What Happened to the Old Portuguese Flag?

this is the flag of portugal but historically there was also this other flag that portugal used and indeed if you look back at portuguese history you can see that a whole array of different flags were used at different times and so in this video i want to look at what's the history behind the portuguese flag and why did it change so often to find out the story of how this came to be portugal's flag today we're going to have to take a look at the history of portugal as ultimately this is completely intertwined with the history of its various flags and coat of arms and a good place to start is by looking at the coat of arms of portugal which is indeed featured on the modern flag the first attested use comes from the reign of sancho the first whose rule started in 1185. he was a king of portugal but indeed the story of where the symbol comes from is actually quite a bit older than from his reign on the shield are depicted the cinco chagas which is the portuguese word for the five holy wounds of christ which he is said to have received and then which miraculously of course healed when he came back and so this actually comes back to a story from 1139 at the very famous portuguese battle of urike and this battle was incredibly important for the history of portugal because basically it saw the defeat of a moorish army the moors being these muslims of north african descent who had invaded the iberian peninsula in 711 a.d and they were then defeated by the portuguese under the leadership of a certain alfonso who is alfonso the first of portugal in the years after the battle a legend grew up about orique which said that the king had been visited by saint james known in spanish and portuguese as santiago who had promised him a victory against the outnumbering forces of the moors and of course when victory was delivered this kind of stories often developed following such a battle and it's actually thanks to this that we get this uh really veneration of santiago or st james in the rest of the world in the north of portugal and the north of spain today and that's why santiago de compostela in galicia was established there to venerate this cult which then springs up around the story of the miracle of aurike as it was called and this also finds its way onto the flag legend has it that at the battle he defeated the kings the moorish kings of five different taifas which is an arabic word for like a small kind of kingdom and these were the typhus of sevilla elvas and the fact that he defeated these five meant that symbolically he decided to add five shields onto the coat of arms and these five shields each contained five bezel and bezance is actually from an old french word and it's actually found in quite a few medieval coat of arms and these were actually coins that were based on old arabic or old kufic coins at the time often these were gold but these particular ones are silva on the portuguese coat of arms but they're seen in gold variant for example on the coat of arms of the duchy of cornwall which you can still see here where there are 30 of these byzant and you can see here the the basalt are in silver on these five shields and they're meant to represent the five wounds of christ so this and course chagas in portuguese on five shields and of course if you then have five on each shield that gives you 25 and if you have the central shield twice really when you look at it metaphorically that leads to 30 basons and these 30 baisons are meant to be representative of the story of of course judas when he betrayed jesus was given 30 pieces of silver and then it's all symbolic and links well together but there are some reasons to doubt this explanation and everything linking up so nicely this may only have come in a little bit later on during the reign of alfonso the first we find many shields and other depictions afterwards as well with more than five shields and it is the case that this legend only appears in chronicles in 1419 so the early 15th century whereas these events are meant to have occurred during the mid 12th century so there's quite a large gap and this is probably retrospective history and trying to hagiographize his life in some way due to the contemporary events and to create a nice story rather than being based on actual evidence although potentially this symbolism was sort of conjured along the way rather than being that way from the start now what we can also see on this design of course are in on the edges this red border with seven castles inside and these seven castles also have an explanation the explanation is basically that these were various castle seven castles that were captured from the muas in the region of the algarve in portugal and interestingly enough the algarve as well you can trace that back to an arabic word so it's in arabic and that actually means the west because this is well on the western coast of portugal i thought that was an interesting bit of etymology there but this idea as well that there were precisely seven castles has also been called into question that this again might be slightly retrospective and trying to add symbolism that wasn't there to begin with the fact of the matter is that as was the case with the baisons and the amount of shields on this design we find various and you know changing numbers of castles on various kings designs throughout the middle ages on these portuguese codes of arms and actually one parallel that i thought was potentially quite interesting is that seven in the germanic world and remember of course that the visigoths who had been rulers of portugal and spain before the moorish invasion and from whom the aristocratic classes were drawn which would eventually lead the fight back against the moors and from whose family alfonso and many of the others would come that in the