Fernão Garcia Esgaravunha
Trovador medieval

Biographical Note:

Portuguese troubadour belonging to one of the kingdom’s most important lineages, the Sousas. Son of one of the oldest Galician-Portuguese troubadours, Dom Garcia Mendes de Eixo, and of Elvira Gonçalves de Toronho, Fernão Garcia may have been born in the beginning of the 13th century, shortly after his brother, the count Dom Gonçalo Garcia de Sousa, equally a troubadour. He is already an adult in 1224, the year he is mentioned for the first time as lieutenant of Gouveia, and also holding the tenure of Celorico da Beira in 1230. Having disappeared from the documents until 1247, he may have been absent to Castile or even out of the Iberian Peninsula, following the political tensions that would lead to the deposition of Sancho II. In that year of 47, however, he is in Portugal defending the party of the kink’s brother, Afonso, count of Boulogne, since he is the protagonist of a famous episode exquisitely related in the Crónica Geral de1344, the challenge he launches in Trancoso to one of the most faithful supporters of Sancho II, his private counsellor Dom Martim Gil de Soverosa, accusing him of being one of the main instigators of the political crisis. With the end of the civil war and the ascent to the throne of Afonso III, he accompanies the new monarch, assuming in 1250 the lieutenancy of Maia. He marries, in an undetermined date, with Urraca Abril de Lumiares (widow, since 1248, of João Martins de Riba de Vizela, that first marriage of hers being attested in a satirical song by João Soares Somesso). According to Resende de Oliveira1, he may have died around 1251, the year from which he disappears from the royal documentation, an opinion that seems to be contradicted by the fact of Urraca Abril having been King Afonso III’s lover between 1248 and 1256 (the year of the last donation made by the monarch, according to data by Leontina Ventura2). Therefore, it is plausible that her marriage to Fernão Garcia occurred only arround this last date, and that Vicenç Beltran, based on the fact that his assets only appear to have been divided in 1284, is correct in his belief that he may have lived at least until 12753. It should also be added that the nickname Esgaravunha (the scratcher) by which Fernão Garcia de Sousa became known may have been due, according to Carolina Michaelis(4), to the fact that he possibly may have worn big nails.

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 Ventura, Leontina (2006), D. Afonso III, Lisboa, Círculo de Leitores, p. 211.

3 Vasconcelos, Carolina Michaëlis de (1990), Cancioneiro da Ajuda, vol. II, Lisboa, Imprensa nacional - Casa da Moeda (reimpressão da edição de Halle, 1904), p. 348.