Battle of Ourique - Aftermath

Aftermath

It was presumed that after his victory over the five Moorish kings, the nobles acclaimed Afonso Henriques as king. In reality, documents after his victory continued to refer to Henriques as Prince or Infante.

Immediately after the battle, Afonso Henriques is said to have called for the first assembly of the estates-general (Portuguese: Cortes Gerais) of Portugal at Lamego, where he was given the Crown from the Bishop of Braga, to confirm the Portuguese independence from the Kingdom of León. This was a patriotic falsification perpetuated by the clergy, nobility and supporters who promoted the Restoration of Portuguese sovereignty and the claims of John IV, after the Iberian Union. The documents that refer to the estates-general were "deciphered" by Cistercian monks from the Monastery of Alcobaça to perpetuate the myth and justify the legitimacy of the Portuguese crown in the 17th century. The author of this falsification was Oliveira Marques, and even in 1632 there were misgivings about the validity of the chronicler's account or the existence of the Cortes of Lamego The account continued to support the notion that in the 12th century a meeting of the Cortes occurred in the Church of Santa Maria de Almacave, in Lamego, in 1143. During this meeting, after being acclaimed by estates-general, Afonso Henriques accepted a group of laws on royal succession and excluded the Castilian line of Kings from the Portuguese throne, made provisions for the nobility, on justice and the independence of Portugal. But, even as Spanish jurists and diplomats later demonstrated that the document was uncreditable, the Portuguese defended the authenticity of the account. Alexandre Herculano later recounted the patriotic re-imagining in his História de Portugal, which caused its own controversy, and was later perpetuated by the writings of Alfredo Pimenta (who defended the existence of the Cortes of Lamego).

In commemoration of the Battle of Ourique, the first Portuguese coat-of-arms appeared that included five small shields, to represent the five defeated Moorish kings (from one interpretation), which was later challenged by many authors.