Writing in the new world cloister : colonial convents and New Spanish culture

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E u ro p e a n U niversity In stitu te

D e p a rtm e n t o f History and C ivilisation

W r i t i n g i n t h e N e w W o r l d C l o i s t e r : C o l o n i a l C o n v e n t s a n d N e w

S p a n i s h C u l t u r e .

E lis a S a m p s o n V e r a T u d e la

Jury:

Dr. F e rn a n d o C e rv a n te s , U niversity o f Bristol

Prof. Kirti C h a u d h u ri, E .U .I.

Prof. O lw e n H ufton, E .U .I. (S u p erviso r)

Prof. R ic h a rd K a g a n , J o h n s H opkins U n ive rs ity, B altim o re

Prof. G ia n n a P o m a ta , U niversity o f M in n e s o ta & E .U .I.

EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE

■I iiiiiiiiiiii mi mi in iijjjjiiiinni mm

European University Institute

D epartm ent of History and Civilisation

W ritin g in th e N e w W o rld C lo is te r: C o lo n ia l C o n v e n ts a n d N e w

S p a n is h C u ltu re .

T h e s i s s u b m it t e d f o r a s s e s s m e n t w i t h a v i e w t o o b t a i n in g t h e d e g r e e o f D o c t o r o f t h e E u r o p e a n U n i v e r s i t y In s t it u t e

Jury:

Dr. Fernando C ervantes, University of Bristol

Prof. Kirti Chaudhuri, E .U .l.

Prof. O lw en Hufton, E .U .l. (Supervisor)

Prof. Richard Kagan, Johns Hopkins University, Baltim ore

Prof. G ian n a P o m ata, University of M innesota & E .U .l.

Elisa Sam pson V e ra T u d e la

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

A ckn o w led g m en ts___________________________________________________________ 4

In tro d u ctio n ________

5

C hapter 1: N ew W orld H isto ries: th e C hronicles o f C olonial C o n ve n ts_________ 1 7

C hapter 2; T h e C onvent o f Sa n J o sé an d the M exican C arm elites._____________ 77

Exemplary Histories_________________________________________________________

C hapter 3: F ro m C onfessional to A lta r; the L etters o f a C riollo N u n

and H e r C o n fesso r's use o f them in h er H agiography. _______________________

The Letters and their New Spanish Context____________________________________ 105

The W riting Nun as S u b ject___________________________________

H

The Politics of the Confessional_______________________________________________

From Confessional Letter to Political Hagiography________________________

129

Writing Lives in New Spain__________________________________________________ 140

C hapter 4: Voyages in the N ew W orld Cloister: th e R epresentation

o f T ravel in th e H agiographie L itera tu re o f N ew Spain.______________________

C hapter 5: C orpus Cristif o r th e F oundation o f a C onvent fo r

In d ia n W o m en ,____________________________________________________

Paradise After the Fact: Late Colonial Society____________________________

170

From Confession to E thnography_____________________________________

C hapter 6: T he E xem plary C loister on Trial: Sa n José in th e

In q u is itio n .___________________________________________________

2 9 7

The Background_________________________________________________ _________ 226

The Clérigas Monigotas________________________________________

238

The Hijas de la O rd e n ______________________________________________________ 284

C onclusion_________________________________________________

29 7

A p p en d ix I _______________________________________________________________ 303

A p p en d ix I I ______________________________________________________________ 3 J3

A p p en d ix I I I _______________________________________________________

3 1 7

A p p en d ix I V _____________________________________________________________ 3 3 s

B ibliography o f W orks Cited\_________________________________________

3 3g

Manuscript Sources__________________________________________________ _ _ _ _ 338

Printed Books_____________________________________________________

340

A c k n o w le d g m e n ts

As befits a study of the relationship between the Old World and the New,

this thesis owes its existence to both worlds. In particular to Italy, where at the

European University Institute I wrote most of the text and to Mexico, where I found

the inspiration to do so. Among the many people in both worlds to whom I owe

substantial debts of gratitude, l will mention only a few: in Europe, Olwen Hufton,

who opened my eyes to history, Anthony Pagden, who showed me what was Old

but could truly be transmuted into the New, Jonathan Murphy, Luisa Passerini, Ana

María V. T. Sampson, Peter Snowdon and Juan Pablo Zuniga, who all read or

commented on different parts of the text. In the Americas, Asunción Lavrin read the

vaguest of first outlines and encouraged and advised, Lourdes Villafuerte Garcia

and José Antonio Robles Cahero introduced me to the Mexican group

Historia de

las Mentalidades and, more importantly, welcomed me into their circle of friends. I

especially want to thank Roberto Beristain of the

Biblioteca Nacional in Mexico City,

whose knowledge and love of the library, combined with an extraordinary generosity

of spirit, led him to guide me with unfailing intuition towards the material I wanted

and liked.

