Luís Adão da Fonseca became interested in the subject of military orders at the very beginning of his academic career. In preparing the dissertation for his bachelor’s degree at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto, entitled O Condestável D. Pedro de Portugal. Subsídios para o estudo da sua mentalidade (1968), he readily understood that many of the details of the life of this infante were to be explained by his membership in the Order of Avis. This realization aroused his curiosity and strengthened his resolve to pursue a new research theme and to contribute to its development. From then on, he became increasingly aware of the important role that the Order of Avis played in the political context of the fifteenth century, which included the period when the Constable Dom Pedro was its Grand Master. The relationship between military orders and the monarchy, and the political and social repercussions of that same relationship, became the core perspective of Luís Adão da Fonseca’s analytical and interpretive research work over the following decades.

Early on in his academic career, he was a lecturer in history at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto (1969) and a scholarship holder at the Instituto de Alta Cultura in Madrid and Barcelona (1971 and 1973-1975). This latter opportunity, in particular, enabled him to make important progress in his research in the field of Medieval History at the Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid, Archivo Histórico Nacional, Biblioteca de la Real Academia de História, Archivo Histórico de la Ciudad de Barcelona, Biblioteca Central de Catalunya and, above all, the Archivo de la Corona de Aragón. This first experience of internationalization was crucial both for the development of his vision of university life and the organization of his research studies. During this period, he obtained a PhD in Medieval History (1978) with a thesis entitled O Condestável D. Pedro de Portugal, a Ordem Militar de Avis e a Península Ibérica do seu tempo (1429-1466), published by the Instituto Nacional de Investigação Científica in 1982 and now regarded as a major work of reference in this area.

From then on, he devoted himself to the study of military orders on a constant basis. He espoused an innovative approach within the context of Portuguese historiography: military orders were now regarded as an autonomous subject of research and became the central topic of a number of studies of that historical period. In this sense, he was a pioneer and provided a decisive stimulus for the evolution of these studies in recent decades. The output of his research activities was quite remarkable. The first step in this process was the publication of the book corresponding to his aforementioned doctoral thesis (1982), which was followed by his first oral presentation on the theme in 1983. At the same time, he was one of the people responsible for creating the first master’s degree course in medieval history at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto, in which he taught a seminar precisely on the subject of these religious institutions. At that time, a special group of students-the most enthusiastic ones-conducted their studies in a room that was informally christened with the name of Avis, and it was in this environment, in 1989, that the first master’s degree theses produced under his supervision were discussed and approved. In the same year, he established a fruitful relationship with the municipality of Palmela, because it was there that the most important architectural complex of the Order of Santiago in Portugal was located, namely the convent and castle of Palmela, which hosted the first academic conference on the military orders in Portugal. The following year, in 1990, he published his first writings on the theme, as part of a collective work again promoted by the municipality of Palmela.

To sum up, Luís Adão da Fonseca's work on the military orders consists of the authorship and/or coordination of seven books, the publication of almost thirty articles and book chapters, and the presentation of thirty-seven papers and lectures at academic conferences and meetings, as well as the supervision of fifteen PhD dissertations and master's degree theses, the creation and editorship of a collection specifically devoted to the subject-the Militarium Ordinum Analecta-whose first volume was published in 1997, and the scientific coordination of a project sponsored by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) in 2008. These key indicators underline the increasing consolidation of the different outcomes that he was achieving. However, his involvement in other positions of public responsibility outside the academic world of the university meant that he was obliged to divide his attentions to some extent, making it difficult for him to continue his intensive work on the military orders.¹ The ending of the mandates of these public offices naturally led to an increased academic production on the military orders, precisely from the second half of the 1990s onwards.

