The Episcopal Court of Portalegre, 1780-1835

Abstract

Based on original sources, this study intends to examine the action of the Episcopal Court of Portalegre in the late eighteenth and first decades of the following century. It is an instigating period, marked by a structural and tumultuous change of the paradigms of the authority of the Church, the power of bishops and the place of religion, triggered by Pombalism and consummated after the Portuguese Liberal Revolution of 1820. The main objective is to analyse the performance revealed by this Portuguese Ecclesiastical Court in that historical context, when the pastoral office was already strongly marked by the limitations imposed by secular power.