Conscience and Empire: Politics and Moral Theology in The Early Modern Portuguese World

Journal of early
modern history 18 (2014) 473-494

brill.com/jemh
Conscience and Empire: Politics and Moral

Theology in the Early Modern Portuguese World
Giuseppe Marcocci
Università degli Studi della Tuscia
Abstract
This article presents the first reconstruction of the relationship between conscience
and empire in the Portuguese World between 1500 and 1650. It shows to what extent
the foundation of the Mesa da Consciência (“Board of Conscience”), a royal council of
theologians devoted to issues like war, commerce, conversion, and slavery, shaped the
imperial ideology. In this context, “conscience” emerged as a keyword in the political
vocabulary, reflecting the importance of moral theology for the political language in
which the empire was conceived. It not only bolstered the hegemony of theologians
but also encouraged the emergence of a missionary casuistry, which became increas-
ingly independent of the central authorities in the kingdom and in Rome. Under the
Habsburg domination (1580-1640) this system was dismantled and theologians lost
their centrality at court. After the Restoration of 1640 some of the old institutions were
recovered in name, but the old interconnection between politics and moral theology
was not re-installed.
Keywords
Portuguese Empire – imperial ideology – moral theology – Mesa da Consciência e

Ordens – missionary casuistry
…
What a lot of ways he [King John III of Portugal]
seeks so as not to go against God’s will
in anything that may concern his conscience.
joão de barros (1533).1
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474 Marcocci
Introduction1
A non-specialist reader who, on the basis of recent historical scholarship

on early modern European overseas empires, wanted to get a general idea
about the Portuguese Empire would probably be easily mistaken into believing
that the extraordinarily persistent Portuguese prototype was the fruit of acci-
dent, of random experiences unaccompanied by any systematic political
reflection; to put it somewhat provocatively, that the Portuguese had invented
the European overseas empire without realizing it.2 This impression is due to
a long-standing scholarly tradition that has depicted Portuguese expansion
as the result of essentially economic drives, and as a response to material
impulses welding together the interests of investors and merchants from all
over Europe with those of the Portuguese crown and nobility.3 As a conse-
quence, the Portuguese case is generally neglected in studies of the ideological
dimension of the overseas empires: Richard Tuck’s observation that “there is
surprisingly little research on Portuguese ideas about empire” still holds true.4
This article offers to invert this state of affairs and to contribute to a better
historical understanding of the formation of Portuguese imperial thought and
its characteristics. One of the best ways of achieving this is to bring back into
the picture another image that is also widely associated with the Portuguese
Empire: that of a militant missionary enterprise on a planetary scale.5 How do
we reconcile such intense religious fervor with the vision of empire as a merely
1 João de Barros, Ao mui alto e muito poderosõ Rey de Portugal D. João 3o. deste nome Panegirico,
in Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal (Lisbon), cod. 3060, fol. 34rv.
2 According to some historians, the Portuguese just aspired to build an empire. See Pedro
Cardim, “La aspiración imperial de la monarquía portuguesa (siglos XVI y XVII),” in
Comprendere le monarchie iberiche: Risorse materiali e rappresentazione del potere, ed.
Gaetano Sabatini (Rome, 2010), 37-72. For a controversial study of the Portuguese legal vision
of empire, see António Vasconcelos de Saldanha, Iustum Imperium: Dos tratados como funda-
mento do império dos portugueses no Oriente (Lisbon, 1977).
3 This interpretation has been predominant since the publication of Vitorino Magalhães
Godinho, Os descobrimentos e a economia mundial, 2nd ed. revised and augmented (Lisbon,
1981-1982), 2 vols. (1st ed. Lisbon, 1963-1965).
4 Richard Tuck, The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from
Grotius to Kant (Oxford-New York, 1999), 72. An exception is David Armitage, ed., Theories of
Empire, 1450-1800 (Aldershot, 1998).
5 The classic study of the subject is Charles Ralph Boxer, The Church Militant and Iberian
Expansion, 1440-1770 (Baltimore, 1978). Among more recent works, see Ines G. Zupanov,
Missionary Tropics: The Catholic Frontier in India, 16th-17th Centuries (Ann Arbor, 2005); Alida
Metcalf, Go-Betweens and the Colonization of Brazil, 1500-1600 (Austin, 2005); Contextos
Missionários: Religião e Poder no Império Português (São Paulo, 2011).
Journal of early modern history 18 (2014) 473-494

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Conscience and Empire 475
commercial operation? My conjecture is that it was the endeavor to answer

questions of this kind that was at the very center of Portuguese imperial
thought. I shall therefore focus on the interaction between politics, moral the-
ology, empire, and conscience in the sense of the legal-religious sphere for
resolving the doubts and questions that permeated the early modern
Portuguese world throughout.
Very few studies have been devoted to the strong links between politics and
religion in the Portuguese Empire. This is rather a paradox considering that it
was the papacy who had authorized overseas exploration by means of the mid-
fifteenth-century bulls, which had granted rights of conquest, trade monopo-
lies, and navigation in return for the spread of the Catholic faith.6 Historians
have explored only limited aspects such as the prosopography of the confes-
sors of the royal family, the royal control over the appointment of bishops and
other ecclesiastical authorities, or the functioning of the Crown’s spiritual
patronage over its imperial possessions.7
Despite the attention paid by scholars such as António Manuel Hespanha
to legal history, the interconnection between politics and conscience has been
investigated more fully for France, Spain, and the Italian Peninsula than for
Portugal and its empire.8 This might be explained, in part, as a rejection of
6 A useful study is Charles-Martial De Witte, “Les bulles pontificales et l’expansion portugais

au XVe siècle,” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 48 (1953): 693-718; 49 (1954): 438-461; 51 (1956):
413-453 and 809-836; 53 (1958) 5-46 and 443-471.
7 João Francisco Marques, “Os jesuítas confessores da corte portuguesa na época barroca, 1550-
1700,” Revista da Faculdade de Letras (Universidade do Porto) s. 2, 12 (1995): 231-270; José Pedro
Paiva, Os bispos de Portugal e do Império, 1495-1777 (Coimbra, 2006); Idem, “El Estado en la
Iglesia y la Iglesia en el Estado: Contaminaciones, dependencias y disidencia entre la monar-
quía y la Iglesia del reino de Portugal, 1495-1640,” Manuscrits 25 (2007): 45-57; Angel Santos
Hernández, Las misiones bajo el patronato portugués (Madrid, 1977).
8 The most representative work by António Manuel Hespanha is still As Vésperas do Leviathan:
Instituições e Poder Político: Portugal, séc. XVII (Coimbra, 1994); with reference to the
Portuguese Empire see his “Modalidades e limites do imperialismo jurídico na colonização
portuguesa,” Quaderni fiorentini per la storia del pensiero giuridico moderno 41 (2012): 101-135.
On politics and conscience see Harald E. Braun and Edward Vallance, eds., Contexts of
Conscience in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700 (Houndmills, Basingstoke, 2004); Vincenzo
Lavenia, L’infamia e il perdono: Tributi, pene e confessione nella teologia morale della prima età
moderna (Bologna, 2004); Isabelle Poutrin, “Cas de conscience et affaires d’État: le ministère
du confesseur royal en Espagne sous Philippe III,” Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine
53, no. 3 (2006): 7-28; Nicole Reinhardt, “Spin Doctor of Conscience? The Royal Confessor and
the Christian Prince,” Renaissance Studies 23 (2009): 568-590; Paolo Broggio, La teologia e la
politica: Controversie dottrinali, Curia romana e monarchia spagnola tra Cinque e Seicento
(Florence, 2009).

