Bishops and Politics: The Portuguese Episcopacy During the Dynastic Crisis of 1580*

Using Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of "field", this essay assumes that there was no single "Church position" during Portugal's dynastic crisis of 1578-81: Portugal's Church was an institution encompassing a large number of different agencies, each containing a huge number of very different agents (from a social, cultural, economic and even religious perspective) struggling for power and influence and disputing control over material, spiritual and symbolic goods. Therefore, my purpose is to explain the various and changing ways that the different prelates of Portugal's thirteen mainland dioceses responded to the acute political problem of the royal succession between 1578 and 1581, and how the crown candidates tried to obtain their support