Thus the whole of his life was devoted to research and to teaching, belonging to that rare group of scholars who, in true medieval fashion, could teach in any part of the world. We know very little though about his pastoral activities: we only have the testimony of Pierre Hourcade in Coimbra who allows us to glimpse some of his apostolic and charitable actions.

It is obvious that his role as an ecclesiastic allowed him to have a certain amount of itinerancy, which was also the result of the vicissitudes of the two world conflicts which he lived through. According to his own words at the investiture ceremony when he became Doctor honoris causa (see below), he thought of Portugal as his second homeland. The fourteen years he spent in Coimbra were spent teaching and researching the most complex issues of the Portuguese Middle Ages. According to what Manuel Lopes de Almeida proclaimed in the habitual eulogy and presentation at the investiture ceremony, Pierre David’s studies allow us to establish the importance of “the Portucalense people” in the formation of the “political conscience” of what would become Portugal, downplaying geographical inevitability and the desire of one chieftain.

He became fully integrated into the intellectual life of Coimbra, as his doctorate honoris causa in Historical Sciences proves. The ceremony took place on 15 April 1951 in the Sala Grande dos Actos [Great Ceremonial Hall] where Pierre David was presented by the Primate, Archbishop D. António Bento Martins Jr., who in the doctoral candidate’s name requested his investiture, which was conferred by the Chancellor-Rector. It is of no lesser importance that in the same ceremony the same honour was conferred on two other notable foreign intellectuals working at the same University: Joseph M. Piel and Émile Planchard.

His contribution to fostering closer intellectual and academic relations between his country of origin and his adopted country must be noted - through his contribution to the Bulletin des Études Portugaises (on which he collaborated between 1942 and 1952 and to which he gave a new direction) and also through his encouragement of numerous French leitores, or language teachers, to come to Coimbra.

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