Brother–sister ‘love’ and family memory in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Castile: the third Count of Fernán Núñez and the Convent of La Concepción

Abstract

In 1717, the third Count of Fernán Núñez left orders in his will for his body to be embalmed and buried in the family vault that he had built in the parish church of his ancestral home. He also expressed the wish that his heart and entrails be taken to the Convent of La Concepción in Córdoba ‘because of the love he had for this place and his sister Inés, the convent's abbess’. Using this information as a starting point for analysis, the article will examine the motives and nature of the ties that led to the Count's plan for a double burial. This study will look at the foundation of the convent and the church prior to that date, focusing on how members of the House of Fernán Núñez used these two spaces, and on the relationship that the third Count maintained with his sisters in the convent. By analysing the ways in which the House of Fernán Núñez created initiatives of patronage and commemoration, this article will show that, while patrilineal lineage played a key role in legitimising and institutionalising the power of the nobility, the family experience and its commemoration had in practice a marked horizontal orientation.

Keywords:

• siblings
• family memory
• nobility
• early modern Castile
• burial places

Notes

 1. Sebold, El hombre práctico , Discourse LX, ‘De los testamentos, fábricas y sepulcros,’ 291–2.

 2. Archivo Histórico Nacional-Sección Nobleza [henceforth AHN-SN], Fernán Núñez, C. 490, D. 20, Fernán Núñez, 1 April 1717.

 3. AHN-SN, Fernán Núñez, C. 468, D. 1, n° 4 y C. 468, D. 1, n° 12.

 4. ‘por el amor que a él [convento] yo siempre e ttenido y tengo y a mi hermana mi señora Doña Inés Abadesa’.

 5. Salazar y Castro, Catálogo historial genealógico de los señores y condes de la Casa y villa de Fernán Núñez, desde la conquista de Córdoba año de 1236 hasta este año de 1682. Madrid: 1682.

 6. Among others, the genealogical Catalogue he commissioned from the genealogist Salazar y Castro, the book he wrote (El hombre práctico, 1686), the entailment of some material expressions of the status of the lineage such as furniture, pictures, tapestries, and so on, and the forms taken by his religious and pious patronage.

 7. The symbolic meaning of royal funerals and their importance for the maintenance of the social order have been widely studied. See Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies, and Giesey, Cérémonial et puissance souveraine. For Spain, see Varela, La muerte del rey.

 8. Jara Fuente, Muerte, ceremonia y ritual funerario.

 9. ‘One of the most intractable problems in this regard is the tendency to think in terms of “hard” and “soft” alternatives, of actions and motivation determined by interest on the one hand and emotional or moral value on the other’, in Medick and Sabean, Interest and Emotion, 3. Both worlds are scrutinised in the study of family relations and dynamics in Calvi, Il contratto morale, and Bastress-Dukehart, Family, Property, and Feelings.

10. Sabean et al. eds, Kinship in Europe, 5. For the role played by horizontal ties in middling sorts, see Cavallo, Artisans of the Body.

11. Philip III was the last king who wore the Franciscan habit in his coffin. Once embalming became a general practice, the dead body of the king was clothed in full dress uniform with all its medals and stripes. Martínez Gil, Muerte y sociedad en la España de los Austrias, 81. There is no place here to explore the practice of the fragmentation of the dead body, common among European royalty and nobility despite Boniface VIII's condemnation in 1299. See Blutrach Jelín, ‘El III Conde de Fernán Núñez (1644–1721),’ 201–6.

12. Casey, “Queriendo poner mi ánima en carrera de salvación,” 43.

13. Casey, ‘‘Queriendo poner mi ánima en carrera de salvación,’’, 38.

14. The sixth lords were Doña Inés Alfonso de Montemayor (who inherited Fernán Núñez from her mother) and her husband Don Diego Gutiérrez de los Ríos, Salazar y Castro, Catálogo historial genealógico, 30. The mayorazgo was founded in 1382, AHN-SN, Fernán Núñez, C. 484, D. 8.

