Lorvão: Books, Rituals and Space in a Cistercian Nunnery. Living, Praying and Reading in Lorvão, 13th-16th centuries

Projetos

Description

The project aims to study, in an interdisciplinary way, the liturgical codices that were part of the library of the Monastery of Lorvão, the first female Cistercian house in Portugal, contributing to the
integration of national monastic studies in gender studies, in the period between the beginnings of the 13th century and the end of the 16th century, in a corpus of about three dozen codices.
We intend to analyze this corpus, on the one hand, in material terms, that is, the characteristics of the codex from the illuminated decoration, pigments/paints and parchment used, to the binding materials and methods, including a survey of its conservation status and additions /changes suffered, contributing to the history of the book and conservation; on the other hand, in liturgical and content terms, characterizing its uses and types of circulation in the monastery, as well as the role of the nuns in ordering and in the formation/ conservation of this library. This interdisciplinary study will provide data
that can contribute to the raising of hypotheses regarding the characterization of the scriptorium or scriptoria of origin of the codices and their particularities, as well as realizing whether the liturgy practiced in Lorvão during the female period reveals identity traits and/ or submitted to Cistercian liturgical unanimity.

Principal Investigator (PI)

Catarina Fernandes Barreira, IEM – NOVA FCSH

UÉvora’s PI: Catarina de Sousa Cabral,
Laboratório HERCULES – University of Évora
Type of Collaboration: NOVA – UÉvora