The “Entail of the Month” initiative this June presents the Castelo Branco o Novo Estate, established in Pirescoxe, Santa Iria da Azóia. On October 31st 1442, Nuno Vaz de Castelo Branco and his wife, Joana Juzarte, without heirs and already towards the end of their lives, founded an entailment centred on the Castelo Branco o Novo farm/estate and appointed the eldest male child of one of Nuno’s brothers, Lopo, as administrator.

The inheritance bequeathed by the founders to this nephew represents a step forward in the process of defining what was to become one of the sumptuous estates of this period in Portugal: vast properties in areas with high economic value; headquartered in a palatial residence – known as the ” estate head”  -, located on a property that is expressly referred to as the ” estate and settlement of Castelo Branco o Novo“; finally, an extensive depiction of the figure of the heir, obliged to bear arms, a particular surname, the annexation of a third of the estate bequeathed to each generation, perfect mental capacities for managing the properties and penalties for non-compliance. 

The way in which this awareness of lineage is expressed and implemented, conceived of in the present but for the future, deserves detailing. The defining clauses for heirs are accompanied by due justifications:  the estate “(…) is the beginning of the honour of the said Castelo Branco lineage; the successors shall all be called castel branco and with no other manor or lineage; and they shall bear their arms straight and with no other designation or deference and shall neither bear them as such nor in any other guise or designation and be called by any other surname and lineage, which they do not bear nor can be borne by the said heir”.

The symbolic preference for the palace located in Pires Escouche, as dreamt of by the founding couple, would later shift to other locations, such as the Paço de Belas, which would benefit from its proximity to the Court from the mid-18th century onwards. However, the old “Palace” has since gained a new lease of life: today classified as a building of public interest, it was subject to extensive restoration work by Loures City Council in 2001 and the Castle of Pirescoxe Municipal Gallery has been hosted there ever since.

To find out more details about this entail, go to this page with all the Entail of the Month information. Here, you may also find out about the other entails made available in the meantime, at: https://www.vinculum.fcsh.unl.pt/entail-of-the-month

You can also contribute to this initiative by making suggestions for future entails of the month and any details you may be able to provide. To this end, please contact the project at: vinculum@fcsh.unl.pt.

The VINCULUM project is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and led by Maria de Lurdes Rosa, Professor of NOVA FCSH and researcher at the Institute of Medieval Studies, awarded the first ERC Consolidator Grant to a Portuguese researcher in the field of History.