the wills of the kings of portugal between the 12thand14thcenturies “Gordo” (The Fat), but it would be fairer for him to be remembered as “Legislator” and reformer. Three testaments have come down to us from this monarch.17 The first of them is written unexpectedly in the GalicianPortuguese vernacular language, mother of modern Portuguese, while the king was in Coimbra, on June 27, 1214. Only two copies are known (one in Lisbon, in Torre do Tombo, another in Toledo, in the cathedral archive), but the king ordered 13 copies of it to be made, one remaining in the royal archive, and 12 that were sent, for safekeeping, to the archbishops of Braga, Santiago de Compostela, and Toledo; to the bishops of Porto, Lisbon, Coimbra, Évora, and Viseu; to the master of the Order of the Temple in Portugal; to the prior of the Order of the Hospital in the kingdom; to the prior of Santa Cruz de Coimbra; and, lastly, to the abbot of Alcobaça.18 The texts of the two letters that are known are copies of a written copy, a matrix, perhaps Latin – more in keeping with the excellent writing practices of this monarch’s chancery – and copied in translation into Romance language, presenting variations among them that indicate they were written by professional royal chancery scribes. Written in the Galician-Portuguese language, the diplomatic structure of the act is identical to that of the wills of Sancho I: invocation (“In the name of God”), intitulatio (“I, King Afonso, by the grace of God king of Portugal, being hale and sound and fearing the day of my death, the health of my soul and the progeny of my wife (….) and of all my kingdom, I made my order so that after my death my wife and my sons and my vassals and my kingdom and all those things that God gave me may continue in peace and tranquility). Below is a list of royal legacies. Like his father’s, this will also contains no sanctio. On January 28, 1218, the monarch dictated his second will, written in Latin. He repeats the brief formulas of his father’s wills, namely the invocatio (In Dei nomine), initulatio, andarenga or narratio: 244 17 Vilar 2005. 18 Costa 1992, pp. 227–236. Ego Alfonsus Dei gratia Portugalensis rex timens diem mortis mee, incolumis existendo, ad salutem anime mee et utilitatem uxoris mee regine domne
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