NOBLE MISTRESSES IS EARLY MODERN SPAIN - A SCHOLARLY and COMPELLING WORK

SCHOLAR WORKS : GVSU : by GRACE COOLIDGE 2007 

While researching I came across this academic paper by a student named Grace Collidge.  It's title is compelling: “A VILE AND ABJECT WOMAN”: NOBLE MISTRESSES, LEGAL POWER, AND THE FAMILY IN EARLY MODERN SPAIN. It focuses on Mistresses in Spain from 1360-1600. Author Collidge researched over 40 Mistresses, This paper is also about the flexibility of illegitimate status as well as changing ideas about what marriage is and when having sex is OK. It says the influence of the Catholic church was strict but there was also an emphasis on forgiveness.

EXCERPT from page 201

In Spain, if there was no legal impediment to their parent's marriage, illegitimate children were known as hijos naturales and had some legal rights of inheritance if they were acknowledged by their father.  If the parents of hijos naturales subsequently married, then these children were automatically legitimated. The Siete Partidas, which is not very clear on the various categories of illegitimacy, nevertheless notes that natural children are called "natural: for the reason that they are begotten contrary to law, and in opposition to the natural order. The other, and much more problematic, category of illegitimate children is that of hijos bastardos or "bastards" whose parents were legally unable to marry at the time of their birth. The various types of bastards are again classified by the nature of their parent's sins.  Incestuousos are children of parents who were related within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity provided by the Catholic Church, adulterinos are children who had at least one parent who was married to someone else, and sacrilegos were children who had at least one parent bound by religious vows.

The mention of sacrilegos reminds me our Mistress of the Month for October 2011 was STEPHANIA SOLOMONE In Love With A Catholic Priest Unable to Marry. I was unable to find an update on how she is a decade later but I don't think she had children with the priest she was in love with as she said their physicality never went beyond hugging..