In t r o d u c t io n

E n e s ta c iu d a d d e M é x ic o , c a b e z a d e e s te m u n d o In d ia n o , e m p o rio d e virtu d , le tra s y n o b le za , im á n d e to d a s la s n a cio n es y e n c a n to d e los e x tra n je ro s . A q u í p u e s , n a c ió e s ta n iñ a e l d ía d ie z y n u ev e d e e n e ro , a ñ o d e m il s e te c ie n to s y n u e v e , p o rq u e quiso D io s a la s g ra n d e z a s c o n q u e s u P ro v id e n c ia h a ilu s tra d o a e s ta c iu d a d , a ñ a d irle é s ta d e ta n ta m onta, y h a c e rla c u n a o co n c h a fe liz d e ta n ta p e rla , ja r d ín d e tan b e lla r o s a .1

Sebastiana Josepha de la SS. Trinidad, a professed nun in the convent of San

Juan de la Penitencia whose hagiography was published in 1765, was born on 19

January 1709 in the city of Mexico. For her mother and father, Doña Ana Maria Marin

Samaniego and Don Francisco Maya, this was certainly a happy event, but probably

neither parent could have imagined their daughter’s birth would be described by her

hagiographer, Joseph Eugenio Valdés, as the most magnificent of the splendours with

which God, in His mercy, had seen fit to grace the city. In Valdés's account of

Sebastiana’s life, the saintliness of this

criollo nun is portrayed as being of enormous

symbolic worth, the jewel that sets off the value of the viceregal capital. She is the seal

confirming Mexico City's civility, a quality implicit in its description as an agora of virtue,

letters and nobility, as a magnet for all nations and a delight for all strangers.

The great symbolic worth attributed to the saintly nun in the New World was not,

however, so far from the minds of the Spanish women who undertook the perilous

journey to the Indies in order to found the first convents and who likened their voyages

to the dangers martyrs encountered.2 The recreation of the cloister by these nuns, in

the desert which was the New World, can also be interpreted as a supreme instance of

the exportation of civility to barbarian lands. In this thesis I examine the various

representations produced by both men and women of these nuns’ lives and of their

1 [In this city of Mexico, the head of this world of the Indies, agora of virtue, letters and nobility, magnet of

all nations and enchantress of all strangers. Here, this girl child was bom on the nineteenth of January,

1709 because God, who through his Providence has decorated this city with splendours, wanted to add

this priceless one, and make it the cradle or fortunate oyster of such a pearl, the garden for such a

beauteous rose] Joseph Eugenio Valdes,

(Mexico: Biblioteca Mexicans, 1765)3-4. All translations are mine

unless otherwise indicated. I have modernised the punctuation and spelling as well as resolving all

abbreviations which are not titles for ease of reading.

2 Cf. Natalie Zemon Davis,

(Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 1995)76 on the voyage to Canada in 1639 of Marie de I'lncarnation, foundress of

the first Ursutine convent in North America, as a fulfilment of her desire for martyrdom; "Martyrdom was

not a passive affair, a mere acceptance of meritorious suffering and death [...] Martyrdom was a prize one

sought, a mobilizer for audacious action, a priming of that flesh already disciplined by nettles, an

enflaming of the heart - the seat of bravery - already fuelled by union with the heart of Christ”.

convents. 1 confine my study to Mexico City, the capital of the Viceroyalty of New Spain,

and in the main to seven convents of different religious orders, some very early

Mendicant foundations, and others of orders which arrived much later on the colonial

scene.3 I aim to show that in the context of Spain’s evangelical empire-building

mission, these writings provide a unique opportunity to assess the role and significance

of women in the colonial project.

