He did not neglect critical reviews, exclusively of edited works, notably “Observações à última edição do ‘Livro de Cozinha’ da Infanta D. Maria” [1968] (edited by Giacinto Manuppella and Salvador Dias Arnaut, 1967), “Jacques Stiennon, Paléographie du Moyen Age, Paris, A. Colin, 1973” [1973] and, in the final phase of his work, “Há ler e ler. 1. «Amtonio camelo a fez» (Brotéria, 1993 - critique of the Álbum de Paleografia by João José Alves Dias, A.H. de Oliveira Marques and Teresa F. Rodrigues, 1987).

Varia Palaeographica. Maiora ac minora” (Portugaliae Historica, 1st Series) was published, which included, in addition to the critical review of Stiennon’s book mentioned above, two of the most important texts of “Paleografia de Borges Nunes” (Paleography by Borges Nunes), a discipline he understood as either the history of writing centred on graphic trends or a detailed analysis of the graphic case of each individual or document. In the first, O Conceito Novo de Paleografia (The New Concept of Palaeography), we read a brief annotated history of palaeography as a science, highlighting the authors of his choice – among the living, the Frenchman Jean Mallon and the Italian Giorgio Cencetti; in the second, História Portuguesa do Cifrão (Portuguese History of the Cifrão), he traces the evolution of the cifrão in Portuguese documentation, boasting his interpretative skills as a top palaeographer. Still unpublished, a text presented in 1974 to the School for his final academic exams, only defended in 1979, constitutes, together with the History of the Cifrão, the other decisive piece of ‘his palaeography’ – An exercise in methodology for the history of writing in Portugal: the origins of the numeral letter b (=5).

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