In Portugal, unlike in other countries such as Spain and France, municipal account books have encountered difficulties in establishing themselves as a specific and privileged object of study within medieval urban and economic history. This scenario partly stems from the scarcity of these sources which, however, is not the case in Loulé, a small town that preserves the oldest and second largest series of account books in the country. Thus, this session aims to present the work of editing these documents, as well as some information gathered about the process of drawing up and controlling the books of revenue and expenditure. Finally, this seeks to reflect on the influence of these account books in the preparation of other municipal accounting records

About the author:
Gonçalo Melo da Silva is a researcher under contract at the Institute of Medieval Studies, the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, NOVA University (IEM – NOVA FCSH) working on the MEDDOCS: Digital Editions of Portuguese Medieval Documents project. He is co-researcher on the Thinking big about small border towns: Alto Alentejo and Alta Extremadura leonesa (13th – 16th centuries) project funded by the FCT. He graduated in History (2010) and obtained his M.A. in History – Specialist Field of Medieval History, European Doctoral Degree and PhD in History – Specialist Field of Medieval History (2021) at FCSH-UNL. His doctoral thesis focuses on the port towns and cities of the Algarve between 1249 and 1521. His fields of research interest span medieval history, maritime history, urban history and religious history as well as the Digital Humanities and Communicating Science. He currently participates in several national and international projects.