The individuals and institutions transplanted from Europe to America in the

colonising enterprise arrived in a space conceived of as being without history - the

N ew

Spain. This

tabula rasa afforded the first generation of colonisers undreamt of

opportunities for wealth, fame, and social mobility. It also implied the erasure of any

inconvenient indigenous history which might contradict or complicate the colonial

venture. One of the first recorded actions of the Spaniards was the burning of

indigenous codices, since these were believed to contain not only the ‘rites of the devil’,

but also the histories and genealogies of the vanquished peoples. Although an

oversimplification, the colonial enterprise can indeed be characterised as finely poised

between these two drives of creation and destruction. Inevitably, this balancing trick

grew more and more complicated as time passed and the boundaries between

Spaniard and Indian became increasingly blurred. The continual need to steady these

relations influenced the participation of both the transplanted individual and the

transplanted institution in the many narratives which constituted New Spanish culture.

The founding of the female enclosed orders in Mexico took place some time after the

initial colonising and evangelising drive (the first convent, La Concepción, dates from

1540), and was thus the heir to a conjuncture of multiple cultural forces. The way this is

represented in the writings connected to these institutions and to their inhabitants

sheds light on the fortunes of dominant Spanish norms in New Spain.

Writing in and about the convent is crucial to the cultural analysis of New Spain I

want to pursue not only because it constitutes a form of self-representation but, as

Giulia Calvi points out in relation to writing from the cloister in general, because it is

only the ‘tip of an iceberg' made up of relations between the author and her or his

subject which are

historically

determined.4 Writing in this sense comes to signify a

3 Jesús Marfa, 1578 (Conceptionist), San José, 1616 (Carmelite), Sta. Catarina de Sena, 1580

(Dominican), Nra. Sra. de las Nieves, 1743 (Brigidino), La Enseñanza, 1755 (Compañía de Marfa), San

Felipe Jesús, 1673 (Capuchin), Sta. Clara, 1670 (Poor Clares) and Corpus Christi, 1728 (Franciscan).

4 Giulia Calvi Ed.,

(Roma: Laterza, 1992)viii.

locus of social activity. I want to stress that in the thesis I understand ‘context' not so

much as a back-drop to these texts but as a means of locating the writing nuns and the

exact conventions of their social and intellectual universe precisely, and so of defining

these texts as part of a tradition that was not Spanish but New Spanish, not male, but

female.

I wish to examine the ecclesiastical-religious axis on which one specific culture

turned. In part this means an examination of the spirituality of the culture. What I

observed, however, were not so much lives informed by spirituality as a spirituality

constructed through living actions. The quotidian is the both the vehicle and the tool of

this spirituality.5 Behaviour characterised as spiritual in this period, as so many facets

of the Baroque, has had a host of varied and contradictory labels applied to it.

Assertions of its extravagance are refuted with evidence of the profound coherence of

its popular theology; its 'artifice* belied by the dogmatic and visceral strength of its faith,

its hunger for prodigies and harvesting of superstitions, some accredited with Papal

bulls, finding a counterpoint in rigour and ascesis.6 All these contradictions and

amalgams, confusions and syntheses, mean that as an object of study, Baroque

spirituality constitutes a model of culture in the broad sense of the word, rather than

only denoting a set of specific activities regulating the relation of human beings to their

God.

I approach this history of female spirituality in the New World through a variety

of writings. For example, the material connected to the Inquisition which I examine is a

mixture of personal deposition and transcriptions of oral evidence given by witnesses

during a trial. In many cases the quality of the source is inversely proportional to the

quality of the writing (where excellence is understood to lie in the originality and

individuality of the masterpiece), its historiographic value increasing the more the

writing becomes a frame for repetitive ideas, commonplaces and

topoi. Clearly,

repetition, individuality and originality in this period were conceived of in a manner very

5 Cf. Olwen Hufton on the need for any history

spirituality of this period to consider the role of

women and of the feminine: “With the Reformation and Counter Reformation, the writing of history extends

to a consideration of the responses of the masses [...] Not surprisingly, since women constituted half of

any congregation and religion was a pan of the warp and the woof of their everyday lives and the system

of values to which they subscribed, it is possible to discern a distinctive female presence in and response

to many of the changes.” In The

.

1 5 0 0 - 1 8 9 9

(London: Harper Collins, 1995)365.

6 Cf. León Carlos Alvarez Santaló’s prologue to José L. Sánchez Lora,

(Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 1986).

different to the Romantic tradition of literary value.7 Part of my aim is to recontextualise

these writings, restoring their profound creativity to them by understanding the

rhetorical tradition which formed them. These repeated

topoi interest me most both

because of their expression of collective beliefs, their betokening a desire to impose

certain ideas, and because this pattern was often broken or took on a different form in

New World versions.8 This exercise of contextualisation places my study at the centre

of discussions about the originality of Baroque artistic production and I argue that by

understanding the ‘marginal’ Baroque art of the Americas as having been formed by a

number of specific historically determined factors, my work casts the period’s

preoccupation with issues of novelty into a clearer light.

