The Taking of Lisbon in 1147 and the Portuguese Reconquista

I. The County of Portugal

The lands between the Minho and the Douro had been resettled by Christians since the late ninth century, when Vímara Peres took Porto in 868 for Alfonso III of Asturias, and the region became known after the town of Portucale on the mouth of the Douro. The county of Portugal was ruled by a local comital family within the kingdom of León until the eleventh century, when it was absorbed into the realms of Ferdinand I. Ferdinand's capture of Coimbra in 1064 extended Christian rule to the Mondego, and the region between the Douro and the Mondego became a frontier zone, exposed to raids from the Muslim cities of the Tagus valley.

In 1096 Alfonso VI of León and Castile granted the county of Portugal, together with the territory of Coimbra, to Henry of Burgundy, a younger son of the ducal house who had come to Spain with other French knights after Sagrajas and who had married Alfonso's illegitimate daughter Teresa. Henry's cousin Raymond of Burgundy held Galicia and married Alfonso's legitimate heir, Urraca. Henry governed Portugal as a vassal of the Leonese crown, but after Alfonso's death in 1109 he took part in the struggles between Urraca and her husband Alfonso I of Aragon, seeking advantages for himself.

Henry died in 1112, leaving the county to Teresa and their young son Afonso Henriques. Teresa ruled Portugal for over a decade and styled herself queen, but her alliance with the Galician noble Fernando Peres de Trava alienated the Portuguese barons. In 1128 Afonso Henriques, now about nineteen, defeated his mother's forces at São Mamede near Guimarães and took control of the county. This victory is regarded in Portuguese tradition as the founding moment of the kingdom.

II. Afonso Henriques and the Battle of Ourique

Afonso Henriques spent the following decade asserting his independence from his cousin Alfonso VII of León and Castile, who had been crowned emperor in 1135, and expanding southwards. He built the castle of Leiria in 1135 to protect Coimbra and raided into the territory of the Almoravids beyond the Tagus. On 25 July 1139, the feast of Santiago, he won a victory over a Muslim force at a place called Ourique. The location is uncertain, and the battle may have been a successful raid rather than a great engagement. Later Portuguese tradition magnified it into a decisive victory over five Moorish kings, after which Afonso was acclaimed king by his troops, and a legend of the fifteenth century added a vision of Christ before the battle. The five shields on the Portuguese royal arms were later explained by reference to this legend.

From 1139 Afonso Henriques used the title of king. Alfonso VII recognised him as such at the Treaty of Zamora in 1143, probably in return for continued vassalage. Afonso then turned to the papacy, offering the kingdom to the Holy See as a vassal and promising an annual tribute of four ounces of gold, in order to obtain papal protection against the claims of León. Papal recognition came only in 1179, with the bull Manifestis probatum of Alexander III, which acknowledged Afonso as king and his kingdom as independent.

The new king's religious policy was closely linked to his military aims. He favoured the Cistercians, granting them the great domain of Alcobaça in 1153, and the canons regular of Santa Cruz in Coimbra, founded in 1131, who became the intellectual centre of the kingdom and the keepers of its early annals. He also welcomed the Templars, who received the castle of Soure in 1128 and later Tomar, which became their Portuguese headquarters.

III. The Almoravid Collapse and the Capture of Santarem

In the 1140s the Almoravid regime in al-Andalus began to disintegrate. In North Africa it faced the rising power of the Almohads, a movement founded by Ibn Tumart in the Atlas mountains in the 1120s and led after his death by Abd al-Mu'min. As the Almoravids lost ground in Morocco, revolts broke out in the Andalusi cities, and a second period of taifa kingdoms began, with local rulers seizing power in the Algarve, Badajoz, Córdoba, Valencia and Murcia. One of them, Ibn Qasi, a Sufi leader in the Algarve, called the Murids, rose against the Almoravids at Mértola in 1144.

Afonso Henriques seized the opportunity. On the night of 15 March 1147 he took the fortress town of Santarém on the Tagus by surprise, his men scaling the walls with ladders. Santarém was the key to the lower Tagus valley, and its capture opened the way to Lisbon. A narrative of the event, the De expugnatione Scalabis, was written at Santa Cruz of Coimbra and presents the attack as an act of faith, preceded by a vow to the Cistercians. Afonso granted the churches of Santarém to the Templars in thanks.

