ABSTRACT

This chapter illuminates the patterns of everyday life in late medieval and early modern Spain. It talks about religion, honour and sexuality. The chapter describes the way in which religion in Spain served as a social bond and at the same time reinforced differences between social orders. Gender also affected religious practices. Women related to God and observed the rituals of religion in ways that differed greatly from those of men. In Spain, the culture of honour owed much to codes of behaviour that were formulated by courtly romances throughout most of western Europe in the twelfth and later centuries. Although honour and shame are two different things – there is a great deal of scholarship about the differences between the two – the intersection of these categories with sexuality has long been a strong feature of popular culture.