A tale of two monasteries

There are two major tourist attractions within the city of Arequipa. One is the museo dedicated to "Juanita" a young woman murdered on a mountain top that froze over and preserved her body for hundreds of years. The other is a monastery. One is a one trick pony with an hour worth of fluff to explain why you paid so much money. The other is a photography fans paradise rivalling Valparaiso.

El monasterio de Santa Catalina de Siena is actually two monasteries, separated not by space, but by time.

For, in space, it is more or less how it has always been. Enormous. Within it's high sillar walls, there are the homes of the up to four hundred and fifty nuns and slaves that have lived there at one time, communal dining, cooking, and storage areas. An upper choir and a lower choir. Plazas. A cemetery.

Originally, it was a convent for rich noble second daughters who, traditionally, were destined to a life of religious devotion. They would show up at the convent, with their dowry, a sizable dowry, the type of dowry only the rich could afford, and any slaves or servants they required to continue living in the manner they were accustomed to.

There are rumours of fornication, wild parties, and debauchery not normally seen outside of a Marquis de Sade tale. But, all of that is apocryphal. It is more likely that they simply continued to live the good life of the wealthy. However, none of this can be known for sure as hardly anyone other than the nuns and their slaves were ever allowed within the walls of the convent.

Their only contact with the outside world was speaking to someone through a darkened portal. With a tiny swing door that could only be open on either the inside or the outside, allowing items to be moved one way or the other.

Later, the church decided that the nuns in this convent weren't suffering enough. They sent in a new head nun. An ascetic, she brought many changes to the convent. No more slaves. All slaves were given the option to leave or become nuns themselves. No more living in your own rooms doing your own thing. Life was communal. Religion was brought to the fore; at meal times, now that they all ate together, one nun would give up eating for the day to read the bible out loud from a pulpit in the corner of the dining area.

Today, I suppose one could argue that we are living in the times of the third monastery, that of museum. Very little of the monastery is devoted to the few nuns who remain, with the majority being open to the public, our entry fees being used to restore the monastery to it's once former glory. And to provide a stable income to those same very few nuns.

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Photographic evidence is on facebook in the folder entitled Monasterio de Santa Catalina.