Sancho I

Bibliographic notes

Although we are nor certain that Sancho I was a troubadour, as we discuss in the note to the only song that may possibly be attributed to him, here are the main points of his biography.
Son of the first king of Portugal, Afonso Henriques and Mahaut (Mafalda) of Savoy and Maurienne, Dom Sancho was born in Coimbra in 1154 and died in that same city in 1211. Not being the first-born son, he ascended to the category of heir with the premature death of his brother Henri, shortly after his birth. From 1170, following the so-called Badajoz disaster, that is, the failed attempt to conquer that city, an episode in which Afonso Henriques is hurt, he becomes his father’s right arm. While Afonso was still living, in 1178, he executes a risky military sortie in Al Andaluz, even managing to put Seville under siege. He rises to the throne in 1185, and continues the effort of conquest to the south, taking namely Silves (1189), With the Almoadas invasion the following year, however, not only that city returns to Muslim hands, as several other cities in the north (including Santarém) suffer dangerous attacks, a situation only resolved by a truce (that would last five years) signed in 1191. Among various conflicts with the neighboring kingdoms of Castile and Leon, Sancho performed an important task of political and administrative organization of the kingdom.
He married, in 1174, with Dulce de Aragon, of whom he had eleven children. After the death of Dona Dulce (1198), he had liaisons with two ladies, Maria Aires de Fornelos (of whom he had two children) and Maria Pais Ribeiro, the famous Ribeirinha, with whom he had a further six children.