Duke of Loulé

Duke of Loulé is a Portuguese title that was originally granted to the family of Folque Mendoça de Moura Barreto.

Contents

• Dukes of Loul 1862
• Genealogical Summary
• References

The dukedom was created by a royal decree of King Luis I of Portugal, dated from October 3, 1862, to his grand-uncle Nuno José Severo de Mendoça Rolim de Moura Barreto, 2nd Marquis of Loulé and 9th Count of Vale de Reis. The new duke descended from earlier Portuguese monarchs and belonged to the highest nobility.

Duke Nuno served several times as Prime Minister of Portugal.

On December 5, 1827, Nuno of Loulé married Infanta Ana de Jesus Maria of Braganza and Bourbon, youngest daughter of King John VI of Portugal. She bore him five children, but died before he was elevated to ducal rank.

When the deposed King Manuel II of Portugal died in 1932, Constança Maria was the representative of the House of Loulé (4th Duchess of Loulé, if one counts all the subsequent heirs of the original duke, including those that never registered the ducal title as required by law during the monarchy).

The current representative is the infanta's great-great-great-grandson, Dom Pedro de Mendoça Rolim de Moura Barreto. He is styled 6th Duke of Loulé in D. Filipe de Loulé's work on the "House of Loulé". But he is the 4th duke according to Portugal's post-monarchic titular convention, which considers the title only properly renewed in 1992 for D. Pedro's father, the 3rd (or 5th) duke (who also registered the style of Dom, which the Loulés had not traditionally used, although entitled to do so). According to its 1998 Boletim Oficial, a request for the third renewal of the ducal title was submitted to the Conselho de Nobreza, headed by D. Duarte Pio, Duke of Bragança.

During the exile of Miguel I of Portugal and his male heirs from 1834 until 1950, Infanta Ana's descendants remained domiciled in Portugal. Therefore, the claim of the current duke to the defunct throne, as the infanta's dynastic representative, has been contrasted with that of the Duke of Braganza, great-grandson and heir of Miguel I. In "As Senhoras Infantas filhas de D. João VI", published in Lisbon in 1938, Ângelo Pereira quotes, on page 161, a letter from the infanta to her brother D. Pedro, assuming her marriage had not been authorized (although nothing in Portugal's law required a cadet infanta to obtain royal permission to marry). The Dukes of Loulé have not, in the past, pressed any claim to the throne publicly, whereas the Portuguese government and media have accorded some indications of recognition to D. Duarte Pio and his late father as the dynasty's royal representatives since the extinction of the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha branch of the Braganzas in 1932.