Sebastian (Portugal)
Sebastian I , "the longed-for" ( Portuguese Dom Sebastião I. " O Desejado "), from the house of Avis (born January 20, 1554 in Lisbon ; † August 4, 1578 in Alcácer-Quibir ) was the 16th from 1557 to 1578 . King of Portugal .
Life
Childhood and taking office
Sebastian was born on January 20, 1554 in Lisbon as the son of Joan of Spain and the posthumous son of her husband Johann Manuel of Portugal . He was thus a grandson of the Portuguese King John III. , which he followed on the royal throne from June 11, 1557 to August 4, 1578 after his death.
Just three months after Sebastian's birth, his widowed mother had returned to the Spanish court as an Infanta of Castile and Aragon to take over the reign of her brother Philip II while he was in England and the Netherlands. She never returned to Portugal and became a major supporter of the Jesuit order . Since she was in personal contact with Saint Ignatius of Loyola and Saint Francisco de Borja of Aragon, she is said to have been the only woman who ever entered the Jesuit order as "jesuíta secreta".
When his grandfather the king died, Sebastian was just three years old. Again, therefore, a regent had to take over the exercise of power. This fell to his energetic grandmother Katharina , the widow of John III. It was she who introduced an inquisition tribunal in Portugal in 1536 and even wanted to repeat this in Goa . The heir to the throne was raised mainly by Jesuits . Cardinal Heinrich , Archbishop of Lisbon, a brother of John III, soon took over . and thus great-uncle Sebastian, the reign. In 1568 Sebastian was declared of age at the age of 14 and then took over the government himself.
Campaign to Morocco
Sebastian's rule was to have catastrophic consequences for Portugal: He lived in a mystical dream world, filled with medieval knightly ideals and the idea of the crusade . His main goal was to conquer the great Moroccan Empire and thus to Christianize North Africa again. In 1578 he therefore led a military expedition to Morocco . The king used a dispute for the succession to the throne in the Sultanate of Fez as an opportunity to finally liberate Morocco from the Arabs. With an army of 18,000 men, he marched into the Arab part of the country against the advice of all his advisors. In addition to the Portuguese royal crown, he carried another newly made crown that was supposed to represent his kingship in Africa.
The army traveled through North Africa for nine days in 1578, with poor knowledge of the country and the unfavorable supply situation already affecting it before the first battles. The battle of Alcácer-Quibir (Ksar-el-Kebir or al-Qasr al-Kabir) in Morocco turned into a catastrophe for the campaign: the far superior army of Sultan Muley Abd-el Malik defeated the Portuguese and completely wiped out the army , the king was killed in battle. Allegedly only 60 Portuguese survived the battle.
Since Sebastian fell unmarried and childless, the former regent, Cardinal Heinrich, took over the throne as Heinrich I. The defeat of Ksar-el-Kebir had weakened the country so that after the death of Henry it fell to the Spanish Habsburgs , which ended Portuguese independence for 60 years.
Sebastianism
Since the king's body was never found, the legend developed that Sebastian was still alive and would one day save his country from extreme danger. During the rule of the Spanish Habsburgs in Portugal, there were at least three "false Sebastiane" who led local revolts against the Spaniards and pretended to be the former king. Even outside of Portugal, people pretended to be the missing ruler, for example in Venice in 1598 .
Sebastianism, i.e. the belief in the return of Sebastian, was alive in Spain until around 1830 and was instrumentalized for political, anti-democratic purposes in the 20th century.
Literary and artistic processing
The poetic fiction of King Sebastian's survival is the basis of a novel by Adelheid Reinbold published in 1839 .
The fate of the king and his campaign in Morocco is the subject of Gaetano Donizetti's last opera Dom Sébastien , roi de Portugal (1843).
See also
literature
- Ralph Braun, Marion Ehrhardt: Johann Strauss "Cervantes or The Queen's Lace Shawl". Program booklet for the rediscovery of the operetta. Landestheater Coburg, Coburg 2006, pp. 14, 21, ralph-braun.com (PDF).
- Ralph Braun, Marion Ehrhardt u. a .: Twenty years of international Johann Strauss encounters in Coburg. Coburg 2007, pp. 11-13, 53, ralph-braun.com (PDF).
Web links
- Sebastian, King of Portugal on "Genealogy Middle Ages" (manfred-hiebl.de)
predecessor | Office | successor |
---|---|---|
Johann III. |
King of Portugal 1557–1578 |
Heinrich I. |
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Sebastian |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Sebastian I of Portugal |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | King of Portugal |
DATE OF BIRTH | January 20, 1554 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Lisbon |
DATE OF DEATH | August 4, 1578 |
Place of death | Alcazarquivir |