Guidelines for a reform: The visitation of Pierre de Virey, abbot of claraval, to the monastery of Alcobaça (1492)

Abstract

The visitation of the abbot of Clairvaux Pierre de Virey to the Iberian Cistercian monasteries in 1490-1493 left a written record shedding light upon his conception of the reform of the houses of the Cistercian Order in the peninsular kingdoms. The present paper, an examination of a recently discovered and hitherto completely unknown visitation, considers the different perspectives of that reform for the specific case of the monastery of Alcobaça at the end of the Middle Ages.