Jonathan Wilson | Universidade Nova de Lisboa (original) (raw)
Books by Jonathan Wilson
Doubts over the authenticity of Bernard of Clarivaux's Letter 308 have focussed principally on a ... more Doubts over the authenticity of Bernard of Clarivaux's Letter 308 have focussed principally on a certain Pedro mentioned therein being described as Portuguese King, Afonso Henriques’s “brother”, in association with the known fact that the king had no such brother – the character being thought to have been almost entirely invented by the controversial seventeenth-century historian Bernardo de Brito as a device to further his desired version of Portuguese History. To confound matters even more, there are references in a cluster of late Portuguese chronicles (fifteenth century) to a quasi-mythical character “Pedro Afonso”, for whom there is no diplomatic evidence whatsoever, who is confusingly referred to as a brother or son of Afonso Henriques, with the earliest references to him occurring in texts redacted well-over two centuries after the events that supposedly concerned him. This article seeks to highlight various aspects of this convoluted saga, some hitherto overlooked, some apparently forgotten, in order tentatively to suggest that we may be able to assert with a little more confidence that Letter 308 could well be genuine.
Routledge Crusader Texts in Translation Series, 2021
Achieved at the height of the Crusades, the Christian conquests of Santarém in 1147 by King Afons... more Achieved at the height of the Crusades, the Christian conquests of Santarém in 1147 by King Afonso I, and of Alcácer do Sal in 1217 by Portuguese forces and Northern European warriors on their way by sea to Palestine, were crucial events in the creation of the independent kingdom of Portugal. The two texts presented here survive in their unique, thirteenth-century manuscript copies appended to a codex belonging to one of Europe’s most important monastic library collections accumulated in the Cistercian abbey of Alcobaça, founded c. 1153 by Bernard of Clairvaux. Accompanied by comprehensive introductions and here translated into English for the first time, these extraordinary texts are based on eye-witness testimony of the conquests. They contain much detail for the military historian, including data on operational tactics and the ideology of Christian holy war in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Literary historians too will be delighted by the astonishing styles deployed, demonstrating considerable authorial flamboyance, flair and innovation. Likely written by Goswin of Bossut, the search for authorship yields an impressive array of literary friends and associates, including James of Vitry, Thomas of Cantimpré, Oliver of Paderborn and Caesarius of Heisterbach.
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003162292/conquest-santar%C3%A9m-goswin-song-conquest-alc%C3%A1cer-sal-jonathan-wilson
Intended for a GENERAL READERSHIP with colour illustrations by I. C. Shackleton, this is a book o... more Intended for a GENERAL READERSHIP with colour illustrations by I. C. Shackleton, this is a book of journeys. The first begins 830 years ago, when a fleet of crusaders embarks from the river Weser in Northern German travelling via England along the Atlantic seaboard, heading for Jerusalem and the Third Crusade. Another begins 648 years later, the year of Queen Victoria’s coronation, when a sojourning Italian academic accidentally discovers a mysterious codex in Aix-en-Provence in south-eastern France. Ultimately both journeys share a common end, the unravelling of the secrets of an unknown German pilgrim who relates in his own words the marvellous and terrible things he witnesses. Now translated into English from the original Latin, the Anonymous Crusader of Silves speaks directly to us. With explanatory notes, illustrations, maps, photographs and full narrative texts, here you will learn of distant sea voyaging and far-flung places, of besiegers and besieged, of conquest and re-conquest, of suffering and martyrdom. It is a quest for identities, one is that of a twelfth-century pilgrim warrior, another is of the Portuguese nation.
