“ORA CHE IL PORTOGALLO HA UN RE CHE LO GOVERNI, UN PADRE CHE LO CONSOLI E UN SIGNORE CHE LO DIFENDA (...) SIGNORE, PORTATEMI CON VOI”. ARCHBISHOP RODRIGO DA CUNHA AND THE RESTORATION OF 1640

Abstract

There are events that have the force to change the path of history, already designated as events-advents. In this paper we analyze the role of a concrete individual in a specific historical process: Rodrigo da Cunha and his participation in the Restoration movement of 1640, one of the rebellions that made the powerful Spanish monarchy tremble. According to the testimony of those who praised him after his death, this archbishop of Lisbon, who in the 1630s presented himself as a faithful servant of King Philip IV, confidently declared that he would die peacefully because, finally, with Juan IV, Portugal returned to have a king to govern it, a father to console it and a knight to defend it. How did Rodrigo da Cunha intervene in the preparations and in the coup d'état on December 1? What role did he play from then until 1643 on the succession of events? Why did he come to betray the king he had served for more than twenty years? This study will answer these questions, from the analysis of a set of sources that report on the work of the archbishop, and we’ll try to understand, from a case study centered on the figure of an ecclesiastic, how the exercise of politics worked in the first half of the seventeenth century.

Keywords

• rodrigo da cunha
• restauração
• storia del portogallo
• arcivescovado di lisbona
• monarchia spagnola