Author:
Professor H. V. Livermore
Report:
16
Page:
19
Year:
1989
Subject Matter:
Middle-Ages and the Renaissance
Excerpt:
Although King Afonso Henriques assumed the title of Rex Portugalensium seven years earlier, it was the conquest of Lisbon in 1147 that ensured the completion of the Reconquest and the survival of what had hitherto been an extended county. Without the independence of the Atlantic seaboard, it is difficult to see how the voyages of discovery could have been launched, or the resulting expansion of Europe could have taken the form it did. The taking of Lisbon was an event of capital importance in the history of Portugal and of the West. It was also perhaps the only positive consequence of the Second Crusade.Yet the Peninsular chroniclers have little to say about it, only three documents alluding to it have survived in the Portuguese archives.
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