Papers by Jonathan Wilson
Cistercian Horizons, Collected Essays, 2024
In addressing the problem of Cistercian origins in Portugal, the dearth of surviving documentatio... more In addressing the problem of Cistercian origins in Portugal, the dearth of surviving documentation relating to the earliest settlements of the order in the region leaves the historical sleuth with little option but to sift through fragmentary information often contained in sources of doubtful provenance. Nevertheless, although thrust into a world of uncertainty, at least one clear constant emerges, the obvious centrality of the mysterious holy man known as João Cirita, who appears to have been instrumental in the establishment of the order in the Iberian Far West. In contrast to some cautiously narrow twentieth century approaches, this paper takes a broad view of the evidential landscape and contemplates the legendary and the mythical alongside the documentary clues to investigate what can be known about this individual whose activities would have such profound impact on Portuguese Ecclesiastical History. The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. (Isaiah, 35: 1)
FERNANDES, Isabel Cristina et al. eds., Ordens Militares, Identidade e Mudanca, 2021
Doubts over the authenticity of Bernard of Clarivaux's Letter 308 have focussed principally on a ... more Doubts over the authenticity of Bernard of Clarivaux's Letter 308 have focussed principally on a certain Pedro mentioned therein being described as Portuguese King, Afonso Henriques’s “brother”, in association with the known fact that the king had no such brother – the character being thought to have been almost entirely invented by the controversial seventeenth-century historian Bernardo de Brito as a device to further his desired version of Portuguese History. To confound matters even more, there are references in a cluster of late Portuguese chronicles (fifteenth century) to a quasi-mythical character “Pedro Afonso”, for whom there is no diplomatic evidence whatsoever, who is confusingly referred to as a brother or son of Afonso Henriques, with the earliest references to him occurring in texts redacted well-over two centuries after the events that supposedly concerned him. This article seeks to highlight various aspects of this convoluted saga, some hitherto overlooked, some apparently forgotten, in order tentatively to suggest that we may be able to assert with a little more confidence that Letter 308 could well be genuine.
FERNANDES, Carla Varela and CASTINERAS GÒNZALEZ, Manuel (Edit) - Imagens e Liturgia na Idade Média. Criação, Circulação e Função das Imagens entre o Ocidente e o Oriente na Idade Média (séculos V-XV), 2021
The De expugnatione Scalabis is purported to be Portuguese King Afonso Henriques’s own account of... more The De expugnatione Scalabis is purported to be Portuguese King Afonso Henriques’s own account of his conquest of Muslim Santarém in 1147. The text survives in a codex of the fundo of the Cistercian Abbey of Alcobaça having been produced during the twelfth/thirteenth century in the Iberian Far-West amid an atmosphere of Christian/Islamic Holy War mediated by the evolving Crusading Movement underway in the East and elsewhere. The work displays several unmistakable features suggestive of liturgical use from which emerges a closely crafted portrait of the Portuguese king demonstrating impressive scholarship and political vision on the part of the author(s) and projecting an image of Afonso Henriques designed to extend well beyond the cloisters of Alcobaça and which perhaps found physical echo in the architecture and civic ceremony of the medieval town of Santarém itself.
Al-Masaq Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean, 2020
This article addresses the long-standing problem of the authenticity of Saint Bernard’s “Letter 3... more This article addresses the long-standing problem of the authenticity of Saint Bernard’s “Letter 308”, purportedly sent by the Abbot of Clairvaux to King Afonso Henriques of Portugal in response to his request for Bernard’s aid in recruiting northern European crusaders for an attack on Muslim-held Lisbon – an enterprise that took place in 1147, resulted in the conquest of the city by the Portuguese, and essentially guaranteed the autonomous survival of the kingdom. Since the letter concerns one of the most discussed topics in Portuguese medieval history, namely the extent of Bernard’s involvement in the determinative years of the independent kingdom, this article scrutinises the arguments surrounding it in an attempt to untangle the disparate and often disjointed responses it has produced since its first appearance in 1602, and examines facets hitherto unheeded by those who have denounced it as a forgery, to discover if Letter 308 should now be accepted as genuine.
