La mémoire du passé. Les couvents dominicains des provinces d’Espagne et d’Aragon à travers les écrits de l’époque moderne

Abstract

The documentation available to the medieval art historian working on the settlements of Dominican friars and nuns in the Iberian Peninsula includes numerous sources dating from the early modern period. Two questions need to be asked first in order to use this documentation properly: 1) To what extent does the state described in the early modern period reflect that of previous centuries? 2) How was this documentation produced, in what context and for what purpose? The article outlines a typology of both manuscript and printed early modern sources produced within the order that should be useful to the medieval art historian. It also attempts to analyse the way in which Dominican scholars looked at their ancient heritage. Although these sources rarely give us a formal approach to buildings or artworks, they very often document tombs as well as the topography of liturgical and devotional practices, as illustrated by several examples described here.