Los Conceptas

This afternoon (I'll write about the morning in a separate blog post) we went to Los Conceptas, which is a museum inside of a monastery. Fascinating. There are 22 nuns living there today but there used to be as many as 900. The nuns take a vow of scilence and speak only for 1 hour per day. The current nuns range in age from 16 to 90. They pray a lot but they also sew and cook.

In the museum are some of the garments embroidered by nuns in the past. They embroider garments for the priests with silver and gold thread. Since gold is hard, they embroider while the gold is hot and then it hardens when it cools. Surely it would have taken months if not a year to make the elaborate garments that we saw.

Supposedly this monastery has the best collection of religious art in Ecuador. We saw lots of paintings and statues that were either brought to Ecuador by the Spaniards or painted soon after they arrived. Most had a blend of Inca and Spanish arts. Apparently the nuns are also famous for the cookies that they bake. Some were on sale but I didn't buy any. Frankly, it seems like an odd religion. For example, there were several figures depicting self mutilation where the person would use a whip-like object and strike the back to remind them of the pain that Jesus suffered. Apparently this has finally been outlawed but it is still practiced. The model room that depicts the nun's bedroom also had such a whip. There was also a hospital in the monastery because the nuns are never allowed to leave. But after I saw the whips, I understood why they might need the hospital. BTW, No one from the outside is allowed to see the nuns. So the people who work there talk to them via the phone.

The nuns who are accepted into the nunnery are from the wealthy class because they must bring with them a dowry. Several objects in the museum were in the monastery because they were things that the wealthy girls brought with them - sets of dishes, figurines, large trunks. There were also a lot of toys because it was common for children to be given to the monastery as young a 4. Our group left quite glad to not live the life of a nun.