Judging Maria de Macedo: A Female Visionary and the Inquisition in Early Modern Portugal

Sebastianismo - the messianic belief that the Portuguese King Sebastian I, who disappeared during an ill-fated invasion of Morocco in 1 578, would return to liberate Portugal from its Spanish kings and lead the country to victory and honor - affected the Portuguese sense of national and cultural identity for more than a century in the Early Modern period. The introduction, "A Journey to Another World," describes the author's microhistorical approach, which regards Macedo's pamphlet and the trial record as cultural artifacts, which he reads closely, studying each element to find the clues that will lead his contextualizing research to the origins of the images and beliefs expressed in both records. [...]Maria was tortured and she confessed that she had fabricated her stories. Intriguing connections and shifts exist between the Prisoner of Venice in Dom Joäo de Castro's writings and Maria de Macedo's descriptions of King Sebastian on the Hidden Isle, and the author convincingly argues that Castro is the most likely indirect source of Maria's beliefs about Sebastian's identifying characteristics.