvão de Luviça Alemão. Álvares was entrusted with Ferdinand's money purse, estimated to be carrying some 6,000 reals for expenses. They were joined by an additional set of four Portuguese noble hostages identified as Pedro de Ataíde, João Gomes de Avelar, Aires da Cunha and Gomes da Cunha/Silva. The first three were knights of Ferdinand's household, the last a knight of Aviz. These four were not part of Ferdinand's entourage, but part of a separate temporary hostage swap to ensure the smooth embarkation of the defeated Portuguese troops back to their ships, for which Salah ibn Salah gave his own eldest son as hostage to the Portuguese in return. These were meant to be released once the troops were boarded, whereas Ferdinand and his entourage were only to be released upon the evacuation and handover of Ceuta.Ferdinand, his entourage and the four knights were handed over to Salah ibn Salah on the evening of 16 October 1437 by the Portuguese negotiator Rui Gomes da Silva, who then received the son of Salah ibn Salah in return. The hostages stayed in a tower inside Tangiers while the troops evacuated the beach. But the embarcation did not go smoothly. Discipline broke down and a skirmish broke out on the beach, apparently provoked when some of the Portuguese soldiers were caught smuggling forbidden items. After the troops were all embarked, Henry the Navigator refused to release his own temporary hostage, the eldest son of Salah ibn Salah, cut the moorings and sailed off. As a result, the four noble hostages were now stranded in Moroccan captivity. Hearing of the beach skirmish and receiving no communication from Henry, Ferdinand was beside himself in tears, fearing that his brother had been among those killed. Ibn Salah sent a few men to investigate the bodies to assure him that Henry was not among them, and when that was insufficient to comfort the prince, Ibn Salah even sent a messenger to Ceuta to try get written assurance from Henry himself.
Ferdinand, the entourage and the four knights left Tangier on 22 October and made their way under Moroccan guard to Asilah, thirty miles down the coast from Tangier. The Portuguese hostages were jeered by Moroccan crowds as they made their way. Upon arrival, Ferdinand and his entourage were kept in relatively comfortable quarters in Asilah, as would befit a royal hostage. He was allowed to write and receive correspondence from Portugal, interact with the local Christian community and had dealings with local Genoese merchants. The entourage was also allowed to celebrate Christian mass daily. Fellow-prisoner Frei João Álvares reports Ferdinand expected that the treaty would be promptly fulfilled – that Ceuta would be evacuated and handed over and that they would soon be released. Salah ibn Salah also expected to hear of the evacuation of Ceuta in a matter of days.
Back in Portugal, the news of the defeat at Tangier and the subsequent treaty were received with shock. John of Reguengos immediately set sail for Asilah, hoping to negotiate Ferdinand's release in return for Salah ibn Salah's son, but to no avail. The question of what to do divided Ferdinand's older brothers. Ceuta was highly symbolic – the brothers had been made knights there when their father conquered the city back in 1415. Peter of Coimbra, who had been adamantly opposed to the whole Tangier expedition to begin with, urged their eldest brother, King Edward of Portugal, to fulfill the treaty immediately, order the evacuation of Ceuta and secure Ferdinand's release. But Edward was caught in indecision. Henry the Navigator, who stayed in Ceuta, depressed and in seclusion after the defeat in Tangier, eventually dispatched letters to Edward counseling against ratifying the treaty he had himself negotiated and suggesting other ways of getting Ferdinand released without surrendering Ceuta. But Ferdinand himself wrote letters to Edward and Henry from Asilah noting that the Marinids were not likely to release him for anything less than Ceuta, urging them to fulfill the treaty and wondering what the delay was.
In January 1438, still undecided, Edward of Portugal convened the Portuguese Cortes in Leiria for consultation. Ferdinand's letters were read before the Cortes, wherein Ferdinand expressed his desire to be released, and noted that Ceuta did not serve Portugal any strategic purpose and should be abandoned regardless. Contrary to later legend, it is clear from these letters that Ferdinand did not seek out a martyr's fate, that he wanted Ceuta to be handed over to the Marinids according to the terms of the treaty and that he wanted to be released swiftly. At the Cortes, urged by Peter and John, the burghers and clergy voted largely for the swap, but the nobles, rallied by Ferdinand of Arraiolos, argued strongly against it, with the result that the Cortes were dissolved without a decision being made. The decision to keep Ceuta was only made in June 1438, after a conference in Portel between Edward and Henry the Navigator. Henry once again urged a repudiation of the treaty and proposed alternative schemes to secure Ferdinand's release, e.g., ransoming him for money, persuading Castile and Aragon to join in a mass release of Muslim prisoners in exchange, raising a new army and invading Morocco all over again, etc. After repeated entreaties from Ferdinand, Henry finally dispatched a message to his imprisoned brother giving his reasons for not fulfilling the treaty: firstly, that Henry had not had the royal authority to make such a treaty to begin with, and secondly, because of the beach skirmish at Tangier, Henry considered the treaty had already been violated and thus he was under no legal obligation to honor it.