KEYWORDS: Conquest of Lisbon, Forgery of Letter 308, Bernardo de Brito, Saint Bernard, Afonso Henriques, Pedro Afonso, Templars, Portuguese Reconquista, Crusades, Second Crusade, Eugenius III, Alfonso VII
Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 2019
During high summer 1189, a fleet of northern crusaders en route to the Third Crusade landed in wh... more During high summer 1189, a fleet of northern crusaders en route to the Third Crusade landed in what is today Algarve and massacred 5600 inhabitants of the Islamic town of Alvor. Mentioned only fragmentarily in contemporary sources, modern commentators have either ignored the event or passed over it as an extraneous episode, being merely one more incidence of crusader savagery. Often overlooked is that these crusaders were supported by Portuguese vessels. Considering Sancho I of Portugal, soon afterwards, with another crusader fleet, would launch a campaign to conquer the nearby Almohad regional capital, Silves, the proposition emerges that the slaughter, rather than being haphazard, formed part of a strategy. If so, viewed against the Portuguese policy of preservation of target populations, Alvor stands out as an anomaly requiring urgent explanation. Through an analysis of the De Itinere Navali, a German mariner's account of the siege of Silves, and other contemporary references, this article reveals details of Sancho I's military planning, probes aspects of the complex relationship between the Portuguese Reconquista in the latter twelfth century and the international “crusading movement,” and presents new information regarding the author of the De Itinere Navali and the origins and aptitudes of his crusader shipmates.
Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies, 2019
This article seeks to explain a rhetorical curiosity, unique in mid-twelfth-century Portuguese hi... more This article seeks to explain a rhetorical curiosity, unique in mid-twelfth-century Portuguese historiography, namely an exhortation to massacre, contained in the so called De expugnatione Scalabis, ostensibly an eyewitness account of the conquest of Santarém in Portugal by Christian forces under King Afonso Henriques, in 1147. Highlighted are several contextual elements likely to have been significant in conditioning the origins and production of the text as it survives to us from the library of the great Portuguese Cistercian house of Alcobaça, not least the espousal by the White Monks of progressively hardening attitudes towards those hostile to Roman Christianity in a discourse that reached a peak in the early thirteenth century. Against this cultural background and re-evaluating the evidence for the time of redaction of the Scalabis it becomes possible to suggest an author for the text and to glimpse the operation of timely Cistercian literary, perhaps even liturgical, innovation at a crucial juncture when, for a moment in late 1217/early 1218, the whole of the Islamic Iberian west appeared wide open for immediate Christian conquest.
Keywords: Alcobaça, Crusades, Albigensian, Fifth Crusade, Cistercians, Reconquista, Afonso Henriques, Santarém, Alcácer-do-Sal, Goswin of Bossut.
![Research paper thumbnail of ‘Enigma of the De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi’, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies (2017) 9:1, pp. 99-129. [ Winner, JMIS, Best Article Award, 2017 ]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/59094443/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](• ‘Enigma of the De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi’, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies (2017) 9:1, pp. 99-129., 2017
One of the most famous works in Portuguese Medieval History and, certainly, the most well-known o... more One of the most famous works in Portuguese Medieval History and, certainly, the most well-known outside Portugal, the De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi purports to furnish a contemporary eye-witness account of Portuguese King Afonso Henriques’s 1147 conquest of Lisbon accomplished in combination with a passing fleet of Anglo-Norman, German and Flemish crusaders on their way by sea to Palestine and the Second Crusade. For over a quarter of a century, most commentators have accepted without demur the late Harold Livermore’s assertion that the author of the Lyxbonensi, identified in the text only as “R”, could be none other than the Anglo-Norman crusader-priest, Raul, who donated the battlefield church founded by him during the siege of Lisbon to the royal monastery of Santa Cruz de Coimbra, as recorded in a deed dated April of 1148. This article will argue that such identification must now be rejected, or at least substantially qualified, in the light of more recent scholarship and following a comprehensive consideration of the likely circumstances subsisting in Portugal around the time of Afonso Henriques’s Lisbon campaign. Examining previously over-looked complexities in the relationship between Afonso Henriques’s war on the Saracens of al-Andalus and the conduct of the “crusades” taking place both in the East and in other parts of Iberia, this article suggests an alternative and more likely authorship than that proposed by Livermore, and puts forward the case for the true purpose behind the construction of this extraordinary text, which has, until now, remained something of an enigma.
