Insanity Through History
Peter the Cruel, King of Portugal
Peter I, better known as Peter the Cruel, was the son of Alfonso IV of Portugal. Peter was, without doubt, the best example of psychopathic criminality; he took up arms against his father, pursued his brothers to death, and ended up poisoning his own daughter.
When his father, Alfonso IV, died, he succeeded him on the throne.
Peter was weak and impulsive; he acquired from his father the arrogance of the timid and the shy and stuttering lisp of the hypersensitive. From childhood he suffered fainting spells and was the victim of paroxysms of rage. He was also magnanimous, righteous, brave, and unconditionally loyal. In him bloomed, in the same manner, sensitivity, resentment, lack of tact and ferocity.
“He was fat with a round head, a trustworthy forehead, a broad, thick, and frank mouth, and his eyes … large black, and pleasant, to a good extent, impulsive eyes with extreme vivacity, the same in times of coarseness as in sweetness. Rigid gestures, a hard gait, and stuttering speech — all his means of expression were excessive. Given his simplicity, he made friends easily. Never restrained and abrasively loyal, he only felt at ease among persons of ample frankness.”
The drama began to be come to light on the day of his wedding. During courtship of his wife, the sweet Mrs. Constanza de Castilla, there was another woman: Ines de Castro, remarkably beautiful and for whom Peter the Cruel fell for from the first moment. Ines also responded to the prince’s solicitations. Mrs. Constanza pretended to ignore her husband’s relationship with her best friend. She made her godmother to her son who was about to be born. The child was born and the mother died. From that moment, there were no barriers or pretense for the lovers. Peter put his concubine in the Santa Clara Palace (Monastery of Santa Clara).
Antero Figueiredo observed that during that joyous time, King Peter was showing signs, without anyone knowing why, of melancholy, and his soul darkened suddenly. Invaded by wild sadness, he became intractable and aloof. Also, and most significantly, his moods rose and infuriated him. Discontent and devoured by unexpressed intimate aspirations, he lived in an uncertainty as if in his closed heart’s successive desires on the verge of explosion collided with each other.”
Years passed and three children were born. Peter saw in them his successor, but unfortunately, his father, King Alfonso, thought otherwise. It seemed that the children of Ines and Peter’s neglect of his son with Constance, Prince Ferdinand, reactivated childhood sufferings from when his father put aside affection for him for the children of a concubine. For this reason he rose up twice in arms against his him. Because of this, he became obsessed with marital fidelity and issued stern measures against concubinage. This was because Alfonso IV could not stand that his son lived with a kept woman. Alfonso identified with his grandson, the orphaned child abandoned by Ines, the image of his brothers who made him suffer so much in his youth. And so, he orders Ines to death.
Alfonso took advantage of his son’s absence, and personally leading the executioners arrived suddenly one afternoon at the Santa Clara Palace. The executioners fell like beasts on Ines. In the presence of her children, among shouting, wailing and cursing, she was beheaded.
Upon receiving the news, Peter went crazy. He passed alternately from crises of furor to the deepest depression. The fainting spells of his youth were now accompanied by seizures. He cried desolately like a child, and at the same time destroyed everything that came into his path. Figueiredo writes: “Peter foamed at the lips, his squinting eyes advertised epilepsy, his pursed mouth spat anger, and from his constricted throat came the same cry of entreaty, anger, pity, and passion… It burned his brain. The least noise was a sharp stab in his ears that ran through his head from side to side.”
Remorse for having abandoned Ines to the mercy of his enemies tormented him, and this idea shone in a monstrous imbalance that would be fixed in history.
“…the fever that took the prince to the gates of insanity and death forever affected his already overburdened brain…”
Followed by those loyal to him, he declared war on his father. Peter’s hordes sowed terror wherever they went. From Coímbra to Oporto, the trees bent under the weight of those hanged. The epileptic furor soon exhausted itself. The prince fell into a strange state of indifference. Father and son were reconciled. Alfonso conceded him high and low jurisdiction over the kingdom to show his trust and affection. The people of the village, however, would make the sign of the cross whenever they saw the prince go galloping through the streets in search of an imaginary prey.
He would kill animals with his own hands, provoking a strange glow in his eyes when his hands were stained with blood. With the same rigor, he persecuted those who violated the law. He would always carry a whip with which he struck those that were guilty. He attended the torture of prisoners and more than once played the part of executioner. He showed inflexibility and rigidity in the application of justice. A merchant’s wife caught committing adultery was burned alive in the public square, and the husband was charged with bearing the execution costs. He would perform justice in the Plaza Mayor dressed entirely in black and surrounded by gigantic dogs. His sentences were dreadful and varied depending on his mood.
Feeling that his end was approaching, King Alfonso advised those who had something to do with the death of Ines to put a lot of distance between themselves and his son.
As soon as Alfonso died, Peter ordered the arrest all of Ines’ victimizers. Two of the murderers were tortured beyond belief. Finally the king had their hearts ripped out while they were still alive, and he devoured them before the horrified public who watched the scene in terror.
He exhumed Ines’ body, placed it on the throne, and forced all of those present to render her homage by kissing her hand.
His paroxysms of fury and despair alternated with pathological joy. He organized large popular feasts where he tirelessly danced until he dropped.
King Peter reigned for ten years. At 47, he left this world as the faithful lover of Ines de Castro, who could not reign in life, but instead, after death.
Some authors would consider Peter the Cruel of Portugal mad, while others found him to be righteous and a lover of the people.
Peter the Cruel, according to psychiatrists, was severely mentally ill, most likely schizophrenic or at the very least a bloodthirsty paranoid psychopath. His violence and fainting spells make them think that it may have involved an epileptic gene.
