Female Memory in the Forged Diplomas of San Salvador de Oña: A Double Monastery facing the Benedictine Reform

Abstract

This article explores the documentary treatment of the women related to the monastery of San Salvador de Oña after its suppression as a double house. A diplomatic and paleographic study of the charters from that early period demonstrates alterations conceived not only to defend the monastic heritage in a troubled context but also to justify and extol the new male community settled in Oña after the Benedictine reform. A necessarily cautious approach to such documentary material, containing forgeries and imitative copies, has revealed different versions of a deliberate smear operation against the memory of the women that protagonised the foundational stage of this monastery, whose influence reached the historiography of the Modern Age.