Portuguese Studies, vol. 30, no. 2, 2014, pp. 204-21. This paper considers aspects of the Portug... more Portuguese Studies, vol. 30, no. 2, 2014, pp. 204-21. This paper considers aspects of the Portuguese Reconquista highlighting the collaboration of maritime crusaders en route to Palestine in the conquests of Lisbon, Silves and Alcácer do Sal. It proposes that elements more or less connected to the Portuguese royal courts of Afonso Henriques, Sancho I and Afonso II developed and prosecuted a policy for attracting crusaders passing along the Atlantic coast to join military operations on the Portuguese-Andalusi frontier. The policy operated through the promotion of various saintly cults, the representation of Portugal as part of the pilgrimage route to Jerusalem, and the advancement of the notion that the Portuguese war on the Andalusi Saracens offered opportunities for Christian martyrdom on a par with the Crusades in the East. The pinnacle of this strategy was achieved during preparations for the 1217 conquest of Alcácer do Sal.
Conference Presentations by Jonathan Wilson
International Medieval Meeting, University of Lleida, 25-28 June 2019., 2019
FCSH, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2019
University of Porto, Faculdade das Letras, IF, Church Powers Territories Conference (December 2018), 2018
Colóquio Internacional da conquista de Lisboa à conquista de Alcácer: definição e dinâmicas de um... more Colóquio Internacional da conquista de Lisboa à conquista de Alcácer: definição e dinâmicas de um territoório de fronteira; 18-20 Maio, 2017 - Palmela, Alcácer e Sesimbra
Doubts over the authenticity of Bernard of Clarivaux's Letter 308 have focussed principally on a ... more Doubts over the authenticity of Bernard of Clarivaux's Letter 308 have focussed principally on a certain Pedro mentioned therein being described as Portuguese King, Afonso Henriques’s “brother”, in association with the known fact that the king had no such brother – the character being thought to have been almost entirely invented by the controversial seventeenth-century historian Bernardo de Brito as a device to further his desired version of Portuguese History. To confound matters even more, there are references in a cluster of late Portuguese chronicles (fifteenth century) to a quasi-mythical character “Pedro Afonso”, for whom there is no diplomatic evidence whatsoever, who is confusingly referred to as a brother or son of Afonso Henriques, with the earliest references to him occurring in texts redacted well-over two centuries after the events that supposedly concerned him. This article seeks to highlight various aspects of this convoluted saga, some hitherto overlooked, some apparently forgotten, in order tentatively to suggest that we may be able to assert with a little more confidence that Letter 308 could well be genuine.
Routledge Crusader Texts in Translation Series, 2021
Achieved at the height of the Crusades, the Christian conquests of Santarém in 1147 by King Afons... more Achieved at the height of the Crusades, the Christian conquests of Santarém in 1147 by King Afonso I, and of Alcácer do Sal in 1217 by Portuguese forces and Northern European warriors on their way by sea to Palestine, were crucial events in the creation of the independent kingdom of Portugal. The two texts presented here survive in their unique, thirteenth-century manuscript copies appended to a codex belonging to one of Europe’s most important monastic library collections accumulated in the Cistercian abbey of Alcobaça, founded c. 1153 by Bernard of Clairvaux. Accompanied by comprehensive introductions and here translated into English for the first time, these extraordinary texts are based on eye-witness testimony of the conquests. They contain much detail for the military historian, including data on operational tactics and the ideology of Christian holy war in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Literary historians too will be delighted by the astonishing styles deployed, demonstrating considerable authorial flamboyance, flair and innovation. Likely written by Goswin of Bossut, the search for authorship yields an impressive array of literary friends and associates, including James of Vitry, Thomas of Cantimpré, Oliver of Paderborn and Caesarius of Heisterbach.
