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In 1970 JBM was offered the position of Vice-Rector of the University of Lisbon, but did not accept. Neither did he accept, in 1972, the position of Director of the Faculty of Letters. However, in 1980 he agreed to become a member of the cultural commission of the Seventeenth European Exposition of Art, Science and Culture, and in 1983 he would become Area Coordinator of the National Museum of Ancient Art, which was involved in that event. From 1990, as a cultural counsellor and vice-president of the Higher Council for the Defence and Safeguarding of Heritage, he was involved with the Ministry of Culture, with the running of national museums, and in staging various events of European-wide importance. In 1990 he finally accepted the position of Director of the National Archive (Torre do Tombo), and under his leadership modern facilities were inaugurated on the campus of Lisbon University. As its new Director he fulfilled what he saw as its historical and cultural mission by enriching its documentary heritage, through the acquisition of important collections of codices and manuscripts alluding to Portuguese history, and he opened it up to the national and international community, by organizing and supporting exhibitions, seminars, day schools, national and international congresses, including, amongst many examples, the second plenary conference of the European Science Foundation entitled “The Origins of the Modern State in Europe” (1992) and the Fourth Congress of the Ibero-American Academies of History (1994).
JBM’s involvement with the periodical press began in 1940, even before completing his degree in History and Philosophy, in O Diabo, by way of opinion articles and commentaries, reviews of publications and cultural events, and under the heading of “readers’ correspondence”. He contributed to Seara Nova, from 1946, and Vértice, from 1948, and to these we can add Ler and the Jornal de Letras, Artes e Ciências, from 1952, and the Bulletin d’Études Historiques, in 1953. His writings appeared in a wide variety of national periodicals, notably the Revista da Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa, the Revista Portuguesa de História (Coimbra), the Boletim da Academia Internacional de Cultura Portuguesa, Garcia de Orta, Arquivos do Centro Cultural Português of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Paris), Economia (Lisbon), the Boletim da Faculdade de Direito (Coimbra), the Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia (Braga), Brotéria, the Revista da Biblioteca Nacional, the Revista de História das Ideias (Coimbra), a Revista da Universidade de Coimbra, Didaskalia and Estratégia, Revista de Estudos Internacionais.
