FERDINAND (FERNANDO) of Portugal, the Blessed. — Son of JOHN I, King of Portugal, and of PHILIPPA, daughter of JOHN of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, born at Santarem on 29 Sept. 1402, died in prison at Fez (Morocco) on 5 June 1443. Piously educated, he reluctantly accepted, to remedy his poverty, the rank of Grand Master of the Knights of Aviz; but he refused the cardinalate offered him by EUGENE IV.
He led, with his brother HENRY the Navigator, an expedition against the Moors of Africa to drive them from Tangier; but he was overpowered and defeated. FERDINAND was taken hostage as security for the cession of Ceuta. When the hope of obtaining this city vanished, the Moors changed their courtesy into harsh treatment and slave labour and imprisonment. Transferred from Arzilla to Fez, in the presence of the King and his cruel vizier, he was left to languish in prison until his death. Yet amid such suffering, not a word of complaint escaped his lips. His fellow prisoner JOÃO ALVAREZ, having regained his freedom, brought back his heart to Portugal in 1451; later, his mortal remains, discovered in 1463, were buried in the church of Our Lady at Batalha, near Leiria. PAUL II declared him blessed in 1470.
FERDINAND is the hero of one of the most moving plays of CALDERÓN: *Il principe constante*, composed in 1629.