Braga

Who holds it

Name

Martinho Pires

Title

Archbishop of Braga

Since

1189

Confidence

high

Archbishop from 1189 to 1209, after Godinho (1176-1188). The sources checked add nothing on his family or early career.

What it holds

• Braga: lordship and temporal jurisdiction over the city and its couto (since 1112)
• Metropolitan rights over Porto, Coimbra, Viseu and Lamego in Portugal and over the Galician sees in León
• A claim to the primacy of the Spains, against Toledo

How it was acquired

Donation of Count Henry and Countess Teresa in 1112, confirmed by later kings.

How things stand that morning

Held by the archbishop.

Wealth

Rents, market and justice of Braga and its couto; tithes of the Minho, the most densely settled part of Portugal.

Threats

• Royal pressure on church rights under Sancho I
• The primacy and suffragan lawsuits at Rome

Advocates and rivals

The king of Portugal, Sancho I, who quarrels with several of his bishops; the archbishops of Toledo (primacy) and Santiago (suffragans); the townsmen of Braga.

Places of note

• Sé de Braga: The metropolitan cathedral

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: The 1112 couto and the list of archbishops are clear; little detail on Martinho Pires himself in the sources checked.

On the map: A disc round the city stands for the couto of 1112, whose bounds are not pinned; the modern concelho is larger.

Primary sources for Portugal

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• Annals of Toledo and other short Iberian annals (12th and 13th centuries; Anales Toledanos I to 1219). Florez's volume 23 gathers the short annals of the peninsula. Read online
• Chronicle of the World (Lucas of Tuy), Lucas de Tuy (1236, for Queen Berenguela). The Leonese counterpart to Rodrigo, written at San Isidoro for Berenguela. Read online
• Historical Monuments of Portugal: Writers (Annals of King Afonso, Chronicon Conimbricense, Chronica Gothorum and others) (12th to 15th centuries). The Portuguese annals in one volume. Read online
• Latin Chronicle of the Kings of Castile, Anonymous, probably Juan of Osma, chancellor of Castile (about 1223 to 1239). The chancellor's chronicle of Alfonso VIII's reign, detailed from the 1190s. Read online
• The Garden of Pages: a History of the Kings of the Maghreb and of the City of Fez, Ibn Abi Zar al-Fasi (completed in 1326 at Fez, for the Marinid sultan Abu Said Uthman). The Almohad chapters give a brisk dated narrative of al-Mansur's death and burial, al-Nasir's accession and the Banu Ghaniya troubles, with the kind of detail (coinage, public works at Fez and Rabat, prices, plagues) that a Fez compiler cared about, and the annals of Fez supply the city's governors and markets. Read online
• The Wondrous Account of the History of al-Andalus and the Maghreb, Ibn Idhari al-Marrakushi (about 1312, at Marrakesh). The Almohad section is the fullest year-by-year narrative of the caliphate around 1200: the last campaigns and the death of Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur in January 1199, the accession of his son Muhammad al-Nasir, the renewed war of the Banu Ghaniya in Ifriqiya under Yahya ibn Ishaq and his ally Qaraqush, the Almohad losses of Mahdia and Tunis a few years later, and al-Nasir's reconquest of Ifriqiya in 1205 to 1206 followed by the appointment of Abd al-Wahid ibn Abi Hafs as governor. Read online
• History of the Affairs of Spain, Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada (completed 1243). The archbishop's history of the peninsula, written forty years on by a Navarrese who served Castile. Read online
• The Gift of the Imamate, Ibn Sahib al-Sala (Abd al-Malik ibn Muhammad al-Baji) (late twelfth century; the surviving part covers 1159 to 1173). The only Almohad court chronicle written from inside the administration, by a chancery secretary who travelled with the caliphs Abd al-Mu'min and Abu Yaqub Yusuf.

5 more in the sources library for France and Iberia.