The writing of virtue and sin, of rebellion and of conformity in this period, is

conceived of as the manifestation of a received (in the sense of learned and diffused)

ideal. Hence the period’s predilection for ‘mirror’ books; mirrors of princes, of noblemen,

of young women, of married women, of widows and, of course, of saints who

constituted mirrors in which everyone could see the Godhead reflected. This didactic

impulse, while certainly considered a corrective tool over minds, is also credited with

forging and fashioning new collective opinions and identities. Thus, the writing I

examine is not didactic in a monolithic way, it does not only show the ‘ought’ of

behaviour, making it solely the theorisation of practices for which there can be no

evidence. Didacticism in this period always begins with a form of seduction consisting

of the alluring exposition of ‘what is’, in order to guide the pupil, by means of

dramatisation and exemplification, towards new and alternative values. I argue that

what ‘was’ in New Spain was radically different to what ‘had been’ in the Peninsula and

that the didactic model and its written form registered such difference.

7 In this instance, the classical traditions of simplicity, transparency and even a certain degree of

clumsiness as betokening an unmediated relation with the ‘real* joined with the mistrust of rhetoric (the

archetypal example of its capacity to deceive embodied in St. Augustine’s renunciation of his profession as

teacher of rhetoric) and with the universal conception of women as ‘empty vessels' to mean that excellence

in writing was conceived precisely as that which obeyed the norm and was decorous.

8 Cf. Gabriella Zarri,

(Torino:

Rosenberg & Sellier, 1990)12 on the strength of the hagiographic model and its ability to register historical

change. For an advocation of the value of an interdisciplinary approach to these texts, see Stephen

Greenblatt,

(Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1992). Greenblatt makes the distinction between texts where the imagination is ‘at work* and those where it

is ‘at play* and claims that the European encounter with the New World brought the imaginative operations

usually below the surface of non-literary texts into the light. "Consequently”, he argues, "it may be possible

to use some of the concerns of literary criticism to illuminate texts written with anything but literary

ambitions..." (23).

Although the study of women’s writing and the history of convent life is well

advanced in Europe, in Latin America it is still a relatively unexplored field.9 In the

thesis, I deal with a varied, little-known, and almost wholly unconsidered body of

writing. Most attempts to understand this kind of writing have been limited to an

analysis of the text, or texts, or they have confined themselves to the historical

conditions of their production. In this thesis I seek to combine these two approaches.

By so doing I hope to go beyond the description and narration which traditionally

accompany the discovery of documents written by or concerning women, and to raise

at least some of the questions posed by these texts. What, for instance, were the

conditions governing a woman’s transformation into a writer? Did the means exist to

reconcile the identity of a woman as a writer with her sexual identity? Did issues of

sexuality and gender inform the creation of literary genres themselves?

r

Access to women’s texts of this period is usually complicated and often

tangential. It frequently involves the examination of works by male authors who use

primary material written by women. Thus, an important part of my work involves an

attempt to understand the cultural context, the imperatives and sanctions, in which the

re-elaboration and use by men of texts written by women took place. In terms of

scholarly interpretations of the cultural activities of the period, a clear consequence of

this re-eiaboration of women's texts is that the issue of gender has often been elided or

ignored by these readings, which effectively reproduce the exclusion of women

practised by the canonical literature of the period. While my own work does not directly

address the issue of canon formation, it is concerned, as the analysis of previously

forgotten writings demonstrates, with the move away from a study of the canonical text

towards a focus on writing as a symbolic cultural form.

9 For a review of the historiography of New World women see Asunción Lavrin, ‘Women in Spanish

American Colonial Society’ in

Leslie Bethell Ed. (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1984) vol.2: 321-355 and by the same author

(Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978). Cf. Marfa Lourdes Aguilar Salas, ‘Imagen de

las Indias en cartas escritas por mujeres en el siglo XVr in

-

Cristina Segura Graiflo Ed. (Madrid: Asociación Cultural Al-

mudayna, 1992)157-171 for an attempt to locate possible sources of writings by women in the Americas

who were not nuns and Josephina Muriel,

(México: UN AM, 1982). Muriel’s

(México: UNAM, 1946) gathers together many previously

unknown writings by women. Electa Arenal and Stacey Schlau's selection and analysis of texts by nuns,

(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989),

remains the most significant recent contribution to the field.

