Love and Portugal and Me
As my husband and I jetted off to Portugal recently, I anticipated a trip that would be filled with Fado and gorgeous scenery, plenty of good wine, beautiful old tiles and medieval churches. We did find and luxuriate in all of these things. But it never occurred to me that Portugal would bring us closer to the heart and soul of love. We stumbled across three powerful love stories that caused me to somewhat shamefully compare these tales to my own almost-20-year marriage. Was our love as good as theirs, I wondered?
We encountered the physical remnants of the first love story at the magnificent Quinta das Lagrimas hotel in Coimbra, which is an old university town located in the middle of the country. The hotel had once been a palace, and the handsome rooms and gardens were permeated by romantic vibes. As we explored the garden, the poetic tragedy of the lovers Dom Pedro and Ines unfolded.
Gardens, Quinta das Lagrimas hotel, Coimbra, Portugal.
Pedro and Ines lived almost 700 years ago, but their story still captivates the Portuguese imagination. He was a long-ago prince and king of Portugal, ruling from 1357 to 1367; she was the beautiful lady- in-waiting to Pedro’s wife. Their love story began before his royal reign; he was still a prince and his father was the king.
The two lovers would rendezvous secretly in the gardens of the palace. We discovered a graceful archway on the hotel grounds that marks the spot of their clandestine meetings. However, Pedro's father, the king, Alfonso IV of Portugal, disapproved of their relationship, not on moral grounds but for political reasons. He felt that Ines’s Spanish relatives were a threat to the security of Portugal, which was still a relatively new and unstable country. But he could not dissuade his son from seeing his beloved. After Pedro’s wife passed away, he and Ines lived together openly and had several children together. Alfonso refused to tolerate this and sent his envoys to end the relationship permanently – by murdering Ines. The spot of her tragic death is also marked in the hotel gardens by a water feature with stones the color of blood. It’s called the Fountain of Tears.
Romantic rendezvous spot of Pedro and Ines (with me and my husband).
Pedro never forgave his father for Ines's murder and five years later, once he had become king, he hunted down her assassins. After their capture, he had their hearts ripped out from their bodies while they were still alive. He then exhumed Ines, set her on a throne, placed a crown on her head, and made his subjects kiss her decomposed hand. We could not help giving an internal cheer at Pedro's revenge. Hurray for love that endures beyond death!
We were captivated by this love story and soaked up the many portrayals of the lovers in the hotel artwork. In fact, we got so caught up in their drama that near the end of our trip we made a special pilgrimage to Alcobaca, a town between Porto and Lisbon, to see the medieval monastery which houses their tombs, which Pedro had commissioned. The exquisitely-carved marble tombs depict the story of their lives as well as religious themes. The tombs face each other so, as Pedro hoped, the first sight that they would behold on Judgment Day would be each other. The words "Until the end of the world..." are inscribed on the tombs. I was touched that on her tomb, Ines wears a Queen’s crown, although she was never formally crowned in real life. Interestingly, there is no proof they ever married, though Pedro claimed they had secretly wed.
Detail of tomb of Ines wearing crown.
It was in Coimbra, too, that we encountered the second love story of our trip, and the most unusual one, since it is not a story about the love between two people but the love of women for their God. The setting of this story is the convent of Santa Clara, built early in the 14th century near the Mondego River. The convent’s church had long been in ruins but has recently been restored. Its fifteenth-crntury builders unfortunately placed it too close to the river and so it was inundated whenever the river overflowed its banks. The convent had to be abandoned in 1677. But during its years of use, even through floods, the good sisters of Santa Clara refused to forsake it. They were so devoted to their church and to their Lord that they had a second floor built in the church above the water, so they could still worship there. They had to climb up a ladder to the new floor and crawl through a window in order to hold their services. Nevertheless, they held fast to their convent for over three hundred years. As I studied the handsome old church, I could imagine a long line of nuns in bulky habits, standing in the pouring rain, calf deep in water, patiently waiting for their turn to scramble up the ladder into their second-floor sanctuary. I deeply admired their devotion.
Remains of Convento de Santa Clara
We learned about the third love story while in Lisbon. Close to our hotel was the home of the great modern Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa. His house is now a museum. Pessoa was a somewhat mysterious figure who supported himself as a translator and wrote poetry in the voices of dozens of fictional characters. But he was a real man with real passions, and he fell deeply in love with a young woman who worked in his office, Ofilia.
The story of their love was vividly recounted to us by a staff member at the museum. Evidently, their “dates” consisted of long trolley rides where he escorted her from the office to her house. He painstakingly studied the trolley routes in advance and chose the lengthiest ones so they could spend as much time together as possible. According to what is known, Ofilia would gladly have married him, but this was an impossibility in his eyes, because he felt his modest income could not support her in the manner he thought she deserved. Nevertheless, they remained devoted to each other for decades.
Each of these three love stories has a common theme: enduring love, despite terrible challenges and obstacles. I could help but ask myself if our marriage had the same strength and could also endure whatever challenges were thrown at us. Then I remembered that, like the nuns of Santa Clara, my husband and I had also been faced with flooding, not of a church but of the basement of our house. We had to get up in the middle of the night to bail out the water, but, as we did, we laughed about how silly we looked in our waterlogged nightclothes and we started to sing silly songs.
I also recalled the time our luggage, including my irreplaceable heirloom jewelry, was stolen from the back of our car. We didn’t laugh then, but never snarled at each other, either. And I acknowledged that we supported each other through various ordeals: the illnesses and deaths of our parents, career upsets, serious medical issues, and relocating to a new city. Though I am sure my husband would never tear out the heart of another man (something I’m not at all sorry about) and would prefer other ways of spending time with me than riding around on a trolley, I am also sure that our love story is strong in its own, more modern way. I concluded that we who are blessed by being in a loving relationship create our own unique love stories. When faced with savage floods of any kind, we can endure.
Carolyn Handler Miller is a writer who works across a variety of media. Originally beginning her career as a newspaper reporter and magazine journalist, Carolyn's projects spans TV shows and specials, feature films, books and new media. She is one of the pioneering writers in the field of interactive narrative, where she has contributed to over four-dozen projects as a writer, writer-story designer, and consultant. She is the author of “Digital Storytelling: A Creator's Guide to Interactive Entertainment” (Focal Press), now in its second edition.
