Companions for the afterlife: texts, rituals and Early Modern female piety

In 2009, restoration work at the Church of San Esteban in Cuéllar (Segovia, Castile and León) revealed an exceptional burial assemblage that included two bundles of devotional texts interred with the noblewoman Isabel de Zuazo (1474–1544). Among the sixty-six papal indulgence bulls, a small printed booklet entitled La oración de sant León papa en latín. Con la oración del Obsecro was discovered. While the indulgence bulls have been studied as evidence of early print culture in Castile, the booklet has received comparatively less scholarly attention; nevertheless, it opens a new interpretive path. Within a funerary context, their pairing sheds light on the intersection of gender, material devotion and protective ritual in early modern Spain. This article argues that the prayer booklet buried with Isabel de Zuazo functioned not merely as a textual aid to devotion, but as a personalized ritual device designed to structure daily practice, mediate bodily protection and prepare the devotee for death. By analyzing this booklet as an object whose functions extended beyond reading, this study redefines the role of printed prayers in the religious lives of women in the Early Modern period.