Isabel de Villena

As the first major female writer of a work done in the Catalan language, she composed a number of religious treaties.

She lived in the court of Alfonso V of Aragon (the Magnanimous) and was educated there until 1445 when she became a nun in the Monastery of la Trinidad.

[5] This monastery, La Trinitat, was founded by Queen Maria de Luna, who was also the chief benefactor.

Sor Isabel was a capable abbess who carried out economic policies in order to improve the convent she presided over.

[12] Sor Isabel's book was likely her expression of her dissatisfaction toward the image of women that her male contemporaries created and encouraged in their work.

Sor Isabel decided to write a version of Christ's life in the vernacular for the nuns of her convent.

Mary also has conversations with allegorical representations of Diligence and Charity, echoing the popular philosophical rhetoric of authors such as Boethius in his Consolation of Philosophy.

[22] Isabel de Villena's writing was relatively obscure until recently, primarily because of the language in which it was written and her gender.

[25] She has been compared to another proto-feminist writer of the early modern period, Christine de Pizan.