Achieved at the height of the Crusades, the Christian conquests of Santar m in 1147 by King Afonso I, and of Alc cer do Sal in 1217 by Portuguese forces and northern European warriors on their way by sea to Palestine, were crucial events in the creation of the independent kingdom of Portugal. The two texts presented here survive in their unique, thirteenth-century manuscript copies appended to a codex belonging to one of Europe's most important...