It is with great sadness that we share the news of the passing of Jill Rosemary Webster, who was a Professor of Spanish literature, culture and history in our Department.
Jill died peacefully at Hazelton Place, Toronto, on April 24, 2025. She was the elder of two children born to Harold James and Dora Elena Webster in London, England on September 29, 1931.
Jill was educated in England earning a B.A. in Hispanic Studies (Honours) at the University of Liverpool, in 1962 and an M.A. in Spanish at the University of Nottingham (with certificate in Education) in 1965. She continued her academic career in Canada gaining her Ph.D in Spanish at the University of Toronto in 1969. During her graduate studies in England, Jill became interested in the independence movement of Catalonia. She conducted interviews with Catalan anarchists who had fled from Franco’s Spain to live in southern France, favouring Catalan independence. Though her notes sadly remained unpublished, she saved and donated them to the post-Franco Spanish archives. The notes she kept from those interviews were considered to be a treasure of otherwise unrecorded data and were welcomed in archives in Spain. In gratitude for them and for her published work, Jill received an "Encomienda de la Orden del Merito Civil" by the King of Spain, Juan Carlos I, on November 9, 2007.
Her academic career included the following roles at the University of Toronto:
1968 – 1995: Teacher (ultimately Professor) of Spanish Language, Literature, and History in the Deptartment of Spanish & Portuguese
1977 – 1979: Assistant Director of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences
1979 – 1994: Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies
1993 – 1994: Associate Chair of Graduate Studies in the Deptartment of Spanish & Portuguese
And as part of her service to the profession, she was the President of the American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain from 1990 to 1995.
In the 1970s, professor Webster had bought an apartment in Barcelona, from where she spent her sabbatical leaves and almost every summer travelling to archives in that region, particularly those in the great medieval city of Vic. In pre-computer days she had amassed several thousand index cards containing her research, of which those on the Carmelites have also been termed “a treasure.”
Professor Webster published over 30 scholarly articles, and two books, Carmel in Medieval Catalonia (Leiden: Brill, 1999), and Els Menorets: The Franciscans in the Realms of Aragon From St. Francis to the Black Death (Toronto: PIMS, 1993). As acknowledgement of her immense contributions to the cultural understanding of Iberia, she was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2021.
A memorial service was held at St. Paul’s Bloor St., 227 Bloor Street East, Toronto, on Thursday, May 8th at 10:30 a.m. A private interment followed.