Afonso III, born 5 May 1210: from count of Boulogne to king of the Algarve

In June 1241 the young King Louis IX of France held a great feast in the market halls of Saumur, on the Loire. The knight Jean de Joinville, who carved for the King of Navarre that day, remembered the scarlet and ermine, the twenty bishops and archbishops at one table and the 3,000 knights who were said to have dined in the halls.2 sources2 sources

At the far end sat the king's mother, Blanche of Castile, who had ruled France while he was a boy. Among the men who waited on her was a Portuguese prince of 31.2 sources2 sources

The count was Afonso, the younger brother of King Sancho II of Portugal, and Blanche was his aunt. He had been born on 5 May 1210, probably in Coimbra; Humberto Baquero Moreno, in the Spanish Royal Academy of History's biography, gives both the day and the town as presumed. Nothing in his birth suggested a crown. Within seven years of the feast he would be king of Portugal, and his elder brother would be dead in exile.2 sources2 sources

His father, Afonso II, became king in 1211 and died in 1223, excommunicated and with the kingdom under a papal interdict. The crown passed to the eldest son, Sancho, born in 1209 and only 13, while a council of his father's ministers governed in his name.2 sources2 sources

There was little for a second son at home. Afonso left for the French court, at 17 in 1227 according to Baquero Moreno and the Lisbon castle's history of the king. The nineteenth-century historian Alexandre Herculano could find no firm date, mentioned his going around 1229 and thought it might have been later still; the first proof of him in France is from 1238. Several Portuguese knights went with him.3 sources3 sources

In 1238 he married Matilde, or Mahaut, Countess of Boulogne, an heiress who had been a widow since 1234. Her first husband, Philippe Hurepel, was a son of King Philip Augustus. Herculano thought Queen Blanche arranged the match. Through it Afonso became Count of Boulogne, on the Channel coast, and in Portuguese history he is still o Bolonhês, the man from Boulogne.3 sources3 sources

He was knighted in 1239. In July 1242, when Louis IX met Henry III of England near Saintes, Herculano records that the Count of Boulogne and his men were the first to break the English ranks. The English took the count's seneschal prisoner, and Herculano identified him as Pedro Ourigues, one of the Portuguese knights who had followed Afonso to France.2 sources2 sources

Sancho II was a successful soldier. He took Elvas, Juromenha, Serpa, Aljustrel and Mértola and pushed down the Guadiana to Ayamonte, Cacela and Tavira on the Algarve coast. At home he was weaker. Nobles feuded, royal officials and bishops clashed over rents and jurisdiction, and in 1238 a complaint by the bishop of Porto brought an interdict on the kingdom.2 sources2 sources

Rome began looking for a substitute. In late 1239 Pope Gregory IX issued twelve bulls in favour of the youngest brother, Fernando of Serpa, the last of them allowing for him to claim the throne if Sancho proved incapable. Nothing came of it. By 1245 the candidate was the Count of Boulogne, who was already corresponding with Innocent IV and who told the pope that Sancho's marriage to Mécia López de Haro was within the forbidden degrees of kinship.2 sources2 sources

The archbishop of Braga and the bishops of Porto and Coimbra took their complaints to Rome, and then to the Council of Lyon. On 20 March 1245 the bull Inter alia desiderabilia blamed Sancho for the state of the kingdom. The council closed on 17 July, and a week later, on 24 July, the bull Grandi non immerito told the nobles and towns of Portugal to obey Afonso as governor; a copy for the prelates followed on 1 August. Sancho was removed from government rather than formally deposed. The same council deposed Emperor Frederick II for tyranny; the charge against Sancho was weakness.4 sources4 sources

On 6 September 1245, in the Paris house of the chancellor of the university, Afonso swore to the archbishop of Braga and to a representative of the bishop of Coimbra that he would protect the Church's liberties, punish those who had wronged clergy, take hospitality dues no larger and no more often than his grandfather had, and consult the prelates on the affairs of the kingdom. Fourteen seals were attached to the record.2 sources2 sources