At the same time, it is important to note that, especially since the 1980s, Portuguese historiography has been marked by a substantial increase in the editing and publication of documentary sources, benefiting from the modernization and reorganization of archives and their related research tools. This new environment significantly improved the identification of, and access to, the respective documentation and opened up a dialogue with the international community, providing a decisive impetus for future studies (^{Homem, 2001}; ^{Costa, 2004}). In line with this evolution, Spanish historiography also established its own areas of interest in relation to the military orders. Attention is drawn, in particular, to the work that was carried out at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid with the contributions of Vicente Álvarez Palenzuela and Carlos de Ayala Martínez, to whom one should further add the name of the medievalist Luis Garcia-Guijarro Ramos. The same happened in the English-language academic world, with Jonathan Riley-Smith, from Cambridge University, who became the main interlocutor on the subject and involved many other colleagues in this international network of researchers. In turn, these developments had a great impact on the research into military orders that was being carried out at the University of Porto. The situation was, in all respects, very favorable.

Identifying the perspectives that Luís Adão da Fonseca gave to his own works and to those that were developed under his academic supervision helps us to better understand his interests and the thematic lines that he was researching. There were fifteen theses and dissertations written under his supervision, which can be divided into two groups. The first consists of eight master’s degree theses and the second comprises seven PhD dissertations. Almost all of these students were enrolled at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto; except for two PhD dissertations, which were registered at the Lusíada University of Lisbon, where he was both Professor (1996-2003) and also Vice-Rector (2004-2011). These master’s degree theses were completed and approved between 1989 and 1993. They all reveal coherent trends in their contents: on the one hand, the study of the historical evolution of these religious institutions from their origins to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, focusing on their internal organization, their property and estates, and the individuals responsible for their management, as well as their relations with outside entities, especially the papacy, the monarchy, and the local power; and, on the other hand, the examination of some normative manuscripts that proved decisive for the characterization of these institutions.

In particular, the first master thesis focused on the Order of Avis, which was precisely the order that had aroused his curiosity at the beginning of his academic career. One of them examined the order within a broader context and from a diachronic perspective until the third decade of the fourteenth century-A Ordem Militar de Avis (das origens a 1329) (^{Cunha 1989})-and another one-A Ordem Militar de Avis (durante o mestrado de D. Fernão Rodrigues Sequeira) (^{Pimenta 1989}, published in 1997)-explored a shorter chronological period, roughly coinciding with the reign of King John I, adopting a perspective that was based more on questions relating to political and social history. A very similar focus was also adopted by A Ordem de Cristo sob o Mestrado de D. Lopo Dias de Sousa (^{Silva 1989}, published in 1997). A different viewpoint was, however, to be found in the research study of A Ordem de Santiago em Portugal na Baixa Idade Média, which has the unique feature of focusing on the normative aspects of the order in question, making use of some edited documentary sources on this subject (^{Barbosa 1989}, published in 1998). Another particularity of the Order of Santiago-A Comunidade Feminina da Ordem de Santiago: a Comenda de Santos na Idade Media (^{Mata 1991}, published in 2016)-was explored in this early phase, while, in another master’s degree thesis, a general approach was made to the order, highlighting its role in the conquest, settlement, and organization of the southern territories of Portugal-A Ordem Militar de Santiago (das origens a 1327) (^{Cunha 1992}). To complete the range of orders under investigation at that time, there was also a study of A Ordem Militar do Hospital em Portugal (séculos XII-XIV) (^{Costa 1993}). Finally, the interest in the normative dimension was further reinforced by A Ordem Militar de Cristo na Baixa Idade Média. Espiritualidade, normativa e prática (^{Vasconcelos 1996}, published in 1998). This master’s degree thesis, focused, just like the previous one, on the Order of Santiago, again made use of edited documentary sources, emphasizing the order’s religious and community life to the detriment of its manorial and political dynamics.

