The city, the university and the Empire: Coimbra and the shaping of the ruling elites (17th and 18th centuries)

Abstract

The University of Coimbra was responsible for training generations of scholars who have integrated the Portuguese political elites between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries. Its setting in Coimbra in 1537 led to the creation of a specific identity of the city, impacting its spatial configuration. he city daily life, marked by the presence of students, was organized according to the state's interests with regard the control on the moral education of youth. This article combines three objectives: to analyze the relationship between the city and the University in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, paying attention to the students' daily lives; to discuss, in the context of Pombal reforms, the role of the University as an irradiation locus of illustrated knowledge; and, finally, to demonstrate that Coimbra degree earned the formation of identity and clientelist ties, the basic configuration of the ruling elites.