IV. The Second Crusade and the Northern Fleet

In December 1145 Pope Eugenius III issued the bull Quantum praedecessores, calling for a new crusade to recover Edessa, which had fallen to Zengi of Mosul in 1144. Bernard of Clairvaux preached the crusade in France and Germany, and in 1147 Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany set out overland. Eugenius also extended crusading privileges to wars against the pagan Wends on the Baltic frontier, discussed in The Northern Crusades, and against the Muslims in Spain.

Among the crusaders from northern Europe, a large contingent chose to travel to the Holy Land by sea. Some 160 to 200 ships, carrying perhaps ten thousand men from England, Flanders, the Rhineland and Normandy, assembled at Dartmouth in May 1147. They had formed a sworn association with rules on peace among themselves, the division of booty and the conduct of the voyage. Their leaders included Hervey de Glanvill, the commander of the men of Norfolk and Suffolk, Saher of Archelle, Count Arnold of Aerschot and Christian of Ghistelles. The fleet sailed along the coasts of Brittany and Galicia and arrived at Porto in June.

At Porto the crusaders were met by the bishop, Pedro Pitões, who on Afonso's behalf invited them to join the king in an attack on Lisbon. The bishop's sermon, preserved in the account of the expedition, argued that the war in Spain was as meritorious as the war in the east and that the land had been taken unjustly from Christians. After negotiations at the camp outside Lisbon, the crusaders agreed to stay. The king promised them the plunder of the city and the ransom of its inhabitants, and those who wished could settle in the conquered land with grants of property.

V. The De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi

The main source for the siege is a Latin letter known as the De expugnatione Lyxbonensi, the Conquest of Lisbon, preserved in a single manuscript at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge. Its author was a priest who accompanied the Anglo-Norman contingent, perhaps a man named Raol, and he wrote soon after the events, addressing the letter to a cleric in England named Osbert of Bawdsey. The text includes a detailed narrative of the voyage and the siege, the speeches of the leaders, and the sermons preached in the camp.

The letter is remarkable for its attention to the moral and theological questions raised by the expedition. It records the arguments of the English leader Hervey de Glanvill to persuade reluctant members of the fleet, who suspected Afonso's promises and wished to continue to Jerusalem. It reports the discussion of whether it was lawful to fight against the Muslims of Lisbon, who had done the crusaders no injury, and the answer given by the bishop of Porto that the war was a just war for the recovery of lands once Christian. The bishop quoted biblical precedent for the defence of the people of God and cited the teaching of Augustine on just war. He also addressed the objection that Christ had told Peter to put away the sword, from Matthew 26:52, explaining it in terms of the distinction between private vengeance and war waged by legitimate authority.

Several other accounts of the siege survive, including a letter by a Rhineland crusader named Winand and a short narrative attributed to a Flemish participant, the so-called Lisbon letter of Arnulf. A later Portuguese text, the Indiculum fundationis monasterii Sancti Vincentii, records the foundation of the monastery of São Vicente de Fora on the site of the crusaders' cemetery. Together these sources make the siege of Lisbon one of the best documented operations of the twelfth century.

VI. Lisbon under Muslim Rule

Lisbon, known in Arabic as al-Ushbuna, was a prosperous port city on the northern bank of the Tagus estuary. Its walled madina occupied the slopes of the hill crowned by the citadel, the qasba, on the site of the later castle of São Jorge, and its suburbs extended along the river below. The De expugnatione describes it as a rich city with a population, swollen by refugees from Santarém and the countryside, of perhaps sixty thousand families, although the figure is surely exaggerated. Its inhabitants included Muslims of Arab, Berber and Muladí descent, a Mozarab Christian community with its own bishop, and Jews.

The city had been attacked before. Alfonso VI had briefly held it in 1093 after the Muslim ruler of Badajoz ceded it, but it was lost to the Almoravids within a few years. Fleets of northern crusaders on their way to the Holy Land had raided the coast, and in 1142 an earlier fleet had joined Afonso Henriques in an unsuccessful attack on the city. In 1147 the inhabitants of Lisbon had no hope of relief from Almoravid forces, which were collapsing, and the Almohads had not yet crossed to the peninsula. The ruler of Badajoz, to whom the city appealed, sent no help.

