Maria Pia of Saxe-Coburg and Braganza"Princess Maria Pia of Saxe-Coburg, duchess of Braganza" in CHILCOTE, Ronald H.; The Portuguese Revolution: State and Class in the Transition to Democracy, page 37. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers; Reprint edition (August 31, 2012)."...Her Royal Highness D. Maria Pia of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha Braganza, the Crown Princess of Portugal" in PAILLER, Jean; Maria Pia of Braganza: The Pretender. New York: ProjectedLetters, 2006;"…aquela que todo o mundo conhece e trata (…) por Maria Pia de Saxe-Coburgo e Bragança" in SOARES, Fernando Luso; Maria Pia, Duquesa de Bragança contra D. Duarte Pio, o senhor de Santar, Lisboa: Minerva, p. 40, 1983. (March 13, 1907 – May 6, 1995), also known by her literary pseudonym Hilda de Toledano, was a Portuguese writer and journalist who claimed to be the bastard daughter of King Carlos I of Portugal. From 1932 she also claimed the right to the title of Duchess of Braganza and to be the rightful heiress to the throne of Portugal.
Maria Pia of Braganza claimed that King Carlos I legitimized her through a royal decree and placed her in the line of succession, however no proof was presented to demonstrate this and the King similarly did not have the personal authority to do so. Maria Pia's paternity was never proven and her claim to the throne or of royal ancestry never widely accepted.
Birth and baptism Maria Pia of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha Braganza was born Lisbon, Portugal, allegedly as the royal bastard daughter of an adulterous relationship between King Carlos I of Portugal, then married to Princess Amélie of Orléans, and Maria Amélia Laredó e Murça, the daughter of a wealthy Brazilian couple who had moved to Europe: Armando Maurício Laredó and Maria Amélia Murça e Berhen.Luís D'Oliveira Nunes; Maria Pia - A Guerreira. Edição do Autor, 2021. Maria Amélia's parents are sometimes given the title "baron", but they did not actually hold any noble title; their wealth and patrician status, however, may have allowed them to use such a title unquestioned.
Maria Amélia Laredó e Murça was not married at the time she gave birth to her daughter on March 13, 1907. Maria Pia of Braganza claimed that, shortly thereafter, she was taken by her mother and grandparents to Madrid, Spain. There, she said, she was baptised in the Church of Saint Fermin de los Navarros on April 15, 1907, and that the baptism was registered at the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel and Saint Aloysius. She claimed that her baptismal registration recorded that her father was "D. Carlos de Sassonia-Coburgo y Savoya de la Casa de Braganza de Portugal". This clearly refers to King Carlos I of Portugal, who at the time was married to another woman, Princess Amélie of Orléans.
The original baptismal registers of the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel and Saint Aloysius were destroyed during the Spanish Civil War, and no original birth record of Maria Pia of Braganza has ever been made public. In 1939 the Vicar-General of the Diocese of Madrid-Alcalas issued a baptismal certificate to Maria Pia of Braganza with information provided to him at that time by Don Antonio Goicoechea y Cusculluela, a member of the Spanish parliament and the Governor of the Bank of Spain, who had reportedly been present at the baptism. Subsequently, Maria Pia of Braganza used this baptismal certificate as evidence for her claim to be the recognised daughter of King Carlos.
Maria Pia of Braganza also claimed that in the archives of the Diocese of Madrid-Alcalá there was a copy of a document signed by King Carlos on March 14, 1907 in which he recognised Maria Pia of Braganza as his daughter and that "she may be called by my name and enjoy from now on the use of this name with the honours, prerogatives, rank, obligations and advantages of the princes of the House of Braganza of Portugal". Like the baptismal certificate, the original of this document did not survive.
Marriages and children
In 1925, at the age of eighteen, Maria Pia of Braganza married Francesco Javier Bilbao y Batista, a Cuban playboy twenty years her senior. He came from a rich family of cattle breeders. Since Bilbao was divorced, the marriage was a civil one only and took place in the Cuban embassy in Paris. They had one daughter, Fátima Francisca Xaviera Iris Bilbao de Saxe-Coburgo e Bragança,Jean Pailler; Maria Pia of Braganza: The Pretender. New York: ProjectedLetters, 2006. in 1932, who became Sister Francisca, a cloistered nun in a convent.
Maria Pia of Braganza lived briefly with Bilbao in Cuba, before returning to Spain. Bilbao died November 15, 1935. Francisca died unmarried in 1982.
To escape the Spanish Civil War, Maria Pia of Braganza moved with her mother to Rome. In 1939, she married Giuseppe Blais, a colonel in the Italian carabinieri. At the time, members of the carabinieri were forbidden from marrying foreigners. The marriage was, therefore, celebrated clandestinely, and was not registered civilly until August 5, 1946. The union proved much happier and together they had a daughter, Maria da Glória Cristina Amélia Valéria Antónia Blais de Saxe-Coburgo e Bragança, born in 1946. Maria Cristina Blais de Saxe-Coburgo e Bragança (in Spain also called María Cristina Blais de Sajonia-Coburgo Braganza) married the Spanish sculptor Miguel Ortíz y Berrocal (1933–2006) and together they lived in Verona and had two sons: Carlos Miguel Berrocal de Saxe-Coburgo e Bragança (born 1976) and Beltrão José Berrocal de Saxe-Coburgo e Bragança (born 1978).
