This perspective, which became especially prominent in the second phase of the author's work, was already evident in his study on feudalism, published in 1912. Merêa's role in the study of medieval Hispanic law was fundamental. It was this historian who, in the early decades of the 20th century, chose to move away from a positivist historiography he regarded as flawed, instead returning to earlier historians such as Alexandre Herculano and Fustel de Coulanges. In his view, although their conclusions were less detailed, they were more reliable due to a stronger foundation in the available sources. In his very first book, Paulo Merêa chose not to identify the origin of feudalism with Roman or Germanic elements. He wrote that "the remote germ of the future fiefdom [was neither] [...] in the public institutions of Roman society, nor in those of Germania". For the historian, "feudalism was not born out of a political system; it has its roots in the sphere of private life" (Merêa, P. Introdução ao Problema… , 1912, p. 37), and there it would be difficult to argue the prevalence of a Roman or Germanic system.

In this work as well, it is important to highlight a consistent concern throughout Paulo Merêa's scholarship: the precision of concepts and terminology. For this reason, the author was intent on distinguishing between closely related concepts, such as "fiefdom" and "feudalism", as well as "manor" and "fiefdom" for instance (Idem, pp. 102 ff.) According to Torquato de Sousa Soares, the rigour of the concepts was the greatest virtue of Paulo Merêa's writings, as it was this accuracy that lent validity to his conclusions (Soares, T. S., “Prof. Doutor Manuel Paulo Merêa…”, 1969, p. 12). In this regard, Merêa asked: "Isn't this imprecision and confusion in terminology, common among renowned historians, one of the main causes — if not the primary cause — of the uncertainty that still surrounds the question of feudalism today, and, more broadly, many historical issues related to medieval institutions?" (Merêa, P. Introdução ao Problema… [Introduction to the Problem], 1912, p. 120).

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