The writings I examine were absolutely necessary to the being of their authors

as nuns, it defines them; it is their ‘work'. By this I mean that the existence of the nuns

is justified by their representation, their writing of themselves as virtuous individuals,

even as potential saints. Their ability to represent themselves is both a source of

vulnerability (because it was always monitored by the authorities) and of strength

(because it was impossible to control completely). Although I deal with literature which

is in many senses similar to propaganda, its techniques are never straightforward or

univoca!.

I may not have uncovered the literary sisters of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, but

in this context it is of little significance that these nuns appear less interesting or less

talented than Sor Juana; their importance lies rather in the fact that they write in

another ambience where exemplarity is more important than aesthetic virtuosity.10 By

this I do not mean to imply that they are conformist. Their exemplarity is in fact better

thought of as a negotiated originality; negotiated with priests, with literary traditions,

with cultural values. What it shows is a novel literary form which, though not necessarily

outstanding according to aesthetic norms, is nonetheless dynamically creative.

There are competing versions of what exactly constituted New Spanish culture

in the period, the one viewing Mexico in opposition to the Peninsula, the other

characterising the colony as subservient to Madrid. These interpretations go from

political appraisals of Viceregal government, seeing it either as an instance of

independent municipal traditions inspired in the medieval

fueros of Castille, or as a

typical example of the encroachment of royal absolutism, to economic analyses which

propose radically divergent opinions of the extent to which the colonies were implicated

in the ‘decline’ of Spain, to more broadly cultural judgements. In these cultural

evaluations, academic culture, artistic production, and civil society in general in New

Spain are alternately praised for their perfect execution of European models or

condemned for their provincialism. In the thesis I contend that both these extreme

explanations are inadequate. In fact, the material I examine suggests some very

complex ways of thinking about and overturning, more than once, the simple

10 Sor Juana Inés de fa Cruz (1648-95) called by contemporaries the tenth Muse’, poet, playwright and

leading intellectual figure, first entered the noviciate of the Carmelite convent of San José. She withdrew,

however, and eventually professed in the convent of San Jerónimo. See Asunción Lavrin, ’Unlike Sor

Juana? The Model Nun in the Religious Literature of Colonial Mexico' in

Stephanie Merrim Ed. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991)61-85 for a

discussion of Sor Juana’s ’originality' in relation to the didactic models of the period. For an attempt to

trace Sor Juana's literary sisters in Colonial America, see Luis Monguió, 'Compartía para Sor Juana:

mujeres cultas en el Virreinato del Perú’ in

16, no. 2 (1983): 45-92.

oppositions between colony and capital, centre and periphery, New and Old, as well as

the distinctions, hardly ever discussed in this context, between male and female and

enclosed and free.

The diversity and range of material I work with in the thesis reflects a belief that the

study of the full complexity of women’s experience in the past, as well as a feminist

reassessment of it, requires both an interdisciplinary perspective and the use of intellectual

approaches which are perhaps more often considered as being mutually exclusive. I hope

that gathering these together will produce a densely textured and persuasive account

which in its concreteness and intimacy will provide a more nuanced understanding of

New Spanish women and the cultures in which they lived.

The New World in this period is less El Dorado or Utopia than the land of

Cockaigne - a land, that is, of change and exchange. Take, for instance, the two most

often quoted examples of the exchange involved in colonisation; the building of Mexico

Cathedral on the site of the most important Aztec temple in the city, and the adoption by the

Spaniards of the Indian maize

tortilla

as a replacement for the wheaten bread of the

Peninsula. The stark disparity between the two examples means they could easily be

thought not so much as evidence of exchange but of brutal imposition on the one hand and

pragmatic appropriation on the other. Without in any sense negating the trauma of the

conquest, 1 would argue that even the adoption of the

tortilla carried with it considerable

cultural weight. Bread, of either kind was a staple food, quotidian and yet symbolically

resonant, especially in the Catholic tradition. Maize grows more quickly than wheat and

requires less care.

Tortillas were prepared exclusively by women at specific times of the

day. All these factors would have meant that the switch from the one to the other inevitably

entailed cultural shifts, in this case particularly in the distribution of time in agricultural work

and in the sexual division of labour.