General Blais died in 1983. In 1985, Maria Pia of Braganza married António João da Costa Amado-Noivo (January 28, 1952 – December 29, 1996). At the time of the wedding, Maria Pia was 78, Amado-Noivo 33.
Literary career
Like many society ladies, Maria Pia of Braganza supplemented her income by writing. In the early 1930s she had a number of articles published in two Spanish newspapers Blanco y Negro and ABC.
In 1937, Maria Pia wrote her first book La hora de Alfonso XIII (The Hour of Alfonso XIII) published in Havana, Cuba, by Ucar, Garcia y Companía. This work, written in Spanish and published under the name "Hilda de Toledano", is a defence of King Alfonso XIII of Spain, who was living in exile at the time.
In 1954, Maria Pia wrote Un beso y ... nada más: confidencia consciente de una pecadora inconsciente (A Kiss and ... Nothing More: Conscious Confidences of an Unconscious Sinner) published in Madrid by Plenitud. This novel was also written in Spanish and published under the name "Hilda de Toledano".
In 1957, Maria Pia wrote Mémoires d'une infante vivante (Memoirs of a Living Infanta) published in Paris by Del Duca. This work, written in French and published under the name "Maria Pia de Saxe-Cobourg Bragance", is an autobiography. It marks the first attempt of Maria Pia to receive widespread public recognition for her claim that she was the bastard daughter of King Carlos I of Portugal. In the book, however, Maria Pia makes no claim to any dynastic rights. The book closes with the sentence, "I claim no sceptre but my pen, no crown but that bequeathed by my father and mother: my dignity." Instead, Maria Pia of Braganza suggests that the rightful heir to the Portuguese throne should be Princess Isabelle d’Orléans, eldest child of Henri, Count of Paris.
Controversies Claim to the Portuguese throne
For at least several decades Maria Pia had claimed to be the bastard daughter of King Carlos I, and even to be entitled to the style "Her Royal Highness" and the title "Infanta". It was not, however, until 1957 that she claimed to be the rightful queen of Portugal in succession to Manuel II, the son of Carlos I (and the purported half-brother of Maria Pia) who had died childless in 1932.
On July 15, 1957, a group of ten Portuguese monarchists published a petition asking Maria Pia to claim the throne. In 1958 she went to Portugal where she was received by the President Francisco Craveiro Lopes; the Prime Minister, António de Oliveira Salazar, however, refused to meet her. In the presidential elections that year Maria Pia supported the failed candidacy of Humberto Delgado. She continued to support Delgado after he went into exile in Brazil.
From this point forward Maria Pia used the title Duchess of Braganza. She attracted the support of a small minority of monarchists who were actively opposed to Salazar. Maria Pia of Braganza played on the rivalry in monarchist circles between the Miguelists and the constitutionalists, presenting herself as the "constitutional" (i.e. liberal) candidate. The support given to Salazar by Miguel's heir at the time, Duarte Nuno, in the 1950s enabled Maria Pia of Braganza even more to represent herself as the liberal and democratic claimant to the Portuguese throne.
Maria Pia was very active in her claim to the Portuguese throne. Articles about her appeared in Italian and Portuguese newspapers. In February 1965, she went to Portugal to visit the tomb of King Carlos. As she was leaving Portugal and returning to Spain, she was arrested and held in custody overnight. She was released without charge at the request of the Italian embassy. In 1976, she infamously checked out of a hotel in Lisbon, where she had stayed for several weeks, without paying the bill, claiming simply that as the Duchess of Braganza she was not obligated to pay for her lodging.
Maria Pia mixed frequently with the jet set idle rich. She claimed that for many years she maintained an ongoing friendship with the exiled King Alfonso XIII of Spain and his son Infante Jaime, Duke of Segovia, and this was confirmed by the widow of the latter, Emmanuelle de Dampierre. Much correspondence exists between Maria Pia of Braganza and members of European royal families recording her efforts to gain legitimacy within royal circles, but most of the replies were merely polite but unsupportive.
Baptismal certificate
In October 1966 Duarte Nuno petitioned an ecclesiastical court of the Diocese of Madrid-Alcala to remove the name of King Carlos from the baptismal certificate of Maria Pia. Duarte Nuno claimed that there was no evidence that King Carlos was the father of Maria Pia. It is unusual for a baptismal registration to record the father of a bastard child. The Roman Ritual instructs the officiating priest only to record the father's name if the father himself requests it or if he is known to be the father from some public authentic document (Titulus XII, caput II). Clearly King Carlos was not present at Maria Pia's baptism, but Maria Pia claimed that the copy of the document purportedly signed by Carlos granting her the rights of the princes of Portugal was sufficient justification in ecclesiastical law for Carlos to be named her father on her baptismal certificate.
In February 1972 the case between Duarte Nuno and Maria Pia moved up to the Sacred Roman Rota, the normal appeal court for the Roman Catholic Church. On December 6, 1972, the court dismissed the claim, on the grounds that Duarte Nuno did not have legal standing in the case, being only the second cousin twice removed of King Carlos. The court did not address the primary question of whether there was sufficient evidence for Carlos being Maria Pia's father and thus named as such on the baptismal certificate. It did, however, question the necessity of changing a certificate which was over sixty years old.