At Zamora, Afonso Henriques and his cousin Alfonso VII of León, Emperor of Spain, hold a peace conference in the presence of the papal legate Cardinal Guido de Vico. The date of the concluded meeting is 5 October 1143; the talks occupy 4 and 5 October. It is not the proclamation at Ourique in 1139, and it is not the bull Manifestis Probatum of 1179.

The text of any written instrument is lost; no articles survive. An imperial diploma dated the same day, tertio Nonas Octobris, at Zamora, records that Guido had held a council at Valladolid and had come to the colloquium of the King of Portugal with the Emperor. Alfonso VII there styles him Rex Portugalis.

The two are known to have pledged peace. Acknowledgment of the royal title is not, in the surviving sources, an express grant of full sovereignty. As emperor, Alfonso VII could count a king among his other peninsular kings without diminishing his prestige.

João Peculiar, Archbishop of Braga, mediates. The truce of Arcos de Valdevez in 1141 is only a preliminary: prisoners restored, sureties taken, not this act. The council of Valladolid in September 1143 is Guido’s council, not the treaty.

After the conference Afonso returns to his own dominions and leaves at Astorga, as governor, his lieutenant Fernando Captivo. The lordship of Astorga, if granted, holds a technical vassalage to the Leonese crown; the written clause is missing.

On 13 December 1143 Afonso writes to Pope Innocent II: he declares himself a miles of Saint Peter and a vassal of the Apostolic See, with a yearly census of four ounces of gold, that the See should defend him from any other dominion. That letter is not the conference at Zamora. Lucius II accepts the tribute in 1144, but still calls him dux Portugalensium, and Portugal a terra.

It is not the pact of Tui of 1137. It is not the Portuguese Republic, proclaimed on the same calendar day in 1910. Later lists of Alfonso VII’s vassals name the king of Aragon and the king of Navarre, not the king of Portugal.

The bull of 1179 later recognises at Rome what Zamora did not set down in surviving articles. The missing text is not to be filled with later clauses.

Image: azulejo panel of the conference of Zamora, Jardim 1.º de Dezembro, Portimão; Aires Almeida, 2015; CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. Cropped to 16:9.

Source consulted: Treaty of Zamora. Treaty text: McMurdo, History of Portugal, p. 172 (1888).