"The ladies of Zamora" is the story of a convent of nuns in a thirteenth-century Spanish city, their battles with the bishop, the altogether friendlier relationship with the local Dominican friars and the consequences further afield of their activities. Based on unpublished records of the enquiry into the affair, it brings into sharp focus a number of usually unrelated aspects of the age: the tensions between the mendicant orders and the local ecclesiastical authorities: thirteenth-century religiosity, female religiosity in particular and collusion in high places; both in Castile and at the papal curia. Beyond the tale it tells of nuns observed in flagrante at the convent gate, cornered by tumescent friars in the convent infirmary and oven, giving their prioress the evil eye and threatening their bishop with stout sticks, this account lays bare the realities of life within and beyond the cloister in the later years of the century of Christian Spain's greatest achievements at the expense of Spanish Islam. Not since Montaillou have the exploits of a single medieval community been laid bare in this way.
- ISBN10 0719050448
- ISBN13 9780719050442
- Publish Date 27 March 1997
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 23 October 2000
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Manchester University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 208
- Language English