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 Provençal 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 Provençal. 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 Provençal 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 Provençal 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 Provençal 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 Provençal _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.