Convent and Family Property in New Spain
Convent and Family Property in New Spain
- Rosalva Loreto LópezRosalva Loreto LópezInstituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, Benemérita Autonomous University of Puebla
Summary
The process of establishing women’s convents in Hispanic America must be understood as the result of converging expectations from the crown, the church, and important laypeople who were interested in re-creating a Catholic world in the cities of the New World. The importance of women’s convents depended on the regular clergy as well as the secular, both of whom were invested in replicating their own religious identity. The role of families was also critical in the processes of establishing and populating the fifty-eight convents, as it was the nun’s families who expanded their networks of power, pedigree, and the reproduction of their own lineage by way of these institutions. Finally, the study of convent wealth is also essential to understanding the mutual dependence between the urban growth of cities and the expansion of these women’s institutions.
Subjects
- History of Mexico
- 1492–1824
- Church and Religious History
