ABSTRACT

During the closing days of September 1997 in the Spanish town of Espinosa de Henares north of Madrid, an unusual conflict erupted when the five remaining nuns of the convent of La Asuncion boldly resisted an order from the bishop of Siguenza. The convent owned a small amount of property that the bishop intended to turn over to the Castilian Federation of Clares. One of the greatest obstacles facing these various reform movements were the regular and customary intersections of female monasticism with secular concerns and preoccupations. Convents owned and managed vast and diverse estates. They protected their financial and property interests by filing lawsuits in the secular courts of the day. The religious landscape of the city was at once typical and unusual. Like Avila and Seville it saw renewed interest in founding convents between the late fifteenth and mid-sixteenth century.