Fallacies of the “christic destiny”: the myth of Ourique (1139) and the anticlerical answers of Alexandre Herculano (1810-1877)

Abstract

Attempts at a scientific investigation of history, a subject very dear to the 19th century, were carried out in Portugal by Alexandre Herculano (1810-1877) who, in 1846, began publishing História de Portugal. However, the work generated dissatisfaction, mainly from reactionary sectors of the Portuguese clergy and, in 1850, it erupted in the so-called Polemic of Ourique: Herculano sent public letters to the Cardinal-Patriarch of Lisbon, D. Guilherme Henriques de Carvalho (1793-1857), as well as as well as to the editor of the Catholic periodical A Nação and to a writer and officer of the Portuguese Army, defender of Absolutism, António Lúcio Maggessi Tavares (1806-1877). There is also a personal missive to Father Francisco Recreio (1800-1857), which was not collected by the author in the booklets published later. These messages originate because the historian purposely omitted in his work the myth of Ourique, according to which Christ would have miraculously appeared to the first Lusitanian king, D. Afonso Henriques (1109?-1185), before the battle against the Moors – the Battle of Ourique (July 25, 1139) – and thus, with the Christian victory, medieval Portugal would have been founded “by the will of God” and with a “Christic destiny”, that is, of an anointed favorite. Under the proposals of Eduardo Lourenço, to whom we pay homage in this year of his centenary, but also of Ana Isabel Buescu and Luís Machado de Abreu, we will analyze, in this study, the meaning of the belief in the medieval miracle for the 19th century period and the speeches of the correspondence from Herculano in the midst of controversy. We will verify, above all, the content of the missive to the archbishop of Lisbon and the letter to Father Recreio, as well as its anticlerical content.