ABSTRACT
In 1461 Pius II commissioned Juan de Gumiel, prior of the Benedictine monastery of San Benito in Valladolid, to reform the female Cistercian convent of San Quirce in Valladolid. The story of the fifteenth-century reform of San Quirce is a colorful and dramatic moment in the history of this convent. Yet it also transcends the anecdotal and constitutes an episode that captures in microcosm the late fourteenth and early fifteenth-century Spanish campaign for Church reform. The attempt from outside to impose enclosure on the convent threatened San Quirce's history as a self-governing institution. San Benito, for its part, had assumed its power over San Quirce and its ability to transcend customary jurisdictions through a careful manipulation of ecclesiastical politics. The reaction of the nuns at San Quirce also demonstrates how the personalities of individual reformers could make these questions of jurisdiction and politics even trickier.
