On April 3, 2024, the 2nd Session of the 2024 Medieval Studies Seminar will take place online via Zoom.

This session, dedicated to the theme “The relevance of studying the Liturgy in a Cistercian context” will be led by Catarina Fernandes Barreira (IEM—NOVA FCSH).

In a social and political context obsessed with the usefulness of knowledge and knowledge, we ask why it is essential and what is the purpose of studying medieval liturgy, through its primary testimony, the liturgical book, in context with the respective monastic libraries?

In recent decades, medieval liturgy has emerged as a field or area of study whose development has produced a varied source of information and attracted the attention of a growing number of scholars from the most diverse regions. This has contributed to the development of its study at various levels and to its methodological renewal.

This intervention is part of this international current, trying to demonstrate the importance of studies around liturgical books and their potential as a historical source, as a window to the past. The context will be the libraries of two Portuguese Cistercian houses, Alcobaça and Lorvão, and our objective is to understand the relationship that these books had with the communities, with the monks and nuns who used and read them, with the monastic spaces, and even with each other.

Catarina Fernandes Barreira is an Integrated Researcher at the Institute of Medieval Studies of the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of Universidade Nova de Lisboa and, since 2019, researcher hired under the Transitional Norm, financed by national funds through the FCT (DL 57/2016/CP1453/CT0070), and her field of specialization is the History of Medieval Art.

Her research interests include Medieval Liturgy, the Cistercian Order, the Cistercian Monasteries, Libraries, Scriptoria, codices (and their material study), and manuscript/book circulation.

She has participated in several national and international conferences and regularly publishes in transnational journals. She also has extensive experience in supervising and co-supervising doctoral and master’s theses and is the Principal Investigator (PI) of projects (both funded by FCT):

Between 2015 and 2019, she coordinated the IEM’s Research Group Imagens, Textos e Representações. Between 2019 and 2021, she was substitute Deputy Director of IEM, a role she has held again since 2023.