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The King had a strong interest in the monks of Order of St. Jerome.
He had great respect for them, because of the contemplative spirituality
of the Order, their development of religious life, and their status
in Spain. They practised "good and exemplary customs",
which fitted in with the King's views of religion, and their political
objectives for the Iberian Peninsula were in agreement with his
own. For these reasons, he chose to give them the Monastery where
he would be buried and which would come to serve as a National Pantheon
for the Avis-Beja dynasty that he founded.
The monks were expected to celebrate a daily mass for the souls
of Prince Henry the Navigator, King Manuel I and his successors
in perpetuity. Thus there was a privileged relationship between
the monks and the King - the King provided physical security for
the monks, and they glorify and perpetuate his memory and the great
feats of the Portuguese. In addition the monks were to hear confessions
and give spiritual comfort to seamen and navigators who left the
Belém beach in search of new lands.
With the arrival of a liberal government under a constitutional
monarchy in 1833, religious orders were dissolved. The monastical
communities were dispersed, and had to leave the places where they
had lived for almost four hundred years. The Jerónimos Monastery
became State property and the building was turned into a school
until 1940.
The Jerónimos Monastery was intimately connected with the
Royal House of Portugal, and from early on became a symbol of the
Portuguese nation. The reasons for this are numerous. The Order
was powerful and had a strong relationship to Spain, and the intellectual
output of its monks was prodigious. The Monastery is inevitably
linked to the Age of Discovery because of its geographical location
at the entrance to the port of Lisbon.
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