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IMC 2014: Sessions

Session 1030: Cistercian Studies, IV: From Order to Congregation - The Legacy of the Portuguese Cistercian Monasteries

Wednesday 9 July 2014, 09.00-10.30

Sponsor:Cîteaux: Commentarii cistercienses
Organiser:Ana M. Tavares Martins, Departamento de Engenharia Civil & Arquitectura, Universidade da Beira Interior, Covilhã
Moderator/Chair:Terryl N. Kinder, _Cîteaux: Commentarii cistercienses_, Pontigny
Paper 1030-aThe Construction of a Portuguese Cistercian Territory: Architecture versus Territory - The Abbey of Alcobaça and Its Domains
(Language: English)
Ana M. Tavares Martins, Departamento de Engenharia Civil & Arquitectura, Universidade da Beira Interior, Covilhã
Index terms: Architecture - Religious, Monasticism, Religious Life
Paper 1030-bCistercian Feminine Monasteries in Portugal as Spaces of Assertion and Power: From the Mystic Marriage to the Management of Everyday Life, Leisure, and Creativity
(Language: English)
Antónia Fialho Conde, Departamento de Historia, Universidade de Évora
Index terms: Monasticism, Religious Life, Women's Studies
Abstract

The Cistercian Order was introduced in Portugal in the 12th century and its monasteries were from the beginning associated with the development of the nation and the objectives of occupation and administration of the territory. Their architectural legacy - the object of recoveries and rehabilitations evoking the ideals and the spirituality of the Cistercians - is a constant reminder of the importance of the Cistercian Order in Portugal. Order that originated a Congregation, that accompanied the first moments of the nationality, the maturation and the affirmation of a country, culminating with their extinction, but leaving their architectural legacy and memory alive.

Paper -a:
Cistercian foundations usually take place in valleys, but many Portuguese Cistercian monasteries are the result of affiliations rather than foundations. This paper therefore asks how a Cistercian monastery can be understood as an organism which is inserted into a territory in the way that adapts to it - modelling and altering it according to its needs - but is at the same time an urban organism with urban characteristics and even contributes to urban development. Can a monastery be understood as a micro-city (within a city), a city of God? Some hypotheses will be presented using as an example the Portuguese Cistercian abbey of Stª Maria de Alcobaça (f. 1153) and the city into which it was inserted and with which it interacts, the ideals that support it and the material realities assumed by it.

Paper -b:
Life in contemplative female communities was characterized by the ideal of purity fostered in the monasteries and based on the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, reinforced by the cloistered life. Especially from the Council of Trent, in Portugal as in Europe, its compliance underlines the paradigms of virtue: the religious woman should be unique in patience, humility, mortification, piety and charity. In this environment, increasingly demanding since the late Middle Ages, counting on validity of the spiritual life (based on prayer and silence, in asceticism and liberation of the soul), the leadership capacity of some nuns or, on the other hand, the musical expressions of singing and writing, became specialties, demonstrating the power or the creative liberation in the female monastic universe.