Looking through the 'Vizão Feita por Xpo a el Rey Dom Affonso Henriques' (1659). Franciscans in India and the legitimization of the Braganza monarchy

摘要

Early modern Portuguese political providentialism has attracted significant scholarly interest in recentyears. Whether in reference to the legitimization of imperialism in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, to the divinejustification of royal power in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (especially after 1640), to Sebastianism, theFifth Empire and other forms of millenarism, or to the uses of astrology, scholars have demonstrated that politicalprovidentialism was a familiar language to the Portuguese monarchy.Little is known, however, about the formulation and spread of political providentialism in the Asian part of the PortugueseEmpire. In this paper I provide a more complex picture of the dissemination of this language in the Estadoda Índia through an analysis of the treatise Vizão de Affonso Henriques, written in Goa by Friar António de S. Thiago,in the year 1659. How does this treatise relate to metropolitan political providentialism, namely in the context ofthe legitimization of the Braganza monarchy? How is Franciscanism crucial in the treatise’s structure? And can thetreatise be located at the crossroads of Euro-Asiatic political culture?