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003162292/conquest-santar%C3%A9m-goswin-song-conquest-alc%C3%A1cer-sal-jonathan-wilson
Intended for a GENERAL READERSHIP with colour illustrations by I. C. Shackleton, this is a book o... more Intended for a GENERAL READERSHIP with colour illustrations by I. C. Shackleton, this is a book of journeys. The first begins 830 years ago, when a fleet of crusaders embarks from the river Weser in Northern German travelling via England along the Atlantic seaboard, heading for Jerusalem and the Third Crusade. Another begins 648 years later, the year of Queen Victoria’s coronation, when a sojourning Italian academic accidentally discovers a mysterious codex in Aix-en-Provence in south-eastern France. Ultimately both journeys share a common end, the unravelling of the secrets of an unknown German pilgrim who relates in his own words the marvellous and terrible things he witnesses. Now translated into English from the original Latin, the Anonymous Crusader of Silves speaks directly to us. With explanatory notes, illustrations, maps, photographs and full narrative texts, here you will learn of distant sea voyaging and far-flung places, of besiegers and besieged, of conquest and re-conquest, of suffering and martyrdom. It is a quest for identities, one is that of a twelfth-century pilgrim warrior, another is of the Portuguese nation.
Cistercian Horizons, Collected Essays, 2024
In addressing the problem of Cistercian origins in Portugal, the dearth of surviving documentatio... more In addressing the problem of Cistercian origins in Portugal, the dearth of surviving documentation relating to the earliest settlements of the order in the region leaves the historical sleuth with little option but to sift through fragmentary information often contained in sources of doubtful provenance. Nevertheless, although thrust into a world of uncertainty, at least one clear constant emerges, the obvious centrality of the mysterious holy man known as João Cirita, who appears to have been instrumental in the establishment of the order in the Iberian Far West. In contrast to some cautiously narrow twentieth century approaches, this paper takes a broad view of the evidential landscape and contemplates the legendary and the mythical alongside the documentary clues to investigate what can be known about this individual whose activities would have such profound impact on Portuguese Ecclesiastical History. The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. (Isaiah, 35: 1)
FERNANDES, Isabel Cristina et al. eds., Ordens Militares, Identidade e Mudanca, 2021
Doubts over the authenticity of Bernard of Clarivaux's Letter 308 have focussed principally on a ... more Doubts over the authenticity of Bernard of Clarivaux's Letter 308 have focussed principally on a certain Pedro mentioned therein being described as Portuguese King, Afonso Henriques’s “brother”, in association with the known fact that the king had no such brother – the character being thought to have been almost entirely invented by the controversial seventeenth-century historian Bernardo de Brito as a device to further his desired version of Portuguese History. To confound matters even more, there are references in a cluster of late Portuguese chronicles (fifteenth century) to a quasi-mythical character “Pedro Afonso”, for whom there is no diplomatic evidence whatsoever, who is confusingly referred to as a brother or son of Afonso Henriques, with the earliest references to him occurring in texts redacted well-over two centuries after the events that supposedly concerned him. This article seeks to highlight various aspects of this convoluted saga, some hitherto overlooked, some apparently forgotten, in order tentatively to suggest that we may be able to assert with a little more confidence that Letter 308 could well be genuine.
