The second session of the cycle “Manuscritos de Alcobaça II” will take place on April 20th, and will feature lectures by Jonathan Wilson and Maria João Branco, both researchers from the Institute of Medieval Studies of the School of Social Sciences and Humanities of the NOVA University (IEM-NOVA FCSH).

1st Conference:
“Alcobaça and the Liturgy of Portuguese Reconquista in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries“, by Jonathan Wilson (IEM-NOVA FCSH)

“Alc. 415,” a mid-thirteenth-century codex belonging to the fundo of the great Portuguese Cistercian monastery of Alcobaça, whilst taken up almost entirely with works by Fulgentius of Ruspe and a copy of Orosius’ well-known “Seven Books of History Against the Pagans”, also contains two texts of great importance for the early history of Portugal, both of which survive uniquely in a manuscript contained in an anomalous quire, literally tacked-on to the end of the volume, apparently cobbled-together from scrap parchment. The first of these texts, the De Expugnatione Scalabis comprises a report of the 1147 conquest of Santarém by Portugal’s first king, Afonso Henriques, astonishingly presented as the king’s very-own, eye-witness testimony and duly related in the first person. The second text, the Gosuini de Expugnatione Salaciae Carmen, is an idiosyncratic, versified account of the conquest of the Almohad naval base and Atlantic port of Alcácer-do-Sal in 1217 by Portuguese forces allied with a fleet of passing crusaders on their way to the East. This paper examines the possible liturgical uses of these texts both in Alcobaça and elsewhere.

2nd Conference:
“Os manuscritos jurídicos da Livraria de Alcobaça e o papel dos monges alcobacenses junto aos primeiros três reis portugueses: notas de investigação”, by Maria João Branco (IEM-NOVA FCSH)

The legal preparation of the first monks of Alcobaça and their role with the first kings, acting as the king’s lawyers and delegated judges of the Pope, made them fundamental elements in the construction of the kingdom and in the mediation of ecclesiastical and secular conflicts, where their legal expertise was outstanding. Of all the conventual and cathedral libraries whose collections have come down to us, Alcobaça’s is the richest in legal manuscripts, containing even some very rare specimens at the European level. This paper intends to approach this collection and try to understand to what extent these works, when complemented with the data found in the loose documentation, in which the Cistercians of Alcobaça are abundantly attested in the exercise of judicial functions, may allow us to better understand not only the relevance of their function but also the ascendancy they may have had with the first Portuguese kings – from Afonso Henriques to Afonso III – and the close relationship these monarchs had with the most important Cistercian house in Portugal.