Castle of Ceras

Parish of Alviobeira

Background

The primitive human occupation of the Tomar region dates back more than thirty thousand years, according to archaeological evidence. In historical times, the towns of Nabância, founded by the Turduli since 480 BC, and Selio, founded by the Romans at the time of Emperor Augustus, in the 1st century, stood out. The region was successively occupied by the Visigoths and the Muslims.

With the weakening of the Visigothic empire, in 716 the Muslims arrived in the region and occupied the Visigothic town of Selio, on the right bank of the river, without difficulty. On the hill they built a watchtower for surveillance, where the castle is located today. In this one, one of the doors has the exact name of Porta da Almedina, that is, the city door. They called the river Tamaramá, which translated means "sweet waters", and the city Thamara.

The medieval castle

In 1127, one of the Knights Templar visited the Iberian Peninsula with the aim of recruiting members and raising financial support. In response to this appeal, the Regent of Portugal, D. Teresa de Leão, donated Fonte Arcada to the Knights of the Order, to which she would add, in 1128, the Castle of Soure and its domains, in exchange for the Templars' collaboration in conquering territory from the Moors. Later, in 1145, when Hugo Martins (Hugues Martins) was Master of the Order in Portugal, the nobleman Fernão Mendes de Bragança II, brother-in-law of D. Afonso Henriques, donated the Castle of Longroiva to the Order.

In 1144, a Muslim offensive conquered and destroyed the Castle of Soure. The Templars who managed to escape, joined, in the spring of 1147, the forces of Afonso I of Portugal (1112-1185) who were preparing to conquer Santarém. As a reward for their assistance in this campaign, they received from the sovereign the ecclesiastical revenues of the conquered land; but months later, when Lisbon was also integrated into Christian possession, the English priest Gilberto, the first bishop of the restored diocese of Lisbon, contested the validity of that donation, leading to a lengthy dispute, which only ended more than ten years later, when Afonso I of Portugal himself reconciled the disputed parties, granting that prelate the benefit he was disputing and donating to the Templars, in the person of their Master in the kingdom, then Gualdim Pais, the Castle of Ceras ("Castrum Caesaris") (today Ceras) with its vast territory, next to the current Ceras river, about two leagues to the North-Northeast of the place of Alviobeira.

Pope Adriano IV collaborated and accepted the bull "Justis Potentium Sideris", directed at the Order of the Temple, in which he authorized her to build churches in the place of wax under the protection of the Holy See, by virtue of the wide faculty of her knights. From the Zêzere to East-West River, in the direction of Mur Ta, about six kilometers north of waxes, he continued to Freixianda and, from now to the South and South-South, he initially reached a Vau in the medium course of the Nabão River (then called Rio Tomar), which allowed the passage of the river on the old Roman road, which stretched from Santarém ("" Ada Portum Homar Qui Estrata de Colimbria ad Santarém ") and, later, another Vau, now in the Ourém Ribeira (" et indeed per portum of OREN S "). Following the Leiria region, the line continued towards Ribeira da Bezelga and, turning to the Southeast and East, followed that watercourse, a tributary of the Nabão River, the Nabão itself until its confluence with the Zêzere River ("and inde per lombum de Santarém… ad Bezelga and descendit ad Thomar and inde in Ozezar") and from the Zêzere to the North back to the starting point.

From the 12th century to the present day

There is no further news of the ruined Castle of Ceras. although the ancients always called the western area of the EN 110 Castelhanas and there are what are thought to be traces of the alambor or foundations of the castle or fortress. See the donation of the territory of Ceras to the Templars by Afonso I of Portugal in the Torre do Tombo in Lisbon