476 Marcocci
topics that had been particularly privileged under the Salazar regime (1932-
1974), which had always been eager to stress the spiritual inspiration of the
Portuguese overseas expansion.9 However, far from being an empire without
an ideology, the Portuguese Empire defined its political nature in close relation
with moral theology, to the point of devoting a permanent royal council to
conscience: the Mesa da Consciência (“Board of Conscience”). It directed the
choices and delimited the scope of action of the sovereign’s government in
such matters as warfare, commerce, monopolies, navigation, slavery, and mis-
sions, affecting all political levels.
Literature was remarkably quick to reflect the changes that preceded the
creation of this new political organ. The famous playwright Gil Vicente (1465-
1536), for example, traced many of the political, religious, and social tensions,
as well as the radical transformation that went with overseas imperial expan-
sion, in his plays. In his Auto da Lusitania, staged for the first time at the
Portuguese court in 1532, a caustic exchange between the devils Dinato and
Berzabu (Beelzebub) summed up the encounter between the typical character
of the Portuguese merchant-knight Everybody and the indigent No-one, as
follows:
Dinato: What should I write, fellow?

Berzabu: That No-one seeks conscience,
And Everybody money.10
Morals and economic interests are presented here as opposites. Reworking

a longstanding literary tradition, the pair Everybody and No-one lent itself
perfectly to voicing moral criticism. Gil Vicente was arguably the first to put
them on stage, but later on, this pair was to spread to early Jacobean England,
as the anonymous play No-body and Some-Body (1606) and the reference to the
picture of Nobody in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1610-1611) clearly
demonstrate.11 The public of courtiers and churchmen who watched the
9 See, for instance, Martim de Albuquerque, A consciência nacional portuguesa: Ensaio de

história das ideias políticas (Lisbon, 1974).
10 Maria Leonor Cavalhão Buescu, ed., Copilaçam de todalas obras de Gil Vicente, vol. 2
(Lisbon, 1984), 573.
11 Gerta Calmann, “The Picture of Nobody: An Iconographical Study,” Journal of the Warburg
and Courtauld Institutes 23 (1960): 60-104; Anthony Archdeacon, “The Publication of
No-body and Some-body: Humanism, History and Economics in the Early Jacobean Public
Theatre,” Early Modern Literary Studies 16 (2012), available online: http://extra.shu.ac.uk/
emls/16-1/archnobo.htm (07/04/2012). This theatrical tradition was influenced by the
English morality play The Somonyng of Everyman (late fifteenth-century).

remière of the Auto da Lusitania may have grasped the ironic allusion to the
p
shifting relationship between politics and conscience in Renaissance Portugal
in the punning of the devils’ remarks. Be that as it may, some theologians at the
Portuguese court were perplexed by the “capricious disorder” of the Auto.12
One of the reasons for this was almost certainly that they understood Gil
Vicente’s irony as an attack on the moralistic atmosphere that had developed
at court since the late 1520s and which culminated in the establishment of the
Mesa da Consciência, set up in 1532, the same year as the first performance of
the Auto da Lusitania.
The very name of the Mesa da Consciência indicated an instituzionalization
of the sphere of conscience at the highest levels of Portuguese government.
The founding of this council marked a turning point.13 It was the result of a
political shift from millenarian imperialism to a more limited and regulated
expansion after King Manuel I’s death (1521), in the wake of which the influ-
ence of canon lawyers and theologians increased at court.14 The latter domi-
nated the Mesa, which had no parallel in Catholic Europe at that time.15 Its aim
was to resolve and settle any possible conflict between secular power and
moral theology. The council intervened, generally, but not always, on behalf of
the Portuguese king when his decisions risked conflict with the Church, as well
as on the papal decisions concerning the Crown.
My starting point is the distinction between “consciousness” and “con-
science,” two notions that Romance languages, however, render with one word,
descending from the Latin conscientia. In particular, I will try to respond to the
common opinion that the Portuguese had no imperial consciousness, since
12 Carolina Michëalis de Vasconcelos, Notas Vicentinas: Preliminares duma edição crítica das
obras de Gil Vicente (Lisbon, 1949), 32.
13 Scholars have little analyzed the Mesa da Consciência. See Martim de Albuquerque,
“Política, moral e direito na construção do conceito de Estado em Portugal,” in Idem,
Estudos de cultura portuguesa, vol. 1 (Lisbon, 1984), 152-248; Maria do Rosário Sampaio
Temudo Barata de Azevedo Cruz, “A Mesa da Consciência e Ordens, o Padroado e as per-
spectivas de missionação,” in Missionação portuguesa e encontro de culturas: Actas do con-
gresso internacional, vol. 3 (Braga, 1993), 627-647.
14 Luís Filipe F. R. Thomaz, “L’idée imperiale manueline,” in La Découverte, le Portugal et
l’Europe: Actes du colloque, ed. Jean Aubin (Paris, 1990), 35-103.
15 In early-sixteenth-century Spain theological juntas on the Americas were frequently con-
vened, but they were temporary and limited to specific points. See Anthony Pagden, The
Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnography
(Cambridge, 1986), 27-29, 47-50.

478 Marcocci
they were merely interested in business or proselytism.16 This opinion is one of

the most important reasons for which their case tends to be left out of the
comparative history of early modern European overseas empires.17 Conversely,
I argue that once court theologians started overseeing the morality of
Portuguese government, the Portuguese word consciência produced a doubly
intertwined meaning, and that the centrality of conscience created a new
political consciousness of empire. Studying the interaction between con-
science and empire is a means to explore how the Portuguese conceived their
own overseas expansion. Indeed, the reaction to the moral implications of the
empire is a strong indicator of the existence of an imperial consciousness.
The central role of religion and theology in legitimizing the empires—
chiefly the Catholic ones—that arose in the age of the twilight of the Holy
Roman Empire is widely acknowledged.18 In the following pages, drawing
inspiration from Adriano Prosperi’s work on the conquest of Italian souls by
early modern ecclesiastical powers, I intend to bridge the gap between the
abstract notion of conscience and the history of concrete institutions, focusing
on the Mesa da Consciência.19 Although many of its original documents have
been lost, on the basis of reliable copies it is possible to sketch out the institu-
tions and figures that shaped its development, creating the link between poli-
tics and conscience that was distinctive to the Portuguese world, including the
evolution of the relationship between the kingdom and the imperial posses-
sions. It will be shown that, as political agents, merchants, and missionary
elites reflected on the risk of sin that might endanger the moral safety of their
decisions on war, administration, trade, and conversion, they reflected and
shaped their imperial context and outlook.
The chronological structure of my analysis is divided into five periods: the
background (up to 1532); the foundation of the Mesa and its first activities
(1532-ca. 1560); the Jesuit predominance (ca. 1560-1580); the effects of Spanish
domination on Portugal (1580-1640); and finally the reconfiguration after the
restoration of Portuguese independence (post-1640), which led to a definite
decline of conscience and moral theology in the institutional space of political
decision-making and action.
16 José Sebastião da Silva Dias, Os descobrimentos e a problemática cultural do século XVI

(Coimbra, 1973), 342.
17 Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France,
c. 1500-1800 (New Haven, 1995).
18 James Muldoon, Order and Empire: The Concept of Empire, 800-1800 (Houndsmills,
Basingstoke, 1998).
19 Adriano Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza: Inquisitori, confessori, missionari (Turin: 1996).

