Sancho II of Portugal
Sancho II ruled Portugal from 1223 to 1248 and was deposed by papal decree, the only Portuguese king removed in that way. Born in 1207, the son of Afonso II, he inherited a kingdom under interdict because of his father's long quarrel with the church over jurisdiction and clerical property. He began by settling with the bishops, which lifted the interdict, and spent the productive part of his reign campaigning southward. He took Elvas, Juromenha, Serpa, Moura and Aljustrel, and pushed into the Alentejo and the eastern Algarve, more than doubling the territory under Portuguese control. He is called the Pious or the Cowled for his religious observance during these campaigns. Administration was his failure. He relied on a narrow group of favourites, allowed disorder in the towns and the countryside, and did not enforce the law reliably; the clergy complained that church property was seized and their privileges ignored, and the nobility split. His marriage to Mécia Lopes de Haro, a Castilian noblewoman, was contested as invalid and became the focus of the opposition, since a disputed marriage meant a disputed succession. The bishops appealed to Rome. In 1245 Pope Innocent IV issued the bull Grandi non immerito, declaring him a rex inutilis, a useless king, and instructing the Portuguese to accept his brother Afonso, Count of Boulogne, as governor of the kingdom while leaving Sancho the title. Afonso landed in 1246, civil war followed, and his wife was abducted from Coimbra. Sancho withdrew to Toledo, where he died in January 1248, still nominally king.
- Lived: 1209 CE – 1248 CE
- Nationality: Portuguese
- Roles: king, head_of_state
