Jonathan Wilson

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

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 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.