Religious Women in Andalusia at the end of the Middle Ages: Economic Foundation and Family Ties

Abstract

The aim of this article is to study the collectives of religious women who lived at the end of the Middle Ages in Andalusia. Researches about this item multiplied in the last years, but the analysis has been made from an institutional perspective. The novelty of my investigation is based on the analysisof their economic basis and their religious vocation, as on their family ties that their lifestyle allowed them to keep unlike religious women living in enclosed environments. Even they didn’t renounce to maternity. Enter into the privacy of religious women’s lives has been possible thanks to the information contained in the compilation of Public Notaries’ official records preserved at the Municipal Archive of Jerez de la Frontera.