Illegitimate child (bastard) of King Pedro I,  Master of the Order of Avis (based in Avis, Alentejo), as king following the crisis of 1383 to 1385 that threatened the independence of Portugal.

With the support of the kingdom constable, Nuno Alvares Pereira, and British allies fought the battle of Aljubarrota against the Kingdom of Castile, who had invaded the country. The victory was decisive: Castile retired, ending several years later by the officially recognized as king.

To seal the Luso-British alliance married Philippa of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt, dedicating himself since the development of the kingdom.

In 1415 conquered Ceuta, strategic square for navigation in North Africa, which would start the Portuguese expansion. There were armed horsemen their children Duarte, Pedro and Prince Henry, called the brothers illustrious generation.

John was born in Lisbon as the natural son of Peter I by a woman named Teresa, who, according to Fernão Lopes, was a noble Galician. In the 18th century, António Caetano de Sousa found a 16th-century document in the archives of the Torre do Tombo, wherein she was named as Teresa Lourenço. In 1364, by request of D. Nuno Freire de Andrade, a Galician Grand Master of the Order of Christ, he was created Grand Master of the Order of Aviz, by which title he was known.

On the death of his half-brother Ferdinand I without a male heir in October 1383, strenuous efforts were made to secure the succession for Princess Beatrice, Ferdinand’s only daughter. As heiress presumptive, Beatrice had married king John I of Castile, but popular sentiment was against an arrangement in which Portugal would have been virtually annexed by Castile. The 1383–1385 Crisis followed, a period of political anarchy, when no monarch ruled the country.

On 6 April 1385, the Council of the Kingdom (the Portuguese Cortes) met in Coimbra and declared John, then Master of Aviz, King of Portugal.^[1] This was followed by the liberation of almost all of the Minho in the course of two months, in the war against Castile and its claims to the Portuguese throne. Soon after, the King of Castile again invaded Portugal with the purpose of conquering Lisbon and removing John I from the throne. John I of Castile was accompanied by French allied cavalry while English troops and generals took the side of John of Aviz (see Hundred Years’ War). John and Nuno Álvares Pereira, his Constable and talented supporter, repelled the attack on the decisive Battle of Aljubarrota (14 August 1385).^[2] John I of Castile then retreated. The Castilian forces abandoned Santarém, Torres Vedras, Torres Novas, many other towns were delivered to John I by Portuguese nobles from the Castilian side and the stability of the Portuguese throne was permanently secured.

On 11 February 1387, John I married Philippa of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt, who had proved to be a worthy ally, consolidating the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance that endures to the present day.

After the death of John I of Castile in 1390, without issue by Beatrice, John I of Portugal ruled in peace and pursued the economic development of the country. The only significant military action was the siege and conquest of the city of Ceuta in 1415. By this step he aimed to control navigation of the African coast.

The raids and attacks of the Reconquista created captives on both sides, who were either ransomed or sold as slaves. The Portuguese crown extended this to North Africa. After the attack on Cueta, the king sought papal recognition of it as a crusade. Such as determination would then indicate that those captured could legitimately be sold as slaves.^[3]

John I requested and obtained from Pope Martin V a Papal bull, Sane charissimus,^[4] of 4 April, 1418, confirming to the king all the lands he should take from the Moors. Political weakness compelled the Renaissance Papacy to adopt an acquiescent and unchallenging position when approached for requests for privileges in favour of these ventures.^[5] Under the auspices of Prince Henry the Navigator, voyages were organized which ultimately led to the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope.^[2]

The ill result of the expedition against Tangier, which was undertaken against the advice of Eugenius IV and ended in the captivity of the Infanta Ferdinand, hastened the end of John I, and his son Alfonso V (1438-81) succeeded to the throne.^[2]

Contemporaneous writers describe John as a man of wit, very keen on concentrating power on himself, but at the same time with a benevolent and kind personality. His youthful education as master of a religious order made him an unusually learned king for the Middle Ages. His love for knowledge and culture was passed to his sons, often collectively referred to by Portuguese historians as the “illustrious generation” (Ínclita Geração): Edward, the future king, was a poet and a writer; Peter, the Duke of Coimbra, was one of the most learned princes of his time; and Prince Henry the Navigator, the duke of Viseu, invested heavily in science and the development of nautical pursuits. In 1430, John’s only surviving daughter, Isabella, married Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and enjoyed an extremely refined court culture in his lands; she was the mother of Charles the Bold.

Afonso I of Portugal, would occupy Évora about 1165, and about 1175 would donate goods in the city, Intramuros, the Calatrava brothers settled in Portugal – where the first name of this militia in Lusitanian soil: the friars of Santa Maria de Évora or Militia of Santa Maria de Évora – to the populate, develop and organize.

Even, the first king would grant a his illegitimate son, Pedro Afonso, Avis order master, the position of first master of this order on Portuguese soil.