In the case of the PhD dissertations, there was a shift towards later chronologies, in keeping with the previously presented research plans, with dissertations being defended and approved on the following subjects: A Ordem de Cristo (1417-1521) (^{Silva 1998}, published in 2002); A Ordem Militar do Hospital em Portugal: dos finais da Idade Média à Modernidade (^{Costa 1999}, published in 2000)²; A Comunidade feminina da Ordem de Santiago: a Comenda de Santos em finais do século XV e no início do século XVI. Estudo religioso, económico e social (^{Mata 1999}, published in 2007); and As Ordens de Avis e de Santiago na Baixa Idade Média: o governo de D. Jorge (^{Pimenta 1999}, published in 2001). A previous topic relating to the regulations of the military orders was further expanded on in a dissertation entitled A normativa das Ordens Militares portuguesas (séculos XII-XVI). Poderes, sociedade, espiritualidade (^{Ferreira 2005}). Running counter to this dominant trend, however, were two dissertations based on regional and heritage aspects: A Ordem de Avis revisitada (1515-1538). Um alheado entardecer (^{Mendonça 2008}) and A comarca da Aldeia Galega do Ribatejo (séculos XV e XVI) (^{Seabra 2010}). Two other PhD projects, developed by António Vasconcelos and Cristina Fernandes, were supervised by Luís Adão da Fonseca at the level of their initial work plan, although, due to legal requirements resulting from his retirement process, these two PhDs were completed in 2009 under the guidance of another professor. The same can be said regarding his influence on the choice of theme for the PhD thesis written by Joana Lencart, which centered on the sixteenth-century figure of Pedro Álvares Seco, whom we can describe as the memory maker of the Order of Christ and whose work inspired the edition of O Livro da Regra e Definições da Ordem de Cristo por Frei Pedro Álvares Seco by the same researcher (2018).

While supervising this set of academic works, Luís Adão da Fonseca continued to give lectures at conferences, as well as publishing papers and book chapters that reveal the wealth of knowledge that he had accumulated, his broad research experience, and the wide recognition that he enjoyed among his peers. As already mentioned, in the 1980s, under the scope of the Conference on Medieval Portugal organized by the municipality of Leiria, he gave his first talk on the Order of Avis, entitled Algumas considerações a propósito da documentação existente em Barcelona respeitante à Ordem de Avis: sua contribuição para um melhor conhecimento dos grupos de pressão em Portugal em meados do século XV (Fonseca 1983 published in 1984), taking advantage of the research that he had undertaken during his previous visit to Spain and inspired by the predominant tendencies of French historiography at that time. As a side note, I recall that, among others, he enjoyed personal contact with Fernand Braudel (1976), Jacques Heers (1990), and Jacques Le Goff (1993), all of whom he frequently referred to in his informal talks. Shortly afterwards, at the conference entitled Jornadas sobre o Município na Península Ibérica: Séculos XII-XIX, he discussed his reflections on the Relações entre a Ordem de Avis e os municípios medievais portugueses (Santo Tirso, 1985). It was, however, at the second edition of the Jornadas de Historia de Andaluzia e del Algarbe that he addressed a subject-A Ordem de Avis e a memória da fronteira nos finais da Idade Média: o caso de Noudar (La Rabida, 1986)-which would later be divided into two fundamental aspects in the structure of his research: memory and frontier. This latter topic was addressed mainly through the example of Noudar, a commandery of the Order of Avis located in the Alentejo (south of Portugal), in the border area between the kingdoms of Portugal and Castile, and which has been so important in the problematization of the political relationship between the two peninsular kingdoms. For this reason, Noudar was constantly reinterpreted and revisited in his work (^{Fonseca 2000}; ²⁰⁰⁹; ²⁰¹²; ²⁰¹³; and ²⁰¹⁶).

