ALFONSO I, RE DI PORTOGALLO, DETTO IL CONQUISTATORE

ALFONSO I, king of Portugal, known as the Conqueror — b. 1109, d. 1185, was the first king of Portugal, more commonly called AFONSO HENRIQUES. His father, HENRY OF BURGUNDY, had held the county of Portugal as a fief; but A. declared himself independent on the field of Ourique (1139), after a splendid victory over the Saracens; and to give greater stability to the new kingdom, he placed it under the protection of the Pope, declaring himself the Pope’s vassal and binding himself to pay an annual tax of four ounces of gold. Continuing the struggle against the infidels, he wrested from them in 1147 Santarém and then Lisbon, which he proclaimed the capital. He founded several monasteries: the Cistercian one at Alcobaça, endowing it with extensive lands comprising thirteen towns, over which the abbot exercised jurisdictional powers and the faculty of levying taxes; that of Santa Cruz at Coimbra for the Augustinian Canons; and that of St. Vincent at Lisbon.