germanic world the number seven was often taken just as to mean lots and that's actually why you see seven bumper blade on the friesian flag again because seven just means lots there were far more than seven friske salon and so the friesian sea countries and potentially this is also why the number seven was eventually chosen uh by by those in portugal but that's quite a stretch well the number of castles is interesting we should also ask where did the castle idea come from and possibly this is a later thing as well because in 1241 during the reign of king alfonso iii he's connected to castile in that he married beatrice of castile so he was married to a castilian and his mother was also castilian and of course castile means castle and they they feature castles very prominently on their flags and you can see similarities in the design there between the two so it's quite possible that they came in during his reign of course there is also a red banner around the outside and the banner of castile traditionally was a red banner with a golden castle in the center of it which would later be transposed onto future spanish flags as well now let's go right back and this is to look at the complete formation of the portuguese flag and some important factors because we somehow have jumped into the middle of the flag story this is to go back to count henry now count henry he started his rule in 1095 and he had a very interesting banner it's not it's not really it's just white with a with a blue cross they tended to like that kind of thing back then but what's important about king henry actually and i don't really have a reason for bringing this up to be honest because it's quite a boring flag and i could have skipped this the real reason i'm mentioning it is because he was count of burgundy or he was from the family of burgundy anyway and do you know what burgundy became later on after the middle ages there was actually some point in me showing the shield rather than just to meme everyone with headphone helmets and this is because this is the basis upon which the next designs of the coat of arms and later the flag of portugal would be based from this very simple design of count henry because as we've already covered his son would then go on to add on the the shields with the baisons and also to form the coat of arms by potentially adding castles around the edge but that's probably a later development although it should be said actually that we don't have any evidence that this flag was used by king by count henry sorry because he wasn't a king yet this may have been a later portuguese invention as well to make things align nicely what we do know is that his son if this was building on an older design changed it to something more like this with the various byzants on there and the shields and this was because he proclaimed himself king after winning that victory against the moors rather than being just accounts and when they received official recognition from very spanish kingdoms they decided to make this their official banner and the story goes that the next development of this during the reign of his son and then future generations was that this was on a shield so there was a reason that you often see coat of arms on shields this is because they were portrayed on shields they were painted on and that during battles at this time there was a tradition not to paint over a shield once it had been scarred and scratched and battered in the various battles he was fighting against the moors and because of this it said that parts of the blue cross had eroded and faded away over time and because of the various engagements and blows that the shield had received so that during the reign of his son we see a different design and actually that had become so faded that they changed the design because various parts of the cross had been lost so that there were actually now five shields in the form of a cross with the base on rather than having a full cross this is very interesting and later we see another development where then this gets taken on with the red border with those castles inside but as you can see many more than seven castles on this coat of arm this design dating to the reign of king alfonso iii and of course the castles and the red banner being added potentially because of his relationship with castile through his mother and his wife i think that's the most likely explanation that we have there another change occurred in 1383 and this is because there was a succession crisis in portugal at the time and two years later it came to blows with castile its large and important neighbor and scored a great victory at the battle of al-jubarrota and during this battle the portuguese and with the help of some english longbowmen fought off the castilians who were aided by the aragonese and also the kingdom of france and won a great victory there and it's after this that john the first who was actually an illegitimate son of the previous portuguese king came to the throne now he had actually been the head of the order of avif and so decided to add the symbol of the order which was this green fleur de lis to the banner of the portuguese kings and so you see that appears now he also regularized the number of castles that were there because he's added this fleur de lis that sort of crosses over you no longer have space for all the castles so he reduced the number down to 12 you had three sort of peeking around each corner and it said that during his reign as well they they went down from the number of the byzant from about 11 to apparently to nine although you can't actually see that on this design on here you can still see that there are 11 byzant on each shield which is a little confusing and again we don't know if they were being really uh very paranoid about getting the exact number of byzantine shield or