We have already referred to the pilgrim route to the shrine of Compostella, by which a steady stream of foreign influence entered the country.  The same effect was produced by crusaders who came to help the Spaniards in their struggle against the Moors, and by foreign colonists who helped to Christianise the territories conquered from the Mohammedans.  The capture of Lisbon in 1147 increased maritime intercourse with the North.  Individuals from Portugal also visited Northern and Southern France, after the example of their Spanish neighbours.  References to Portugal in the poetry of the troubadours are very scarce, nor is there any definite evidence that any troubadour visited the country.  This fact is in striking contrast with the loud praises of the Spanish courts.  None the less, such visits must have taken place:  Sancho I. had French jongleurs in his pay during [125] the twelfth century and the Portuguese element in the five-language descort of Raimbaut de Vaqueiras shows that communication between Provencal poets and Portuguese or Galician districts must have existed.  The general silence of the troubadours may be due to the fact that communication began at a comparatively late period and was maintained between Portugal and Spanish courts, and not directly between Portugal and Southern France.

Alfonso X. of Castile himself wrote many poems in the Galician or Portuguese dialect; perhaps his choice was dictated by reasons analogous to those which impelled Italian and Catalonian poets to write in Provencal.  The general body of Portuguese poetry declares itself by form and content to be directly borrowed from the troubadours:  it appeals to an aristocratic audience; the idea of love as a feudal relation is preserved with the accompanying ideas of amour courtois, and the lyric forms developed in Southern France are imitated.  The Provencal manner took root in Portugal as it failed to do in Spain, because it found the ground to some extent prepared by the existence of a popular lyric poetry which was remodelled under Provencal influence.  The most popular of the types thus developed were Cantigas de amor e de amigo and Cantigas de escarnho e de maldizer; the former were love songs:  when the poet speaks the song was one de amor; when the lady speaks (and she is unmarried, in contrast to Provencal usage) the song was de amigo.  This latter is a type developed independently by the Portuguese school. Cantigas de escarnho correspond in intention [126] to the Provencal sirventes; if their satire was open and unrestrained they were cantigas de maldizer.  They dealt for the most part with trivial court and personal affairs and not with questions of national policy upon which the troubadours so often expressed their opinions.  Changes in taste and political upheavals brought this literature to an end about 1385 and the progress of Portuguese poetry then ceases for some fifty years.