Early modern Iberian religious women and pilgrimage

The importance of religious women helping pilgrims has often been overlooked by scholars. This article focuses on how the cult of female saints, holy women, and nuns helped travelers both spiritually and physically with their journeys not only on the Iberian Peninsula, but across the Americas, and on to the farthest outposts of Asia. Some of these women created works of art related to the Virgen Peregrina while others worked as nurses in pilgrim hospitals, and even a few walked the alongside other pilgrims in Spain, Mexico, and the Philippines. Nuns and third-order religious women looked to their spiritual predecessors and contemporaries for support through letters and visions. They also used holy cards and miraculous rosary beads to help themselves and others on long journeys. Focusing on first-person accounts and material culture this article weaves together a more complex picture of pilgrimage and travel in early modern Iberia

Ancient history · Pilgrimage · Early Modern Women Writers · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Medieval and Early Modern Iberia