castles often in the middle ages you just kind of made it look nice and and that was okay now you see that the change that has occurred here you can see clearly with the green fleece and with the three castles that's there but again the number of byzantines on the shield has not changed during the reign of his great grandson john ii starting in 1485 so more changes are made to the design that john the first created this is to remove the green fleur-de-lis or cross of the order of avis and also to actually straighten up the shield so that they are no longer coming in at angles remember the story being that it comes from the cross that had then become sort of degraded and and faded away on the shield and he makes them all straight so all facing downwards but the big change comes in 1495 90 years later during the reign of manuel the first and this is because for the first time they do away with the square design that had been firstly used on shields and they get a real rectangular design congratulations portugal and welcome to the early modern era now in 1578 sebastian who doesn't actually get a number he's just sebastian he really changes it up again well not really actually he just changes the number of castles he fastened the number at exactly seven castles and this was the last time that the number of castles on the design would change and he also changed the the kind of crown that's on there as well as shuffling a few things around as you can see there are a few changes made and fixing the number of castles is important but other than that nothing drastic now actually he only reigned for two years he died on successfully successfully fighting off the moors and the ottomans in 1580 and this caused a crisis and after this crisis actually there was a union between portugal and spain which lasted until 1640 when there was a coup d'etat and when you got the crowning of john the fourth of portugal and he actually just basically went back to the old designer flag adding you know a slight change here and there but nothing really major now in 1707 we do get another change and this is during the reign of john v who was very much influenced by louis xiv of france who of course had been a very influential figure and and by other uh the french designs of flags and coat of arms and things like this and for this reason he decides to change the crown once again not in form but by adding a kind of red beret behind it and you see this on quite a few coats of arms and crowns from the later 17th century and into the 18th century as well that they do this this became the the regnal style and the portuguese wanted to become part of it as well as of course the fact that the shape of the shield has changed and the shape of the shield would continue to change after this period with some monarchs favoring an iberian style shield which was more of the the square kind some would favor a more french shape of royal shield and others would go for an italian one there's a few different changes that sort of fluctuate but really you can see the different shields there um these are just based on various sort of international themes and trends in coats of arms and shields and you can see that the color of the velvet changes there as well behind the actual crown um but that's quite interesting one interesting thing about this is that the monarchy started ruling in 1816 john vi actually you can see because of the french invasion the franco-spanish invasion of portugal and the napoleonic wars the royal family fled to brazil and they really proclaimed brazil a kingdom from which to rule and this creates all sorts of funny things in the history of portugal but it's actually you can see it on the flag and that's because you can see that the this design behind the coat of arms has changed and you've got this blue filling as well as this armillary sphere which is the name of the kind of ball that you see which was actually a tool that was used by mariners at the time by those who were going around the world and finding spices and other things to navigate their way around and actually this was a symbol of brazil and that's why he used it the blue was also a color that was associated with brazil so it was showing off this link between them the kind of chronology is a little hard to follow but in 1807 with the franco spanish invasion of portugal the portuguese royal family fled to brazil and in 1815 after the defeat of napoleon they declared the united kingdom of portugal brazil and the algarves which elevated brazil to the status of kingdom rather than just a colony which was actually quite an unprecedented move for the new world and is very interesting in its own regard however in 1822 when king john had gone back to portugal his elder son peter declared the independence of brazil from portugal as its own kingdom with him as its ruler and actually in that constitution it said that you could no longer have personal unions between the ruler of brazil and of portugal and this became an issue in 1826 when john so the father died in portugal and um what happens then is that obviously peter is ruling in brazil he can't then become king of portugal so instead peter's daughter maria the second becomes queen in portugal and actually you see a very interesting flag she goes back to this design but the problem is she was only seven years old and this was indeed a problem because her uncle miguel who was set to marry her when she became of age actually did a power grab in 1828 and this sparked off a series of conflicts in portugal called the liberal wars between the liberal supporters of maria and the more absolutist traditionalist supporters of miguel and during this war which was was hard fought actually the the liberals gained the upper hand and and this was the the banner that they flew in support of maria and as you can see the