Conventos - History Lab

Cadastre of the Ensenada

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:32:42 +0000

Between 1750 and 1754 all the towns in “las Castillas” were subjected to an interrogation consisting of the following 40 questions: Name of the town (question 1); jurisdiction (2); extension and limits (3); types of land (4, 5); trees (6, 7, 8 and 13); measures of surface and capacity used (9, 10); species, quantity and value of fruits (11, 12, 14 and 16); tithes and first fruits (15); mines, salt mines, mills and other “artefacts” (17); livestock (18, 19 and 20); census of population, with neighbours, labourers, solemnly poor (21, 35 and 36), census of clerics (38) and convents (39); houses and other buildings (22); goods belonging to the commons (23), sisas and arbitrios (24), expenses of the commons, such as salaries, festivals, paving, fountains (25), taxes (26 and 27); industrial and commercial activities, with the utility of the goods or services produced: taverns, inns, shops, bakeries, butchers, bridges, boats on rivers, markets and fairs (29), hospitals (30), money changers and merchants (31), shopkeepers, doctors, surgeons, apothecaries, notaries, muleteers etc. (32); masons, stonemasons, masons, stonemasons, blacksmiths, cobblers etc. (33, 34); ships (37); alienated goods (28) and the King’s own revenues (40); the answers to these questions are obtained following a previously regulated process. This panoramic view of the Kingdom is a small part of a larger survey, the so-called Cadastre of the Marquis de la Ensenada, set in motion by Royal Decree of Ferdinand VI on 10 October 1749, as a preliminary step to fiscal reform, replacing the complicated and unjust provincial revenues with a single tax, the so-called Contribution. The Single Tax was never implemented, but it has left an important volume of documentation in our archives, the General Answers are kept in various State Archives. The General Archive of Simancas holds the complete certified copy of the replies of the 13,000 localities of the Crown of Castile. Preservation reasons led to the initiation of the microfilming process. In the 1980s, the 545 books of General Answers kept in Simancas were microfilmed. The frequent consultation of these collections and the need to facilitate access made digitisation advisable, which was carried out by the Document Reproduction Service (SRDAE) from microfilm during 2004 and 2005. The result is 350,000 images of documents with very neat calligraphic handwriting, easy to read and with hardly any abbreviations; very few pages have legibility problems, such as faded inks or ink transfer from the back. These images are now available on this page.

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Women’s Monastic Spaces in Cordoba (1811)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:32:25 +0000

The women’s monasteries had a significant influence on the urban structure of Cordoba from the end of the Middle Ages until the end of the Modern Age. This is partly due to the presence of large oligarchic families at the origins of these buildings, influencing the typology, artistic trends and the disproportionate size of some of their spaces. The Christian recovery of these southern territories during the late Middle Ages led to the formation of different lordships, which, being endowed with extensive lands, eventually allowed the establishment of this type of religious foundation.
During these years, the 17th century was undoubtedly the most prolific, as no less than six female cloisters were added to the existing ones. The first of this century was the convent of Corpus Christi in Santa María, which was founded in 1608 by order of Bishop Fray Diego de Mardones in his quest to establish in Córdoba a convent for nuns belonging to the Order of Saint Dominic. From then on, it was not until 1635 that the formation of new convents continued in this century.
Thanks to this resource, a total of twenty female cloisters can be recorded, which, together with the large number of male communities, turned Cordoba into a convent city. Taking as a reference the Map of the French of 1811, the first map of the city of Cordoba to be drawn, the location of the monasteries of nuns at the end of the Modern Age can be seen, with a clear chronological separation between the late medieval foundations – in red – and those belonging to the modern period – in dark tones.

The post Women’s Monastic Spaces in Cordoba (1811) first appeared on History Lab.