15. This has been also documented in the case of Neapolitan noblewomen. See Visceglia, Il bisogno di eternità, 133–5.

16. For the lack of commemorative bonding between spouses and the complex and gendered kin map that can be traced through the study of commemorative bequests in Renaissance Florence, see Strocchia, ‘Remembering the Family.’

17. Visceglia, Il Bisogno di Eternità, 136. For Ireland see Tait, Death, Burial, and Commemoration in Ireland.

18. AHN-SN, Fernán Núñez, C. 468-1, D. 1, n° 17, Fernán Núñez, 17 January 1531.

19. In her will, signed 22 January 1546, in the Convent of La Concepción, she ordered her body to be buried next to her parents in the chapel of San Pedro in the cathedral of Córdoba. But on 10 February she wrote a codicil where she revoked those burial provisions and ordered her body to be buried in the main chapel of the convent. Beatriz Carrillo died on Wednesday, 7 April 1546. Real Academia de la Historia, [henceforth RAH], Colección Salazar y Castro, 9-1020 (antiguo N-15), Genealogía del antiguo i noble linaje de los Ríos desde su primer apellido y Armas que trujeron en tiempos de los godos hasta en el tiempo del Rey don Pelaio, que comenzó a restaurar la pérdida de España, 1620, by Andrés Gutiérrez de los Ríos, 192.

20. AHN-SN, Fernán Núñez, C. 468-1, D. 1, n° 17, Córdoba, 21 July 1646.

21. AHN-SN, Fernán Núñez, C. 468. D. 1, n° 15, ‘Memorial presentado por el IV Conde don Pedro.’

22. AHN-SN, Fernán Núñez, C. 468, D. 1, n° 5, 28 July 1730.

23. AHN-SN, Fernán Núñez, C. 468. D. 1, n° 17, ‘Informe sobre el patronato de la Casa de Fernán Núñez en la iglesia parroquial y sobre el panteón’, 24 December 1768.

24. The exhumation of the corpse of Joseph took place in Cartagena on 28 March 1786 and the funeral was performed on 16 May in Fernán Núñez. Bells were rung to precede the entrance of the coffin into the village, and it was then placed on a burial mound. A vigil was sung and a requiem mass was said before the coffin was introduced into the family pantheon. The following day the same ritual sequence was performed for Pedro's funeral. AHN-SN, Fernán Núñez, C. 491. D. 14.

25. AHN-SN, Fernán Núñez, C. 87, D. 13.

26. The 19-year gap between the signing of the will (1487) and the concession of the Papal Bull (1506) may explain the non-observance of that burial provision. This interval could also explain some other modifications to the founder's project (e.g. the convent became Cistercian instead of following the Dominican Order).

27. For Valladolid, see Lehfeldt, ‘Religious Women in Golden Age Spain.’ For the Mendoza Family, see Carrasco Martínez, ‘Los Mendoza y lo sagrado.’

28. See Levy, ed., ‘Widowhood and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe,’ especially chapter 11.

29. Hills, ‘Cities and Virgins’ and Diefendorf, ‘Contradictions of the Century of Saints.’

30. For the relation between family structure, marriage and convents see Evangelisti, ‘Wives, Widows and Brides of Christ.’

31. AHN-SN, Fernán Núñez, C. 491, D. 10, August 1660.

32. AHN-SN, Fernán Núñez, C. 468, D. 5, n° 7.

33. ‘… por dicha cantidad ha de estar obligado el convento cada 10 años a recevir una religiosa a nombramiento del señor conde o subcesores computándose por dote de dicha religiosa 8.800 que es el regular que se paga en dicho convento y los 2.000 restantes como propinas en la entrada y profesión de las religiosas de dicho convento’. The economic aspects in clauses 2–3 and 10–12.

