“No pueden ellos ver mejor…”. Autonomía, autoridad y sororidad en el gobierno de los claustros femeninos en la Edad Moderna

Abstract

The established order that arranged the female convents dependence and subordination regarding male ecclesiastical hierarchies, constituted the regulated institutional framework for these communities, but it did not monopolize the living world, nor the one lived by them. This is the idea we uphold, and it comes up from an investigation that raises other interpretative perspectives and from an approach that looks at them —the nuns—, in their considerations and in their actions. On this institutional and normative reality, religious women worked and also struggled to claim and defend their levels of autonomy and maintained their competence, suitability and sufficient capacity for government and leadership of their communities, based on their experience, knowledge and learning, much closer of the reality of their own religious communities. This conviction they had was part of a feminine political action that was sustained and deployed in a variety of ways and moments. This paper aims to show and analyse some of the dimensions in which this feminine intervention, that was oriented to the autonomy in the government and in the management of their convents and monasteries, was developed. One of the most relevant expressions were what we consider “government writings” composed by them.