Convents As Litigants: Dowry And Inheritance Disputes In Early-Modern Spain

Journal of Social History, Spring, 2000 by Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt

In these disputes the role played by the convents as corporate actors in the legal system becomes clear, thereby underscoring the individual nun's incorporation into the life of a new "family." To begin with, convents regarded dowries, alimentos, and other sums of money that accompanied a woman at her profession as corporate property and duly recorded them in their account books as part of the community's collective assets. [27] Convents drew considerable financial security from the profession of these women. Valladolid's daughters entered the convents in large numbers in the sixteenth century. At mid-century the number of nuns in Valladolid was estimated at approximately 595 out of a population of approximately 40,000 (compared to 615 monks). [28] Most of these communities commanded sizable dowries. By the early seventeenth century most convents in the city were requiring a dowry of 1000 ducados. [29]

Most strikingly, it was the convents that filed these lawsuits. Though they would be represented in the courts by their secular appointees, convents nonetheless initiated the legal proceedings that exposed these conflicts between sacred communities and the secular world. In so doing, the convents asserted an identity by which they conceived of themselves as institutions with a legitimate presence in the temporal world. [30] The foundation of many of these convents had been attended by the bestowing of privileges, endowments, and property designed to provide them with financial support. [31] From this starting point, these foundations had augmented their financial resources through careful management and the cultivation of further patronage relationships. In so doing, they had created for themselves an undeniably secular presence. While their existence and support rested on their spiritual responsibilities, they nonetheless possessed a concurrent mission by which they defined themselves as institutions that h ad to protect their finances in order to continue to prosper. The families with which they did battle in the early-modem period adopted a defensive stance of protecting perceived threats to their social status. Yet convents, by defending their fiscal interests in court, were engaged in an argument of continuity, whereby they sought to preserve their secular identity over the course of the early-modern period.

It is critical to note that the convents' partners in these litigious endeavors were the women in their care. The individual nuns whose cases the convents represented were not passive actors. It was their intimate knowledge of the family's assets and property that would have brought disputes over claims to the family patrimony to the attention of the convent. Yet they could not have pursued these claims without the convents' willingness to speak on their behalf.

One of the most common types of disputes involved payments that were expected after a daughter's initial profession. The payment of alimentos was supposed to be made on a yearly basis. Additionally, dowries were rarely paid in one lump sum. In this era of limited liquid capital a dowry might be paid off gradually through the mechanism of an annuity contract. [32] Thus, the annual payment toward the dowry could become an additional burden above and beyond the alimentos. In 1662 the convent of Santa Catalina, on behalf of Bernarda de Mercado, entered into a lawsuit with her father's estate, claiming that he had not made sufficient payment on her alimentos. [33] Santa Maria de Las Huelgas initiated proceedings in 1602 for Rafaela and Juana de Heraso y Herrera who believed they had been deprived of the full sum of their dowries and alimentos. [34] Their father had died, so it filed suit against his estate to seek compensation. Ultimately, the community was awarded an annuity contract to cover the amount.