Introduction

This study is concerned with the policies of the Castilian crown towards the mendicants in the last three centuries of the Middle Ages, and focuses on the Poor Clares at Alcocer, a little town near the northern border of the diocese of Cuenca (and nowadays, near the southern border of the administrative province of Guadalajara) in central Spain, not very far from the border between Castile and Aragon. It is still a matter of debate whether the main role in the royal protection of mendicant foundations in thirteenth-century Castile should be assigned to Ferdinand III (1217–1252) or to Alfonso X (1252–1284). But in the case of Alcocer we are dealing with Alfonso. In fact, the matter is intimately related to Alfonso, for the very foundation of this Poor Clare community cannot be explained without due reference to the Learned King's personal life. During seven decades, the memory of the connection with Alfonso was an essential part of the history of the community, and though subsequently that memory waned for some time, it would ultimately be recalled and reshaped in the subsequent relations between that ‘royal monastery’ and the Castilian crown until the end of the Middle Ages.

Although both the Poor Clare convent at Alcocer and its founders have been subject to some attention by historians, and information on the topic is to be found scattered in a variety of studies, the most intensive research line concerning the community is still in progress, and thus this present work is to be considered partly a result of and partly a contribution to that research.