Gonçalo Anes do Vinhal

Bibliographic notes

Portuguese troubadour, but whose career mainly unfolded in Castilla and in a clear path of social ascension, Dom Gonçalo Anes, forth Lord of Vinhal, would have been born in the second decade of the 13th century, in the region comprised between Felgueiras and Celorico de Basto. We don’t know neither the date of his departure from Portugal nor the motives (like so many of the portuguese knights that left for Castilla at the time, it may have been related to the growing tension around king Sancho II), but in 1243 he’s already attested as the lieutenant of Helin and Isso, in the region of Murcia, in whose conquest he certainly participated alongside prince Alfonso (future Alfonso X) and to whom, in the next decades, he seems to have been in close relation. Also with the prince he takes part in the conquest of Seville, five years later, being handsomely rewarded in it’s Repartimiento. It’s possible that he returned for some time to Portugal (where he would have remained until 1256, as Resende de Oliveira supposes), since around this time the village of Moimenta da Beira is donated to him by Afonso III.
He returns, however, to Castilla, where he continues to receive assets and favors of Alfonso X, namely, as soon as 1257, the village and castle of Aguilar, in the Cordoba region, around which he will build an important lordship, transformed in 1275 into a Morgadio. It´s possible that the bestowment of this later privilege, a rare event at the time, is related to the several delicate missions he performed at the service of the king, namely by serving as a mediator in the grave conflict between the Wise king and the rebel nobility (1272-1275). According yet again to Resende de Oliveira, there’s news again of his traveling to Portugal in 1276, only to return to the neighboring kingdom, but this time to a Castilla where tension grew between Alfonso X and his heir, prince Sancho, whose side, by all indications, he ended up joining. After the death of Alfonso X in 1284, he takes a leading role in the court of Sancho IV, eventually dying by his side fighting in Veiga de Granada, most possibly in 1285.
Dom Gonçalo was married twice. First, maybe as soon as 1243, with Dona Joana Rodrigues, a lady of the important Castro lineage (m. 1260) and secondly, a bit before 1270, with the aragonese Berengaria de Cardona, daughter of the viscount of Cardona, Ramón Folch, one of the most important figures of the Catalan nobility.