Gender, negotiation, collaboration, and autonomy in the shaping of liturgical practice in female mendicant convents: between texts, spaces, and images
Abstract
The belief in the passive existence of women’s communities within the female branches of religious orders, combined with the assumption that there were no sources capable of documenting their lives and religious practices, long led historiography to disregard medieval female conventual life as a relevant object of study for understanding either the history of monasticism or the history of women in this period.
The rediscovery of the importance of studying medieval female conventual life for understanding the role of pre-modern women—within the broader development of feminist studies and women’s studies in the final decades of the twentieth century—has brought to light numerous sources previously overlooked or unknown. These sources demonstrate the fundamental role played by religious women in medieval society and culture, expressed through a wide plurality of ways of life, cultural and religious practices, and degrees of autonomy.
The study of regulated communities that owed obedience to religious orders with strict normative frameworks is particularly relevant for understanding the configuration of medieval female conventual life. The extent to which these communities adhered to the general norms of their orders remains an open question that has only begun to be clarified in recent years, thanks to the recovery and discovery of material culture from these contexts. This evidence reveals a plurality of scenarios resulting from the complex interaction of various factors and brings to light new meanings and functions for the elements of material culture left behind by these communities.
About the Speaker
Paula Cardoso holds a PhD in Art History from NOVA University of Lisbon (2019). Her doctoral thesis focused on the production, patronage, and use of illuminated liturgical books in Portuguese female Dominican convents within the context of the Observant reform. Her research revealed new insights into the role of Dominican nuns in the temporal and spiritual governance of their communities, as well as their levels of literacy and the connections between monastic art and communal memory.
She has published peer-reviewed articles in the Journal of Medieval History, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, and Pecia. Le livre et l’écrit (Brepols). She was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA) postdoctoral researcher at Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona (2021–2023), and is currently working at the Institute for Medieval Studies of NOVA University of Lisbon, where she holds a research contract under the Estímulo ao Emprego Científico (CEEC) programme of the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). Her current research focuses on the interrelations between textual and visual culture, communal identity, and the liturgy of Portuguese female mendicant communities between the late Middle Ages and the early Modern period.
