Alexandre Herculano: the soldier-historian who took the miracle out of Ourique

On 8 July 1832 a liberal fleet put an army ashore near Mindelo, not far from Porto. It numbered about 7,500 men, led by Dom Pedro, the former emperor of Brazil, against the absolutist king Dom Miguel. The next day Pedro marched into Porto at its head.3 sources3 sources

In the ranks was a 22-year-old volunteer from Lisbon who had joined the Queen's Volunteer Battalion in the Azores that March. Alexandre Herculano had no university degree and no fortune, and he had spent the past year as a refugee. He fought through the siege of Porto that followed, which lasted about a year and brought hunger, cholera and typhoid to the city.3 sources3 sources

By the mid-1840s he was a celebrity. He wrote the country's first historical novels and a history of its first two centuries built on the documents themselves, and he told the clergy that one of the nation's founding miracles was a forgery. In 1880 the critic Teófilo Braga wrote that in Portugal there had been a man who was listened to “as if he were an oracle”.2 sources2 sources

Herculano's family was modest. His father, Teodoro Cândido de Araújo, was a clerk at the Junta dos Juros, the office that handled the state's loans, and the son of a grain trader. On his mother's side the family were builders; a great-grandfather had been a foreman on the palace-convent of Mafra.2 sources2 sources

He learned to read with his father and studied with the Oratorian fathers at Necessidades between about the ages of 10 and 15, then took mathematics at the Royal Naval Academy. In 1827 his father went blind, and plans for the University of Coimbra were dropped. Herculano took commercial classes instead and, in 1830 and 1831, the course in diplomatics, the reading of old documents, at the Torre do Tombo, the royal archive.2 sources2 sources

Before he was 18 he had found his way into Lisbon's literary circles, where he met the poet António Feliciano de Castilho and won the patronage of the elderly poet Leonor de Almeida, Marchioness of Alorna. He read Walter Scott, Chateaubriand, Lamartine and the German poets of the Sturm und Drang.1 source1 source

Which side the young Herculano was on is still argued over. A hostile bibliographer, Inocêncio Francisco da Silva, later claimed he had written paid verses for the Miguelists at about 18. His biographers find little proof of the detail, though some sympathy for Miguel seems real. A poem, A Semana Santa (Holy Week), probably written in the spring of 1829, already puts him in the liberal camp.1 source1 source

In August 1831, probably after joining the freemasons, Herculano took part in a rising of the 4th Infantry Regiment in Lisbon, led by one of his former teachers at the Naval Academy. (One modern biography names the 4th Cavalry instead.) The Miguelist forces crushed it, at the cost of much blood. Herculano escaped on board the French frigate Melpomène.3 sources3 sources

From there an English ship took him to Plymouth. He passed through Falmouth, Jersey, Saint-Malo and Granville and settled for a time in Rennes, in Brittany, to study history, part of the network of Portuguese liberal exiles gathering for a return. In March 1832 he reached the Azores, the liberal base, and enlisted.3 sources3 sources

After Mindelo the liberals were shut up in Porto by Miguel's army. Herculano fought in the actions of the siege and in 1833 was appointed second librarian of the new public library of Porto. There he learned the archivist's trade. One of his first editions was the chronicle of King Sebastião by Friar Bernardo da Cruz, published in 1837 after he compared six manuscripts.4 sources4 sources

Herculano's politics were liberal but never radical. When the September Revolution of 1836 brought back the Constitution of 1822, he refused to swear to it and resigned his post in Porto. He attacked the new government in a fierce anonymous pamphlet, A Voz do Profeta (The Voice of the Prophet), which caught the public mood.2 sources2 sources

In 1837 he became editor of O Panorama, a Lisbon weekly modelled on the London Penny Magazine and published under royal patronage by the Society for the Spread of Useful Knowledge. In 1839, with the backing of the king consort, Fernando II, he was made director of the royal libraries of Ajuda and Necessidades. The post gave him a secure income for life and let him live close to his work.3 sources3 sources