This thesis is in part an attempt to understand the histories and stories of such

negotiations as these. I thus stress the reciprocity of the exchanges while not ignoring their

often unequal nature. There are hundreds of examples of the kind of 'down-up' transmission

of culture embodied in the

tortilla example, where the dominant Spanish group in some

measure acknowledged the existence and value of the conquered and marginalised

Indigenous group. The investigation of these kinds of exchange is a relatively new field in

studies of the imposition of the Spanish empire in the Indies and a difficult one to document

because it concentrates on spheres which leave less obvious 'traces' than the reproduction

of institutions or the ideological import of the evangelical work of missionaries. I contend that

the writings connected to convents and their inhabitants provides such a source. While

certainly a record of the transplantation of an Old World institution to the New World, they

also reveal aspects of this transplantation which has less to do with the machinery of

imperial domination than with the personal experience of cultural exchange and negotiation.

In the thesis I examine various examples of the range of this exchange, this literary

acculturation, and argue that the New World context necessitated the creation of a new kind

of writing. In the first three chapters I look at the writing of hagiography in New Spain. In the

first two I am concerned with the convent chronicle as the record of an entire community. In

third, I turn to the individual, examining the letters written by a nun to her confessor and his

reworking of them into her hagiography. The fourth and fifth chapters concentrate on

writings connected to the convent which negotiate the ‘otherness’ of the New World in a

much more direct manner; travel narratives and accounts of the spiritual potential of Indian

women. The final chapter deals with the arraignment of Mexico’s Carmelite convent in the

Inquisition on charges of heresy, and analyses what effects such an extreme situation have

on the way the cloister and its nuns represent themselves and their community. The general

structure of the thesis is thus dictated by type of source material (chronicle, hagiography,

epistolary, travel narrative, speculative disquisition, and legal deposition) and in a sense

constitutes a an attempt to trace the fortunes of different types of writing and of literary

genres in their New World incarnations.

All of these sources reflect the value of the convent in colonial society. This was far

from being only symbolic. At the beginning of the seventeenth century convents were

among the few colonial institutions that could lend large amounts of money and by the

end of the eighteenth century, their financial activities as property holders and lending

institutions were considerable. In a society where capital was tied to land or business

enterprises, to have such moveable assets conferred great economic significance. The

convent chronicles and hagiographies are thus testimony to the networks of patronage

in colonial society and to the distribution of wealth within it as well as to the piety of its

subjects.11

11 Asunción Lavrin's work on the socio-economic history of New Spanish convents remains fundamental.

See in this context The Role of Nunneries in the Economy of New Spain in the Eighteenth Century in

no. 46 (1966): 371-93 and 'Values and Meanings of Monastic Life for Nuns in

Colonial Mexico* in

no. 58 (1972): 367-87.

The hagiography, of which most of the chronicles I examine in the first two chapters

are a compendia and the composition of which I trace in the third chapter, has a very

distinct form which relies on well-established conventions. A recurrent pattern in the genre is

for the virtuous individual to find herself in conflict with the sinful society around her. In the

convent chronicle, this pits the saintly nun against her monastic community. In many of the

writings, this conflict is expressed in terms of birthplace, the sinful nuns being insulted

variously for being criollas (of Spanish blood but bom in America), gachupinas (Spaniards in

America), or Indias (Indigenous women), and for exhibiting the supposed characteristics of

these peoples. Thus, the gachupinas are condemned as modemas or lovers of novelty, the

criollas are regalonas or spoilt and indulgent, while the

Indias are

chocolateras or eaters of

chocolate in a period when it was considered an aphrodisiac.

Throughout the New Spanish

vidas the sins of the less virtuous find

exemplae

rooted in experience, in the politics of the moment. Greedy nuns add chilli to their food,

revealing their decadence and their inability to eat simply, in an opposition where

'decadence' is connected to the new spice discovered in the Indies, and 'simple* qualifies

the food of the pure Peninsula. Vain nuns wear numerous jewels, a complaint usually

directed at

criollo women who were considered to be utterly superficial and ostentatious,

while lazy nuns are described as

Indias, ruined by the climate whose pernicious effects

were well established. The specificity of these insults reveals how the issues of birth were

social and cultural before they became racial. They also reveal the extent to which the

chronicle hagiographies were a literature of everyday life in the cloister. In this respect, they

are an extraordinarily valuable source because descriptions of this kind do not exist in more

official literature. In the manuscript chronicle of the Carmelite convent, for example, the

conflict between the reforming nun who is a gachupina and the

criollo monastic community

is represented exclusively in the cultural terms I have described above. When

Parayso

Occidental, a version of the same chronicle comes to be published however, the conflict is

represented as pertaining only to spiritual virtue and religious orthodoxy.

