A honra was an administrative division and a form of

lordship A lordship is a territory held by a lord. It was a landed estate that served as the lowest administrative and judicial unit in rural areas. It originated as a unit under the feudal system during the Middle Ages. In a lordship, the functions of eco ...

that existed in the

Kingdom of Portugal The Kingdom of Portugal was a Portuguese monarchy, monarchy in the western Iberian Peninsula and the predecessor of the modern Portuguese Republic. Existing to various extents between 1139 and 1910, it was also known as the Kingdom of Portugal a ...

prior to 1834 - a land, or district, whose jurisdiction and income belonged to a Lord or

Fidalgo ''Fidalgo'' (, ), from Galician and Portuguese —equivalent to a nobleman, but sometimes literally translated into English as "nobleman" —is a traditional title of Portuguese nobility and Brazilian nobility that refers to a member of the ...

History and characteristics

Along with the ''coutos'', the honras were manifestations of medieval manorialism in the

. These were forms of property that could belong both to lay Lords (the honras) and to ecclesiastical Lords (the coutos, which in the beginning could belong to either one or the other, but after the Middle Ages in most cases came to be in the hands of the Church). Honras and coutos - made up of one or more parishes, or parts of parishes - had in common the characteristic of

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, which resulted in the exemption from tax charges before the Crown, the right to administer civil and criminal justice by the respective Lords and the right to prevent the entry of royal officials. The main characteristic that differentiated honras from coutos was the fact that the honras were a form of "spontaneously generated" Lordship. While the coutos were normally created by the "

charter A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified. It is implicit that the granter retains superiority (or sovereignty), and that the ...

of the couto", which - as an expression of royal authority - expressly delimited the territory of the couto and specified the scope of the powers that the Lords could exercise, the honras were never originally a royal act. Therefore, they were not gifts bestowed by the power of the King but rather impositions on the crown, made by powerful Feudal Lords. The honras' original constitutions were linked to the so-called "

Reconquista The ''Reconquista'' (Spanish language, Spanish and Portuguese language, Portuguese for ) or the fall of al-Andalus was a series of military and cultural campaigns that European Christian Reconquista#Northern Christian realms, kingdoms waged ag ...

" movement, during which several Portuguese noble families managed to impose their political and territorial influence independently of royal concessions. This connection to the Reconquista explains the absence of honras in the south of Portugal. They were concentrated mainly in the northern part of the country, where - many centuries later, at the end of the 17th century - provinces such as Entre Douro e Minho had still a total of 21 honras. The honras thus had their original legitimation in the strength and prestige of a social class (the early-medieval warrior nobility) and the crown's intervention to curtail the powers of that class only appeared in a later period, first by recognizing these pre-existing situations and then by seeking to control them, namely through the Inquirições. During the reign of King

Denis Denis may refer to: People * Saint Denis of Paris, 3rd-century Christian martyr and first bishop of Paris * Denis the Areopagite, Biblical figure * Denis, Bishop of Győr (13th century), Hungarian prelate * Denis, son of Ampud (died 1236), bar ...

, the Inquirições distinguished between the "old" honras, which were recognized, and the "new" honras, which were considered abusive and illegitimate because they were of recent formation.{{Cite book , last=Ramos , first=Rui , url=https://search.worldcat.org/pt/title/580221334 , title=História de Portugal , last2=Sousa , first2=Bernardo Vasconcelos e , last3=Monteiro , first3=Nuno Gonçalo , publisher=A esfera dos livros , year=2009 , isbn=978-989-626-139-9 , edition=1 Kindle , location=Lisboa , at=1484, 2567 , language=pt , trans-title=History of Portugal , quote=os senhorios tinham em geral a designação de honras ou coutos (pos. 1484) ... D. Dinis lançou Inquirições Gerais, contrariando (...) a constituição de novas honras (pos. 2567) ranslation: the lordships were generally called honras or coutos ... King D. Dinis launched General Inquiries, opposing the constitution of new honras} The crown thus recognized acquired rights, at the same time as it sought to limit the expansion of the Lords' powers and influence. The honras continued to exist in Portugal in the

Modern era The modern era or the modern period is considered the current historical period of human history. It was originally applied to the history of Europe and Western history for events that came after the Middle Ages, often from around the year 1500 ...

(they were extinguished, together with the other territorial domains of the nobility, in 1834). By then, however, they were already subject to the general regime applicable to Lordships (that is, to the provisions of the so-called '' Lei Mental,'' that only allowed the succession of property and lordships, in a noble family, when there was a legitimate male son to inherit them), namely with regard to the process of royal confirmations - either by more or less automatic succession or by express confirmation made by a new King. Royal confirmations were thus a method for making the Lords and donataries of the honras recognize royal authority.

References

Feudalism Historical geography of Portugal