ALFONSO I, king of PORTUGAL, called the CONQUEROR — Born in 1109, died in 1185, he was the first king of Portugal, more commonly called Alfonso Henriquez. His father, Henry of Burgundy, had held the county of Portugal as a fief; but A. proclaimed himself independent on the fields of Ourique (1139), after a splendid victory over the Saracens; and in order to give greater solidity to the new kingdom, he placed it under the protection
of the Pope, proclaiming himself his vassal and undertaking to pay an annual tribute of four ounces of gold. Continuing the struggle against the infidels, in 1147 he wrested Santarem and then Lisbon from them, and proclaimed the latter the capital. He founded various monasteries: the Cistercian monastery of Alcobaça, endowing it with extensive lands including thirteen towns, over which the abbot possessed jurisdictional powers and the authority to levy taxes; that of Santa Cruz at Coimbra for the Augustinian Canons, and that of S. Vincenzo at Lisbon.