Afonso sailed for Lisbon at the end of 1245 or the very beginning of 1246. The city declared for him at once, and in February 1246 he confirmed its old privileges. He took the title of visitor, curator and defender of the kingdom, and the war that followed was fought castle by castle, with sieges, payments and defections.2 sources2 sources

Sancho turned to Castile. Its heir, the future Alfonso X, led troops into Portugal and, by the chroniclers' account, came as far as Leiria, but could not restore him, and Innocent IV took care to keep the Castilian prince out of the excommunications that fell on Sancho's other supporters. Sancho withdrew to Toledo, where he died on 4 January 1248. His will asked for burial at Alcobaça, beside his father. It was not carried out. Afonso now took the title of king.3 sources3 sources

The new king finished what his brother had begun. Early in 1249 he marched south with his uncle Pedro, the master of Avis, the knights of the military orders and a few close followers. In February he was still at Ourém. By March he was dating documents at Santa Maria de Faro, the old Muslim town on the lagoon, which had surrendered. Albufeira, Porches and the remaining places followed.2 sources2 sources

Little is known of the fighting. The main narrative, the so-called chronicle of the conquest of the Algarve, is an extract from a chronicle of 1419. It places the fall of nearby Loulé after the surrender of Faro, following a short siege by Paio Peres Correia and the knights of Santiago. The historian Luís Filipe Oliveira notes that by March Paio Peres was already at Alcácer do Sal and that by May the king was at Crato, heading north. He argues that Loulé fell soon after Faro and probably negotiated its surrender.2 sources2 sources

Castile objected. Its heir Alfonso argued that Ibn Mahfuz, the Muslim ruler of Niebla, had handed him the rights to the Algarve, and war followed. A truce was agreed at the end of 1250; fighting resumed after Alfonso became king in 1252, until Innocent IV pressed both sides to make peace.2 sources2 sources

The price was a marriage. At Chaves in May 1253 Afonso III, then about 43 and still married to Matilde, took as his wife Beatriz, an illegitimate daughter of Alfonso X who was still a child. Castile was to enjoy the Algarve, and the lands east of the Guadiana, until the first son of the marriage reached the age of seven.2 sources2 sources

That son, Dinis, was born in Lisbon on 9 October 1261, and the arrangement began to unwind. At Badajoz, on 16 February 1267, Alfonso X gave up all his rights in the Algarve and ordered the knights who held its royal castles to hand them to the king of Portugal. Afonso III in turn gave his father-in-law Aroche and Aracena, east of the Guadiana. The river became the border from its meeting with the Caia down to the sea, and Arronches and Alegrete stayed Portuguese.4 sources4 sources

Afonso III had promised the bishops a great deal in Paris. He also needed money, and the usual way for a medieval king to raise it was to 'break' the coinage: recall the silver pennies, recast them with more copper and reissue them at the same face value. Prices rose at the mere rumour. By the end of 1253 the court had tried to hold them down with a fixed schedule of prices.1 source1 source

In the spring of 1254 he called a solemn assembly at Leiria. It met from late February to early April and dealt with complaints from towns and monasteries, confirmed privileges and settled the trade of the river Douro between Porto, which belonged to its bishop, and the royal town of Gaia across the water. His chancery register recorded who came.2 sources2 sources

The good men of the towns were the novelty. Herculano, writing in the 1840s, held that before 1254 town procurators had never sat in a Portuguese assembly, and called their summons the event that would make the reign worth remembering if nothing else did. Torquato de Sousa Soares later argued that they may already have attended an assembly at Guimarães in 1250, though Herculano himself would not affirm it. Leiria in 1254 is the first where their presence is certain.2 sources2 sources

The coinage came back again and again. Around this time Afonso promised to leave the money unchanged for seven years in return for a one-off levy, which in practice only commoners paid. When the term ran out in 1261 he began to issue debased coins. Prelates, barons, orders and towns together demanded Cortes, which met at Coimbra and produced a settlement dated 11 April 1261.2 sources2 sources

