It happened that his imprisonment of his mother was not at all pleasing in the sight of Rome. Dona Theresa had powerful friends, who so used their influence at the Vatican on her behalf that the Holy Father—conveniently ignoring the provocation she had given and the scandalous, unmotherly conduct of which she had been guilty—came to consider the behaviour of the Infante of Portugal as reprehensibly unfilial, and commanded him to deliver Dona Theresa at once from duress. This Papal order, backed by a threat of excommunication in the event of disobedience, was brought to the young prince by the Bishop of Coimbra, whom he counted among his friends. Affonso Henriques, ever impetuous and quick to anger, flushed scarlet when he heard that uncompromising message. His dark eyes smouldered as they considered the aged prelate. “You come here to bid me let loose again upon this land of Portugal that author of strife, to deliver over the people once more to the oppression of the Lord of Trava?” he asked. “And you tell me that unless by obeying this command I am false to the duty I owe this country, you will launch the curse of Rome against me? You tell me this?” The bishop, deeply stirred, torn between his duty to the Holy See and his affection for his prince, bowed his head and wrung his hands. “What choice have I?” he asked, on a quavering note. “I raised you from the dust.” Thunder was rumbling in the prince’s voice. “Myself I placed the episcopal ring upon your finger.” “My lord, my lord! Could I forget? All that I have I owe to you—save only my soul, which I owe to God; my faith, which I owe to Christ; and my obedience, which I owe to our Holy Father the Pope.” The prince considered him in silence, mastering his passionate, impetuous nature. “Go,” he growled at last. The prelate bowed his head, his eyes not daring to meet his prince’s. “God keep you, lord,” he almost sobbed, and so went out. But though stirred by his affection for the prince to whom he owed so much, though knowing in his inmost heart that Affonso Henriques was in the right, the Bishop of Coimbra did not swerve from his duty to Rome, which was as plain as it was unpalatable. Betimes next morning word was brought to Affonso Henriques in the Alcazar of Coimbra that a parchment was nailed to the door of the Cathedral, setting forth his excommunication, and that the Bishop—either out of fear or out of sorrow—had left the city, journeying northward towards Oporto. Affonso Henriques passed swiftly from incredulity to anger; then almost as swiftly came to a resolve, which was as mad and harebrained as could have been expected from a lad in his eighteenth year who held the reins of power. Yet by its very directness and its superb ignoring of all obstacles, legal and canonical, it was invested with a certain wild sanity.