This volume brings together the studies presented at the international colloquium ‘Writing to the monastery - writing from the monastery’, which was the fourth scientific meeting held as part of the research programme «MISSIVA, Letters from women in Medieval Europe (Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, 8th-15th centuries»), part of the multi-year programmes of the École des Hautes Études Hispaniques et Ibériques-EHEHI (Casa de Velázquez, Madrid). The published texts focus on letters written by medieval women who lived permanently or temporarily in a monastery, or who wrote to someone who was there.In fact, for these women, choosing divine service and spirituality as a way of life meant accepting cloistered life as their horizon, silence as their daily routine, writing as their select instrument of communication, and letters as their only possible means of contact with the outside world. Thus, these studies examine, on the one hand, the correspondence between nuns or abbesses and the outside world, as well as letters written by women of the nobility or the royal family who lived for varying lengths of time in a religious establishment. On the other hand, they seek to ascertain who the women were who corresponded with monasteries, and why they did so.