Secrecy, Conscience, and Royal Power
Portugal was a monarchy whose foundation had gained strength thanks to

papal sanction in the twelfth century. Roughly three hundred years later,
since Portuguese royal legislation stated the primacy of canon over imperial
law, it was natural for the crown to turn to the Roman Curia when it needed to
resolve the disputes between European powers concerning overseas expan-
sion and approval of the jurisdiction the Portuguese claimed over Atlantic
Africa and the sea routes to the Indies (usque ad Indos).20 The foundations of
the future empire included the right of waging war against non-Christians, full
lordship (dominium) over land and sea, as well as the power of enslaving
human beings. This unprecedented concession was justified in the name of the
faith and its propagation. Thus, royal conscience was burdened with a great
moral and legal duty.21
An atmosphere of secrecy and confidentiality surrounded this new dimen-
sion of Portuguese politics, not so much with regard to geographic information
and sea routes, as in defining legal and diplomatic strategies, as well as the
management of their effects. When taking advice on matters relating to explo-
ration and conversion, the kings of Portugal and their relatives could count on
their confessors. The Dominican friar Afonso Velho, confessor of Prince Henry
(1394-1460), for instance, was commissioned to negotiate in Rome the mid-
fifteenth-century papal bulls about the Portuguese overseas expansion.
Similarly, the Dominican friar Jorge Vogado, confessor of King Manuel I, urged
the latter to expel Jews and Muslims from the kingdom in 1496, as an act of
conscience in the name of the purity of faith.22 The political importance of the
role of the royal confessor emerges clearly in a letter sent in 1525 by the Bishop
of Algarve, Fernando Coutinho, to the Franciscan friar João de Chaves, confes-
sor of the young King John III (1502-1557), Manuel I’s son and successor after
20 Mário Júlio de Almeida Costa and Eduardo Borges Nunes, eds., Ordenações Afonsinas
(Lisbon, 1984) bk. 2, 9, 1. This royal collection of laws was concluded in 1446-1447. The
expression “usque ad Indos” was used in the papal bull Inter cetera, March 13, 1456, pub-
lished in Monumenta Henricina, vol. 12, ed. António Joaquim Dias Dinis (Lisbon, 1960-
1974), doc. 137, in order to specify the extension of the jurisdiction granted to the Crown
of Portugal by the earlier bull Romanus Pontifex, January 8, 1455, ibid., vol. 12, doc. 36.
21 James Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers and Infidels: The Church and the Non-Christian World,
1250-1550 (Liverpool 1979).
22 Prince Henry to Pope Nicholas V, July 29, 1450, in Monumenta Henricina, vol. 10, doc. 213,
and Diogo Barbosa Machado, Bibliotheca Lusitana (Coimbra, 1966), vol. 3, 819. Vogado’s
role is not mentioned in François Soyer, The Persecution of the Jews and Muslims of
Portugal: King Manuel I and the End of Religious Tolerance, 1496-7 (Leiden, 2007).

480 Marcocci
1521. By that time, the Portuguese Empire was a reality and it encompassed
islands and archipelagos in the Atlantic Ocean, strongholds in Morocco, trad-
ing posts on the coasts of West and East Africa, and fortresses, factories, and
land possessions in South Asia from Hormuz to Malacca. A diplomatic mission
to China by Tomé Pires—at the same time as the victorious expedition to
Mexico by Hernán Cortés (1519-1521)—had recently failed, while the shores of
Brazil, discovered in 1500, remained yet to be explored.23 Governing such a
composite empire entailed a variety of decisions and actions on a global scale,
for which, according to Bishop Coutinho, the king needed his confessor’s sup-
port and counsel. He therefore proposed to reform central institutions along
the Spanish model, including the establishment of a “Council of India,” whose
affairs “are of the greatest importance, because peace and war depend on
them.” The royal confessor should sit on all royal councils and stand by John III,
steadily and patiently, like a father by his son. This was the only way to make
the king sure of “the love he [the confessor] feels for him.” Coutinho reminded
Chaves that he should make use of sermons and of the intimate space of con-
fession as weapons capable of penetrating the king’s conscience in order to
reconcile his political view with theological rules.24
That such a reflection was made so early may be explained by an increasing
presence of religious men at the Portuguese court. In the second half of the
1520s, John III put the Bishop of Viseu and Erasmian humanist, Miguel da Silva,
in charge of the traditional office of “Notary of Purity” (escrivão da puridade).
The office was distinct from that of the Secretary of State, which was occupied
by father and son for more than fifty years (António Carneiro, 1515-1531 and
Pêro de Alcáçova Carneiro, 1531-1567). The Notary of Purity was one of the
king’s closest ministers: he wrote and sealed John III’s letters, sat on the Royal
Council, and had the responsibility of keeping secret the most important
affairs of the monarchy.25 As the office touched on all aspects of politics and
religion indiscriminately, Silva’s cultural openness and his strong links with the
Roman Curia, where he had been Portuguese ambassador (1515-1525), pro-
voked the hostility of a group of scholastic theologians and canonists. Amongst
23 Serge Gruzinski, L’Aigle et le Dragon: Démesure europeenne et mondialisation au XVIe siècle

(Paris, 2012).
24 Fernando Coutinho to João de Chaves, April 30, 1525, in Colecção de São Lourenço, vol. 1,
ed. Elaine Sanceau (Lisbon, 1973-1983), 329-333.
25 Sylvie Deswarte-Rosa, Il “Perfetto Cortegiano” D. Miguel da Silva, trans. Benedetta Sforza
(Rome, 1989). On the Erasmian current at the court of John III see Marcel Bataillon,
“Erasme et la Cour de Portugal,” in Idem, Études sur le Portugal au Temps de l’Humanisme
(Paris, 1974), 35-69.

these hostile theologians were the dean of the royal chapel Diego Ortiz de
Villegas, the king’s chaplain and Bishop of Lamego Fernando de Meneses
Coutinho e Vasconcelos, and Pedro Margalho.
These court theologians had risen at court during John III’s controversy with
Rome over the spiritual patronage of the empire, including the control over
tithes and the right to choose bishops. Since, unlike Spain, where the doctrine
of the Dominican theologian Francisco de Vitoria’s and Charles V’s military
power carried the day, the Portuguese Crown’s only source of legitimacy for its
overseas expansion was papal authority, the court theologians provided the
king with arguments to support a jurisdictional conflict with the Roman Curia:
they had endorsed John III’s decisions by discharging his conscience in case of
possible offenses against the Pope’s spiritual power.26 This was the real origin
of the Mesa da Consciência (1532). By penetrating the secret sphere of royal
power, the court theologians initiated what we may call a new direction for
conscience in the political and cultural life of Portugal and its empire. The
subsequent establishment of the Inquisition (1536), the reopening and renewal
of the University of Coimbra (1537), and the creation of the Inquisition’s
censorship (1540) must be seen in this context.27 Meanwhile the Augustinian
João Soares, who was President of the Mesa da Consciência and who supported
this decision, also became John III’s confessor, while Silva, the former Notary of
Purity, was disgraced. This rapid change in the cultural and religious order
challenged churchmen and humanists. In the name of the primacy of con-
science, the Mesa was not slow to expand its activities to imperial matters.
More than one royal official in Asia was suspected of immorality, while the
long distance worsened the problem of responsibility for administrative
decisions that often had judicial consequences after the officials returned to
Portugal. In 1535, Francisco de Sousa Tavares, Captain of Cannanore (India),
wrote a letter of denunciation to King John III. He reported the “novelty” of the
“signed approvals” (assinados) “that the governors ask captains and nobles to
put at the bottom of the advice given in the councils they have here.” Such a
precaution was meant to be evidence of the sharing of responsibility among
governors and officials before the royal court. As Sousa Tavares complained,
“these signed approvals are like plenary indulgences that absolve them of
any guilt or penalty, and so they can do whatever they want without any
26 On this group of court theologians, see Giuseppe Marcocci, A consciência de um império:

Portugal e o seu mundo, sécs. XV-XVII (Coimbra, 2012), 129-133.
27 Giuseppe Marcocci, José Pedro Paiva, História da Inquisição Portuguesa, 1536-1821 (Lisbon,
2013), 30-33.