34. ‘…que si alguna señora, hija, nieta o parienta seglar lexítima, o no lexítima entrase en el conbento a criarse con la decencia, virtud, y recogimiento que en dicho conbento se acostumbra haya de ocupar, y usar de las dichas celdas, libratorios y jardín…’, clause 7. The regulation of the use of the new cells also, in clauses 5, 8 and 9. The privatisation of the monastic space in Evangelisti, ‘L'uso e la trasmissione delle celle nel monastero di Santa Giulia di Brescia (1597–1688).’

35. ‘podían fabricar un entierro y poner lápidas y las inscripciones de dicho patronato y que en dicho entierro no pueda enterrar otra persona que los señores de la Casa de Fernán Núñez, o sus hijos y hermanos, y para los demás parientes transversales se necesite de licencia del señor, y mientras se construye se puedan enterrar en el entierro que tienen en la iglesia’. All the conditions related to the use the House could make of the convent as a burial place appear in clauses 17–19.

36. The third Count wrote in his will that he took care of ‘la crianza y educación de mis hermanos y hermanas substituiéndome en lugar de padre’.

37. For an analysis of the sibling bond and convent life, see Miller and Yavneh, eds, Sibling Relations and Gender in Early Modern World, especially chapters 2–4.

38. In 1692, the third Count was appointed to a new post in the army. In his way from Fernán Núñez to Puerto Santa María (Cádiz) he planned to make a stop in Córdoba to visit and bid farewell to ‘sus hermanas las monjas’, AHN-SN, Osuna, CT. 229, letter to the Duke of Pastrana, Fernán Núñez, 18 June.

39. AHN-SN, Fernán Núñez, C. 961-2 [henceforth RD]. The Count wrote to his sister Inés from Madrid on 9 May 1683, telling her that he would visit her in the convent, RD, fol. 156v. The RD has been studied from the perspective of the aristocratic uses of correspondence in Bouza, ‘La Correspondencia Del Hombre Práctico.’

40. Doña Ana de los Ríos y Quesada married Don Juan de Carvajal Escavias y Quesada. Salazar y Castro, Catálogo historial genealógico, 163.

41. As an example, in a letter sent to Inés from Fernán Núñez on 3 January 1680, the Count wrote about the recovery of his wife and about his health problems with molars, RD, fol. 36r.

42. RD, fol. 105r and 109v; 28v; 51; 89v, 94v; and 54r.

43. The third Count sent a chicken stew, chocolate and olive oil (RD, fol. 24v, 46r, 169r, 51v). The convent supplied the Count with oranges, lemon syrup, bars of incense of violet, olives and amber water (RD, fol. 41r, 43r, 66v, 72v, y 100v). All letters were addressed to Inés.

44. RD, fol. 6r. An analysis of symbolic elements of enclosure in convents and especially of grilles as guarantees of female virginity in Hills, ‘Cities and Virgins.’

45. RD, fol. 35r and 145v.

46. RD, fol. 13v and 15v.

47. RD, fol. 78r, 89r, 90v, 91r, 92v, 103r, 107r and 120r.

48. For example, RD, fol. 43r.

49. RD, fol. 82v, 107r, and 111v.

50. RD, fol. 120v. The note from a letter sent to Inés on 31 March 1683, was: ‘Que a don Pedro se le remite el poder para sus alimentos y de mi señora Isabel y se le ymbía copia de dicho poder’, fol. 150v.

51. RD, fol. 85v and 98v.

52. This discussion can be followed in the following entries in RD: fol. 78r, 92v, 93r, 94v, 96v, 98v, 100r, 105v, 154v.

53. The ways material culture contributed to maintain family ties, in Evangelisti, ‘Monastic Poverty and Material Culture’. The bonds maintained between religious women and their families, in Laven, Virgins of Venice, especially chapter 6, ‘Sustaining Networks’.

54. See Lowe, ‘Election of Abbesses and Notions of Identity’.

55. The House of Fernán Núñez had to pay Inés' debts, a difficulty which other nuns might usually solve by the sale of their cells.