Complaints about Mexican convents which led to reform in the eighteenth

century centred, as the

exemplae of the chronicles do, on many of the factors

associated with the convent’s courtliness. The wearing of ornamental habits, including

silk veils, was censured as were the large number of servants, the constant demands

by the nuns upon their families for money, the enormous number of children allowed to

live in the convents, the selling of merchandise within the cloister and, more generally,

th e c lo is te r’s to o fr e q u e n t c o n ta c ts w ith th e o u ts id e w o rld .12 T h e w ic k e d n u n s in th e c h ro n ic le s , lazy a n d indulgent, lu lle d b y th e c lim a te a n d re n d e re d lascivious b y th e fo o d , w h o s m o k e , w h o w a tc h p lays a n d listen to c o n c e rts in th e ir c lo isters, w h o s e c o n v e n ts a re like sm all cities w h e r e In d ia n s , b la c k s a n d c h ild re n also live a n d w o rk , d e m o n s tra te h o w th e literary m o d e l is re w o rk e d c re a tiv e ly b y th e inscribing of th e historic m o m e n t.

In th e fo u rth a n d fifth c h a p te r s t h e tw o v e ry d iffe r e n t k in d s o f s o u rc e s I e x a m in e s h a re th e n e e d to a s s e s s a n d r e p r e s e n t th e d ire c t c o n fro n ta tio n w ith th e n o v e lty a n d d iffe re n c e o f th e N e w W o rld . T h e e v a n g e lic a l p ro je c t r e q u ir e d th e n a rra tio n o f t h e e x p o rta tio n o f S p a n is h h o lin e s s a n d c iv ility to a n id o la tro u s la n d , b u t it a ls o n e e d e d to a ffirm th a t s u c h a la n d h a d b e e n r e n d e r e d c o m p le te ly C h ris tia n a n d o rth o d o x , a n d w a s c o n s e q u e n tly a fittin g p la c e fo r s u c h p io u s in d iv id u a ls . It is in th e r e p r e s e n ta tio n o f tr a v e l th a t th e s ta k e s o f s u c h a c o m p lic a te d p ro je c t a r e m a d e c le a r . T h e tr a v e l n a r r a tiv e th ro w s in to s h a r p r e lie f, a s n o n e o th e r c o u ld , th is p a ra d o x ic a l d e s ir e to b o th a s s e r t t h e s p e c ific ity o f th e N e w W o rld s e ttin g a n d to d e n y th e p e rn ic io u s e ffe c ts o f its d if f e r e n c e . In e x a m in in g th e c a s e o f th e fo u n d a tio n o f th e c o n v e n t o f C o r p u s C h ris ti fo r In d ia n w o m e n , I a tte m p t to e s ta b lis h a g e n e r a l m o d e l o f th e re la tio n s h ip b e tw e e n re lig io u s lite ra tu re in th e N e w W o rld a n d th e lite r a tu r e o f tra v e l. In o r d e r to a s c e r ta in t h e fe a s ib ility o f th e f o u n d a tio n , th e a u th o r itie s d e m a n d re p o rts fr o m p rie s ts w h o h a v e tr a v e lle d th e c o u n try a n d h a v e h a d v a r ie d a n d lo ng e x p e r ie n c e o f m in is te rin g to t h e s p iritu a l n e e d s o f In d ia n s . In th e ir r e p o rts , th e strict a s s o c ia tio n o f fe m in in e p ie ty w ith th e h a g io g r a p h ic m o d e l is b ro k e n . In s te a d , a w ritin g in tim a te ly c o n n e c te d to th e re a lity o f th e N e w W o r ld c o n t e x t is p r o d u c e d , a w ritin g in w h ic h th e m e ta p h o r o f t h e jo u r n e y s e rv e s to m e d ia t e t h e re la tio n b e t w e e n S p a n is h m a n a n d In d ia n w o m a n , b e t w e e n t h e O ld W o rld a n d th e N e w . T h e te s tim o n y o f th e p rie s ts c e rta in ly fo rm s p a rt o f t h e c la s s ic d e b a te a s to w h e t h e r t h e In d ie s w e r e tru ly C h ris tia n (a n d c iv ilis e d ) o r still p a g a n ( a n d b a rb a ric ). H o w e v e r , th r o u g h its tr a n s fo rm a tio n o f th e in tim a te m a te ria l e x c h a n g e d b e tw e e n p r ie s t a n d In d ia n w o m a n in t h e c o n fe s s io n a l in to in fo rm a tio n o f a m o r e g e n e r a l n a tu r e , it a ls o c o n trib u te s to a n e w e r k in d w ritin g on t h e In d ie s - o n e w h ic h

