Spaces and distinctions (1502-1620)

Abstract

[Excerpt] This research seeks to understand how differences in social status, gender, and religion materialized in the different areas of All Saints Royal Hospital. The period under analysis extends from the opening of the hospital in 1502 to its detailed description published in 1620 by the Trinitarian friar Nicolau de Oliveira'. The study is based on textual sources, sometimes laudatory, sometimes normative - involuntary micro-utopias - that may not reflect reality, but embody intentions, and in this strict sense are considered reliable from a historiographic point of view (2). [...]