Theresa (Portuguese: Teresa; Galician-Portuguese: Tareja or Tareixa; Latin: Theresia) ( 1080 – 11 November 1130) was Countess of Portugal, and for a time claimant to be its independent Queen. She rebelled against her half-sister Queen Urraca of León. She was recognised as Queen by Pope Paschal II in 1116, but was captured and forced to accept Portugal's vassalage to León in 1121, being allowed to keep her royal title. Her political alliance and amorous liaison with Galician nobleman Fernando Pérez de Traba led to her being ousted by her son, Afonso Henriques, who with the support of the Portuguese nobility and clergy, defeated her at the Battle of São Mamede in 1128.
Birth and marriage
left|thumb|Political map of the north part of the Iberian peninsula in the year 1126
Theresa was the illegitimate daughter of King Alfonso VI of León by Jimena Muñoz. In 1093, her father married her to a French nobleman, Henry of Burgundy, who was a nephew of Queen Constance, a brother of the Duke of Burgundy, and a descendant of the kings of France in the male line. Henry was providing military assistance to his father-in-law against the Muslims on the Portuguese march.
Between the years 1096 and 1105, Henry and his cousin Raymond of Burgundy, husband of Queen Urraca, reached an agreement whereby each swore under oath that Raymond would give Henry the kingdom of Toledo and one-third of the royal treasury after King Alfonso's death and, if that was not possible, Henry would receive the kingdom of Galicia, while Henry, in turn, promised to support his cousin Raymond in securing all of the king's dominions and two-thirds of the treasury.
Alfonso VI had entrusted Theresa and Henry with the county of Portugal in 1096. Both women, Countess Theresa and Queen Urraca, ruled alone after the deaths of their immigrant husbands, ostensibly in defence of their young children, but also in their own right. Pope Paschal II referred to her as queen in the papal bull FRATRUM NOSTRUM issued on 18 June 1116.
In 1116, in an effort to expand her power, Theresa fought her half-sister, Queen Urraca. They fought again in 1120, as she continued to pursue a larger share in the Leonese inheritance, and allied herself as a widow to the most powerful Galician nobleman for that effect. This was Fernando Pérez, Count of Traba, who had rejected his first wife to openly marry her, and served her on her southern border of the Mondego. In 1121, she was besieged and captured at Lanhoso, on her northern border with Galicia, while fighting her sister Urraca. A negotiated peace (Treaty of Lanhoso) was coordinated with aid from the Archbishops of Santiago de Compostela and Braga. The terms included that Theresa could go free only if she held the County of Portugal as a vassal of the Kingdom of León as she had received it initially.
Rebellions
By 1128, the Archbishop of Braga and the main Portuguese feudal nobles had had enough of her persistent Galician alliance, which the first feared could favour the ecclesiastical pretensions of his new rival, the Galician Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela, Diego Gelmírez, who had just started to assert his pretensions to an alleged discovery of relics of Saint James in his town, as his way to gain power and riches over the other cathedrals in the Iberian Peninsula.
thumb|Tomb of Theresa, Countess-Queen of Portugal, at [[Braga Cathedral.]]
The Portuguese nobles and warlords rebelled, and the Queen was deposed after a short civil war. Her son and heir, Afonso, defeated Theresa's troops at the Battle of São Mamede near Guimarães and led her, along with the Count of Traba and their children, into exile in the Kingdom of Galicia, near the Portuguese border, where the Traba had founded the monastery of Toxos Outos. Theresa died soon afterwards in 1130. She was succeeded by her son, who would eventually lead Portugal into becoming a fully independent kingdom, and, later, nation state.
Issue
By Henry, Count of Portugal, Theresa had:
- Urraca Henriques (c. 1095/1097 – c. 1173), wife of Bermudo Pérez de Traba, son of count Pedro Fróilaz, tenente in Trastámara, Viseu, Seia, and Faro in A Coruña, with issue;
- Sancha Henriques (c. 1097–1163), married firstly Sancho Nunes de Celanova, with issue. After being widowed, married secondly Fernando Mendes de Bragança, without any issue from this marriage;
- Teresa Henriques (born c. 1098);
- Afonso Henriques (1109–1185), the first king of Portugal, named after his maternal grandfather, perhaps as "a reminder that the blood of the Emperor of all Hispania also ran through the veins of this grandson".
She had two daughters with count Fernando Pérez de Traba:
- Teresa Fernández de Traba (d. 1180) wife of count Nuño Pérez de Lara and, when widowed, the second wife of King Ferdinand II of León;
- Sancha Fernández de Traba (d. after March 1181). Married before 1150 count Álvaro Rodríguez de Sarria, with issue. After being widowed, she became the second wife of count Pedro Alfonso and, widowed again, married count Gonzalo Ruiz; without any issue from these two marriages.
See also
- Siege of Coimbra (1117)
- Portugal in the Middle Ages
- Portugal in the Reconquista