IMC 2017: Sessions

The Middle Ages in Castile was a period in which the power of the nobility became important. In this session the relationships between monasteries and nobility will be analysed from different perspectives. On the one hand, the material causes of the donations made by the nobles during their lives - inter vivos donations - will be displayed. Among them we can advance donations who intended to maintain the power and memory of the lineage; others donations had caritative and assistential reasons; in other cases, nobility's endowments were directed to reform a monastery and, finally, other group of these had the finality to pay the socio-political role played by the monasteries and their communities. Secondly, we will analyse the noble's devotions and expressions of religiosity through their last wills and testaments. We will put special attention to the women's wills, mainly from the northwestern of Castile (Galicia). The causes of this endowments, had a spiritual and devotional character, but always? Finally, many of the donations made by the nobles to the Church had to be approval by the King, because the money that the noble gave an ecclesiastical institute came from the royal coffers. All this affected the Hacienda Regia, producing changes during the 15th and early 16th century.