He sat in parliament for the Chartists in 1840 and 1841 and left disgusted after he was pushed off the public instruction committee. Years later he called his time as a deputy a “beastly sin”, for which he had done penance by writing the history of the country “with loyalty and conscience”.2 sources2 sources

Between 1838 and 1848 he wrote historical tales for O Panorama and other papers, later collected as Lendas e Narrativas (Legends and Narratives, 1851). They range from O Alcaide de Santarém, set in Moorish Santarém in the tenth century, to A Abóbada, the story of the vault of the Batalha monastery in 1401. In his preface he called them “the first attempts at the historical novel” in Portuguese.2 sources2 sources

His novel Eurico, o Presbítero (Eurico the Priest) came out in 1844, its preface signed at Ajuda in November 1843. Eurico is a Visigothic noble who, refused the hand of Hermengarda, sister of the future Christian leader Pelagius, becomes the priest of Carteia near Gibraltar. When the Muslim armies invade Spain he fights them as an unknown knight in black armour. The book's real subject, Herculano said, was the loneliness of priests forbidden to marry.3 sources3 sources

O Monge de Cister (The Monk of Cîteaux), set in the reign of João I, followed in 1848, and O Bobo (The Jester) ran as a serial in 1843 but only became a book in 1878. The 1911 Britannica found his novels laboured and his dialogue weak, but judged their influence to be as great as their imitators were many.2 sources2 sources

In 1842 Herculano set out his plan in a series of Letters on the History of Portugal. History, he argued, should cover institutions and whole classes of people, not only battles and kings. Four years later the first volume of his História de Portugal appeared. The other three followed in 1847, 1849 and 1853.2 sources2 sources

The book starts with the grant of the County of Portugal to Henry of Burgundy in 1096 and ends with the death of Afonso III in 1279. Each volume closed with notes weighing the authenticity of the sources. He meant to go further: in 1871 the emperor of Brazil, Pedro II, noted after meeting him that most of a fifth volume was written, but it never appeared.1 source1 source

The trouble came from a few pages in volume one. For centuries the Portuguese had been taught that before the battle of Ourique in 1139, Christ appeared to Afonso Henriques and promised him victory, and that his men then acclaimed him king. The miracle was not in the twelfth-century chronicles. It took shape in the Chronicle of 1419 and was later backed by a supposed sworn statement by the king, “discovered” in the late sixteenth century.2 sources2 sources

Herculano gave the battle little space. He wrote that it was wrapped in “fables no less absurd than brilliant” and that the Arab chroniclers did not mention it, and in a note he called the king's sworn statement “poorly forged”. He also rejected the Cortes of Lamego, the record of a supposed founding assembly, first published in 1632, that had long been used to justify the Bragança dynasty.2 sources2 sources

The clergy answered from the pulpit. After his second volume came out, a preacher in Braga called him a heretic and impious for what he had written about the medieval popes. In Lisbon the sermons were about Ourique: first at a feast in one of the city's busiest churches, then in his own parish church and, two days later, in another. In June 1850 he answered with an open letter to the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon, Eu e o Clero (The Clergy and I).2 sources2 sources

A pamphlet war followed. Herculano answered his critics in long letters such as the Solemnia verba of October and November 1850, addressed to A. L. Magessi Tavares, a courteous opponent who had written two pamphlets against him. Lisbon's professor of Arabic accused him and his Spanish ally, the Arabist Pascual de Gayangos, of not knowing the Arab sources. The 1911 Britannica thought the quarrel did credit to no one, but that Herculano's version of the facts had been universally accepted.3 sources3 sources

The quarrel led straight to his next book. The three volumes of his history of the origin and establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal appeared in 1854, 1855 and 1859. They follow more than twenty years of bargaining between Lisbon and Rome that led to the tribunal of 1536. King João III is the chief villain, and the New Christians, Jews who had been forced to convert, try to block the deal, often with bribes.2 sources2 sources

Herculano made no secret of his aim. He wrote that he wanted “to strengthen the liberal faith of the half-hearted”, and he feared an alliance between the centralising papacy of Pius IX and the governments in Lisbon. The book was translated into English by John C. Branner for Stanford University in 1926; Branner noted that the historian of the Spanish Inquisition, Henry Charles Lea, had called it a classic.2 sources2 sources