blue now is on the other side this is to still show some relation to uh to brazil as that had been there before but the armillary sphere has gone because of course brazil and portugal were now separate kingdoms even though her father was ruling in brazil at the time and her uncle was trying to claim portugal so you know christmas that year was was pretty awkward but they were successful in 1834 and when she became queen she indeed went back and and did indeed use this flag as hers and this was the flag that was used by all portuguese monarchs yes they stopped fiddling around with it until 1810 1910 i can't do numbers this was due to the republican revolution of the 5th of october in 1910 which was a social revolution within portugal which led to the abdication of manuel ii who fled to england and would be the last monarch that portugal would ever have and he of course was still using this lovely design that maria ii had been using during her reign and that was finalized in 1834 so a long time they hadn't done anything to the flag and now the last monarch had gone so they decided to switch it up now they wanted to get rid of the the blue color and the white but these had for so long been portuguese colors arguably if we if we believe it all the way back to count henry in 1095 of course there were other reasons why blue came back onto the flag later for brazil and others and it was seen as the the color of mary so a lot of the time mary the mother of god is portrayed in blue for various reasons there's lots of interesting things behind it and so for a lot of the more traditional a lot of the more religious people the fact that they were wanting to get rid of the blue in favor of green and red was a big shock now why did they want to add the green and red we can also see some other familiar features on this more modern one well green and red do have a fairly long history on several of the portuguese flags we've talked about the red being around the banner with castile for quite a long time of course the some of the republicans might like red because it's quite a socialist color or that it represents the blood of the fallen that fell during the revolution so we can understand red green was a little more tricky we do of course have the green fleur de lis of the order of avis which was added onto the flag in the middle ages but also these were important colors for the partido republican portuguese which is the portuguese republican party which were the ones who came to power and initiated the revolution on the 5th of october and that's probably why we get these colors being added here they had lot for a long time been portuguese colors on various flags and designs and also they'd been used by the merchant navy during the age of wind and sail when the the royal navy was using the white and blue ensign the the merchant navy actually was using green we can also see that the old armillary sphere is back on the flag and the reason for this wasn't because portugal had suddenly re-annexed brazil but um and this of course had been added first during the reign of john vi but because of portugal's rich and long maritime history and their their naval enterprises that had been particularly successful and famous and what they were known for and that's why they wanted to to add that there as a little shout out to their uh past as a maritime nation as a successful naval nation and of course the old coat of arms of of portugal that we've talked about quite extensively at this point but before i round off i have some very exciting news and this is that history with hill but is finally releasing some merch it's about time i've been promising this for a long time but i've been really hard at work and i have some designs that i really hope you guys will like i've been working with some artists and creators as well as designing some of my own stuff so in the next few days probably in the next video at the end of the next video i'll be telling you here's the link below go and get yourself something nice from the website i'm very excited about that but more to follow so anyway the merch will be dropping soon but i think it's high time that i stopped talking about portugal and the portuguese flag i hope you have enjoyed this one it's a little bit of a different topic but i thought it was really interesting and i've been wanting to do portugal and all its various flags for quite a long time because really they're super interesting and whenever i'm making a video and i'm wanting to add portugal and represent them with a flag i think oh great here we go again because it changes so often you have to make sure especially during the sort of era of enlightenment that you have the right flag to portray them because every monarch is doing their own thing with it but i thought it was quite an interesting story let me know in the comments below if there are any portuguese speakers if my portuguese was terrible i was kind of vibing it because i speak some spanish and i know portuguese isn't spanish but i was doing my best to not sound too custilian in my accent but anyway let me know what you guys thought in the comments below drop me a like that really helps me out and be hyped for the merch guys i'm really excited there'll be a link below obviously if you're watching this live there won't be a link yet but if you're watching in the future then there should be a link to the website where you can get yourself some stuff so anyway this has been the history of the portuguese flag and i have been hilbert have a great day

Channel: History With Hilbert

Views: 77,084

Keywords: Portugal, Portuguese Flag, History, Flags, Flag History, Historia, Historia Portugal, história portuguesa, Flag Facts, Napoleon, Peninsular War

Id: LIiDr2N8LuQ

Length: 22min 4sec (1324 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 09 2020