Sebastianism

Sebastian I of Portugal.

Sebastianismo was a mystical-secular movement that swept through Portugal in the second half of the XVI century as a consequence of the death of King Sebastián in the battle of Alcazarquivir, in 1578. For lack of heirs, the Portuguese throne would eventually end up in the hands of King Felipe II, of the Spanish branch of the House of Habsburg.

Basically, sebastianismo is a messianism adapted to Portuguese and later northeastern conditions (in the northeast of Brazil). It translates into a disagreement with the current political situation and an expectation of miraculous salvation, through the resurrection of an illustrious dead man.

Few people had seen the king's corpse and even fewer had recognized it. The people, in their despair, needed to believe in something that gave them hope and, on the other hand, did not accept the fact. This is how the legend spread that the king was still alive, just waiting for the right moment to return to the throne and drive away foreign rule.

Its most popular popularizer was the poet Bandarra, who composed tireless verses calling for the return of the Desired (as Sebastián was called). It is true that this Bandarra guy died a few decades before King Sebastián, but his Trovas were later interpreted as a prophecy for the return of a desired king. The Trovas are the emblematic work of Sebastianismo. Exploiting popular credulity, several opportunists presented themselves as the hidden king in an attempt to obtain personal benefits, among them the one known as Pastelero de Madrigal. This case is, however, a highly controversial matter, since Espinosa, according to numerous evidence and the entire judicial process to which he was subjected, guarantee that he could, in fact, be the late King Sebastián. In the General Archive of Simancas, this process of the "Pastelero de Madrigal" is preserved, which was declared as reserved matter and a state secret by the Duke of Lerma on September 23, 1615, with which it could not be investigated until the secret was lifted in the mid-19th century. The most renowned intellectual who joined the movement was Father Vieira.

Finally, in 1640, after the successful movement to restore Portuguese independence led by the Braganzas, the movement began to be confined to the interior of the Brazilian Northeast, also with the belief in the arrival of a "rei bon&# 3. 4; (good king).

According to Brazilian historian José Murilo de Carvalho:

"António Vieira in a curious book called History of the FutureI intended to discover the Portuguese, who had discovered the world, the secret of their future. He argued that Portugal was destined by God to rule a Fifth Empire, which would happen to the Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian and Roman empires. In this Fifth Empire, universal and Christian, "all kingdoms would unite under the same sceptre, all heads would obey a single supreme head, all crowns would meet on a diadem." The myth of the promised empire was normally related to the Messianic belief in the return of King Sebastian, killed at 24 years in the battle of Al Kasr al Kebir in Morocco, in 1578. According to this legend, he would return to restore the kingdom or to found a new one. Three centuries later, at the end of the nineteenth century, the Messianic myth of the return of King Sebastian was still alive among the Brazilian peasants. Canudos was one of the examples of this survival. "

The Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, in his book Mensagem, admits a Sebastianist position, in search of a lost patriotism. The book was composed taking Portugal's heroic past as its motive.

Myths similar to Sebastianismo have been recurrent in different times and cultures. Around the same time, the legend of El Encubierto circulated in the Valencian Germanías, a hypothetical grandson of the Catholic Monarchs who revolted against Carlos I, a myth that also circulated among the Castilian Communards and among the Catalans in 1522 (in this case with the name of Barnabas El Encubierto); this character died in May 1522. There were also figures who posed as the real tsars in Russia (such as various "false Dimitri" in the time of Boris Godunov), or as the emperor Nero in Rome after his death Or by Christ himself.