ABSTRACT
In most instances, convents owed their very existence to the generous support of vallisoletanos. Beyond their initial foundation, though, convents also employed these endowments, dowries, and other bequests in the creation of diverse patrimonies that reflected a wide range of financial activity. The networks of patronage reveal a world in which it was entirely customary for the foundation of convents to coincide with the early stages of estate building. Abbesses and other convent officers acted largely as autonomous administrators of these estates and fiscal interests. In fact, the convent was a world in which many nuns learned various management and bookkeeping skills, making them noteworthy among their female peers in this society. The creation and subsequent management of estates by convents and their officers provides evidence of an important and largely unexplored component of the socio economic world of early modern Castile.
