Published in Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Peninsula Cultural History

Keywords: Keywords: Iberian Peninsula, Judaism, Messianism, Sebastianism.

This paper discusses some of the possible routes of royal messianism in the Iberian world between the XIV and XVI Centuries. Through a vast songbook, poems and texts of various kinds it is possible to identify the roots of royal messianism as emerged in Iberia Peninsula in the Middle Ages, and its development in the Modern Period. The best example of royal messianic expectations, Portuguese Sebastianism, fed upon these sources amongst others, and found fertile ground in the dramatic political context which followed the defeat by the Moors in Alcácer Quibir.