The Sacred Space of Meditation: Nunneries and Devotional Performance in the Territories of the Crown of Aragon (Fourteenth–Fifteenth Centuries)

Abstract

This article considers the devotional practices inside the female religious houses of the Crown of Aragón between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the sacralisation of monastic space through the relationship between body and space. First, we will analyse the conception of space and the dialectic ‘inside / outside’ in the enclosed female monastic life. Based on specific examples from different types of community (Hospitallers, Cistercians, Dominicans, and Poor Clares) in Catalonia, Aragón, Majorca, and Valencia, we will undertake a tour of the different monastic spaces: church, choir, cloisters, etc., focusing on the performative expression of the religious women who do, or do not, interact with these spaces and the devotional objects within them. In this way we will explore the sensual universe of female religious communities and the ways which religious women filled the spaces which they inhabited with meaning.