The Venerable Mother Jerónima de la Fuente

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:30:26 +0000

Velázquez’s portrait of Jerónima de la Fuente was painted just prior to her departure on a long journey that would last a year and three months and take her to the farthest reaches of the Spanish empire to found the first convent of Poor Clares in Manila (Philippines). In the numerous convents in Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries, women of different aspirations and conditions coincided. Many of them were forced to profess because their families did not have the resources to provide them with sufficient dowries for marriage, but the convent could be an opportunity to develop a personal project outside marriage and motherhood, as well as to learn to read and write. Some of them, through their work, foundations and evangelisation, managed to become an active part of the culture of the time, such as Mother Jerónima de la Fuente. On her arrival in the Philippines, she fought to defend the admission of mestizas and women without dowry into the convents, gaining the appreciation of the people by putting the evangelising aim above all considerations of race, creed or economic resources.

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Burial place of the Salamancan servants (1601-1650)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:13 +0000

The servants of Salamanca between 1601 and 1650 were predisposed to be buried in the church, followed by places not yet determined, convents or hospitals. This attitude to death is conditioned both by the mentality of the time and by the socio-economic characteristics of the group to which they belonged. Why in the Church? The motivations identified by the author reflect, firstly, the family conscience, as their ancestors were buried there, and secondly, the lower economic cost, as it was cheaper than the other options. Those buried in convents either had a relationship of dependence on them, being servants of these institutions, or had devotions to certain religious orders, which is why there was a higher percentage of men than women who chose this option: 26.9% compared to 22.5%. However, many of the testators (23.75% of women and 34.6% of men) did not specify the place of burial, leaving the choice to their executors, where relatives and masters were the most common choices.

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Amount and distribution of the mandas to the Church of the prebendados of the cathedral of Murcia (1743-1820)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:13 +0000

The concerns of the transmission of the patrimony for the members of the cathedral chapter of Murcia were their own families. Between 1743 and 1820, 52% of the main beneficiaries of the testamentary mandates of the chapter testify to this. However, the moralist treatises and the doctrine of the Church tried to ensure that the distribution favoured the ecclesiastical institution itself and the poor. How was the distribution and amount of the mandates for these items? As a minority with respect to the total inheritance, the main beneficiary was the cathedral factory with 37,700 reales. The hospital of San Juan de Dios also benefited with 13,220 reales and the Casa de la Misericordia with 9,870 reales. All these institutions had in common the assistance to the poor. Below 9,000 reales, we find ecclesiastical entities: convents, parishes or confraternities, the latter with the lowest contribution: 528.

The post Amount and distribution of the mandas to the Church of the prebendados of the cathedral of Murcia (1743-1820) first appeared on History Lab.

The washerwomen. Segovia Bridge (Madrid)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:27:41 +0000

For centuries, the job of washerwoman was one of the most arduous professions carried out by women. In Madrid, after collecting clothes from private homes or convents and hospitals, they had to take them to the Manzanares River in large sacks to be washed. There they spent long days completely soaked, kneeling on benches placed in the riverbed and exposed to the harsh winter weather. Chilblains and respiratory diseases did not prevent them from handling the wet clothes, sheets and towels. Garments were lathered with soda or potash, beaten and brushed, rinsed and hung, making this a heavy mechanical job. This female work was key to the subsistence economies of the time, to such an extent that the Madrid City Council reserved an important part of the washing benches for poor families in the 18th century, although it was the neighbouring towns of Madrid, such as Hortaleza, which were mainly in charge of cleaning the Court’s clothes. In the middle of the 18th century these banks in Madrid became private, leased for years to a few businessmen, and in order to access them the laundresses had to pay. In 1750, in the part of the river shown in the video there were around 1,142 washing benches, which gives an image of the concentration of workers in this place. The washhouses were small buildings made of reeds and poles for hanging clothes that grew to accommodate a large number of workers to whom the tenant also sold soap. The misery of the washerwomen’s work was hidden by the liveliness and colour of the place, where their children were also present, which attracted the attention of all travellers visiting the capital, especially romantics. The video, 3.51 minutes long, is part of “Madrid, Ciudad de las Mujeres”, a cultural and tourist application where the traces of women in the city of Madrid are recovered http://madridciudaddelasmujeres.es/ and to which we refer for this description.

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