Although Evora Freires maintain obedience who owe the prior in Castile, but soon gained forums of ‘national policy’, especially from the moment moving on for Avis, that they had been donated in 1211 by King Alfonso II. Noble D. Martins de Avelar officially assumes the Master of the Order of Avis until his sudden death in the summer of 1364.

Around 1364, King Pedro I of Portugal delivers the master of the order to his bastard João relationship child with a Galician lady name Teresa Lourenço. It would be the same John who, after the death of Ferdinand, was to bring together numerous support in the fight against Beatriz of Portugal, the legitimate heir to the throne, winning the Spanish King John I in Aljubarrota and be declared king by the Cortes de Coimbra 1385.

The rise of John, Master of Avis, the throne of Portugal, dictated on the one hand, the integration of the master of this order in the Crown of Portugal (being appointed or royals, nobles or the entire confidence of the monarch, as was the case of the Grand Master first after King John, Fernando Rodrigues de Sequeira), and on the other, greater alienation with the Order of Calatrava; after 1385, the Order of the Knights refused to recognize the Spanish Grand Master, Gonzalo de Guzman, as his superior. This led to problems even with the Papacy (to which was added the positioning of both crowns during the Great Schism of the West, with John I of Portugal to support the Pope of Rome, and John I of Castile, the schismatic Avignon) only finally resolved with the council of Basel-Ferrara-Florence (1431).

Furthermore, the accession to the throne of a master of Avis gave rise to a canonical dispensation granted to celebrate marriage, since, under the Benedictine rule that Avis Order followed, members of the said Order professed a vow of chastity.

With the ascent to the throne of John I of Portugal rekindled the flame of war crusade, long lost in Portugal; the achievements in the Maghreb lead the religious orders to pastures new. Thus, the Knights of Avis (as well as the Christ, the other Portuguese national order) will be attending the conquest of Ceuta (1415), as well as in the failed attack on Tangier (1437), in which he was held (and eventually died in captivity reputation for holiness) Prince Fernando, who was then Master of the Order since 1434. By his death in Fez in 1443, passed the Master into the hands of the eldest son of the Regent Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, also called Peter (which would be for a brief period, King of Aragon).

The order was then inherited by Prince John (future John II of Portugal) for his illegitimate son George of Lancaster, and on the death of this in 1551 (reign of John III of Portugal), the Order of the Grand Masters Avis was incorporated perpetually to the Crown, losing all its religious character. That same year, Pope Julius III would allow their members to freely dispose of their property (also contrary to the vow of poverty made by its members). By this time, the only criterion that was needed for admission into the Order was to belong to the State of the Nobility, which was confirmed by a decree of 1604.

On August 1, 1789, Queen Maria I of Portugal, with the help of Pope Pius VI, tried to reform Avis order, but eventually only secularize them – the three orders – (Avis, Santiago and Christ) although he kept the integrated Grand Master still the Crown. This secularization settled the birth of the Band of Three Orders (a tripartite group of purple, red and green, respectively representing the Orders of Santiago, Christ and Avis), with which have since been awarded the Portuguese heads of state (kings or presidents) when his rise to power as a symbol of the judiciary exercising.

The order was also taken to Brazil by the Prince Regent D. John and in 1834, the Regent Pedro, Duke of Bragança, on behalf of the young Queen Mary II, completely abolished the order.

Among the Iberian character of orders, we highlight the Order of Santiago, Alcantara Order and the Order of Calatrava. The latter, founded in 1158 with the help of King Sancho III of Castile, was soon confirmed by papal bull, adopting the Rule of St. Benedict and the Constitution of the Cistercian Order. Of the Order of Calatrava would be born as an independent arm in the kingdom of Portugal, the future Order of St. Benedict of Avis.

The order, as a monastic military order, was founded in emulation of such military orders as the Knights Templar, which existed in Portugal as early as 1128, and received a grant from Theresa, Countess of Portugal in the year of the Council of Troyes, which confirmed their early statutes. A native order of this kind sprang up in Portugal about 1146. Afonso, the first King gave to it the town of Évora, captured from the Moors in 1166, and the Knights were first called “Friars of Santa Maria of Évora”. Pedro Henriques, an illegitimate son of the King’s father, was the first grand master.

After the conquest of Aviz a castle erected there became the motherhouse of the order, and they were then called “Knights of St. Benedict of Aviz”, since they adopted theBenedictine rule in 1162, as modified by John Ziritu, one of the earliest Cistercian abbots of Portugal. Like the Knights of Calatrava in Castile, the Knights of Portugal were indebted to the Cistercians for their rule and their habit—a white mantle with a green fleur-de-lysed cross. The Knights of Calatrava also surrendered some of their places in Portugal to them on condition that the Knights of Aviz should be subject to the visitation of their grand master. Hence the Knights of Aviz were sometimes regarded as a branch of the Calatravan Order, although they never ceased to have a Portuguese grand master, dependent for temporalities on the Portuguese King.

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