"Nobreza e fidalguia": The vocabulary of honour in Habsburg Portugal

Abstract

This paper explores the vocabulary of honour in Habsburg Portugal as a transversal reality to the existing language (or languages) within the framework of the Spanish Monarchy. The existance of similar terms and their permeability in different political scenarios allow us to talk of noblemen and nobilities within the noble ideal typus which dominated early modern Europe. Concepts such as the Spanish term hidalguía and the Portuguese fidalguia referred to a similar discursive reality and this facilitated a perfect assimilation of the Portuguese nobility into the project of the Spanish Monarchy in the years of the so-called Agregação. The main objective of this research is to explore these similarities and to cancel potential conflicts between concepts such as nobre-fidalgo, in order to integrate the discursive production of the nobility in Philippine Portugal within the lines and basic currents of thought of the nobility’s status and identity. From 1580 to 1640, the idea of nobility in Portugal was based on social prominence and blood cleaning, and this ended up establishing a vocabulary of honour in which noble categories were subject to the eloquent power of terms like honrado, noble, ilustre or the category of vivir a lei de nobreza (‘to live according the nobility’s laws’). These are the issues we deal with in this contribution, with the central idea of a union of common discourses that identified the forms of communication on nobility developing in early modern Spanish Monarchy.