FERNANDES, Carla Varela and CASTINERAS GÒNZALEZ, Manuel (Edit) - Imagens e Liturgia na Idade Média. Criação, Circulação e Função das Imagens entre o Ocidente e o Oriente na Idade Média (séculos V-XV), 2021
The De expugnatione Scalabis is purported to be Portuguese King Afonso Henriques’s own account of... more The De expugnatione Scalabis is purported to be Portuguese King Afonso Henriques’s own account of his conquest of Muslim Santarém in 1147. The text survives in a codex of the fundo of the Cistercian Abbey of Alcobaça having been produced during the twelfth/thirteenth century in the Iberian Far-West amid an atmosphere of Christian/Islamic Holy War mediated by the evolving Crusading Movement underway in the East and elsewhere. The work displays several unmistakable features suggestive of liturgical use from which emerges a closely crafted portrait of the Portuguese king demonstrating impressive scholarship and political vision on the part of the author(s) and projecting an image of Afonso Henriques designed to extend well beyond the cloisters of Alcobaça and which perhaps found physical echo in the architecture and civic ceremony of the medieval town of Santarém itself.
Al-Masaq Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean, 2020
This article addresses the long-standing problem of the authenticity of Saint Bernard’s “Letter 3... more This article addresses the long-standing problem of the authenticity of Saint Bernard’s “Letter 308”, purportedly sent by the Abbot of Clairvaux to King Afonso Henriques of Portugal in response to his request for Bernard’s aid in recruiting northern European crusaders for an attack on Muslim-held Lisbon – an enterprise that took place in 1147, resulted in the conquest of the city by the Portuguese, and essentially guaranteed the autonomous survival of the kingdom. Since the letter concerns one of the most discussed topics in Portuguese medieval history, namely the extent of Bernard’s involvement in the determinative years of the independent kingdom, this article scrutinises the arguments surrounding it in an attempt to untangle the disparate and often disjointed responses it has produced since its first appearance in 1602, and examines facets hitherto unheeded by those who have denounced it as a forgery, to discover if Letter 308 should now be accepted as genuine.
KEYWORDS: Conquest of Lisbon, Forgery of Letter 308, Bernardo de Brito, Saint Bernard, Afonso Henriques, Pedro Afonso, Templars, Portuguese Reconquista, Crusades, Second Crusade, Eugenius III, Alfonso VII
Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 2019
During high summer 1189, a fleet of northern crusaders en route to the Third Crusade landed in wh... more During high summer 1189, a fleet of northern crusaders en route to the Third Crusade landed in what is today Algarve and massacred 5600 inhabitants of the Islamic town of Alvor. Mentioned only fragmentarily in contemporary sources, modern commentators have either ignored the event or passed over it as an extraneous episode, being merely one more incidence of crusader savagery. Often overlooked is that these crusaders were supported by Portuguese vessels. Considering Sancho I of Portugal, soon afterwards, with another crusader fleet, would launch a campaign to conquer the nearby Almohad regional capital, Silves, the proposition emerges that the slaughter, rather than being haphazard, formed part of a strategy. If so, viewed against the Portuguese policy of preservation of target populations, Alvor stands out as an anomaly requiring urgent explanation. Through an analysis of the De Itinere Navali, a German mariner's account of the siege of Silves, and other contemporary references, this article reveals details of Sancho I's military planning, probes aspects of the complex relationship between the Portuguese Reconquista in the latter twelfth century and the international “crusading movement,” and presents new information regarding the author of the De Itinere Navali and the origins and aptitudes of his crusader shipmates.
Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies, 2019
This article seeks to explain a rhetorical curiosity, unique in mid-twelfth-century Portuguese hi... more This article seeks to explain a rhetorical curiosity, unique in mid-twelfth-century Portuguese historiography, namely an exhortation to massacre, contained in the so called De expugnatione Scalabis, ostensibly an eyewitness account of the conquest of Santarém in Portugal by Christian forces under King Afonso Henriques, in 1147. Highlighted are several contextual elements likely to have been significant in conditioning the origins and production of the text as it survives to us from the library of the great Portuguese Cistercian house of Alcobaça, not least the espousal by the White Monks of progressively hardening attitudes towards those hostile to Roman Christianity in a discourse that reached a peak in the early thirteenth century. Against this cultural background and re-evaluating the evidence for the time of redaction of the Scalabis it becomes possible to suggest an author for the text and to glimpse the operation of timely Cistercian literary, perhaps even liturgical, innovation at a crucial juncture when, for a moment in late 1217/early 1218, the whole of the Islamic Iberian west appeared wide open for immediate Christian conquest.