His largest project was an edition of the medieval sources themselves. In 1853 he was put in charge of publishing the oldest documents of Portugal, with a grant of 1,000$000 réis (one conto, or a million réis) a year. He made two long tours of the archives of central and northern Portugal choosing documents, many of which were then gathered in the Torre do Tombo.3 sources3 sources

The work absorbed him for about two decades, and it was stormy. In 1856 a man he detested, Joaquim José da Costa Macedo, was made keeper of the Torre do Tombo. Herculano resigned as a member and perpetual secretary of the Academy, saying that since he could not enter the archive he could not work on the Monumenta. He held to that even when the Academy re-elected him in October and made him vice-president in December.3 sources3 sources

He kept being drawn into politics and kept walking away. He helped plan the 1851 coup that ended the government of Costa Cabral and began the period called the Regeneration, but turned down the post of minister of the kingdom.2 sources2 sources

He later won a municipal election as an opposition candidate and became president of the new council of Belém, a separate municipality west of Lisbon that was abolished later in the century. One biography dates his election to November 1853, another to 1854. He resigned in October 1855 after a clash with Rodrigo da Fonseca Magalhães, the minister of the kingdom.2 sources2 sources

He opposed the 1857 concordat with the Holy See and the arrival of the Sisters of Charity, and argued for civil marriage while sitting on the commission revising the Civil Code from 1860. His letters on civil marriage were put on the Church's Index of forbidden books. He refused a peerage in 1861 and the Grand Cross of the Order of Santiago in 1862.3 sources3 sources

He had always disliked Lisbon and liked the land. In the late 1840s he rented a plot near his house at Ajuda and made dairy produce, and from 1855 to 1863 he farmed in the Arrábida hills with two friends. In 1859 he bought the Quinta de Vale de Lobos, a farm on the outskirts of Santarém.2 sources2 sources

After a late marriage in 1867 he made the farm his home, and threw himself into making olive oil. The writer Ramalho Ortigão remarked that he had stopped “making history to make olive oil”. He kept writing all the same: letters by the hundred, pamphlets, new editions, a translation of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso and more pages of the História.3 sources3 sources

He died at Vale de Lobos in September 1877, aged 67, of pneumonia according to an 1894 sketch of his life. His early biographers give the date as 13 September. Ortigão's obituary in As Farpas says he had died “at ten o'clock last night, 14 September 1877”, which can be read as dating either the death or the article, and some modern reference works give 18 September. The obituary was less a eulogy than a reproach for twenty years of silence.3 sources3 sources

He was buried in the parish church of Azóia de Baixo. In 1888 his remains were moved to the chapter house of the Jerónimos Monastery in Lisbon, prepared for him with a tomb paid for by public subscription. The monastery also holds the tombs of Vasco da Gama and Camões.3 sources3 sources

He was famous in his own lifetime. A German Protestant theologian, Rudolf Baxmann, back from a missionary journey to Lisbon, wrote in 1863 that even ships were named after him. In March 1910 the centenary of his birth was marked with a public homage that turned the man into a national symbol.2 sources2 sources

Historians still call him the father of Portuguese historiography, though the scholar Arthur Assis warns that the title is often exaggerated: Herculano built on a century of document work by the Academy of Sciences and scholars such as João Pedro Ribeiro. Assis sees his critical method as the maturing of a long collective effort rather than a one-man revolution.2 sources2 sources

His birthday has been the National Day of Historic Centres since 1993, chosen because he defended old buildings and monuments. His poem Tristezas do Desterro (Sorrows of Exile) inspired O Desterrado (The Exile), the sculpture by António Soares dos Reis that is the best-known work in the Soares dos Reis National Museum in Porto.1 source1 source

His papers are still turning up. In May 2021 the Santarém town council bought a lot of them at auction for the base price of €30,000, subject to the National Library's right to buy first: drafts, research notes, letters and part of a diary about his exile in France and the Azores. Among the manuscripts was a poem called O Desembarque (The Landing). The rest of his papers are in the Porto municipal library and the National Library.1 source1 source