482 Marcocci
contradiction.”28 It was the sign of an emerging concern for moral issues and
conscience across the empire.
The court at that time was itinerant, and the Mesa da Consciência followed
it everywhere. Between the 1530s and 1540s, a new system of central govern-
ment emerged: the bulk of the royal decisions concerning the empire were
submitted to the verdict of the Mesa. Politics and moral theology became more
and more intertwined, while the papal nuncio in Portugal paradoxically cen-
sured the hegemony in the kingdom of those “who have a cowl on their head.”29
It seems likely that in its first period of activity the Mesa—a “council” that
acted “to the great detriment of the ordinary and apostolic jurisdiction,” as the
new nuncio Girolamo Capodiferro blustered in 1538—dealt with the selling of
European copper in India (1538), the abandonment of the Moroccan towns of
Safi and Azemmour (1541), and even a secret peace with the Ottoman Empire.30
The permanent tension with papal representatives led the Mesa to formulate a
warning against the entry of the nuncio Luigi Lippomano in the kingdom in
1542.31 Meanwhile, an anonymous agent informed Lippomano about “the new
way of violating ecclesiastical jurisdiction,” which had been recently invented
at the court of Portugal: “the king established a hearing or parliament that is
called Mesa da Consciência, ruled by fathers and laymen, friars and prelates,
who deal with any issue as long as it may be said it is a matter of conscience.”
They were “judges without any competence,” he complained and besides, “the
Mesa da Consciência does not do anything but absolve the king of what he asks
for, by claiming that he was not bound in conscience, or that in conscience he
cannot allow such things.” The author of these reports harshly criticized the
court theologians, who “had changed into tyrants of this Kingdom by reason of
28 Francisco de Sousa Tavares to John III, January 14, 1535, in As Gavetas da Torre do Tombo,
vol. 10, ed. António da Silva Rego (Lisbon, 1960-1977), 610.
29 Marco Vigerio della Rovere to Ambrogio Ricalcati, September 2, 1535, in La correspon-
dance des premiers nonces permanents au Portugal, 1532-1553, vol. 2, ed. Charles-Martial de
Witte (Lisbon, 1980-1986), doc. 40.
30 Girolamo Capodiferro to Ambrogio Ricalcati, January 18, 1538, ibid., vol. 2, doc. 65bis;
anonymous to Luigi Lippomano, ca. 1542, in Corpo Diplomatico Portuguez contendo os
actos e relações politicas e diplomaticas de Portugal com as diversas potencias do mundo
desde o século XVI ate aos nossos dias, vol. 5 (Lisbon, 1862-1959), 135-140. No more than
contacts in the direction of a peace with the Ottoman Empire existed. See Salih Özbaran,
“An Imperial Letter from Süleyman the Magnificent to Dom João III concerning Proposals
for an Ottoman Armistice,” in Idem, The Ottoman Response to European Expansion:
Studies on the Ottoman Portuguese Relations in the Indian Ocean and Ottoman
Administration in the Arab Lands During the Sixteenth Century (Istanbul, 1994), 111-118.
31 Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo (Lisbon), Colecção Moreira, caixa única, cad. 11,
fol. 10rv.

their confessions and sermons.” Significantly, they possessed the same sort of
weapons as those Bishop Coutinho had recommended to the king’s confessor
Chaves a decade before. This moralistic atmosphere, taxed with hypocrisy by
the papal agent, even seemed to have infected the Treasury Minister (Vedor da
Fazenda), the Count of Castanheira: “This man is evil, but displays his con-
science and saintliness in order to ally himself with the friars, who continu-
ously speak with the king.”32 Whatever we may think of such a description, on
occasions, the Mesa also passed verdicts that went against John III’s will. When
he asked in 1538 for permission to send the firstborn of the noble families to
India so that they might serve in the army, the deputies stated that “the king
had no right to oblige firstborn to go to India, as, since that land had been dis-
covered for commerce and trade, they were not obliged to defend it.”33
The Spread of Conscience across the Empire
The interpenetration between politics and moral theology reached its climax
in the mid-sixteenth century. Princes and nobles, royal counselors and offi-
cials, lawyers and theologians, merchants and missionaries, all took part in an
imperial system that had conscience at its heart. This meant that, whenever
the Portuguese dealt with matters such as war, trade, slavery, or conversion,
they had to resolve a moral issue. The recourse to theology became a constant
feature when dealing with the empire, causing endless battles over the defini-
tion of matters of conscience. At least three generations of court theologians
endeavored to keep the consequences of this under control, and in so doing,
they produced imperial consciousness and a space in which debates and theo-
ries of empire arose.
First of all, the verdicts of the Mesa da Consciência gained legal validity, that
is they were considered as laws and often anticipated royal orders. Moreover,
the council established the guidelines for the missionaries active throughout
the empire. In the 1540s, they prepared “regulations for catechumens” to be
printed, in order to send copies of them to India.34 The relationship between
the Mesa and the empire was not one-way, however. In 1551, the Dominican
friar Diego de Bermudez wrote from Goa to the President of the Mesa, Bernardo
da Cruz (actually, he was no longer the President, but Bermudez could not
32 Letter quoted above in the footnote 30.

33 Diogo do Couto, Década quinta da Ásia . . . (Lisbon, 1612), bk. 3, 8.
34 This lost document is referred to in some theological advice about the mission in India,
November 1545, published in Documentação para a História das Missões do Padroado
Português do Oriente: Índia, vol. 3, ed. António da Silva Rego (Lisbon, 1991-2000), doc. 53.

484 Marcocci
know that), to inform him of the situation of their order (recently arrived in
India) and many other aspects of the political and religious life in the Portuguese
Empire in Asia. His conclusion was devoted to the problem of the venality of
office and endemic embezzlement: “I tell it to Your Lordship, because you are
in charge of the king’s conscience: he must look at this land and send people
who are paid in advance, or pay them by other ways, for if they are to be paid
from this office, they do not think but to be paid from the expenses incurred in
acquiring their three-year position, in order not to lose money.”35
The Mesa’s importance was evident even to some far-away converts who felt
they had been ill-treated. One may wonder who had suggested to the former
Sultan of the Maldives, Hassan IX, to write a letter from Cochin to the “Lords of
Conscience” in 1556. In a touching account, Hassan IX, now Manuel, described
his state of abandonment after being captured and moved from the Maldives
to India, and baptized by the Jesuit Francis Xavier. He was “starving to death,”
because the Governor of India, Francisco Barreto, had coldly told him that he
“was unable to govern either islands or a village.”36 The surprising fact that
such a letter, which clearly mingled religious protest and political ambitions,
was addressed to the Mesa, however, confirms its growing authority and its
expanding grip on conscience throughout the empire.
During the 1550s, the Mesa concerned itself with a wide variety of matters,
ranging from the selling of pikes, horses and other products to non-Christians,
to the subjection of American natives or the baptism of black Africans.37 Each
of these specific interventions corresponded to a more general strategy, such as
the conversion of imperial trade to a less crown-centered system, the begin-
ning of a new colonial policy in Brazil under Governor Mem de Sá (1557-1572),
or the reorganization of the slave trade. Significantly, even though Francisco de
Vitoria’s teachings were well known in Portugal, he was never quoted openly in
these theological debates—arguably because he had criticized the use of papal
bulls as the legal foundation of the Iberian overseas empires. Moreover, it is
noteworthy that the Mesa’s verdicts often originated from questions of con-
35 Diego de Bermudez to Bernardo da Cruz, December 31, 1551, ibid., vol. 5, doc. 12.
36 Hassan IX, alias Manuel, to the Mesa da Consciência, January 23, 1556, ibid., vol. 4, doc. 15.
37 I reconstructed the case of forbidden commerce in my article “Trading with the Muslim
World: Religious Limits and Proscriptions in the Portuguese Empire (ca. 1480-1570),” in
Religion and Trade: Cross-Cultural Exchange in World History, 1000-1900, ed. Francesca
Trivellato, Cátia Antunes, and Leor Halevi (New York, 2014), 91-107. For the subjection of
American natives see Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo (Lisbon), Gavetas, 11, 8, 3:
Tratado sobre a guerra que será justa (probably by the António Pinheiro, ca. 1556). For the
black African slaves, see the sentences of 1559 and February 22, 1560, in Biblioteca
Nacional de Portugal (Lisbon), cod. 10.890: Lázaro Leitão de Aranha, Meza das tres Ordens
Militares de Cristo, S. Thiago e Aviz, vol. 3, fols. 21-22.