At the first conference on the military orders-I Encontro sobre Ordens Militares-he underlined his interest in understanding the complex process of producing the historical memory of the orders, giving a talk on A Memória das Ordens Militares: o Livro dos Copos da Ordem de Santiago (^{Palmela, 1989}, published in 1991). Soon after this, he returned to the subject at the Congresso Internacional dos Caminhos Portugueses a Santiago de Compostela, where he gave a lecture entitled A recordação de Santiago na Ordem de Santiago: o Livro dos Copos (Porto, 1989), the famous Portuguese Saint James cartulary, which began in the fifteenth century. At the II Congresso Histórico de Guimarães, he gave a lecture on D. Afonso Henriques e as Ordens Militares na memória da historiografia moderna (Guimarães, 1996), but the way in which he approached the subject was closely linked to another field of interest that was to become such a distinctive feature of his curriculum and his intellectual development: the epistemological issues underlying historiography. After this, he spent many years researching into the notions of memory and the political frontier. Indeed, the first publication mentioned in his curriculum, and which dealt expressly with the military orders, consisted of his collaboration in the exhibition catalog O Castelo e a Ordem de Santiago na História de Palmela (^{Palmela, 1990}), together with some comments on the Livro dos Copos and the normative texts relating to this organization.

In the 1990s, there was a fundamental shift in his curriculum. He was now mostly concerned with the commemorations of the Portuguese overseas expansion, due to his appointment to a leading position on the National Commission for the Commemorations of the Portuguese Discoveries. He would, however, sometimes combine this subject with that of the military orders. I highlight here his first two contributions in this area: a talk on O Algarve, os Descobrimentos e a Ordem de Santiago, as part of the seminar “O Algarve e os Descobrimentos” (Lagos, 1990) and an initial paper dedicated to Vasco da Gama e a Ordem de Santiago (Palmela, 1998, published in 1999), about whom he would also write a biography (1997). It is also important to mention that he wrote a biography of King John II (2005), who was the Grand Master of both the Order of Avis and the Order of Santiago, as well as a shorter text on the links between Christopher Columbus and the Order of Santiago (2006), after having accumulated some knowledge of this historical personality in the course of his research.

His study of cross-border subjects caused him to associate another perspective with the study of the military orders: the Crusades. This was the case with the reflections that he prepared in co-authorship for The Order of Christ and the Idea of the Crusade (14th-16th Centuries), presented at the international conference on The Military Orders: Welfare and Warfare, organized by The London Centre for the Study of The Crusades (London, 1996, with Pimenta & Silva). In terms of publications, the first text which engaged with the Crusades based on the intercession of religious and political authorities, was The Papacy and the Crusade in 15th-Century Portugal (Avignon, 2008, published in 2011, with Pimenta & Costa). The idea of the Crusades would be maintained as a research theme and served as the support for two new papers: “The Idea of the Crusade in Medieval Portugal. Political Aims and Ideological Framing” (^{Fonseca 2016}a) and “La Orden de Cristo entre la cruzada y la monarquia: un marco ideológico con finalidade política” (^{Fonseca 2016}b). The relationship between the orders, the papacy, and the monarchy and its repercussions for the reinterpretation of the idea of the Crusades and the support given to the Portuguese expansion were the issues most frequently explored in more recent works. This was the case with “The Portuguese Military Orders and the Oceanic Navigations: From Piracy to Empire (Fifteenth to early Sixteenth Centuries)” (^{Fonseca 2008}), “A Ordem de Cristo, o Papado e a Expansão Marítima Portuguesa no século XV” (^{Fonseca 2012}b), “The Portuguese Military Orders, the Royal Power and the Maritime Expansion (Fifteenth Century)” (^{Fonseca 2012}c), and “A Ordem de Santiago e a Expansão” (^{Fonseca 2015}).

In the early years of the twenty-first century, Luís Adão da Fonseca delved deeper into the thematic lines that I have highlighted in this synthesis. One of the most promising and motivating subjects that he examined was the case of the chronicler Frei Jerónimo Román, as we can see in the work Frei Jerónimo Román, Cronista das Ordens Militares (Palmela, 2002, with Pimenta, published in 2005 and reprinted with some changes in 2008). In this same context, he provided the highly valuable coordination of the collective work (published in 2008) on the Chronicle of the Orders of Christ, Avis and Santiago, written by this same chronicler in the sixteenth century. At the same time, there were many questions raised by the study of the sociability that was developed among the military orders. This is a very complex subject and needs further support from other social studies on the medieval period. Luís Adão da Fonseca also put forward a pertinent hypothesis concerning their definition as an elite-As Ordens Militares: uma elite medieval?-at the colloquium on Elites e Redes Clientelares: Problemas e Perspetivas, promoted by the University of Évora (Lisbon, 2002). Moreover, in the previous year, he talked about As Ordens Militares e a Expansão at the colloquium on A Alta Nobreza e a Fundação do Estado da Índia, organized by the Centre for Overseas History of the NOVA University of Lisbon (Lisbon, 2001), exploring very pertinent aspects that opened up a series of new questions for future approaches. The main goal was to identify social networks, viewed from the perspective of the ever-present aspiration to try to understand military orders in their relationship with the monarchy.