VII. The Siege of 1147

The crusaders landed at the end of June 1147 and occupied the suburbs on the western side of the city after fierce fighting. Afonso's Portuguese troops camped on the hill to the north, the Anglo-Normans to the west and the Flemings and Germans to the east. Before beginning the assault the leaders offered terms to the defenders. The archbishop of Braga, João Peculiar, addressed the governor and citizens from beneath the walls, calling on them to surrender the city and keep their lives and property, and to leave if they wished. The Muslim spokesman, according to the crusader account, replied that the city had once belonged to their ancestors and would belong to their descendants, and that they would trust in the will of God.

The siege lasted seventeen weeks. The crusaders built siege engines, including mangonels that hurled stones day and night, and tried to mine the walls. The Flemings and Germans dug a mine beneath the eastern wall, which collapsed in mid-October but was repaired by the defenders. The Anglo-Normans constructed a great movable siege tower, eighty-three feet high according to the account, which after repeated attempts was brought against the walls near the river gate on 21 October. The defenders, weakened by hunger and disease, sought terms.

Food had run short in the city long before. The crusader narrative describes the defenders eating dogs and cats and some fleeing to the Christian camp, where they were given food or, in some cases, mistreated. Captured letters showed that the governor had asked the ruler of Évora for help and been refused. The surrender was negotiated on 22 October. The garrison agreed to hand over the citadel, the city and its goods, and the inhabitants were allowed to leave with their lives.

VIII. The Sack of the City

The surrender did not prevent violence. On 24 October the city was opened, and the Flemish and German contingents, contrary to the agreement that the entry would be orderly, broke in and plundered the city. The author of the De expugnatione, writing from the Anglo-Norman point of view, blamed the men of Cologne and Flanders, and claimed that the English had kept their oath. According to his account the old Mozarab bishop of Lisbon was killed in the disorder. The inhabitants were expelled from the city over several days, many of them starving and sick, and the crusaders divided the booty among themselves.

Shortly afterwards plague broke out among the remaining population and among the crusaders. Many of the crusaders spent the winter in Lisbon and sailed on for the Holy Land in February 1148, arriving too late to join the disastrous siege of Damascus that ended the Second Crusade. Others stayed and settled. An Englishman, Gilbert of Hastings, was appointed the first bishop of the restored see of Lisbon, and the great mosque was consecrated as the cathedral. The cathedral of Lisbon, the Sé, was rebuilt in Romanesque style in the second half of the twelfth century on the site of the mosque.

The capture of Lisbon and Santarém, together with the surrender of Sintra and Palmela soon afterwards, gave Afonso Henriques control of the Tagus estuary. Lisbon replaced Coimbra as the principal city of the kingdom in the following century and became the capital under Afonso III. The siege also showed that crusader fleets on the way to the Holy Land could be drawn into the Iberian wars, a pattern repeated several times in the following decades.

IX. Ships, Engines and the Crusader Camp

The fleet that arrived at Lisbon in 1147 was a mixture of vessels from the North Sea and the Channel. Most were probably clinker-built ships of the northern tradition, single-masted with a square sail, some of them large enough to carry horses and siege timber, and others lighter craft suited to coastal navigation. The voyage along the Atlantic coast was made in stages, with stops at harbours in Brittany, Asturias and Galicia, and the fleet was scattered by storms in the Bay of Biscay before regrouping. The crusaders visited Santiago de Compostela at Pentecost before sailing on to Porto.

In the camp before Lisbon the sworn association that had governed the fleet continued to function. Its regulations, recorded in the De expugnatione, provided for the punishment of theft and violence among the crusaders, for the keeping of a priest on every ship, and for weekly chapters at which disputes were settled. Each contingent elected its own leaders, and important decisions were taken in assemblies. The arrangement reflects the commune-like organisation of the northern towns from which many participants came, and it explains why the leaders had to argue at length to persuade their followers to stay at Lisbon.

