Margarida d'Erill, Hospitaller of Alguaire: 1415-1456

Abstract

Membership of the military-religious order of the Hospital of St. John, based on Rhodes, had long included women who were fully-professed religious bound by vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. In 1415 the noble Margarida d'Erill was received into the female house at Alguaire in Catalunya where the commander was her cousin, the Hospitaller Fr. Ramon Roger d'Erill. When Sor Margarida became pregnant soon after, Fr. Ramon Roger was accused of being responsable and there ensued a lengthy scandal in which extensive gossip circulated within the convent; meanwhile Sor Margarida's father, Arnau d'Erill, challenged her cousin to a duel in a long and bitter poem. While the truth of this affair remains obscure, the scandal threw considerable light on the disciplinary and other conditions prevalent within the convent. Fr. Ramon Roger spent most of the rest of his career on Rhodes, where he died in 1432, while Sor Margarida lived on until 1456 in a house which functioned as a comfortable hereditary hostel for aristocratic Catalan ladies.