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Afonso I, was the first King of Portugal. He achieved the independence o f t h e s o u thern part of the Kingdom of Galicia, the County of Portugal, f r o m G a l icia's overlord, the King of Leon, in 1139, establishing a new k i n g d o m and doubling its area with the Reconquista, an objective that he p u r s u e d until his death, in 1185, after forty-six years o f wars against t h e M o o r s.
Afonso I was the son of Henry of Burgundy and Theresa, the natural born d a u g h t er of King Alfonso VI of Leon and Castile. The pair reigned jointl y a s C o u n t and Countess of Portugal until Henry's death, after which Th er es a r e i gned alone. Afonnso was about three years old when his father C o u n t H e nry, died on 12 May 1112 during the siege of Astorga. In an effo r t t o p u r sue a larger share in the Leonese inheritance, his mother Ther e s a m a r ried Fernando Pï rez, Count of Trava, the most powerful count in G a l i c i a.
The Portuguese nobility disliked the alliance between Galicia and Portu g a l a n d r allied around the infant Afonso. The Archbishop of Braga was a l s o c o n cerned with the dominance of Galicia, apprehensive of the eccles i a s t i cal pretensions of his new rival the Galician Archbishop of Santia g o d e C o m postela, Diego Gelmirez, who had claimed an alleged discovery o f r e l i c s of Saint James in his town, as a way to gain power and riches o v e r t h e o ther cathedrals in the Iberian Peninsula. In 1122 , Afonso tur n e d f o u rteen, the adult age in the 12th century. He made himself a knig h t o n h i s o wn account in the Cathedral of Zamora, raised an army, and p r o ce e d ed to take control of his mother's lands.
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1109 - 1185 (76 years)