science, which missionaries, confessors, and local vicars from different areas of
the empire had raised with the metropolitan authorities. Their doubts, upon
arrival in Portugal, were transformed into general concerns that were debated
by councilors, the high clergy, theologians, and jurists, including the famous
doctor Navarrus (Martín de Azpilcueta), professor of Canon Law at Coimbra
University, whose handbook for confessors had listed the most serious sins of
the secular prince:38
if he wished to conquer, or conquered, kingdoms and dominions against

divine or human law; or he did not return those wrongly conquered,
without a good cause that justified it; or if he notably misruled those
rightly possessed [. . .]; if he made an unjust war, or without authority, or
right cause, being obligated to restore any gains. And if he made a war
that is just in itself, but with an unjust soul, not being obligated to return,
according to St. Thomas and his commentator.39
Discharging the king’s conscience, as the Mesa pretended, thus was an oppor-
tunity to improve and overhaul the imperial system as a whole. From 1551 the
Mesa extended its jurisdiction over the Portuguese military orders (Christ,
Aviz, Santiago) and changed its name to Mesa da Consciência e Ordens. Thus,
the royal council came to control a vital tool of wealth, privilege, and social
prestige in what has been called an “economy of reward” (economia da
mercê).40 The Mesa’s increasing power is also attested by its first known
regulations (1558). They reaffirmed its anti-Roman nature, by establishing its
competence over papal bulls relating to Portugal and its empire, “in order to
check them as soon as they arrive here and manage their effect.”41 A few years
later, the issue of a verdict favorable to the enslaving and selling of Brazilian
natives (1565-1566) gave rise to a celebrated dispute on slavery, in Bahia,
between the Jesuits Manuel da Nóbrega and Quirício Caxa (1567).42 The Mesa’s
38 See for instance Martín de Azpilcueta, Relectio cap. Ita quorundam. De Iudaeis, in qua de
rebus ad Sarracenos deferri prohibitis & censuris ob id latis non segniter disputatur
(Coimbra, 1550).
39 Martín de Azpilcueta, Manual de confessores & penitentes (Coimbra, 1552), 606 and 610.
40 Fernanda Olival, As Ordens Militares e o Estado Moderno: Honra, Mercê e Venalidade em
Portugal, 1641-1789 (Lisbon, 2001). See also António Manuel Hespanha, “Os bens eclesiásti-
cos na época moderna: Benefícios, padroados e comendas,” Anais de História de Além-
Mar 1 (2000): 59-76.
41 Charles Martial de Witte, “Le ‘regimento’ de la ‘Mesa da Consciência’ du 24 novembre
1558,” Revista Portuguesa de História 9 (1969): 10.
42 The materials concerning this dispute are in Manuel da Nóbrega, Cartas do Brasil e mais
escritos, ed. Serafim Leite (Coimbra, 1955), doc. 41. See Carlos Alberto de Moura Ribeiro

486 Marcocci
ambivalence about the Atlantic slave trade soon incurred bitter irony in a trea-
tise by the Spanish Dominican Tomás de Mercado (1569).43
It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of conscience in the early
modern Portuguese context, and it rose to new levels when, during the 1560s,
the Jesuits gained political influence by taking control of the king’s conscience.
This happened largely thanks to the support of Prince Cardinal Henry
(Inquisitor General of Portugal since 1539, and Regent from 1562 to 1568) during
the minority years of the new monarch, Sebastian, who succeeded John III in
1557. It was Henry too, who imposed the leader of the rigorist wing of Portuguese
Jesuits, Fr. Luís Gonçalves da Câmara, as preceptor of Sebastian in 1560, before
he finally became his confessor in 1566.44 The Jesuits now monopolized the
office of confessors of the members of the royal family, and the picture was
completed by the appointment of Câmara’s brother, the secular theologian
Martim, as President of the Mesa da Consciência (ca. 1565) and as Notary of
Purity (1569). The fusion between politics and religion, as well as between con-
science and secrecy, was total. The Queen Mother, Catherine of Austria, widow
of John III, protested that the Câmara brothers were “absolute lords of the
kingdom and the king.”45
Under Martim Gonçalves da Câmara, who gradually replaced the Mesa’s
deputies with people in his trust, the council also adopted a more aggressive
line. An increasingly intense circulation between kingdom and empire
strengthened the Mesa’s influence over the decision-making processes in dif-
ferent geographic contexts. For instance, repeated requests from Goa, capital
of the Portuguese Empire in Asia, led the Mesa to entitle the local Inquisition
to act against Hindus and Muslims in a variety of cases involving the crime of
deterring conversion to Catholicism (1569).46 The following year the Mesa
opened a second office in Goa, but we know very little about it.47
Zeron, Ligne de foi: La Compagnie de Jésus et l’esclavage dans le processus de formation de

la société coloniale en Amérique portugaise, XVIe-XVIIe siècles (Paris, 2009), 77-155.
43 Tomás de Mercado, Tratos y contratos de mercaderes y tratantes discididos y determinados
(Salamanca, 1569), fols. 63v-68.
44 Maria do Rosário Sampaio Temudo Barata de Azevedo Cruz, As regências na menoridade
de D. Sebastião: Elementos para huma história estrutural, vol. 1 (Lisbon, 1992), 96-99.
45 Catherine of Austria to Francisco de Borja, Superior General of the Society of Jesus,
June 8, 1571, in Biblioteca da Ajuda (Lisbon), cod. 54-XIII-12, doc. 113 (copy).
46 Verdict of March 2, 1569, in Manuel de Meneses, Chronica do muito alto e muito esclarecido
D. Sebastião decimosexto Rey de Portugal . . . Segunda Parte (Lisbon, 1730), 87-88.
47 Catarina Madeira Santos, “Goa é a chave de toda a Índia”: Perfil político da capital do Estado
do Índia, 1505-1570 (Lisbon, 1999), 188-191.