It is also worth mentioning his involvement, at an advanced stage in his academic career, in some collective works, both through his coordination of research teams and through his contributions to several works of synthesis. In the latter case, he collaborated in the production of the Dicionário de História Religiosa de Portugal (2001), the dictionary Prier et combattre. Dictionnaire Critique des Ordres Militaires Européens au Moyen Âge (2009), and the book The Historiography of Medieval Portugal (c. 1950-2010) (^{Fonseca et al. 2011}).

The recognition that can be inferred from these collaborations reveals his prestige and standing among the community of Portuguese and foreign historians. The countries where he established contacts for the development of activities in this area of study were Spain (Navarra, Madrid, Ciudad Real, Santiago de Compostela, and Puerto de Santa María), Italy (Rome, Genoa, Florence, and Cagliari), United Kingdom (London and Cardiff), Denmark (Aalborg), France (Avignon), Sweden (Stockholm), Netherlands (Groningen), and Brazil (São Paulo). In fact, he enriched his curriculum with the growing internationalization that led him to expand his horizons and move closer to the study of comparative history. Particularly significant at this level were his membership in the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East (2008) and his joining the Rede Luso-Brasileira de Estudos Medievais, created by the Laboratório de Estudos Medievais (LEME) of the University of São Paulo and the Jaime Cortesão Chair (2012), as well as his collaborative research for the paper entitled “Military Orders between Territorialization and Periphery from the 12th to the 16th Century. A Comparative Perspective on Portugal and Denmark” (^{Fonseca et al. 2016}).

The consolidation of his research into military orders and the maturity of his intellectual and academic career reached far beyond the publications of which he was the author. There are other important manifestations of his contribution to the writing of the history of military orders. At the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto, he founded and organized a network for the study of these institutions, creating the International Seminar on the Military Orders (SIOM) in 1989. From then on, the famous Meetings on Military Orders were promoted by the municipality of Palmela³ under his scientific supervision, becoming one of the leading international events on this subject. These meetings were complemented by the Courses on Military Orders, initiated in 1997, and the launch of the Office for Studies on the Order of Santiago (GEsOS, 1997), which itself became the promoter of all these initiatives and was highly indebted to the great commitment of Isabel Cristina Fernandes. The municipality of Palmela symbolically paid tribute to this work through the award of the Municipal Medal of Merit (Gold Standard) in the area of Historiographic Research on Cultural Heritage in 2015.

The year 1997 was marked by another decisive achievement in this field. At the initiative of Luís Adão da Fonseca, and under his direction, the Militarium Ordinum Analecta was created-a specialized collection on the subject, which already has eighteen volumes and is designed to publish working materials, manuscripts, and historiographic outputs on the military orders. It is linked to a team that has been dedicated to this theme for many years (^{Costa 2008}). Since the publication of volume 12 (2012), the collection has been made available in digital form on the CEPESE website, where there is a repository containing all of the previous volumes, thus ensuring their wide dissemination among the international research community, which is one of the most crucial conditions for promoting research and renewing historiographic approaches in this area. This collection publishes works by individual authors, but above all, it is also a platform for the dissemination of collective team efforts. 2008 was another key year, marked by the organization of the Seminário sobre Comendas das Ordens Militares na Idade Média, involving a fruitful collaboration between Portugal and Italy, under the scope of the bilateral program supported by the Consiglio Nazionale de Ricerche and the Gabinete de Relações Internacionais da Ciência e do Ensino Superior of the FCT (CNR-GRICES, 2007-2008), and also benefiting from Spanish collaboration. The results are compiled in Militarium Ordinum Analecta, volume 11 (2009).

