Religious Women in Golden Age Spain: The Permeable Cloister

Well-written and persuasive ... makes a significant contribution to the fields of Spanish history, social history of religion, and women's history. Lehfeldt's account of nuns' involvement in the very worldly activities of managing estates and utilizing the legal system to assert rights over finances and property ... gives us a more balanced view of nuns in their varied roles in society.-Jodi Bilinkoff, Associate Professor of History, University of North Carolina at GreensboroThrough an examination of the role of nuns and the place of convents in both the spiritual and social landscape, this book analyzes the interaction of gender, religion and society in late medieval and early modern Spain. Author Elizabeth Lehfeldt here examines the tension between religious reform, which demanded that all nuns observe strict enclosure, and the traditional identity of Spanish nuns and their institutions, in which they were spiritually and temporally powerful women. Lehfeldt's work is based on the archival records of twenty-three convents in the city of Valladolid, and peninsula-wide documents that include visitation records, the constitutions of religious orders, and spiritual biographies.Religious Women in Golden Age Spain is the first book-length study in English to pose this chronological and conceptual framework for identifying and analyzing the role of nuns and convents in late-medieval and early-modern Spanish society.

Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt is Associate Professor of History at Cleveland State University, USA.