The siege engines were built on the spot from timber gathered in the surrounding country and from the ships themselves. The crusaders used mangonels, beam slings operated by teams of men pulling ropes, which according to the account hurled thousands of stones within a few days. The Anglo-Norman siege tower was built with a protective covering of hides and wicker against fire, and it was moved forward on rollers over ground levelled by the besiegers. When it first approached the wall it became stuck in soft ground and was exposed to attack for several days, and the defenders made repeated sallies to burn it. Its final success depended on filling the ditch and bringing it close enough that its bridge could reach the battlements.

X. The Bishop of Porto's Sermon

The sermon of Bishop Pedro Pitões to the crusaders at Porto, as reported in the De expugnatione, offers a rare record of how the case for war in Spain was put to an audience of northern knights and townsmen. The bishop began by praising the crusaders for leaving their homes, wives and possessions for the love of Christ, echoing the words of Jesus in Matthew 19:29 about those who leave houses or relatives for his name's sake. He then argued that the work of a pilgrim did not lie merely in travelling to Jerusalem but in living well on the way, and that they would serve God as well by delivering the Christians of Spain as by fighting in the east.

The bishop described the condition of the church in Spain under Muslim rule, the destruction of cities, the captivity of Christians and the burning of churches, and he presented the war as the recovery of what had been lost. He addressed the crusaders' scruples about breaking their journey and about the shedding of blood. Citing Augustine and other Latin authorities, he argued that war was lawful when it was declared by legitimate authority, for a just cause and with a right intention, and that those who fought to defend the Church and repel injury were not murderers but servants of justice.

The sermon illustrates the gradual elaboration of a theology of holy war in the twelfth century. Its arguments rest on the distinction between private violence, which the Gospels forbid, and the use of force by rulers, which the Latin tradition justified by reference to texts such as Romans 13:4. The author of the De expugnatione evidently approved of the bishop's reasoning, but his account also records the doubts of the crusaders who wished to sail on, and the suspicion that the king's promises were made only to obtain their help. The debate shows that the legitimacy of the war was not taken for granted even among those who fought it.

XI. Settlement and Charters

The capture of Lisbon and the advance into the Alentejo required the resettlement of a large territory. The Portuguese kings, like their Leonese and Castilian counterparts, used municipal charters, the forais, to attract settlers. The charter of Lisbon was granted in 1179 by Afonso Henriques, together with those of Santarém and Coimbra, and it set out the obligations and privileges of the inhabitants, the jurisdiction of the municipal council and the rights of the king. The charters of the frontier towns typically gave settlers freedom from many seigneurial dues, the right to judge minor cases, and the obligation to serve in the municipal militia.

Many of the crusaders who settled in Portugal received land around Lisbon. A group of Flemish and French settlers founded or populated Vila Franca de Xira, Atouguia and Lourinhã, and the first bishop, Gilbert of Hastings, brought the liturgical usages of Salisbury to the cathedral of Lisbon. The military orders were given large domains in the south, which they colonised with settlers from the north of Portugal and from Galicia. The Cistercians of Alcobaça organised the clearing and cultivation of their lands with lay brothers and tenants, and their abbey became one of the largest landholders in the kingdom.

The settlement of the south also involved the continued presence of Muslims and Jews. Muslim farmers remained in the countryside around Lisbon and in the Algarve, and they provided much of the agricultural labour on the new estates. The coexistence was unequal, and the Muslim population declined through conversion and emigration, but Muslim communities survived in Portugal until the expulsion ordered by Manuel I in 1496.

XII. The Writing of Portuguese History

The early history of the Portuguese kingdom was recorded first in short Latin annals kept at Santa Cruz of Coimbra and other monasteries, which noted the main military events year by year. The Chronica Gothorum, a compilation of the twelfth century, presents Afonso Henriques as a successor of the Gothic kings and records the battle of Ourique as a great victory. In the fourteenth century the Crónica Geral de Espanha de 1344, compiled by Count Pedro of Barcelos, and in the fifteenth the chronicles of Duarte Galvão and Rui de Pina gave fuller narratives of the reigns, adding much legendary material.

