Preliminary Programme

Based on the Livros da Provisora (Provision Books) and the Cellar Books of
the Remédios Convent, this study intends to reconstruct some of the
community’s alimentary practices and their patterns of food consumption
during the 18th Century. The idea is to compare the data to some other
information about the Portuguese elite table. We argue that aside from the
essential role it played in survival, food in the convent functioned as a
marker of social distinction, helped commutate saints’ days and expressed
the religious fervor of the nuns. (Show less)

This paper will focus on acquisitions by parish churches and chapels in «comendas» of the Order of Santiago in eastern Algarve during the first half of the sixteenth century.
Visitation records show that throughout this period, parish churches and chapels in these «comendas» acquired vestments, altar cloths, chalices, images, retables, candle holders, lamps, baptismal fonts, books, tapestries, bells, in a word, a vast array of pieces in a variety of materials. It will be argued that the role of parishioners in this process was of paramount importance.
Eastern Algarve was not at the center of royal and court routes and yet its parish churches and chapels, however modest they seem to be today, when acquiring whatever was thought to be necessary then, looked for goods not only of Portuguese origin but from elsewhere in Europe (Flanders, Arras, Tournai, Seville) and even coming from a wider world, from places like Guinea and India. What were the kinds of goods imported from abroad? What was coming from where? What sort of churches and chapels acquired imported goods such as these? These will be some of the questions under analysis. (Show less)

My paper intends to analyze the main aspects of everyday life (the non religious activities) of the members of the male Mendicant orders (Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites) and of the Jesuits working and living in India between the 16th and the 18th centuries. Hereby, meaning the activities that occupied the members of those religious communities and also the main tendencies concerning the organization of time (timetables for taking the meals, for going to sleep, distribution of the holiday time and habits of leisure). Moreover, both the two questions of food and dressing will be given special attention.
In the case of mendicant friars, my paper shall observe whether there were great differences between the everyday life of the members of conventual and of the observant communities (the latter being by definition compelled to a more austere life style).
Accordingly, I shall observe how the members of those communities reacted in their everyday to the different context. In other words, meant this necessary process of accommodation great differences vis-à-vis the general normative pattern imposed by Counter – Reformation Catholic hierarchy to the members of the religious orders? Moreover, did the members of those communities, who were mostly Europeans, perceive their life in the missions in India mostly in a negative (hell) or rather in a positive way (heaven)? (Show less)

Renaissance hospitals were living spaces, ruled by tight codes of conduct and norms imposed to all its inmates. During this period, and although hospitals were generally under a civic administration, these institutions were religious houses par excellence. As such, hospitals interiors and their everyday life were punctuated by constant ritualized ceremonies, which were corroborated by religious artifacts. The same can be said regarding the separations of men and women within the hospital, since gender deserved specific rules and was subjugated to different conventions, supported by a set of architectural solutions (the multiplication of fences, walls, doors and keys).
Without denying the religious role of the hospital in what concerns the healing of the soul or its medical role in the rehabilitation of the health of the sick, we intend to emphasize the role of the hospital wards as religious and civic spaces. The location of hospital wards and its size were not random, nor its equipment. Taking as a starting point that material cultures "construct, maintain, control and transform social identities and relations" (Gilchrist, 1994: 15), we will try to unravel how objects articulate with the organization of space and, ultimately, how culture imposed codes of conduct and behavior. We propose therefore to reconstruct the interior of these spaces and their different forms of appropriation, linking these issues with social hierarchies and gender distinctions within hospital’s doors. (Show less)