He also referred to the use of archaeological evidence when expounding facts – the reference to Phoenician and Punic coins, for example (idem, p.5). As such, when he enquired about episodes that marked the governance of this country, he did not limit himself to researching the sources; he questioned each and every document, in the light of the guidelines laid down in the new discipline of Palaeography and the Study of Official and Religious Documents, of which João Pedro Ribeiro was the master and the driving force. Documentary analysis had to demonstrate the path to either the original document, or the oldest possible transcription; its style and language should be compared to those of coeval documents that avouched their consentaneity; and it should be compared with other Portuguese and foreign that might clarify some of the things that occurred at the time.

It was precisely this that happened with the episode of the Cortes de Lamego and the Fundamental Law document. Subjected to this methodical gaze, events like the Cortes de Lamego and the document which was said to have ensued and was called the “Fundamental Laws”, which everything seems to indicate was drawn up by the Alcobaça scriptorium itself, were accused of material incongruence and reduced to the status of historical farce. When analysed in terms of style, language and the use of technical terms, they were unable to stand up to comparative erudition, and the trail of coeval documentation led to the conclusion that, neither in “our chronicles, nor in those of coeval or immediately subsequent historians, did there appear the faintest trace of so respectable and important an assembly having been held”. The good faith of Frei António Brandão, who only published it because he was left in doubt when he “found” a transcription with no reference to the original, was another weighty argument that led António Rocha to follow the inquisitive ideals of João Pedro Ribeiro and Joaquim de Santo Agostinho and ask the rhetorical question: “where was this document, or whatever other document it was copied from, which, in the space of five hundred years, no one ever heard of and has only now appeared, suddenly, without anyone knowing where from or how?”. Finally, he also referred to the antiquaries “with scruples and a critical sense” who, knowledgeable as they were about Portugal’s notaries’ offices and registries and the documents produced there, expressed serious doubts, with José Anastácio de Figueiredo and António Caetano do Amaral describing these documents, for example, as no more than “probably supposed”. Rocha’s work certainly did not resolve the dispute, with his position opposing that of Frei Fortunato de Boaventura and his Memória sobre o cronista Frei António de Brandão (1823), which had been published by the Royal Academy of Sciences (ARC) and about whom Rocha said: “he would achieve his goal, if zeal for national glory were to overcome the lack of proof in the shape of historical facts”. At the end of the day, “as if” the reason why the monarchy was founded and King Afonso Henriques and his successors were legitimate “could not be the customary one” (idem, pp.45-48).

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