He was born in 1394 and grew up at a court that fairly bubbled with political ambition.27 John I was the first king of a new dynasty called the Aviz, and he wished to raise Portugal to the rank of a major European power.28 Thus he intervened in the Hundred Years War by signing a perpetual peace treaty with England;* threw open his capital, Lisbon, to Italian banking houses and Flemish merchants, promoting Portugal as a naval stopping point between the ports of Flanders and England and those of the Mediterranean; and groomed his family to participate in his great project.29 His children were
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