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THE TEAM
CONTACT
A Sociedade Medieval Portuguesa. Aspectos da vida quotidiana [The Portuguese Medieval Society, Aspects of Everyday Life] released in 1962 had six editions (the latest in 2010) and was translated into English. Depicting the daily life of the medieval man, his working rhythm, housing conditions, his body, hygiene and health care, his needs and representations of clothing and food, his intimate affections and beliefs, his culture and leisure and his attitude to death, this book was far too advanced in the Portuguese historiography of the time, when the novelty of an economic and social history was still merely budding. It was only in the 1980s, under the impact of the new history that opened up mentalities, behaviours, religiosity, and human feelings that this work became a “bible”, as already mentioned, a work of reference, read and cited again and again. Likewise, his dissertation Introdução à História da Agricultura: a questão cerealífera na Idade Média [Introduction to the History of Agriculture; the cereal issue in the Middle Ages] for the tender, with three editions (1962, 1968, 1978), would inspire the new generations of the 1980s and 1990s who imposed the inclusion of rural history in Portuguese medieval historiography and in university teaching. His PhD thesis Hansa e Portugal na Idade Média (1959 edition), describing the navigations and trade of the Portuguese in the Atlantic, fell into oblivion until the revised and enlarged 1993 second edition, which for several decades was one of the major scientific works on Portuguese trade in medieval times. He continued to study Portuguese-German relations, ranging from commercial to cultural, focusing on the navigations and trade relations with Prussia and on some features of Flanders’ 15th-century trading station, the contact between Portugal and Germany in the 16th century, the relations between Damião de Góis and the Danzig merchants, the German printers in Portugal in the late Quattrocento and the documentation on Portugal in German Hanseatic archives, publishing some of these works in his book Portugal Quinhentista [Sixteenth-Century Portugal] (1987). He further extended his analysis of Portuguese-German political and diplomatic exchanges far beyond the medieval and modern centuries up to the 20th century (Thomas Denk, Na Jubilação Universitária…[On Academic Retirement…], 2003, pp. 79-99).
Coherently, both in articles and other studies, many of them compiled in Ensaios de História Medieval Portuguesa (1965) [Essays on Portuguese Medieval History] and Novos Ensaios de História Medieval Portuguesa (1988) [New Essays on Portuguese Medieval History] he continued to open new paths for research on the population, the Pragmatics of 1340, currency, international trade and the urban history of Lisbon, Sintra, Cascais and Arruda dos Vinhos.