As a general rule, we may suppose that only the metropolitan Mesa da

Consciência was competent to judge delicate matters, like wars and conquests.
A new pattern emerged around the time of the Jesuit predominance, during
which we also witness the first signs of a use of Francisco de Vitória’s doctrine.
The expedition against the Shona Kingdom of “Monomotapa,” in Southeast
Africa, is a case in point. At the beginnings of 1569, the Mesa issued its verdict
in favor of an attack on this land, described as being full of gold. The instruc-
tions for Governor Francisco Barreto, chief of the expedition, included “the
three essential points” of the verdict, all based on the just titles of conquest
listed by Vitoria in his famous Relectio de Indis (1539): redress for abuses suf-
fered by Christians, punishment of tyrannical laws and crimes against nature,
and defense of the missionaries. Portuguese soldiers were bound in conscience
to obey the verdict, as the Jesuits who were in their train constantly reminded
them during confession.48 Then, a few years later, in a dispute over Portuguese
sovereignty over the oceans and their exclusive right of sailing to the lands
under their jurisdiction, the Jesuit Pedro Simões, a lecturer at the University of
Évora, objected that if for Vitoria there were seven just titles by which “the
Indians of the West could fall into Spanish hands, the same holds for those
of the East with the Portuguese.”49 The theologians’ sense of confidence in
handling the political-moral dimension had reached the point of even includ-
ing Vitoria’s arguments in the arsenal of legal justifications for the empire,
without bothering about the inconsistency of their main warrant continuing
to be precisely those papal bulls whose authority the Spanish Dominican had
demolished.
Missionary Casuistry in the Portuguese World
The centrality that conscience had acquired in the political sphere in the mid-
sixteenth century helps us understand the remarkable presence of questions
connected with the functioning of the imperial system among the cases of
conscience discussed by the missionaries, both during lessons of theology and
in responding to moral doubts that arose in the most varied places, from Bahia
to Goa, and Macao to Nagasaki. Through the circulation of questions, opinions,
48 The verdict can be found in the appendix of the report on Barreto’s expedition by the
Jesuit Francisco Monclaro, c. 1574, in Documenta Indica, vol. 8, ed. Josef Wicki (Rome,
1964), doc. 100.
49 Pedro Simões, Annotationes in materiam de bello [1575], in Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal
(Lisbon), cod. 3.858, fol. 304.

488 Marcocci
and official responses, isolated problems like that of the conditions of absolu-
tions to be given in confession turned into debates conducted on a global scale,
creating a shared cultural patrimony throughout the Portuguese world in the
form of missionary casuistry that can be found in various manuscripts from
the American and Asian monasteries and colleges. It was a decisive point of
intersection of the new sense of conscience across the empire, which ended up
affecting not only the natives that had been converted or were to be converted,
but also merchants and navigators, settlers and crown officials. They all par-
took in a shared outlook and concern for the control and protection of souls
which can be discerned from the middle of the sixteenth century, and which is
well expressed in the recommendation of the Jesuit Francis Xavier to the friar
Kaspar Berzé, then a missionary in Hormuz (Persia): caution was required in
confessions “particularly with honored, rich merchants,” and they should be
allowed “two or three days to think about the sins of their past life,” after which,
if questioned “about usury, forms of bargaining, buying and selling”—as well
as on monopolies and, in the case of a royal officer, on embezzlement—they
eventually always confessed “many crimes.”50
From the 1560s and 1570s onwards, the Jesuit fathers were the swiftest in
covering the various regions of the Portuguese Empire with a missionary casu-
istry that dealt deeply with questions of moral theology and that showed evi-
dent independence of the interests of the Crown and of the central authorities
in Europe generally. The difference in the Jesuit position, which authorized the
violation of royal regulations previously protected by the constraint of con-
science, is clear if we compare the debate on free trade that took place in Goa
in the presence of the Governor of India, João de Castro, in November 1545, and
the line taken on monopolies by Fr. Francisco Rodrigues, professor of cases of
conscience in the local Jesuit college around 1570. The commission presided
over by Castro and composed mainly of Crown officials and other members of
Goa’s imperial élite (none of whom were priests) examined a proposed reform
of the spice trade: while maintaining the monopoly over the seaway between
India and Portugal (rota do Cabo), it suggested opening trade in the region to
private merchants, authorizing them to re-sell spices in Hormuz, and any
excess of the European trade in Malabar pepper in the ports of the kingdoms
of Bengala and Pegu. The Fiscal Superintendent (Provedor Fiscal) Bastião Luís,
50 The instructions to Berzé became such a pattern that they were published in the appen-
dix of the first published history of the Jesuits in the East, from where I quote: Giampietro
Maffei, Historiarum Indicarum Libri XVI . . . (Cologne, 1589), 338.

one of the founders of the Confraternity for Conversion to the Faith, was most
opposed to this idea and claimed that “a case of such importance, as the expor-
tation and trade in pepper in another manner from that of the kingdom, should
be regarded as so sacred as not to be spoken of.”51
Hardly twenty-five years later such assumptions were completely over-
turned, as one can see in a proposal by the Jesuit Rodrigues, whose explanation
of the monopoly of regional trade was intended for confessors in India. He
took the general line that respect for “equality” bound all those in conscience
who stipulated a trading contract, even if “in all else they were as different from
each other as the prince is from any of his vassals.” He pointed out that,
although in some cases one might allow that “for the common good” the prince
or the community might arrange matters so as to reserve trade in specific items
to some merchants, those captains who demanded to limit the local traders’
freedom of sale and purchase showed “inequality towards the contracting par-
ties, force and constriction, monopolies and injustice, as they impede those
who would wish to buy and sell at any time and place, and so those captains
are obliged to make good the harm they have caused with these prohibitions,
as the Council of Goa has declared.”52 Eloquently, Rodrigues also extended his
support for the interests of the local elites to matters of navigation stating that
“it is not licit that the captains forbid the merchants to sail to wherever they
wish, or to enter the harbors whenever they need.”53 He also intervened in the
question of the obligation to restore the proceeds deriving from unlicensed sea
journeys toward regions that were restricted to certain subjects by the king or
the vice roy. “I do not think so,” he replied, “as it is uncertain whether one can
make these prohibitions in these places, mainly as we see that in the conces-
sions that are given to these concessionaries distributive justice is usually
poorly respected.” He conceded that valid reasons might exist for the crown’s
representatives in Asia to grant such privileges to some individuals, but his
51 Luís Filipe F. R. Thomaz, A questão da pimenta em meados do século XVI: Um debate

político do governo de D. João de Castro (Lisbon, 1998), doc. 5.
52 Francisco Rodrigues, Cazos diversos e varios que correm pelas partes da India, in Arquivo
Nacional da Torre do Tombo (Lisbon), Ms. da Livraria 805, fol. 62v-63v. The reference is to
the first Council of Goa (1567), see Arquivo Portuguez-Oriental, vol. 4, ed. Joaquim
Heliodoro da Cunha Rivara (New Delhi, 1992), doc. 1 (act. 4, 27). The decrees of the Council
had value as royal law in the archdiocese of Goa, but this point was contradicted in the
official instructions for the new Viceroy of India, Luís de Ataíde (1568), in which the effec-
tiveness of the monopoly on spices was reasserted, see ibid., vol. 3, doc. 1.
53 Rodrigues, Cazos diversos, fol. 62.

