0
Sometimes we encounter shocking realities:
- The father of our first king (count Henry) was a French knight from Dijon (Burgundy) he was grandson of the king of France and a relative of Hugo de Cluny;
- Apparently he was enrolled by the Templars to start a new nation while fighting the moors in Europe;
- To succeed he had to help one of the Iberian kings and hope lands would be given to him. Leon was the logical choice because of the border with the Atlantic which means one less enemy to fight later;
- When Afonso Henriques succeeded in the succession from Leon he called to the new nation all sorts of French from knights (Templars) to monks to help in the fight against the bloody Saracens and to effectively build the nation (agriculture, law, engineering) they planted vast extensions of fruit trees brought agriculture to savage lands, build bridges and roads, build the most exquisite Romanic monasteries (the ones that would be burned, assaulted and destroyed by another set of French some 700 years later). Other people came, especially English and Flemish but the French were the more important in numbers and in knowhow.
- Most of the people that could write during those days were French and although only some 200 years after that the Portuguese became the official language, it all started in the this early days of Saracen submission.
See, after all, our tortuous grammar may have come from somewhere, is Burgundy enough North? Your “worlds apart” may have been much more close than you ever imagined and in this matters there are no such things as random encounters especially in a place (Europe) where people always had enough mobility, that aren’t that far away apart to walk as they used to do, let alone ride.
In those days France and it’s central position in Europe played a very important role in other nations especially among some of her southern relatives, we may like that or not but it is undeniable.
It’s very curious how the Spaniards have a language so close to Portuguese and they got the easiest grammar, they only lose to English. No king of France grandson or Templar ideologist ever ruled there.
Bookmarks