56. ‘…por las muchas deudas que dejó se vendieron en pública subasta todas las alaxas sobre que imponía la carga anual de los 2.000 reales como resulta de su testamentería’, AHN-SN, Fernán Núñez, C. 468, D. 5, n° 21, ‘Informe sobre el patronato de la concepción’, 20 March 1786.

57. ‘…no hay motivo para que mi casa deje de considerarse en posesión del patronato de ese convento sin que la escritura del conde don Francisco pueda mirarse sino como irrita e ilegal, y de ningún valor, ni los gravámenes que en ella se imponen sean de modo alguno precisos para la conservación del patronato…’, AHN-SN, Fernán Núñez, C. 468, D. 5, n° 23. Although the new patronage agreement was considered illegal, the third Count's donation of goods was formally approved.

58. Morel-Fatio y Paz y Meliá, ‘Biografía del conde de Fernán-Núñez,’ 332, and AHN-SN, Fernán Núñez, C. 430, D. 14, ‘Libro que contiene los motivos, principios y conclusión de la capilla de Santa Escolástica. Diario de las fiestas que se celebraron’: ‘…que perdieron a la tierna edad de tres y siete años, y reuniendo recíprocamente en sí todo el cariño y confianza, (…), vivieron los dos siempre, como si fuesen uno solo. El tiempo que todo lo altera, arruina e insensiblemente lo deshace, no pudo variar ni acabar el amor constante que estaba fundado en caridad, buena crianza, sentimiento de humanidad, y conocimiento cabal del mérito que a cada uno condecoraba…’, fol. 1v.

59. The Count gave all power to his sister: ‘que pueda servir, administrar, regir, gobernar estados, vínculos, maiorazgos y hacienda raíz vienes y demás derechos que le pertenecen así libres como vinculados en varias ciudades y villas, lugares y términos y jurisdicciones que tiene y poseyere en adelante tanto en esta corte como en los reinos de Valencia y qualesquiera otros sin excepción, reservación ni limitación de cosa alguna, y en su virtud, alce, coja, recaude, beneficie y cobre todos los puntos, rentas, emolumentos, derechos, primicias, diezmos y demás derechos (…) que cobre las deudas y que pague las que tenga’, AHN-SN, Fernán Núñez, C. 494, D. 5, n° 7, ‘Poder de Carlos Joseph a la duquesa de Bejar para que le represente en sus estados’, 10 January 1772.

60. AHN-SN, Fernán Núñez, C. 1417, D. 4, n° 4, ‘Liquidación de los bienes de doña Escolástica en favor de su hermano’. Escolástica also transferred some of her properties and goods to her brother to help him with the claims of unpaid creditors, AHN-SN, Fernán Núñez, C. 495, D. 24.

61. AHN-SN, Fernán Núñez, C. 430, D. 14, ‘Libro que contiene los motivos, principios y conclusión de la capilla de Santa Escolástica. Diario de las fiestas que se celebraron’; AHN-SN, Fernán Núñez, C. 219, D. 12, ‘Libro de las alhajas que se han hecho para la Capilla de Santa Escolástica’.

62. Sebold, El hombre práctico, Discourse XLIX ‘De las obligaciones recíprocas en los padres, hijos, hermanos, parientes y criados’, 249–60.

63. ‘…cada congregación de hermanos es un cuerpo inseparable, según la naturaleza y el concepto común de los hombres, con que nada puede ser bien, o mal de uno, que no haga reflexión sobre los otros de que se compone’, fol. 1r, (p. 252 in Sebold's critical edition of EHP); ‘Trae consigo la mayoría una cierta presunción y aun sobervia, que hace al hermano mayor despreciador del otro. Contra este defecto natural, no solo debemos oponer las virtudes cristianas naturales de caridad y generosidad, sino la conveniencia propia que queda visto tener cada hermano, en considerar como un mismo cuerpo a todos los suyos’, fol. 1v, (pp. 253–4 in Sebold's critical edition of EHP).