The legend of the vision of Ourique, in which Christ appeared to Afonso before the battle and promised him victory and a kingdom, appeared in the fifteenth century and was given a supposedly authentic document, the oath of Afonso Henriques, forged at the monastery of Alcobaça around 1596. The story became an article of national faith in the seventeenth century, when it was used to support the Portuguese restoration of 1640 against Spain. In the nineteenth century the historian Alexandre Herculano rejected the vision as a fabrication, provoking a bitter controversy with the clergy. His critical history marked the beginning of modern Portuguese medieval scholarship.

XIII. Afonso Henriques and the Alentejo Frontier

After 1147 the Portuguese advanced into the Alentejo, the plain south of the Tagus. In 1158 Afonso took Alcácer do Sal, and in the 1160s a frontier adventurer named Geraldo Sem Pavor, Gerald the Fearless, captured a series of towns by surprise attacks, among them Évora in 1165, Trujillo, Cáceres and Juromenha. Geraldo's methods recall those of the Cid, and his career illustrates the importance of independent frontier captains in the Iberian wars.

Afonso's advance was halted at Badajoz in 1169. The city's Almohad garrison was being besieged by Afonso and Geraldo when Ferdinand II of León, who claimed the region, came to its relief. Afonso was injured when his leg was caught in the gate as he tried to escape, and he was captured by the Leonese. He was released after ceding the towns he had taken in Galicia, and he never rode to war again. His son Sancho took over the conduct of campaigns.

The Almohads had by then established their authority in al-Andalus. They had crossed the straits in 1146 and 1147, and by the 1160s they controlled most of the peninsula's Muslim territory. Their caliph Abu Ya'qub Yusuf led a great campaign against Portugal in 1184 and besieged Santarém, where he was mortally wounded. His son Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur campaigned in 1190 and 1191, retaking Alcácer do Sal and other towns south of the Tagus, and reversing many of the Portuguese gains.

The Almohad campaign of 1184 was the most serious threat to the young kingdom. Abu Ya'qub Yusuf crossed the straits with a large army and laid siege to Santarém in June, while Ferdinand II of León, now reconciled with Afonso, marched to its relief. During a confused movement of the Almohad camp the caliph's tent was attacked and he was wounded, and he died on the way back to Seville. The death of the caliph and the failure of the siege preserved the Tagus line, but the Almohad offensives of the following years showed that Portugal's southern frontier remained precarious for another generation.

XIV. Silves and the Crusader Fleets of 1189

In 1189, as the Third Crusade was being organised, another fleet of northern crusaders, including Danes, Frisians, Flemings and Germans, arrived at Lisbon. Sancho I, who had succeeded his father in 1185, persuaded them to join him in an attack on Silves, the principal city of the western Algarve. A narrative of the siege written by a participant, the Narratio de itinere navali peregrinorum Hierosolymam tendentium, describes the siege in detail. The city surrendered on 3 September 1189 after its water supply was cut. The crusaders plundered it, and Sancho took the title of king of Silves and the Algarve.

The success did not last. In 1191 Abu Yusuf Ya'qub retook Silves and the other Portuguese conquests south of the Tagus except Évora. The Portuguese frontier fell back to the river, and only after the Almohad defeat at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 did the advance resume.

XV. Alcacer do Sal and the Military Orders

In 1217 a third crusader fleet, carrying Frisian and Rhineland crusaders bound for the Fifth Crusade, arrived at Lisbon. The bishop of Lisbon, Soeiro Viegas, and the leaders of the military orders persuaded part of it to join an attack on Alcácer do Sal, the strongpoint on the Sado that controlled the route south. The town fell on 18 October 1217 after a siege in which the defenders' relief army was defeated. The pope, Honorius III, was at first reluctant to grant the participants the crusading indulgence because they had delayed their voyage to the east, but he eventually confirmed it.

From the 1220s onwards the Portuguese advance was led largely by the military orders. The Order of Santiago, founded in León in 1170, held Alcácer and Palmela and took a large part in the conquest of the lower Alentejo and the eastern Algarve. The Order of Avis, which began as the knights of Évora and was affiliated to the Castilian Order of Calatrava, held the central Alentejo. The Hospitallers and Templars held strongholds along the Tagus. Under Sancho II, between 1226 and 1248, these orders took Elvas, Moura, Serpa, Beja, Mértola and Tavira.

