The 7th Session of the 2024 Medieval Studies Seminar will be held online via Zoom on december 4, 2024, at 4:00 p.m.
This session will feature a presentation by Luís Filipe Oliveira and will be dedicated to the theme “As paisagens das Ordens Militares“.
As institutions were designed and organized to defend the heritage of Christ and the Holy Land, the military orders were well adapted to field combats and control castles, routes, and territories. If they were thus a regular presence in the border landscapes, first in the Holy Land, then in other settings, they had all been founded in cities (Jerusalém, Acre, Calatrava, Cáceres, Évora) and it was there that their convents and their most important houses. Cities and their exchange economy had a decisive role in the structure of these institutions, being essential for gathering and transferring men, resources, and money, which were indispensable to maintaining the war effort on the borders of Christianity.
Luís Filipe Oliveira is an Associate Professor at the University of Algarve and an integrated researcher at the Institute of Medieval Studies of the F.C.S.H of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. He is currently the Director of Medievalista, I.E.M’s online magazine, of whose Editorial Board he has been a member since 2007. He is also a member of the Scientific Council of the E-Strategica magazines, of the Association
Ibérica de História Militar, Estudios Medievales Hispánicos, from the Autonomous University of Madrid, and Alcanate: Revista de Estudios Alfonsíes, from the University of Seville.
He has published several works on the Military Orders, the Reconquista and the Crusade. He is the author of The Crown, the Masters and the Commanders: The Military Orders of Avis and Santiago (1330-
1449), Faro, University of Algarve, 2009. Philippe Josserand and Damien Carraz directed the edition of Élites et Ordres Militaires au Moyen Âge. Rencontre auteur D’Alain Demurger, Madrid, Casa de Velázquez, 2015, co-directed other studies on the history of Lisbon (Lisboa Medieval. The faces of the city, Lisbon, Livros Horizonte, 2007; Lisboa Medieval: Gentes, Espaços e Poderes, Lisboa, IEM, 2016.) having coordinated the edition of As Comendas Urbanas das Ordens Militares, Lisbon, Colibri, 2016, and curated the medieval core of the exhibition and the Loulé catalogue.
Territories, Memories, Identities, Lisbon, Museu Nacional de Arqueologia-Imprensa Nacional, 2017, pp. 572-627, as well as the exhibition and catalogue Banhos Islâmicos e Casa Senhorial dos Barretos: From Place to Museum, Loulé: C.M. Loulé, 2023.
His collaboration is spread across collective works: Bernardo Vasconcelos e Sousa (dir.), Religious Orders in Portugal. From Origins to Trent. Historical Guide, Lisbon, Livros Horizonte, 2005 (3rd revised and expanded ed., 2016); Alan Murray (dir.), The Crusades. An Encyclopedia, 4 vols. Santa Barbara, 2006; Nicole Bériou and Philippe Josserand (dirs.), Dictionaire des Ordres Militaires au Moyen Age, Paris, 2009; João Luís Fontes (dir.), Bishops and Archbishops of Lisbon, Lisbon, Horizonte, 2018, or in the Global History of Portugal, Lisbon, Círculo de Leitores, 2020.
