The relevant and symptomatic debate, stimulated by Catholics and Protestants, polarized around religion and the role that it would have played in the domain of female emancipation or repression, has been animated by authors such as Natalie Zemon Davis.
This author, studying the adhesion of the women of Lyon to Calvinism, maintained that they achieved another "dignity", inasmuch as they were allowed to read the Bible in the company of their husband, with equal freedom of interpretation, but lost in self-determination, as they were deprived of attending of institutions such as monasteries and colleges, which constituted spaces for the exercise of feminine "power", as well as
the management of a certain "freedom". The observation made by Zemon Davis was configured as the starting point for our reflection on the importance and relevance of the study of monastic libraries of the Ancien Régime: Could a monastic library profile be drawn up based on a gender profile? Could the genre function as an element of differentiation / distinction, with regard to the choice, purchase, possession and reading
of the books that constituted these monastic libraries? How the cloister may or may not have conditioned the construction of gender and what will be its repercussions up to contemporary times? With the main objective of determining the possibility of the existence of a male and female "profile" for the construction of a monastic library, the research to be developed throughout this project will focus its attention on the bibliographic collections belonging to two religious houses: the male monastery of S Miguel de Refojos de Basto and the female monastery of Salvador de Vairão, both Benedictines.
 

Starting from the transcription and analysis of inventories, catalogs and other documentation, the research will aim to study manuscripts and printed documents belonging to six scientific-literary fields: (a) Theology and Spirituality; (b) History; (c) Literature; (c) Philosophy and Encyclopedias; (d) Law (canonical and civil); (e) Science, in order to determine the extent to which male and female monasteries were
centres for the dissemination of knowledge that obeyed different knowledge paradigms according to gender. The project will try to determine to what extent the monastery of Salvador de Vairão played an important role in the dissemination of paradigms of female pedagogy in Portugal, namely with regard to the consolidation of a long-term «Catholic» education model. One of the objectives of this project is, therefore, to equate
the dimension related to the “fixation” of education and literacy programs directed at the nuns, in order to understand the moulds in which this process is developed and how this dimension declines in the framework of the exercise of power, which can take on multiple nuances: in the administration of religious houses, in the formation of novices, in writing. In this way, it will be important not to lose sight of the importance that the
book and written culture achieve in the field of female education, as they are configured as fundamental aspects in terms of determining specifically female forms and models of life, with repercussions at the level of the ways of thinking the feminine in Portugal. On the other hand, the study of the presence of books in Latin and books in vernacular may also allow us to outline a profile of a male library and a female library.
 

The project will be configured as an observatory for: (1) the study of two monastic libraries active in Northern Portugal for several centuries,

(2) the development of a methodology for the integrated study of book documentation, the books themselves, and their use for multiple functions, (3) the understanding of the existence of a male and female monastic library “profile”, considering gender as a differentiating aspect,

(4) the use of advanced computer resources for the virtual reconstitution of those library collections, (5) the training of researchers and the development of a multidisciplinary team which can make an innovative contribution to the current research trends on books and reading,

(6) the interaction with local authorities where they are located, (7) the organisation of international scientific meetings, and the open-access publication of our research results and all the documentation assembled, 8) the dissemination of knowledge among a wider audience, in collaboration with local authorities.

The project will be developed by CITCEM, a R&D Unit based at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto, which, drawing up on a solid track record of regional impact and cooperation, remains fully committed to continued fostering of meaningful engagements between state-of-the-art academic research and community engagement.