Luís Adão da Fonseca: an academic master

Abstract

As an homage and as a memory exercise, the author seeks to trace the academic path of Luís Adão da Fonseca since he returned to Portugal in 1981, after a prolonged stay in Spain since 1973. As his close collaborator, both as an assistant and also associated with various projects that he carried out, especially around the alignment between Portuguese and Spanish medievalists (who for decades almost always ignored each other), it is worth mentioning the process of creating of the Portuguese Society of Medieval Studies, of which the author was a close witness. In this same sense, it is important to mention the impulse given to the organization of the Luso- Spanish Journeys of Medieval History or to the creation of Chairs on Medieval History of Portugal and Spain in several universities in both countries. Luís Adão da Fonseca supported my contact with Spanish universities and historiography, to which I remain very close, while at the same time encouraged the beginning of career as a professor and offered me the example of an ethical posture as a teacher and as a researcher. He was essential in my formation as an academic in its various aspects, reasons that make him, along with José Mattoso, one of my Mentors.