Abstract

How did physical education develop among young Catholic university students in Portugal? How can the discourse be placed within the context of the construction of the miles Christi, the new Catholic man conceived by the Church during the papacy of Pious XI? In what way did everything fit into the milieu of national Catholicism that was developing in Portugal on the eve of the creation of the Estado Novo? In order to answer such questions, this paper will focus on the introduction of sport in the Academic Center of Christian Democracy (Cadc) di Coimbra, the organization in which were formed the most important protagonists of the Portuguese dictatorship, the patriarch of Lisbon, Manuel Gonçalves Cerejeira, and the Prime Minister, António Oliveira Salazar. Covering period 1901-1926 and based on research of Catholic press sources, the paper analyses how «muscular Catholicism» became one of the building blocks in the education of Portuguese youth as well as an essential component in the success of banal nationalism.