490 Marcocci
conclusion was clear: “such concessions constitute a great opportunity for evil
in this region and they should be carefully considered when they are conceded
to see if the good deriving from the concession outweighs that evil.”54
Rodrigues was repeatedly consulted on China and Japan too, and he formu-
lated answers to doubts on many questions, including the trade in Chinese
slaves and the sale of arms and forbidden products.55 It was from these very
regions that a few years later the latent resistance of missionary casuistry
became most vigorous—not only against royal legislation and the conclusions
of theologians in Portugal, but above all against the growing role of Rome in
decision-making, which at the same time threatened Portuguese spiritual
patronage. On a different scale the controversy over royal jurisdiction that had
motivated the creation of the Mesa da Consciência in 1532 re-emerged: it was a
prelude to the tensions with Rome that contributed to the creation of the
Congregation de Propaganda Fide in 1622. The Jesuit Alessandro Valignano
from Japan expressed a generalized impatience with distant and over-rigid
constraints on conscience in 1592, as he took issue with the long shadow that
Navarro’s doctrines had cast on all matters defining the moral theology of
imperial Portugal since the mid-sixteenth century: “[if] doctor Navarrus, twice
celebrated and expert in cases, changed so many ideas simply by going from
Portugal to Rome, we can imagine pretty well how many he would have
changed if he had gone as far as Japan and had direct experience of what
happens here.”56
Moral theology had been until then a decisive factor of political unity in the
empire, but the emergence of a local Catholicism for which missionary casu-
istry had laid the foundations, eventually eroded the constitutive link that had
existed between conscience and central imperial power. After the fracture
brought about by the loss of independence in 1580, this crisis could no longer
be concealed in Portugal itself.
54 Ibid., fol. 101v-102 (these responses are part of a section entitled “Cazos correntes pela
India”).
55 Ibid., fols. 96-101v (these responses are part of a section entitled “Cazos diversos e varios
que correm pelas partes da India com suas resolluções”). See also Ana Fernandes Pinto
and Silvana Remédio Pires, “The Resposta que alguns padres de Japão mandaram pergun-
tar: A Clash of Strategies?,” Bulletin of Portuguese/Japanese Studies 10-11 (2005): 9-60.
56 Alessandro Valignano, Adiciones del Sumario de Japon [1592], in Biblioteca da Ajuda
(Lisbon), cod. 49-IV-56, fol. 133 (eighteenth-century copy).

Conscience between Spanish Domination and Portuguese

Restoration
Conscience lost centrality in the Portuguese political system after the tragic
expedition to Morocco, during which King Sebastian died at the age of 24 in
the battle of Ksar el-Kebir (1578). The first signs of decline dated from the mid-
decade, with the passing of Martim Gonçalves da Câmara (1575) and the politi-
cal fall of his brother Luís (1576). Then, the Notary of Purity disappeared, while
the Mesa da Consciência survived the dynastic crisis that followed the death of
Sebastian (1578-1580), as well as the annexation of the Portuguese Crown by
Philip II of Spain (1580-1581). This event brought about radical changes in the
political and institutional life of the Portuguese world. The king of Spain “left
Lisbon a widow” and the court moved to Castile.57 The Mesa followed the
court, but lost the bulk of its power. It shrank to a mere court of appeal for mili-
tary orders. As for the empire, officially it was kept separate from the Spanish
one, even though the two ended up forming a worldwide “composite Empire.”58
The effects of this conjuncture became plainly evident in the expression of the
imperial doctrines, as Spanish and Portuguese arguments now tended to be
mixed. To accompany the transfer of power from Portugal to Spain the old sys-
tem, centered on the Mesa, was dissolved. Kept at a distance by a foreign king,
the Portuguese court theologians were excluded from new royal institutions,
like the Council of Portugal, whose seats were occupied by noblemen loyal to
the Spanish Crown. In 1604 a short-lived Council of India, which shared some
areas of competence with that of the Mesa before 1580, was established.
However, there were no theologians amongst its members, nor did conscience
play any significant role in it. But there was a memory of the Mesa’s past func-
tions, as well as a sense of rivalry between these two councils. It was the Mesa’s
jealousy that caused the Council of India to disappear in 1614.59
The reshaping of the Mesa might be interpreted as an attempt to channel
the autonomy of Portuguese imperial conscience into a sphere of conscience
controlled by Madrid. An integrated theory of empire would now support what
has been called the “Iberian globalization.”60 This certainly does not mean
57 Fernando Bouza Álvarez, “Lisboa Sozinha, Quase Viúva: A Cidade e a Mudança da Corte
no Portugal dos Filipes,” Penélope. Fazer e Desfazer a História 13 (1994): 71-94.
58 Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Holding the World in Balance: The Connected Histories of the
Iberian Overseas Empires, 1500-1640,” American Historical Review 112 (2007): 1359-1385.
59 Francisco Paulo Mendes da Luz, O Conselho da Índia: Contributo ao Estudo da História da
Administração e do Comércio do Ultramar Português no Princípio do Século XVII (Lisbon, 1952).
60 Serge Gruzinski, Les quatre parties du monde: Histoire d’une mondialisation (Paris, 2004).

492 Marcocci
there was an absolute decline of theology, nor did figures such as Luis de
Molina or Francisco Suárez lose their cultural centrality: living in Portugal at
the turn of the seventeenth century, they occupied prestigious university
chairs. Their writings circulated widely and tackled subjects of great impor-
tance—one need mention only the discussion of slavery, a moral and social
question of fundamental importance in the Portuguese world in this period, in
Molina’s De Iustitia et Iure (1593-1609).61 Yet, while the impact of moral theol-
ogy on Iberian imperial thought continued to be significant, in the age of
Spanish domination, arbitristas (projectors) and jurists came to replace
Portuguese theologians as political advisors. The long debate about the coloni-
zation of Angola confirms this trend.62 It was no coincidence that a late refuta-
tion of Hugo Grotius’ attack on the jurisdiction of the Portuguese over the seas,
entitled De Iusto Imperio Lusitanorum Asiatico (1625), was left to the Portuguese
canon lawyer and Mercedarian friar Serafim de Freitas, who taught at the
University of Valladolid.63
Not even the return to independence in 1640 restored conscience and moral
theology to its place. The pre-1580 institutional hierarchy dissolved into a
multiplicity of competing entities, including religious orders and universities.
Of course, royal confessors had a special position at the court of the Braganza,
as in other Catholic monarchies in mid-seventeenth-century Europe. But the
conflict between the new King John IV (1603-1665) and the Inquisition, or
between the latter and the Society of Jesus, proved that it was impossible to
recreate the past order. Except for some bishops, the political turbulence and
internal instability of the first period of Restoration, in which the late recogni-
tion by the papacy (1668) of their regained independence was an important
factor, prevented theologians and religious men in general from filling official
posts in the new system of government. As for the empire, the crown provided
itself with a new institution, named Conselho Ultramarino (“Overseas Council”).
Established in 1643, its members were recruited among the nobility.64
An apparent return to traditional models happened under the new King
Alphonse VI (1643-1683). In 1662 he assumed direct power thanks to the aid of
the artful Luís de Vasconcelos e Sousa, Count of Castelo Melhor. Subsequently,
61 António Manuel Hespanha, “Luis de Molina e a escravização dos negros,” Análise Social 35
(2001): 937-960; Zeron, Ligne de foi, 271-294.
62 Diogo Ramada Curto, “Remédios ou arbítrios,” in Idem, Cultura Imperial e Projetos
Coloniais, séculos XV a XVIII (Campinas, 2009), 177-193.
63 Anthony Pagden, “Commerce and Conquest: Hugo Grotius and Serafim de Freitas on the
Freedom of the Seas,” Mare Liberum 20 (2000): 35-55.
64 Edval de Souza Barros, Negócios de Tanta Importância: O Conselho Ultramarino e a disputa
pela condução da guerra no Atlântico e no Índico, 1643-1661 (Lisbon, 2008).

