“Dominus Rex – as inquirições medievais dos reis de Portugal” (Dominus Rex: the Medieval Censuses of the Kings of Portugal) is the catalogue belonging to the documentary exhibition on display in the Torre do Tombo from 20 October 2020 to 19 January 2021. This sets out an itinerary through the most significant testimonies related to the medieval censuses of the kings of Portugal, from the manuscripts referring to the first surveys, of a more general nature, promoted by King Afonso II, to those carried out more than a century later, by King Afonso IV, within a context of crisis and the confrontation of powers. In the meantime, the censuses of Alfonso III and Alfonso Dinis, display successive enlargements in the geography subject to survey and a more aggressive strategy of affirming the power of the “lord king”, including the 1290 issuing of the firsts sentences resulting from abuses detected by the inquirers and issued by the royal courts. 

The manuscript reproductions of documents contained in the former Crown Archive held at the Torre do Tombo are accompanied by individual commentaries produced by the exhibition’s organisers. These are accompanied by a set of images of royal seals, duly commented on by Miguel Metelo Seixas, which support and reflect not only this same process of affirmation of the king as lord of his kingdom but also the growing identification of the Portuguese kingdom with the person of the monarch. The desire to reach a wider public and extend this rich historical and documentary heritage to other contexts, which is undeniably important for a more correct and broader understanding of the past of the Christian kingdoms in the medieval West, explains the need for a bilingual edition, in Portuguese and English, of the texts produced expressly for this exhibition and its catalogue. 

Coordination: Amélia Aguiar Andrade, José Augusto de Sottomayor-Pizarro, Filipa Roldão and João Luís Fontes

Edited by: Institute of Medieval Studies (NOVA-FCSH) / History Centre (ULisbon).

You can access the catalogue here.