ABSTRACT
This paper aims to discuss some methodological issues in the works published by António Manuel Hespanha (1945-2019), particularly those related to the sources a legal historian specialized in the Early Modern period should use. The focus is the Portuguese early modern legal literature, a kind source that had been neglected during the years Hespanha wrote some of his first texts with high impact. In order to understand this point, two texts are in the spotlight of this article, namely “Para uma teoria da história institucional do Antigo Regime” (1984) and Como os juristas viam o mundo (2015), none of them often mentioned as a canonic work of the author.
KEYWORDS
Legal history; legal literature; António Manuel Hespanha