The Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical/University of Lisbon (IICT/UL), Portugal, holds the most important scientific collections from Portuguese-speaking African countries, which include anthropological, archaeological, ethnographic, mineralogical, botanical and zoological collections, as well as libraries and historical archives. The aim of this paper is to document the advances in conservation and management of IICT collections between 2005 and 2015, namely how the implementation of institutional initiatives created new challenges for the scientific community. After an overview of the IICT's scientific heritage since the creation of the Cartography Commission in 1883, we characterise several recent actions aimed at preserving and providing access to the collections. Considerations on the current preservation of the IICT collections are presented. It is argued that these collections are unique for tropical science and of critical importance for scientific cooperation with Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa.

The Alcobaça Beatus (Lisbon, National Library, Alc. 247) is one of the few extant unillustrated copies of the eighth-century Commentary on the Apocalypse attributed to the Iberian monk Beatus of Liébana. It has traditionally been considered that this Beatus was produced at the Cistercian Portuguese abbey of Santa Maria de Alcobaça and that its model was the Lorvão Beatus (Lisbon, Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Ordem de Cister, Mosteiro de Santa Maria de Lorvão, Liv. 44). This article provides the first in-depth examination of the Alcobaça Beatus, carried out by a multidisciplinary team using combined methods from the natural and human sciences. The technical data provided by the analysis of the decoration, molecular palette and bookbinding support the theory of its production at the scriptorium of the Portuguese monastery of Alcobaça, whereas the analysis of the textual structure and content reveals that the Alcobaça Beatus and the Lorvão Beatus show a different sequence of texts and that the Alcobaça copy contains later notes that evidence its use in the monastic reading practice, especially the liturgical readings of the Divine Office. This set of results turns this manuscript, which had received minimal scholarly attention to date, into a significant case study since it reveals itself as the basis to further investigate the corpus of extant Beatus copies and question the importance of such a work within the Cistercian order, thus provoking new questions within the debate on Cistercians and their identity around the year 1200.

The collection of manuscripts from the monastery of Alcobaça is one of the most important in the Cistercian world. The scriptorium was active from the end of the twelfth to the sixteenth century, and during the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries, transformations both in the materials used for colour and in style, namely historiated and filigreed initials, occurred. In this paper, through the study of a little-known manuscript, the winter Breviary Alc. 54, we will analyse these changes through a study of the pigments applied but also through the liturgy, which enables us to date the manuscript in the Alcobaça scriptorium with an original corpus from the earlier fourteenth century and two additions that were introduced during the second half of the fifteenth century. We argue that these transformations in style, materials and technique were catalysed by the entrance of “university” manuscripts into the abbey. In short, this research shows that the scriptorium was receptive to new ideas, which were absorbed and adapted to its own context. This manuscript provides examples of this: the use of silver in the illuminations, the updating of the palette, the French influence in the historiated initials, and the pen-flourished initials. While these changes were occurring, other Cistercian liturgical traditions and colour application technology stayed in use.