A Peste Negra de 1347-53 é um evento singular na história humana por vários motivos. Entre eles, é habitual destacar-se a mortalidade muito elevada, a rapidez da sua propagação e um profundo impacto na memória dos sobreviventes e dos seus descendentes. Essa memória pode detetar-se de formas diversas, e uma busca intensiva na documentação coeva do Norte de Portugal revela a introdução de palavras e expressões intimamente ligadas a essa ocorrência traumática. Este capítulo é dedicado a um fenómeno desse tipo, relacionando a Peste Negra com a vulgarização do léxico da peste, sobretudo “pestilência”, entre os portugueses comuns da segunda metade do século XIV.

Os textos aqui reunidos - Regimento proueytoso contra ha pestenença e Modus curandi cum balsamo - constituíam, por volta de 1530, a biblioteca médica conhecida em Portugal, posta em letras góticas por impressores estrangeiros: o alemão Valentim Fernandes, talvez o mais importante impressor do período, que trabalhou em Lisboa entre 1495 e 1518, e Germão Galharde, francês que exerceu seu ofício em Lisboa e Coimbra entre 1519 e 1560. O modus curandi, de que se passa a ter notícia em 1974, graças ao bibliófilo José de Pina Martins, é obra anônima. Atribui-se a Johannes Jacobi a autoria do Regimento proueytoso, que teve versões em latim, francês e inglês. Ambos os textos são apresentados em fac-símile e em português atual, reproduzindo-se o primeiro em português arcaico mas com caracteres tipográficos modernos. Complementa esta incursão filológica pela medicina quinhentista um erudito glossário de grande valia como ferramenta para a interpretação não só do Regimento proueytoso como de outros textos da época. Dois artigos colocam em perspectiva histórica os documentos aqui reproduzidos.

O texto apresenta e analisa o Regimento proveitoso contra a pestilência, obra escrita por volta de 1496 em Portugal. A abordagem faz uma contextualização da obra, inserindo-a nas principais teorias vigentes então e nas correntes médicas medievais, baseadas na tradição árabe.

The late Middle Ages western State is seen by some historical points of view as a modern state structure preparation identified with what is conventionally called Absolutism. Upon this state overrating perspective, the European late-medieval kingdoms are, in many occasions, understood as political machines highly centralized, or in their way to an extremely burocratic and rational centralization. Within this panorama, Portugal constitutes a distinguished reference, being pointed several times as a fully centralized kingdom yet before the dawn of the Modern Ages. This line of interpretation is rejected in this dissertation. The consideration of the fourteenth and fifteenth Portuguese society juridical and political peculiarities, specially in the period of time known as the Interregno (1383-1385) and the rise of the second dynasty at the Kingdom of Portugal, the House of Avis, relies on a point of view that values the context with which the new royal lineage needed to deal in deep social and political crisis times. In an ambiguous task concentrating powers around the monarchic institution and reinforcing and maintaining of the noble society structure, the legitimate violence control and the military practice aspects in the Fourteen Hundred s Kingdom of Portugal State structure were privileged. Through the juridical literature Ordenações do Reino, Cortes and Chancelleries registers and the political-moral production of the period analysis, the comprehension of the way in which the tensions and the conjectural conditions hade been conjugated in the definition of the Portuguese state structure profile in the first decades of the fifteenth century had been pursued.

The first Portuguese Dynasty - Afonsina or Burgundy - is characterized by the warrior and reconquering personality of its kings as well as by the performance of these monarchs in the legal area. The period between the reigns of D. Dinis and D. Fernando was marked by the perfection of the judicial system, the official characterization of Portuguese as the language of the kingdom, the promotion of the arts and knowledge with the creation of the first university and the signing of the Treaty of Alcanizes (1279 ) that established the border with Castile. It was also a time of endless wars against the Castilian monarchy and other European kingdoms, plague epidemics and the dynastic crisis of 1383-85 that led to the enthronement of a new dynasty, Avis. The events that followed after the death of Don Fernando reveal a disturbance in the idea of continuity of power and the year 1383 definitively marks the end of the Afonsina Era. In this master's degree research in History, our purpose is to demonstrate how the phenomenon of death is inserted in the relations of power in the Low Portuguese Middle Ages. By means of the analysis of the wills produced by the king D. Dinis (government from 1279 to 1325), Afonso IV (from 1325 to 1357), Pedro I (from 1357 to 1367) and D. Fernando (from 1367 to 1383) we have had as objective in our research to examine how the elaboration of the image of death, the cult of these illustrious dead, the manifestations and funeral symbols represent the symbolic struggles for the permanence of the authority and the regal power, that is, as the manipulation of death appears as a strong element for the perpetuation of the power of the monarchs of the First Dynasty in Portugal. Thus, between bodies and graves, between the visible and the invisible, the funeral ritual served to legitimize the role of kings, head of the kingdom, before the rest of society. If the pluralist type of power was a feature of policy in the Middle Ages, the symbolic and ideological legitimization of the search for power was a constant effort of the monarchy. The structure of symbolic legitimation was always used as a way to consolidate the role of these monarchs as occupants of a prominent place in medieval Lusitanian society: real power imposes itself symbolically and through death we will show how this happens.

A presença dos clérigos estrangeiros em Portugal durante o período do papado de Avinhão é aqui estudada na perspectiva da sua inserção no episcopado lusitano e nos benefícios menores constituídos por colegiadas e igrejas paroquiais disseminadas no reino. Constata-se que esta inserção depende das relações conjunturais mantidas entre a realeza lusitana e os bispos do reino, assim como das estruturas solidárias e funcionais mantidas no reino por papas, cardeais e diversas famílias de clérigos estrangeiros estantes em Portugal.