King Dinis was one of the most illustrious Portuguese monarchs. The son of Afonso III and Beatrice of Castile, he was born on 9th October 1261 and became the sixth king of Portugal.
When he ascended the throne in 1279, he promoted important reforms in medieval Portugal, which earned him the cognomen “the Farmer”. In an attempt to reorganise and consolidate the territory, he promoted the fortification of the settlements, attributing charters, overseeing justice, and developing fairs.
He also promoted the mining of silver, tin, and iron, boosted shipbuilding and agriculture, facilitated the distribution of properties to the people and protected the export of agricultural products to Flanders, France, and England.
He also settled a dispute between Portugal and the Holy See over clerical abuses of royal property by establishing a concordat under which disputes would be settled directly between the king and his bishops.
He made peace with Castile, definitively establishing the territory’s borders through the Treaty of Alcanizes, signed in 1297. He was a lover of the arts and letters, and is credited with having written cantigas de amigo (genre of medieval lyric poetry), and he founded the Kingdom’s first university in Coimbra in 1290.
Based on the need to defend Portugal against Muslim domination, which was geographically close to the limits of Portuguese territory, after several years of dialogue with the Holy See, King Dinis, with a bull from Pope John XXII, dated 19th March 1319, instituted the Ordo Militae Jesu Christi, or Military Order of Our Lord Jesus Christ, which incorporated the members, property, and privileges of the now-defunct Order of the Temple.
He married Isabel of Aragon, who became known as the Holy Queen, and came into conflict with her first-born son, Afonso IV, towards the end of his reign.
After 46 years of rule, King Dinis died on 7th January 1325 and was buried in the Monastery of São Dinis, which he had founded in Odivelas.