Estêvão Reimondo
Trovador medieval

Biographical Note:

Since the Italian apographs and the Colocci Index don’t mention his family name, the identification of this troubadour isn’t firm. One of the most often advanced hypothesis, however, and given the family connections of this knight to the troubadour world, points to his identification as the Portuguese Estêvão Raimundo de Portocarreiro, active from the middle 13th century until the beginning of the next1. Son of Raimundo Viegas and Maria Ourigues da Nóbrega, this Estêvão Reimondo was cousin to the troubadour Pero Gonçalves de Portocarreiro, and equally cousin, on his mother’s side, to Dom João Peres de Aboim. He also seems to have had connections to the troubadour Estêvão Fernandes Barreto, given that, in 1294, he and Martim Fernandes Barreto, brother to the aforementioned troubadour, were accused by the Bishop of Oporto of forced entry and theft of several things from the monastery of Pedroso, under the false pretext of being it’s patrons, in the occasion being forced to pay for damages2. According to the Nobiliaries, Estêvão Raimundo de Portocarreiro married in Santarém with Elvira Fernandes, e esta dona houvera-a el-rei de Portugal por barregã (and this lady the King of Portugal had as concubine - LC43H6) (we don’t know if the mentioned King is Afonso III or his son, King Denis, but it is probably the first, although the marriage is posterior to 1275). The presence of Estêvão Raimundo in Santarém, where his father already had assets, is moreover attested by several documents, and there he may have frequented the courts of Afonso III and King Denis between 1264 and 1304, the dates of the first and last of those documents that mention him. It’s not impossible that he may have travelled to Castile at some point, but aside some influences of the Occitan ballad in one of his cantigas de amigo, there is no proof of it ever occurring. Being therefore this identification plausible, it should however be noted that being documented, among the homonyms already referenced by Resende de Oliveira, another Estêvão Raimundo, this one always associated to a brother of his, Fernão Raimundo, and also considering that in the documents pertaining to the family of the troubadour Martim Soares, disclosed by Pedro d’Azevedo3, there is a letter of attorney of a certain Fernão Raimundo, explicitly referred to as the grandson of this troubadour (the proxy is to his uncle João Martins, son of Martim Soares, and also mentioned as a troubadour), this alternative identification hypothesis of Estêvão Raimundo beeing the gradson of Martim Soares may equally be considered.

References

1 Oliveira, António Resende de (1994), Depois do espectáculo trovadoresco. A estrutura dos cancioneiros peninsulares e as recolhas dos séculos XIII e XIV, Lisboa, Edições Colibri.

2 Pizarro, José Augusto (1999), Linhagens medievais portuguesas: genealogias e estratégias 1279-1325, vol. I, Porto, Centro de Estudos de Genealogia, Heráldica e História da Família da Universidade Moderna, p. 395.
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3 Azevedo, Pedro de (1918), "O trovador Martim Soares e sua família", in Revista Lusitana, XXI .
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