Afonso Rides to Castile's Aid
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Este sempre as soberbas Castelhanas Co'o peito desprezou firme e sereno, Porque não é das forças Lusitanas, Temer poder maior, por mais pequeno. Mas porém, quando as gentes Mauritanas, A possuir o Hespérico terreno Entraram pelas terras de Castela, Foi o soberbo Afonso a socorrê-la.
This king always despised the proud Castilians with a firm and serene heart, for it is not in the nature of Portuguese strength to fear a greater power merely because that power is the smaller. Yet when the Moorish peoples, seeking to seize the land of Spain, poured through the territories of Castile, it was the proud Afonso who went to her rescue.
Canto 3 runs through the kings of Portugal. Here the poet praises a king who scorned Castilian pride, then recounts how, when Moorish armies poured into Castile to seize Spain, that same proud Afonso went to rescue her.
The stanza works as a hinge: first a maxim about Portuguese character, then the deed that proves it. Portugal does not fear a stronger neighbor for being the smaller nation, and the proof is a king who scorned Castilian arrogance yet, when Moorish armies broke into Castile, marched to defend the very rival he despised. This is Afonso II sending Portuguese knights to help Castile against the Almohad invasion, the campaign that culminated at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212.
What a first reader slides past is the single word soberbo. Camões condemns Castilian pride (as soberbas Castelhanas) and in the same breath crowns his own king with it (o soberbo Afonso) — the fault in the neighbor becomes glory in the Portuguese. And there is a political edge invisible today: Camões wrote while Portugal and Castile sat uneasily under one crown, so a Portuguese king riding to rescue Castile is not just chivalry, it is a quiet claim about who once needed whom.
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