Keywords: Alcobaça, Crusades, Albigensian, Fifth Crusade, Cistercians, Reconquista, Afonso Henriques, Santarém, Alcácer-do-Sal, Goswin of Bossut.
• ‘Enigma of the De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi’, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies (2017) 9:1, pp. 99-129., 2017
One of the most famous works in Portuguese Medieval History and, certainly, the most well-known o... more One of the most famous works in Portuguese Medieval History and, certainly, the most well-known outside Portugal, the De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi purports to furnish a contemporary eye-witness account of Portuguese King Afonso Henriques’s 1147 conquest of Lisbon accomplished in combination with a passing fleet of Anglo-Norman, German and Flemish crusaders on their way by sea to Palestine and the Second Crusade. For over a quarter of a century, most commentators have accepted without demur the late Harold Livermore’s assertion that the author of the Lyxbonensi, identified in the text only as “R”, could be none other than the Anglo-Norman crusader-priest, Raul, who donated the battlefield church founded by him during the siege of Lisbon to the royal monastery of Santa Cruz de Coimbra, as recorded in a deed dated April of 1148. This article will argue that such identification must now be rejected, or at least substantially qualified, in the light of more recent scholarship and following a comprehensive consideration of the likely circumstances subsisting in Portugal around the time of Afonso Henriques’s Lisbon campaign. Examining previously over-looked complexities in the relationship between Afonso Henriques’s war on the Saracens of al-Andalus and the conduct of the “crusades” taking place both in the East and in other parts of Iberia, this article suggests an alternative and more likely authorship than that proposed by Livermore, and puts forward the case for the true purpose behind the construction of this extraordinary text, which has, until now, remained something of an enigma.
Portuguese Studies, vol. 30, no. 2, 2014, pp. 204-21. This paper considers aspects of the Portug... more Portuguese Studies, vol. 30, no. 2, 2014, pp. 204-21. This paper considers aspects of the Portuguese Reconquista highlighting the collaboration of maritime crusaders en route to Palestine in the conquests of Lisbon, Silves and Alcácer do Sal. It proposes that elements more or less connected to the Portuguese royal courts of Afonso Henriques, Sancho I and Afonso II developed and prosecuted a policy for attracting crusaders passing along the Atlantic coast to join military operations on the Portuguese-Andalusi frontier. The policy operated through the promotion of various saintly cults, the representation of Portugal as part of the pilgrimage route to Jerusalem, and the advancement of the notion that the Portuguese war on the Andalusi Saracens offered opportunities for Christian martyrdom on a par with the Crusades in the East. The pinnacle of this strategy was achieved during preparations for the 1217 conquest of Alcácer do Sal.
Includes the following articles: Rethinking the minimi of the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Isla... more Includes the following articles:
Rethinking the minimi of the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Islands in late antiquity by Ruth Pliego
Quintana place-names as evidence of the Islamic conquest of Iberia by David Peterson
Territories and kingdom in the central Duero basin: the case of Dueñas (tenth–twelfth centuries) by Daniel Justo Sánchez & Iñaki Martín Viso
“Neither age nor sex sparing”: the Alvor massacre 1189, an anomaly in the Portuguese Reconquista? by Jonathan Wilson
Riots, reluctance, and reformers: the church in the Kingdom of Castile and the IV Lateran Council by Kyle C. Lincoln
Squire to the Moor King: Christian administrators for Muslim magnates in late medieval Murcia by Anthony Minnema
Glassmaking in medieval technical literature in the Iberian Peninsula by David J. Govantes-Edwards , Javier López Rider & Chloë Duckworth