Honor and service. Álvaro Ferreira de Vera and the idea of nobility in the Portugal of the Habsburgs

Abstract

The Early Modern Age was a period when the power of the nobility was at its height, and it also marked the beginning of the civilization of writing. The convergence of both these realities has left us with a wide-ranging literature about the peerage and the idea of nobility throughout southern Europe. In this article, an analysis is made of one of the most essential treatises about the nobility in Habsburg Portugal, Origem da nobreza política, written by Álvaro Ferreira de Vera and published in 1631. The treatises written about the peerage provide the perfect scenario for explaining the concept of nobility, its mechanisms of ennoblement, its hierarchies and its key values, such as honor and virtue. Ferreira de Vera’s work represents a culminating moment in the formulation of the Portuguese discourse about the nobility, since it brings together the medieval tradition, the sources of Castilian law and the political and pedagogical needs of those who were admitted to the nobility under the dynasty of the Habsburgs. In short, this article analyses the discourse written about the nobility in Portugal in the first half of the 17th century, situating it within the general context of treatise writing about the nobility in the Iberian Peninsula, thanks to a text and an author that are both equally central to this genre.