This database involves liturgical manuscripts from three Portuguese Cistercian monasteries – Alcobaça, Lorvão, and Arouca. The research made available to scholars and the general public offers an overview of the codices from some of the largest Cistercian libraries that have come down to us: Alcobaça, a male community founded in the second half of the 12th century (1153), and two female communities, Lorvão and Arouca (both from the early 13th century, 1211 and 1224/26). It is an interdisciplinary database, bringing together information on the materiality of medieval codices – from the characteristics and materials of the binding to the matter of color, with data collected in laboratory contexts – as well as information on their liturgical content, with a particular focus on music-related issues. The historical collection of the database also includes written documentation from the Monastery of Lorvão.
It results from two research projects based at the Institute for Medieval Studies NOVA FCSH, both funded by the FCT: Books, Rituals, and Space in a Female Cistercian Monastery: Living, Reading, and Praying in Lorvão from the 13th to 16th centuries (PTDC/ART-HIS/0739/2020) and Cistercian Horizons: Studying and Characterizing a Medieval Scriptorium and Its Production: Alcobaça. Local Identities and Liturgical Uniformity in Dialogue (PTDC/ART-HIS/29522/2017). Partner institutions include the Centre for the Study of Sociology and Musical Aesthetics NOVA FCSH and two laboratories – REQUIMTE NOVA FCT and HERCULES University of Évora. The data related to the books from Arouca come from another funded project by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, carried out in partnership with the Royal Brotherhood of Queen Santa Mafalda, the CESEM, and the Institute of Ethnomusicology – Centre for Music and Dance Studies (INET-MD).