Las ojas negras, escrito la letra de plata blanca y horo: reconstruction of Leonor Pimentel’s written culture through her library

Abstract

In this work we use, as main sources of study, two documentary types: the inventory and the will, although we will focus in more detail on the first of them. Both are historiographical sources of great value to be able to reconstruct what the education and literacy of some women was like at the end of the Middle Ages; since these documentary sources are one of the few in which the women of that time could record their possessions, and these include the books they owned and would read throughout their lives, a reflection of their education. In this case we focus on the inventories and the different copies of the wills of Leonor Pimentel, I Duchess of Plasencia, that have reached us, to be able to reconstruct the written culture that surrounded the life of the aforementioned duchess.