Then, in the Treaty of Alcañices (1297), which defi ni-
tively fi xed Portugal’s borders with Castile, Portugal
gained the towns and fortresses it desired in the Ribacoa
district. The treaty was sealed by marriage alliances
between Fernando IV of Castile and Constança, Dinis’
daughter, and between Fernando’s sister Beatriz and
Dinis’ heir, the future Afonso IV.
Dinis also resolved the problems inherent in his
younger brother’s control of a number of towns on the
Castilian border, which Prince Afonso used as staging
points to intervene in Castilian affairs. Dinis was de-
termined to bring Afonso’s towns under royal authority
and surrounded his brother’s fortresses. In 1299 an ac-
cord was reached in which Afonso received privileges
over Sintra, Ourém, and other places closer to Lisbon
in exchange for his rights over the towns near Castile’s
borders. This action not only helped secure Dinis’ bor-
ders, but also removed an irritant to Portugal’s relations
with Castile.
To further strengthen his kingdom’s borders, Dinis
undertook a large-scale program of renovation and re-
pair, constructing forty-four new strongholds and castles
and repairing many old ones. Also, because many of
the border towns were underpopulated, Dinis promoted
resettlement. The Ribacoa district and the east bank of
the Guadiana River received the greatest attention. But
the region north of the Duero River was not neglected.
Walls were built to strengthen Guimarães and Braga, as
well as several smaller towns. In addition, Dinis had a
wall constructed along the banks of the Tagus River to
protect Lisbon from attacks by sea.
Related to these activities were Dinis’s efforts to
separate from Castilian infl uence and authority the four
clericomilitary orders active in Portugal: the Templars,
the Hospitalers, Santiago, and Avis. The fi rst two were
international orders with headquarters in the Holy Land
and branches throughout Europe; the latter two had their
origins in the Iberian Peninsula. All four had played
important roles in driving out the Muslims, holding the
frontiers, and reclaiming the newly won lands. For these
activities, the orders had been given extensive spiritual
and temporal privileges.
Portugal’s confl icts with Castile, especially during the
reigns of Sancho IV (1284–1295) and his son Fernando
IV (1295–1312), convinced Dinis that his kingdom’s
security was threatened by the fact that the clericomili-
tary orders in Portugal were under the jurisdiction of
non-Portuguese leaders. Castilian interference in the
political and military life of the monk-knights living in
Portugal was an ever-present danger, especially in the
Order of Santiago. During the Portuguese Reconquest
much land and many strongholds had been given to the
order. As boundary disputes became more intense during
the reign of Sancho IV, Dinis sought to obtain from the
papacy a measure of independence for the order. But it
was a long, drawn out struggle. However, by the time of
Dinis’ death, the Portuguese Order of Santiago was for
all practical purposes under Portuguese control.
In the meantime the Templars had fallen on hard
times. The loss of the Holy Land in 1291 was one of
two main factors that led to the demise of the order. The
other was the ultimately successful personal campaign
of Philip IV the Fair of France and his advisers to destroy
the order and gain control of its valuable and extensive
holdings. In 1312 Pope Clement V suppressed the Tem-
plars and shortly afterward ordered their holdings to be
distributed to their archrivals, the Knights Hospitalers.
Dinis of Portugal, like a number of the other European
monarchs, had sequestered all the Templar properties
in his kingdom and put its knights under his protection.
The Portuguese monarch’s agents at the papal court
argued that the annexation of the Templars’ proper-
ties in Portugal by the Knights Hospitalers would be
prejudicial to the Portuguese crown and the Portuguese
people. As an alternative, they proposed the foundation
of a new order of monk-knights that would incorporate
the property of the Templars and, with headquarters
in the Algarve, would protect the Portuguese frontier
from the Muslims. Clement V’s successor, John XXII,
agreed with this proposal and on 14 March 1319 by the
bull Ad ca ex quibus established the Military Order of
Our Lord Jesus Christ, which would eventually, by the
second half of the sixteenth century, become the premier
order in Portugal.
During the reign of Dinis the economic foundations
of Portugal were greatly strengthened. So energetic were
the monarch’s agricultural reforms that he was given the
epithet “O Lavrador” (the farmer). Dinis cut back on
large landholdings by the church and the higher nobility.
He improved landholding patterns on a regional basis
and affi rmed the nobility of farming one’s own land.
He promoted the reclamation of marshes and swamps
and ordered the planting of pine forests near Leiria to
prevent the encroachment of coastal sand and salt as
well as to provide needed timber. Dinis’s agricultural
reforms ranged from the division of uncultivated lands
into groups of ten, twenty, or thirty casais with lifetime
leases in Entre Douro e Minho; to cooperatives in Trás-
os-Montes; to an emphasis on repopulating the Alen-
tejo by founding towns, hampering the wealthy from
unproductively monopolizing large tracts of property,
and granting land to those who would cultivate it. In this
way, Dinis increased the number of small proprietors
and rural workers who paid rent to the crown. During the
thirteenth century, Portugal’s population probably num-
bered between 800,000 and 1,000,000 inhabitants.
Dinis also took note of Portugal’s foreign trade. He
encouraged the export of agricultural produce, salt, and
salted fi sh to Flanders, England, and France in exchange
for textiles and metals. He increased Portugal’s foreignDINIS, KING OF PORTUGAL