That same year, a research project was started under his coordination; it was approved by FCT and is identified as Comendas das Ordens Militares: perfil nacional e inserção internacional (PTDC/HIS-HIS/102956/2008). This project was the corollary of research already supervised by Luís Adão da Fonseca. It focused on the paradigmatic cases of the commanderies of Noudar of the Order of Avis and Vera Cruz de Marmelar of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. After defining the territories of these two commanderies, the project also set out to characterize the social and power networks generated around them and discuss the international dynamics of their surrounding context. These goals called for a reconstitution of the documentary collections relating to both orders along an extensive timeline, and their paleographic transcriptions were made available online in volumes 14, 15, and 16 of the Militarium Ordinum Analecta (2013). In turn, the reflective and interpretive texts produced in the context of the project can be found in volume 17 (2013).

In addition to his skills in organizing scientific events and publications, and supporting the work of research teams, Luís Adão da Fonseca also devoted his energies to training and preparing young researchers. In fact, the enthusiasm he exuded in his classes has been recognized by many of his students. From a contractual point of view, he taught at the University of Porto, Lusíada University, and Johns Hopkins University. However, his involvement in the training of young people went far beyond that. For example, he was responsible for the organization of several courses: As Ordens Militares Castelhanas e Leonesas na Idade Média, taught by Carlos de Ayala Martínez (Porto, 1996); a specific seminar given by Cristina Pimenta under the scope of the postgraduate course in Medieval and Renaissance History of the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto (Palmela, 2001-2002); and the seminar taught by Jonathan Riley-Smith, under the scope of the Institute of Historical Research, on two topics-Historiografia sobre Ordens Militares: a produção anglo-saxónica and Cruzada e Ordens Militares (Porto, 2005).

The assessment of all this activity undertaken by Luís Adão da Fonseca on the subject of military orders has necessarily had to be condensed into just a few brief words. We can say that he gradually discovered his own preferences: in sequential order, his greatest attention was devoted to the orders of Avis, Santiago and Christ, while the orders of the Temple and the Hospital, both originating in Jerusalem, were clearly the ones that received the least attention. As far as these latter two are concerned, the Order of the Temple was practically absent from his research efforts and was only considered as part of the historical process that led to the creation of the Order of Christ in the fourteenth century. The Order of Christ was itself occasionally analyzed from an Iberian perspective, with Luís Adão da Fonseca highlighting its contribution to the history of mediterranean Europe (2007) and its place within the context of other similar institutions, at the opening conference of the III Seminario Internacional La Orden de Malta, su realidad histórica y su proyección social. Los hospitalarios de San Juan en los reinos de Portugal y Galicia. Balance y perspectivas historiográficas, promoted by the Instituto de Estudios Gallegos Padre Sarmiento (2010). Nonetheless, he always insisted that it was essential to study all of these orders, taken as a whole, in order to arrive at a deeper understanding of the evolution of the history of Portugal in particular and of the history of Europe in general. This perspective was reinforced by the links he established between the military orders and the other major themes that were of interest to him, such as the political relations in the peninsular sphere and the history of the Portuguese overseas expansion.

From all that has been said, it can be safely concluded that he was the scholar who gave the decisive impetus to the study of the military orders in Portugal, making it an integral part of the work that was being produced at other European academies. He launched a school that bore the hallmark of his enthusiasm as a teacher, benefiting from his long hours of study, his recurrent visits to libraries in Portugal and abroad, and his endless purchase of books, which he would then lend to those who needed them. A serious teacher, but nonetheless an easy person to talk to, Luís Adão da Fonseca was endowed with a high intellect and distinguished himself through the challenging nature of the questions that he would constantly raise.