André Luiz BERTOLI

Original title: Modelos de ação bélica na Crônica de D. Duarte de Meneses − Texto, Contexto e Representação

Keywords: Chronicle, Models of warlike action, North Africa, Portugal, War.

In this paper I shall present some preliminary research on the Crônica do Conde D. Duarte de Meneses, wrote by Gomes Eanes de Zurara between 1464 and1468. I will make a closer study of several chapters in the chronicle, especially chapter 44 (Riiij) and chapter 154 (CLiiij), which expound the warrior values and Christian virtues that defined the chivalric profiles of the Lusitanian nobility. The chapters selected retell exemplary deeds through which Zurara highlighted among many other types of warlike attitudes that were part of the whole relationship of medieval man to war: the obedience to the captain versus the execution of chivalric prowess. In this chronicle Gomes Eanes de Zurara tried to define an ideal of chivalry adapted to the needs of the Portuguese expansion in North Africa during the fifteenth century, which, in turn, would serve as a model for all the Portuguese warrior nobility in Africa.