The monastery of «Santa María de Huerta» between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries. Relationship with Aragón and with the regional noble powers

Abstract

The author traces the history of the Cistercian monastery of Santa María de Huerta, since its foundation at the beginning of the twelfth century until its admission into the Castilian Cistercian Observant Congregation at the beginning of the sixteenth century. He exposes the main effects that its location in a border region, between the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, exercised upon its evolution during the first centuries of its history. He also pays attention to another important aspect of its medieval trajectory, the relationships that the monastic community established with the local nobility, in particular with the members of the Hinojosa lineage, until the beginning of the fourteenth century, and with the dukes of Medinaceli, since the Trastamara period. Ultimately the author tries, with the annalysis of a single case, to offer an illustration of the proccess that brought the Cistercian monasteries to lose their pan-European vocation ending up reduced to a position of second-rank actors in the social and political regional stage.