A kingdom becoming a Monarchy: Bernardo de Brito's history of Portugal
Abstract
This article deals with a singular episode in Portuguese historiography: the Monarchia Lusytana, composed by the Cistercian monk Bernardo de Brito in the transition from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century. Specifically, the aim is to analyse the materiality of a text which, having received a particular reception between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, raises a variety of questions regarding the time at which it was written. Questions of identity of the kingdom, such as the mythical origin linked to the Old Testament story, the indomitable Portuguese character, the beginnings of peninsular Christianity or the role of the Suevi and Goths in the configuration of a Portuguese and Hispanic monarchy. The appeal to the past as an example and replica of the present generated debates about its writing and publication in the incipient Hispanic ‘republic of letters’. The aim of this study is to outline this reading.
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