The masters of the orders became figures of national importance. Paio Peres Correia, master of the Order of Santiago in Portugal and later grand master of the whole order, led the conquest of the eastern Algarve in the 1240s, taking Tavira in 1242 according to tradition after the killing of seven of his knights during a truce. He went on to serve Ferdinand III of Castile at the siege of Seville in 1247 and 1248, and he is buried at Tavira. His career shows how the military orders operated across the boundaries of the Iberian kingdoms.

XVI. The Conquest of the Algarve

Sancho II's reign ended in civil war. He was deposed by Pope Innocent IV in 1245 at the request of the Portuguese clergy and replaced by his brother Afonso, count of Boulogne, who became Afonso III. In 1249 Afonso III completed the conquest of the Algarve by taking Faro, Loulé and Aljezur. The Portuguese Reconquista was thereby completed, more than two centuries before the fall of Granada.

Castile disputed the possession of the Algarve, and the question was settled by the Treaty of Badajoz in 1267, which fixed the border along the Guadiana. Portugal's territory was thus established within boundaries that have changed little since. The kingdom's early completion of its Reconquista left its nobility and military orders without a land frontier against the Muslims, and in the fifteenth century their energies were turned towards Morocco and the Atlantic, beginning with the capture of Ceuta in 1415, a subject followed in Portugal against the Mamluks and Ottomans in the Indian Ocean.

XVII. Mudejars, Mozarabs and Jews in Portugal

The conquered cities of the Portuguese south retained Muslim populations under Christian rule. Afonso Henriques granted a charter to the free Muslims, the mouros forros, of Lisbon, Almada, Palmela and Alcácer in 1170, guaranteeing their persons and property in return for tribute and labour services, and similar charters followed in the Algarve under Afonso III. The Muslims lived in separate quarters, the mourarias, under their own judges. The Mouraria district of Lisbon, outside the walls below the castle, preserves the name.

The Jewish communities of Portugal also grew under the early kings. The Jewish quarter of Lisbon, the judiaria, was established near the cathedral, and Jews served the crown as financiers and physicians. The chief rabbi of the kingdom, the arrabi-mor, was a royal official who appointed local judges. The Portuguese communities would later receive large numbers of refugees from Castile after 1492, and suffer the forced conversion of 1497 under Manuel I, events treated in The Expulsion of 1492 and Bible Scholarship in Lisbon.

XVIII. Faith and Memory

The capture of Lisbon became a foundational event in the memory of the Portuguese kingdom. Afonso Henriques was remembered as the warrior king who created the nation, and his tomb in the church of Santa Cruz at Coimbra became a place of veneration. The crusaders' cemetery outside the walls of Lisbon became the site of the monastery of São Vicente de Fora, founded by Afonso shortly after the siege, and the relics of the martyr Vincent were brought by sea from Cape St Vincent in 1173, an event that gave the city its emblem of a ship with two ravens.

The De expugnatione Lyxbonensi, rediscovered and printed in the nineteenth century, has been studied as evidence for the mentality of the Second Crusade, for the relations between the crusaders and local rulers, and for the use of biblical and patristic arguments to justify war. Its account of the bishop of Porto's sermon draws on the language of the Psalms, including the call to God to arise against the enemy in Psalm 68:1, and on the story of the Maccabees, which was read in the Latin Bible of the time as a model of righteous warfare. Modern historians, notably Jonathan Phillips, Susan Edgington and Charles Wendell David, have used the text to show how participants debated the legitimacy of their actions even as they carried them out.

For the history of the biblical text, the Portuguese Reconquista prepared the way for the later flourishing of Jewish scholarship in Lisbon and of Christian Hebraism in Coimbra. Lisbon in the fifteenth century produced some of the finest illuminated Hebrew Bibles of the Sephardi tradition, the work of what scholars call the Lisbon school of illumination, before the forced conversions of 1497 ended open Jewish life in Portugal.

XIX. Bibliography

The following studies, editions and reference works underlie this account.