The Centro Interuniversitário de História da Espiritualidade da Universidade do Porto (C.I.U.H.E.) (Interuniversitary Centre for History of Spirituality of the
University of Oporto) is a Research and Development (R and D) Unit created officially in 1993 within the Instituto Nacional de Investigação Científica (National
Institute for Scientific Research) and presently integrated into the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (Foundation for Science and Technology - website:
www.fct.mces.pt). The initial nucleus of researchers was connected, since 1987, to the Instituto de Cultura Portuguesa (Institute for Portuguese Culture) of the Faculdade de Letras (School of Humanities) of the same University, a continuous link for some of its members.

Internal Organization:

This Unit is the only scientific institution in Portugal expressly dedicated to the research within the History of Spirituality, designation that, by definition, cannot be
separated from the expression and display of the religious feeling - from the “ars orandi” (art of praying) to the guilds and devotions, through the religious orders,
literature, hagiography, readings and libraries. Naturally as much from the point of view of the “orthodoxies” as from the point of view of its “deviations”.
This Unit resumed, and has been trying to develop, a research that had known among us, in the fifties of the twentieth-century, significant achievements in the works of Maria de Lourdes Belchior Pontes and José da Silva Dias, not to mention foreign researchers as, for instance, Robert Ricard, Marcel Bataillon, Pedro Sainz Rodríguez, Miguel Avilez.
The Centre integrates presently 18 researchers (3 as collaborators): 12 with Doctor’s degree; 3 with Master’s degree; 3 graduates, one of them having passed the exam in pedagogical and scientifical skills. The 18 researchers belong to the following Universities and Higher Education Institutions: Porto (9), Lisboa (2), Minho (1),
Salamanca (2), Instituto Politécnico de Tomar (Polytechnic Institute of Tomar) (1), ISAG (1), Instituto de Estudios Madrileños (1) and Secondary Education (1).
The Unit has been directing, in a flexible way, its research activities towards the following “fields of action”:

a) literature and spirituality;

b) Religious Orders in the Early Modern Age;

c) currents of spirituality and religious feeling;

d) Franciscans and Franciscanism in Portugal - 15th-18th centuries;

e) readings on spirituality and libraries.

Following the efforts to announce the results of the research, the Unit created this website in order to provide information on its regular activities (monthly seminars), conferences-seminars (triennial), publications, contents of the magazine Via Spiritus and of other publications.

Scientific Exchange

As a result, and in order to develop an institutionalized scientific exchange, the C.I.U.H.E. set up, with approval from the University of Oporto and its School of
Humanities, scientific cooperation agreements with the “Sociedad de Historia del Libro” (Spain), Department of Spanish Literature of the University of Salamanca,
Instituto de Estudos Ibéricos da Faculdade de Letras do Porto (Institute for Iberian Studies of the School of Humanities of Oporto), Dipartimento di Storia Geografia e
Antropologia di Roma III, and with the Centre de Recherche “Espaces et Cultures” of the Université Blaise Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand.
A similar cooperation agreement with the Centro de História Religiosa da Universidade Católica Portuguesa (Centre for Religious History of the Portuguese
Catholic University) is currently being considered. Should the parties involved come to an understanding, the agreements already reached
may become the core of a shared research projects’ network and, for that reason, the C.I.U.H.E. is lively commited to establish similar contacts and agreements with other institutions interested in its activities.

Last Update: 2008-09-04