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The Twelve of England (in Portuguese: ''Os Doze de Inglaterra'') is a Portuguese chivalric legend of 15th-century origin, famously related by the poet Luís de Camões in his 1572 ''Os Lusíadas'' (Canto VI). It tells the story of twelve Portuguese knights who travelled to England at the request of twelve English ladies to avenge their insult by a group of English knights. == Legend == According to the legend, in the 1390s, twelve English knights insulted〔Camões does not make the content of the insult explicit; but Pedro Mariz (1598) and Manuel Correia (1613) say the English knights simply called the ladies "very ugly" - too ugly to be loved, and too ugly to serve in the ducal household, and challenged any man to prove them wrong. Camões insinuates the insult arose only after the ladies refused to yield to the knights' advances.〕 twelve ladies-in-waiting of the household of the Duchess of Lancaster. The ladies appealed to their master, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, but he was unable to find any English champions to defend the honor of the ladies. The twelve offending knights, renowned for their martial prowess, were too widely feared. Recalling his Iberian campaigns of the 1370s and 1380s, and the bravery of the Portuguese knights he encountered there, Lancaster recommended that they search for a champion among them. In one version of the legend,〔Mariz (1598: (p.140 ))〕 John of Gaunt wrote down the names of twelve Portuguese knights from memory, had the ladies draw lots to be matched with a knight, and then had each of the ladies write a letter of appeal to their champion. John of Gaunt wrote a separate letter himself to his son-in-law, John I of Portugal, asking him to grant the Portuguese knights permission to travel to England for this noble endeavor. (In another version, related in Teófilo Braga's poem, John the Gaunt made an open request to John I, and scores of Portuguese knights applied, from which twelve were selected from an urn by Queen Philippa of Lancaster in Sintra.〔Braga, 1902: (p.95 )〕 Their exact match with an English lady was sorted later - John of Gaunt shuffled the anonymous chivalric mottoes of the twelve knights, and had each of the twelve ladies select one, only learning the exact identify of their champion afterwards.)〔Braga, (1902, (p.207 ))〕 The twelve were scheduled to set out by ship from Porto, but one of them, Álvaro Gonçalves Coutinho, nicknamed ''o Magriço'' ("Ladies' Paladin") told the others to go ahead without him, that he would make his way overland via Spain and France. The eleven knights set sail from Porto and landed in England, where they were well received in London by the Duke of Lancaster and the ladies, but there was great nervousness about whether Magriço would arrive on time. Magriço travelled overland at a languid pace, taking time to meander on the route, and visit various curious locations along the way. When the day of the tournament arrived, legendarily held at Smithfield, London,〔Braga, 1902: p.300〕 there was still no news of Magriço, leaving the damsel destined to be defended by him (named 'Ethwalda' in one version) quite distraught. But just as the fight was about to be enjoined, Magriço arrived on the scene with great fanfare, just in time to take his position alongside his compatriots, heartening the distressed lady. The twelve Portuguese champions successfully dispatched the offending English knights that day, in what was characterized as an unusually hard and brutal fight. The ladies' honor was successfully defended. But a few of the English knights had been killed in the tournament field, and in the aftermath, the Portuguese were threatened with revenge by the friends of the fallen. Fearful of being betrayed if they lingered in England, the Portuguese knights applied to John of Gaunt to secure them passage back to Portugal quickly. However, Magriço, still possessed by a spirit of adventure, decided to linger on in northern Europe, and eventually entered the service of the Count of Flanders for some time. Álvaro Vaz de Almada also went on adventures in continental Europe (legendarily engaging in a duel with a German knight in Basel). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Twelve of England」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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