The launch of the book Tombo do Município de Óbidos will take place on October 20th, at 10 a.m., at the Municipal Library – Casa José Saramago, in Óbidos, ad it was coordinated by Manuela Santos Silva and Gonçalo Melo da Silva, in a joint edition of the Institute of Studies Medieval and the Óbidos City Council.

The Collection Documentos dos Concelhos Medievais Portugueses begins with this volume, following the MEDDOCS project – Digital Edition of Portuguese Medieval Documents. Both express a broader program of making known, studying and making available the written documentary collection relating to the medieval times of the Portuguese kingdom, choosing, from the outset, as one of its priority areas the documentation produced or received by Portuguese municipalities up to 1521. As explained in the Collection presentation by researcher Gonçalo Melo da Silva, this purpose aims to recover and safeguard a set of documentary collections that, affected by multiple losses, prove to be more prosperous and diverse than was long thought.

An example of this is the Tombo do Concelho de Óbidos, the oldest document preserved in the Historical Archive of the Municipality of Óbidos. Tombo had a double function: inventory and cartulary. The primitive inventory would have been created between 1406 and 1410. The creation of the cartulary would have been later, as would its addition to the primitive inventory resulting in the Tombo. The codex includes an inventory of the heritage of the municipality of Óbidos, a substantive number of royal letters sent to Óbidos, and epistles issued by Queen Philippa of Lancaster, her daughter, Infanta Isabel and her daughter-in-law Infanta Leonor of Aragão, relating to the lordship of the “Lands of the Queens” that they then held.

The book presentation will be in charge of Professor Adelaide Millán da Costa and will take place within the scope of the Fólio festival, organized by Óbidos City Hall.