Law Ammusement
Surreal law facts
The truth is always stranger than fiction.
$234-million for a license to use two words
King John V of Portugal, also known as King Joao, lived from 1689 to 1750. Joao became head of state (king) and chief lawmaker at the tender age of 17. He married his first cousin in 1708, as was the custom at the time.
But just as his reign began, fantastic amounts of gold began to arrive from the new Portuguese conquests in Brazil, of which the King, as of right, took 20% for himself. Historians estimate that because of these new gold mines in South America, the amount of Gold in Europe doubled.
King Joao hardly knew what to do with all this money. He certainly never convoked the senate of noblemen, known as the cortés, to advise him in improving the lot of the Portuguese.
Sedgwick wrote of King Joao's:
"... Arbitrary and violent disposition who substituted for the national representation his own absolute and despotic will. The monarch abandoned himself to the unrestrained indulgence of his passions."
A poster-boy for anti-monarchists, John V razed down hundreds of homes in Lisbon and had erected a new palace, a mini-Versailles. Then, he began buying priceless art all over Europe (much of which was lost in the great earthquake and subsequent tsunami of Lisbon in 1755).
But the real kicker came in about 1741, six years after his mental abilities had been affected by a stroke, and he turned "religious".
He paid the Vatican (Pope Benedict XIV) New World gold valued at $234-million, for the exclusive license to use two (2) religious words, rei fidelissimo (most faithful king) as part of his title!
To the great shame of the Church, this formal title not granted on merit but was based on Portugal's payment of $234-million dollars in South American gold, all of which was extracted in Brazil using slave labour; and which in one fell swoop, depleted the Portuguese treasury.
Source: www.duhaime.org.
