The installation of Cistercian nuns in Lorvão. Contours of a complex process, in a kingdom in turmoil

In a bull dated November 1210, Innocent III decreed that the monastery of Lorvão, which had been a house of Benedictine monks, should be transformed into a Cistercian nunnery. The history of the legal proceedings, the arguments presented by the parties, the various advances and setbacks experienced, and many indications suggesting the underlying reasons for such a radical change, are apparently very clearly set out in the bull. This article examines the context of this extraordinary conventual (re)foundation, which would have proved impossible had it not brought together a range of different interests, and revisits the process that led to the establishment of Cistercian nuns in Lorvão, which thus became the first nunnery of the Order in Portugal. In addition, there is a re-evaluation of the networks and concerns manifest in governmental and ecclesiastical circles that led to Lorvão’s community of monks being (in fact for a second time) suspended and ousted, something that would have been neither legitimate nor legal had it lacked royal support, the consent of the bishop of Coimbra and, above all, the blessing of the pope

Blessing · Context (archaeology · Kingdom · Order (exchange · Historical Education and Society · Medieval and Early Modern Iberia · Medieval Iberian Studies