Research Units: Centre of History (CH/FL/ULisboa), Centre of Linguistics, University of Lisbon (CL/FUL/ULisboa)

Lead Researchers: Filipa Roldão (CH/FL/ULisboa), Co-LR Joana Serafim (CL/FUL/ULisboa)
IEM-NOVA FCSH Researchers: Adelaide Millán Costa, Amélia Aguiar Andrade, Maria João Branco
Duration: 01-01-2021 – ongoing

Throughout the 12th and 13th centuries, the construction of the kingdom of Portugal focused on defining the territorial boundaries, setting down power structures and the socioeconomic stability of their inhabitants, involved the written contractualization of long term juridical relationships. Kings and nobles, lay and ecclesiastic entities, established their relationships with their communities in writing and thereby defining the norms of socialisation among inhabitants, including their rights and duties: these written documents were charters.

Approaching the charters signed by the royal power, termed forais breves (brief charters), this project seeks to reinterpret the nature of these documents (the circumstances around their signing and textual transmission) and its function within the broad scope of the relationship between the councils and the royal administration. To this end, this project stems from a core idea: interdisciplinarity. History and Linguistics provide the research with the conceptual and methodological tools and the Digital Humanities the necessary instrumental tools to enable the results and render effective their research and dissemination. The major instrumental project objective is to establish a corpus of Portuguese medieval charters, critically edited and in an electronic format to foster historical-linguistic reflection. This corpus will incorporate all of the Portuguese royal charters granted through to 1279, their copies and the vernacular translations produced through to the end of the 15th century. To this end, we deploy innovative methodologies, based on semi-automatic tools for task optimisation before making the project results available through open access.

However, what are the justifications for studying Portuguese medieval charters? For what reason is there financing for this project in 2020? Firstly, there is an eminently scientific rationale: the study of historical charters has been overlooked in favour of the new charters issued in the 16th century (the Manueline Reform), formally and materially more attractive to historians; the existing studies are either overly dispersed among publishers lacking the capacity for their promotion or requiring scientific validation as having been written not by historians but above all by local intellectuals. In either case, there is no joint perspective considering the entirety of these royal charters. This project aims to overcome that lack.

Secondly, there are reasons of a societal nature: as the 21st century advances, local communities and the public authorities (councils, archives, museums and schools) continue to commemorate the date of signing of their oldest charters, updating the collective memory and identity. The interest in the local charter is easily explained: in them, the communities encounter the longest standing forms of collective organisation of their predecessors and their relationships with the established powers, especially the king, on issues of a political and fiscal nature, on justice and economic activities; furthermore, these documents provide insights into the relationships with the natural resources available to the community and their exploitation and as well as the landscape and its topography still today recognisable to the community.

Convinced that this project reflects scientifically viable and necessary research, the LR and Co-LR submitted this application with a team featuring the best national specialists in the fields of Medieval History (cities, royal power, written culture), in Linguistics (philology, history of language and textual criticism) and IT applied to the Humanities, researchers and renowned international consultants that shall ensure the fundamental comparison with other historiographies, and in addition to a team of junior researchers who shall accompany this process as advanced training. The proponent institution and the participant Institutions, located from the North to the South of Portugal, and the University of Lausanne provide guarantees of the scientific robustness and management capacity of this project, which extends already well-established and cemented partnerships. The project study object represents a fine example of this.

The study of medieval charters by the LR and Co-LR began in 2005 and already counts on various different publications and international public presentations, as well as community knowledge dissemination activities. In their already long careers, the LR and Co-LR are, respectively, specialists in the fields of History and Linguistics, leading the way in methodologies and reflections on Portuguese medieval charters that this project serves to deepen and develop in the service of both science and the various different communities. This project fosters the safeguarding of one of the oldest examples of the written legacy of the local and city powers as well as those of the Portuguese kingdom and, with this memory, we will provide the best response to some of the major United Nations objectives for 2030, such as knowledge about justice, legal defence, equity, and the economic and ecological sustainability of peoples.