Theresa, Countess of Portugal

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Queen Theresa of Portugal, Countess of Portugal, (Portuguese Rainha Dona Teresa, Condessa de Portugal) (sometimes a.k.a. to non Portuguese people as Infanta Teresa of León) (1080 – November 11 1130), is generally said to have been an illegitimate daughter of King Alfonso VI of León and Castile and Ximena Moniz.

In 1094, her father married her to a French prince, the nephew of his wife and Queen, Henry of Burgundy, grandson to the Duke of Burgundy and the kings of France in the male line, the son of a catalan princess, he was born in Barcelone. Prince Henry was military helping his father in law ruling and making war in the Portuguese mark against muslims. The County of Portugal, the southern part of the realm of the assassinated brother of the the leonese King, King Garcia II of Galicia and Portugal, was her dowry, establishing Henry as Regent in the County of Portugal, her personal fief, till her coming of age.

At first, Henry was a vassal of his father-in-law, but when Alfonso VI died in 1109, leaving everything to his daughter Urraca of Castile, Henry invaded León, hoping to add it to his lands. When he died in 1112, Teresa was a very young widow, maybe aged eighteen years, and left to deal with the military and political situation. The Queen took on the responsibility of government, and occupied herself at first mainly with her southern lands, that had only recently been reconquered from the Moors and only as far as the Mondego River.

In 1116, in an effort to expand the land that would descend to her son (who later became the first King of Portugal), Queen Teresa fought her half-sister and Queen, Urraca. They fought again in 1120. In fact, as the canonic law at the time of Theresa did not established yet different rights to the children born in catholic marriages, presided by priests, and none to those born to public life in common, she considered herself as having the same rights to inherite her father's different realms along with her only sister Queen Urraca: as it was the custom then to consider realms as personal propertys, and to divide them in almost equal parts between all children of the deceased Kings. Furthermore, then the legal german custom inherited from the Goths for all children to retain her father and mother titles was still in use, and that is what explain to us why se signed herself Queen Theresa of Portugal, and not Theresa Countess of Portugal.

She thus prosecuted her dead first husband politics to take their share in the leonese inheritance, and allied herself as a widow to the most powerful galician nobleman for that effect, the Count of Trava that she considered her second husband, even if he had rejected his first wife to openly married her and serve her in the southern border of the Mondego. In 1121, she was besieged and captured at Lanhoso, her northern border with Galicia, fighting her sister Queen Urraca. A negotiated peace was coordinated with aid from the Archbishops of Santiago de Compostela and Braga. The terms included that Queen Theresa would go free and hold the county of Portugal as a fief of León, as she received it at first.

By 1128, the Archbishop of Braga and the main Portuguese feudal nobles had had enough of her persistent galician alliance, which the first feared could favour the eclesiastical pretensions of his new rival the galician Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela, Diego Gelmírez, who had just started to claim his pretensions to an alleged founding of Saint James relics in his town, as his way to power and riches over all other cathedrals in Iberian Peninsula.

The Portuguese lords rebelled, and the Queen was deposed, after a short civil war. Her son and heir defeated Teresa's troops near Guimarães and lead her to exile. She was deposed and exiled with her 2d husband, the Count of Trava, and the infants of Portugal by her second marriage, in the kingdom of Galicia, near the Portuguese border, where the Trava founded a monastery (monastery of Toxas Altas]. Teresa died soon afterwards in 1130.

Afonso Henriques took the power and ruled not as Count, as it is generally said and documents refute, but as Infant of Portugal, the son of the Queen, and the grandson of King Alfonso VI of León as he signs in all documents. He ruled alone, even if it is proved by historian José Mattoso he maintained good relations with his Trava stepfather, and maybe his mother, after beating them. He is documented several times in Portugal, after he left to Galicia.

References

MATTOSO, José, D. Afonso Henriques, Círculo de Leitores e Centro de Estudos dos Povos e Culturas de Expressão Portuguesa, 1st ed., Lisboa, 2006, ISBN 972-42-3867-9978-972-42-3867-8.

Theresa, Countess of Portugal

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