the latter became the “favorite” (valido) of Alphonse, who immediately appointed
him Notary of Purity, thus resuscitating an ancient title that had fallen into dis-
use after the death of Martim Gonçalves da Câmara in the sixteenth century.
Thanks to the new “Regulations of the Notary of Purity” his power was almost
absolute, but crucially, it was clearly separated from the sphere of conscience.65
With Castelo Melhor the office lost its sacred dimension and became equivalent
to that of the prime minister of an absolutist monarchy.66
Even though Castelo Melhor was Notary of Purity only from 1662 to 1667, his
government of Portugal and its empire marked a turning point in Portuguese
history, not only due to his decisive contribution to the final victory in the
Restoration War against Spain, but also on account of the controversy over his
power. The religious repercussions of this debate can be traced in the state-
ments of a number of the churchmen who took part. In 1666 the Discalced
Carmelite friar Francisco do Santíssimo Sacramento published a treatise on
the office of the Notary of Purity. His purpose was to justify the adoption of this
title by Castelo Melhor and to present his function as a perfectly normal phe-
nomenon. As stated in the dedication to Castelo Melhor, “if pre-eminences
and rewards of his post raised him with superior excellence, talents and grace
that are associated with the minister applaud him as the most worthy.”
Although Santíssimo Sacramento traced the origins of this title back to the
Bible, there was no space for conscience in his work.67 Santíssimo Sacramento’s
treatise provoked hostility, and his views were rejected in a letter attributed to
António Vieira (1608-1697), a famous Jesuit missionary who had been very
influential at court. The Discalced Carmelite had compared the intimacy of
the king with his Notary of Purity to the relationship of the Sun with its planets:
“He [the Notary of Purity] produces some effects per se as universal cause, by
receiving virtue directly from the Sun; and other effects thanks to second
causes, which always rely on its contribution in their action, as the cause that
is superior.” Vieira, however, used the same solar metaphor to highlight a clear
distinction between the Notary of Purity and the king: “two heads in one body
always were a monstrosity,” he glossed, rejecting Santíssimo Sacramento’s
image.68 Developing Vieira’s metaphor further we might say, that the distance
65 Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal (Lisbon), cod. 8.202: Regimento do Escrivão da Puridade.

66 On the figure of Luís Vasconcelos e Sousa, see Maria Luísa de Bívar Black, Um Escrivão da
Puridade no Poder: O Conde de Castelo Melhor, 1662-1667 (Lisbon, 1995). Very useful remarks
can be found in Ângela Barreto Xavier, Pedro Cardim, D. Afonso VI (Lisbon, 2008), 175-179.
67 Francisco do Santíssimo Sacramento, Epitome Unico da Dignidade, e Mayor Ministro da
Puridade, e de Sua Muita Antiguidade, & Excellencia (Lisbon, 1666).
68 Quoted in Xavier, Cardim, D. Afonso VI, 178. The previous citation is from Santíssimo
Sacramento, Epitome Unico, 99.

494 Marcocci
that separates conscience from head describes the trajectory of the Portuguese
system of government from the Renaissance centrality of political theology to
absolutism; a trajectory with consequences for its empire, too.69
Conclusion
The history of the interdependence between conscience and the Portuguese

Empire is an important chapter in the understanding of the connection
between politics and religion during the early modern period. The central role
Catholic moral theology played in this context well beyond the confines of
Europe is one of its most original traits. Its early institutionalization in the Mesa
da Consciência, which preceded all other European “councils of conscience,”
partly explains how and why it was able to create a common outlook that was
shared by the court and universities, monasteries and palaces of the nobility,
cities of the empire and remote missionary centers. Even powerful merchants
felt its effects, and for much of the sixteenth century there was almost no great
question concerning the empire that was not commented on by its theologians.
This cannot be overlooked if we aim at fully understanding the political life of
Portugal and its overseas empire, as well as its ideological dimension.
Of course, the weight of conscience was not always the same, nor did it
always maintain identical characteristics. The important role of moral theol-
ogy in imperial politics was a response to contingent circumstances, but it
quickly succeeded in welding the salient features of the legal foundations of
the empire. It stamped a decisive new direction on Portuguese culture, but its
political centrality also ended up limiting its liveliness, as is clear, above all, in
the imperial territories, where the growing missionary casuistry soon began to
show signs of impatience toward the metropolitan dominance. By the mid-
sixteenth century an official doctrine had imposed itself, that was to show a
few breaches only shortly before the crown of Portugal passed to Philip II,
when a new power and a different imperial tradition put an end to the
Portuguese model, while at the same time inheriting some of its features. After
the Restoration of 1640, it looked as if some aspects might flower again, but it
was only an illusion. The Portuguese monarchy was about to embark on a new
phase of its history, in which religion continued to be extremely important, but
there was no longer room for a monopoly over moral theology and empire.
69 Glenn J. Ames, “Pedro II and the Estado da Índia: Braganzan Absolutism and Overseas
Empire, 1668-1683,” Luso-Brazilian Review 34, no. 2 (1997): 1-13. See also Idem, Renascent
Empire? The House of Braganza and the Quest for Stability in Portuguese Monsoon Asia,
ca. 1640-1683 (Amsterdam, 2000).


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Journal of early

modern history 18 (2014) 473-494

Conscience and Empire: Politics and Moral

Portuguese Empire – imperial ideology – moral theology – Mesa da Consciência e

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi 10.1163/15700658-12342426

A non-specialist reader who, on the basis of recent historical scholarship

Journal of early modern history 18 (2014) 473-494

commercial operation? My conjecture is that it was the endeavor to answer

6 A useful study is Charles-Martial De Witte, “Les bulles pontificales et l’expansion portugais

Journal of early modern history 18 (2014) 473-494

Dinato: What should I write, fellow?

Morals and economic interests are presented here as opposites. Reworking

9 See, for instance, Martim de Albuquerque, A consciência nacional portuguesa: Ensaio de

Journal of early modern history 18 (2014) 473-494

Journal of early modern history 18 (2014) 473-494

they were merely interested in business or proselytism.16 This opinion is one of

16 José Sebastião da Silva Dias, Os descobrimentos e a problemática cultural do século XVI

Journal of early modern history 18 (2014) 473-494

Secrecy, Conscience, and Royal Power

Portugal was a monarchy whose foundation had gained strength thanks to

Journal of early modern history 18 (2014) 473-494

23 Serge Gruzinski, L’Aigle et le Dragon: Démesure europeenne et mondialisation au XVIe siècle

Journal of early modern history 18 (2014) 473-494

26 On this group of court theologians, see Giuseppe Marcocci, A consciência de um império:

Journal of early modern history 18 (2014) 473-494

Journal of early modern history 18 (2014) 473-494

The Spread of Conscience across the Empire

32 Letter quoted above in the footnote 30.

Journal of early modern history 18 (2014) 473-494

Journal of early modern history 18 (2014) 473-494

if he wished to conquer, or conquered, kingdoms and dominions against

Journal of early modern history 18 (2014) 473-494

Zeron, Ligne de foi: La Compagnie de Jésus et l’esclavage dans le processus de formation de

Journal of early modern history 18 (2014) 473-494

As a general rule, we may suppose that only the metropolitan Mesa da

Missionary Casuistry in the Portuguese World

Journal of early modern history 18 (2014) 473-494

Journal of early modern history 18 (2014) 473-494

51 Luís Filipe F. R. Thomaz, A questão da pimenta em meados do século XVI: Um debate

Journal of early modern history 18 (2014) 473-494

Journal of early modern history 18 (2014) 473-494

Conscience between Spanish Domination and Portuguese

Journal of early modern history 18 (2014) 473-494

Journal of early modern history 18 (2014) 473-494

65 Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal (Lisbon), cod. 8.202: Regimento do Escrivão da Puridade.

Journal of early modern history 18 (2014) 473-494

The history of the interdependence between conscience and the Portuguese

Journal of early modern history 18 (2014) 473-494

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© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��4 | doi 10.1163/15700658-12342426