The ladies of Zamora

by Peter Linehan

The Ladies of Zamora is the story of a convent of nuns in a thirteenth-century Spanish city, their battles with the bishop, their 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 Based on unpublished records of the enquiry into the affair, it brings into sharp focus a number of usually unrelated aspects of the age: the tensions between the mendicant orders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 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.