From “good times” to “the last age of martyrs”: Alexandre Herculano’s petitions for friars and nuns

Abstract

The process of installing Liberalism in Portugal was slow and complex, and one of the most important actions of the Liberal  government was the extinction, in 1834, of religious orders and the confiscation of the assets of the regular clergy. Even though he  took sides with the new regime, Alexandre Herculano (1810-1877) wrote two pamphlets appealing to the friars, “Os Egressos”  (1842), and to the nuns, “As freiras de Lorvão” (1853). It is these two texts that we chose for our analysis in this study, always  thinking about the whole of Herculano’s work and its context. Therefore, the dialogue with the proposals of Carlos Eduardo da Cruz (2010), Eduardo Lourenço (1992), Luís Machado de Abreu (2004), Manuel Clemente (1994) and Rute Rodrigues (2017) will lead  us, in order to understand Herculano’s place in the 19th century conjuncture in Portugal.