October 1495, Lisbon, Portugal, the Alfama Noble District.
In the late fifteenth century, the Alfama Noble District was Lisbon's ancient heart, home to the greatest concentration of the kingdom's nobles, and its legacy had endured from the Moorish age to the present. Narrow cobblestone streets, like winding streams, rose and fell with the slope of the hill, polished smooth and bright by the footsteps of countless generations. Vigorous grapevines climbed the whitewashed walls left behind by the Moors. Linen drying by the windows swayed lightly in the breeze, casting shadows of wealth and pure color.
At the highest point of the entire Alfama district stood Lisbon Cathedral. This twelfth-century Romanesque fortress church towered at the very center of the neighborhood, its rugged towers overlooking the whole city like guards. The priests' morning prayers sang Gregorian chant, and the peal of bells startled a flock of doves into flight, skimming past the rose window of the Church of Saint Anthony.
Beneath the pale golden sunlight, the church spire shone brilliantly, facing from afar the Lisbon "Fortress Palace" beside Castelo de São Jorge several li away, like royal power and ecclesiastical power standing shoulder to shoulder in the Catholic World.
Yet during these years of rule by the "Perfect Prince," John II, the royal power of the Kingdom of Portugal, without a doubt, pressed steadily above ecclesiastical power by a head. As early as fourteen years ago, when John II had just ascended the throne, he had forcibly appointed the Portuguese archbishop Jorge da Costa as Portugal's resident representative in Rome. The king had directly driven this archbishop back to the Holy See, and once he went, he had been gone for more than a decade, still not returned even now.
From then on, all Church affairs throughout the Kingdom of Portugal