Porto

Who holds it

Name

Martinho Rodrigues

Title

Bishop of Porto

Since

1191 (some lists 1190)

Confidence

high

Bishop until 1235. He quarrelled with Sancho I over church rights more than once: in one round the king seized his goods and he fled, until Innocent III's intervention restored him; in a later round he was imprisoned, escaped to Rome, and made peace with the dying king in 1209. Whether a quarrel is open on 1 January 1200 is not pinned.

What it holds

• Porto and its termo: lordship, justice, rents and the town's foral (granted 1120, foral 1123)
• Dues on the river traffic at Porto (shared or disputed with the crown)

How it was acquired

Donation of Countess Teresa to Bishop Hugo in 1120.

How things stand that morning

Held by the bishop, in a lordship the king resents.

Wealth

The Douro port: tolls on ships and goods, fish, salt and wine traffic; rents of the city.

Threats

• Sancho I seizing the bishop's goods and driving him out, as he does at some point in these years
• Townsmen backing the king against the bishop

Advocates and rivals

King Sancho I, in conflict with Bishop Martinho; the merchants and seamen of Porto; the crown's rival landing at Gaia across the Douro.

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: The 1120 grant is well attested; the dating of the first quarrel with Sancho I is not pinned.

On the map: Drawn as the modern concelho of Porto, close to the medieval city and its termo.

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.