English Friars Meet Spanish Nuns: Francis Bell’s Remarkable Relation of Their Exchanges in 1633

In the spring of 1633 on route to the general chapter meeting of the Franciscan order in Toledo, the English friar, Francis Bell, and his fellow traveling companions made sure to visit the convents of several Spanish Franciscan visionary nuns celebrated for their sanctity. Bell’s travel journal detailing the Anglo-Spanish encounters forms an important source for English Catholic historiography and for the study of early modern religious women, attesting to the roles mobile friars and cloistered nuns played in support of religious networks of communication and material exchange across transnational borders.