24 ON THE USES OF THE PAST BY THE MARQUIS OF POMBAL: THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL PORTUGAL IN THE DEDUÇÃO CRONOLÓGICA E ANALÍTICA … FILIPE ALVES MOREIRA 30 The aim of this article is to analyze the most relevant passages devoted to the history of medieval Portugal in one of the texts written under the aegis of the Marquis of Pom- bal (Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1699-1782) 31 , the Dedução Cronológica e Analítica 32 (hereafter Dedução). By doing so I will show how the uses of the past, even the most re- mote one, were strategical in mid and late 18 th century political debates in Portugal. Even though this is a very well-known text, to my knowledge, there is still no work specifically dedicated to this subject. The Dedução… was originally published in three volumes between 1767 and 1768 33 . It appeared under the authorship of José Seabra da Silva, a jurist formed at the University of Coimbra who spent most of his career working at the highest courts of the Kingdom and was also a member of the Council of State and the main person responsible for the national archive (the “Torre do Tombo”). He was an influential politician during most of Pombal’s consulate 34 . The real authorship of the text remains, however, debatable, and most critics believe that it was actually written by Pombal himself or by a number of authors writing under his orders. There are, in fact, several contemporary statements 30 IF/University of Porto, Portugal. This work is funded by FCT through DL 57/2016/CP1367/CT002 and the project “Para a construção de um corpus pombalino: Parte I – Os Escritos Historiográficos Pom- balinos” (PTDC/HAR-HIS/32197/2017). 31 Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo was made the first Marquis of Pombal by King José I in 1769. There are several recent biographies of the Marquis of Pombal. See, for example, Kenneth Maxwell, O Marquês de Pombal. Ascensão e Queda, Lisbon, Manuscrito, 2015; Pedro Sena-Lino, De quase nada a quase Rei, Lisbon, Contraponto, 2020; a brief and updated synthesis in Andreia Lopes Fidalgo, “O Marquês de Pombal: Um reformador?”, in R. L. Jesus and P. M. Dias (eds.), Atualizar a História: Uma Nova Visão sobre o Passado de Portugal, Lisbon, Desassossego, 2022. 32 I use modern spelling when referring to this book. 33 José de Seabra da Silva, Dedução Cronológica e Analítica, Lisbon, Officina de Miguel Manescal da Costa, 1767-1768. 34 Miguel Gorjão-Henriques, “José de Seabra da Silva e a sua família: Iconografia e mobilidade social no Antigo Regime”, Direito e Justiça, vol. 2, special number, 2013, pp. 77-155.