The old coins were to be restored, the new and weaker ones would circulate at a fixed rate of four to three against them, and the king gave up any right to alter the old money again, in exchange for a single tax on property. The new coin could be struck again only after four years, for two years, and never after that in his lifetime. The scale fell hardest on modest owners, and bishops, the masters of the orders, the clergy and knights were exempted outright.1 source1 source

He also sent out inquiries into crown rights in 1258, and in 1265 took legal steps to recover royal property that the inquiries had shown was lost. Those inquiries touched the estates of the Church as well as the nobility, and the historian Ofélia Carvalho suggests they may have triggered the bishops' revolt that followed.1 source1 source

His court spent more and more time in Lisbon. The city had taken his side in 1246, his heir was born there, he made his will there in 1271, and in 1277 a papal legate found him living in the palace inside the castle. The castle's own history of the king is careful: he kept travelling between the main towns, and Lisbon gradually asserted itself as the head of the kingdom.4 sources4 sources

The Chaves marriage left Afonso with two wives. Matilde complained to Pope Alexander IV and asked for her dowry back. In May 1255 the pope had the archbishop of Compostela summon the king to Rome within four months; he neither came nor sent anyone. In July 1256 Alexander ruled against him in his absence, and a bull of 2 April 1258 shows the dowry still unpaid. Beatriz was also related to him within the forbidden degrees, so the Church saw the union as both bigamous and incestuous.3 sources3 sources

Afonso stayed with Beatriz, and under the interdict church services stopped wherever the couple went. Matilde died in 1258. A daughter, Branca, was born early in 1259 and Dinis in 1261. In May 1262 the Portuguese bishops asked the new pope, Urban IV, to regularise the marriage, and Louis IX of France, Theobald of Navarre and Charles of Anjou wrote in support. On 19 June 1263 the bull Qui celestia simul legitimised it.3 sources3 sources

Peace with the bishops did not last. In 1267 and 1268 the archbishop of Braga and the bishops of Coimbra, Viseu, Lisbon, Porto and Idanha, with procurators for Lamego and Évora, went to Rome. Each laid an interdict on his diocese, which put almost the whole kingdom under censure, and they presented 43 articles of complaint: bishops imprisoned or threatened with death, clergy harassed by royal officials, tithes refused, excommunications ignored.1 source1 source

Popes came and went, and the case dragged on. Gregory X demanded amends in 1273, and on 4 September 1275 issued the bull De regno Portugaliae, which reminded Afonso of the oath he had sworn in Paris and set out the penalties if he did not swear again. Gregory died on 10 January 1276, before the deadline ran out. In 1277 the legate Friar Nicolau reached Lisbon and found the king in his castle palace. He would not yield.2 sources2 sources

He gave way only when he believed he was dying. On 27 January 1279, before the bishop of Évora, a former abbot of Alcobaça and other clergy, he swore without conditions to obey the Holy See and to restore what he had taken. His son Dinis, standing by, promised to carry out whatever his father could not. Herculano prints the date as 17 January but says the king lived another twenty days, which fits the 27th.2 sources2 sources

Afonso III died in Lisbon, aged 68. Dinis, 17, inherited a kingdom still under interdict and a quarrel with Rome that he would settle only with the concordat of 1289.3 sources3 sources

The map is the plainest legacy. After Faro there was no more Muslim territory for Portugal to conquer at home, and the last stretch of the Guadiana, past Alcoutim to the sea, is still the border he agreed at Badajoz. His son redrew much of the rest of the frontier at Alcañices in 1297.2 sources2 sources

So is the place of the towns in the Cortes. They kept it: the assembly that elected João I at Coimbra in 1385 included some fifty town procurators.3 sources3 sources

Herculano, no admirer of the way Afonso won the throne, still judged the reign a time of real social progress, and summed up the man in one sentence.1 source1 source