12 Cf. Asunción Lavrin 'Ecclesiastical Reform of Nunneries in New Spain in the Eighteenth Century* in

no. 22 (1965): 182-203. Fernando Benitez,

(México: Era, 1985) calculates that in 1673 in San Jerónimo, the convent where Sor Juana

Inés de la Cruz was a professed nun, there were 87 nuns, of which 78 were choir nuns, 1 non-choir nun, 3

young nuns with no voting rights and 3 novices and 2 servant nuns keeping only the vow of obedience.

This would have meant - at a conservative estimate - about 200 servants and slaves plus an indeterminate

number of widows, single women and girls who were being educated.

s h a re s th e c o m p a r a tiv e a n d e p is te m o lo g ic a l s ta k e s o f e th n o g r a p h y a n d w h ic h , in th is e x tra o rd in a ry c a s e , a ls o c o n s id e rs is s u e s of g e n d e r.

T h e fin a l c h a p te r c e n tre s on t h e trial of th e C a r m e lite c o n v e n t of S a n J o s é in th e In q u isitio n on c h a r g e s o f h e r e s y . T h e c h ro n ic le o f th is c o n v e n t a n d t h e h a g io g r a p h ie s o f its n u n s a re e x a m in e d in t h e s e c o n d c h a p te r, a n d in th is la s t c h a p te r S a n J o s é a n d its n u n s a p p e a r in a n o th e r g u is e . In th e In q u is itio n , th e n u n s a n d th e ir c o n v e n t a r e s u b je c t to a n o th e r s y s te m o f re p re s e n ta tio n , re q u irin g c o m p le te ly d iffe r e n t rh e to ric a l s tra te g ie s . T h e h a g io g ra p h ie to p o i o f re fo rm in g n u n a n d r e c a lc itra n t c o m m u n ity a r e r e h e a r s e d to s u it th e r e q u ire m e n ts o f th e In q u isitio n ’s fo r e n s ic rh e to ric a n d th e ir te rm s b e c o m e w h o lly p o litic a l: a p o litic s c o n n e c te d to in s titu tio n a l s tru g g le s in th e N e w W o r ld a n d to th e p o w e r o f d iffe re n t e c c le s ia s tic a l fa c tio n s . O n c e a g a in , q u e s tio n s o f th e e x c h a n g e a n d n e g o tia tio n o f c u ltu ra l v a lu e s in th e c o lo n ia l c o n te x t a r e ra is e d . T h e c e n tra l q u a r r e l b e tw e e n th e s e M e x ic a n C a rm e lite n u n s a n d th e ir A rc h b is h o p is th e s a m e a s th a t w h ic h b ro u g h t S ta . T e r e s a into c o n flic t w ith th e c le rg y in S p a in a n d e v e n tu a lly le d to h e r s u c c e s s o rs , A n a d e J e s ú s a n d A n a d e S a n B a rto lo m é , s p littin g th e o rd e r in to o p p o s in g fa c tio n s . In b o th th e P e n in s u la r a n d th e M e x ic a n c a s e , th e C a rm e lite n u n s a r g u e d a b o u t w h e t h e r th e ir s p iritu a l p u rity a n d th e in te g rity o f th e C a rm e lite re fo rm w a s b e tte r s a fe g u a r d e d u n d e r th e ju ris d ic tio n o f th e r e g u la r o r o f th e s e c u la r c le rg y . A lth o u g h th e p o litic a l a n d e c c le s ia s tic a l s itu a tio n w a s c o m p le te ly d iffe re n t, th e C a r m e lite tra d itio n w a s tra n s p la n te d w h o le to th e N e w W o r ld ; w ith a ll its h e rita g e o f fra c tu r e s a n d fis s u re s . S ig n ific a n tly , h o w e v e r , th e N e w S p a n is h v e rs io n o f t h e tra d itio n s p lin te rs in s p e c ific a lly N e w S p a n is h w a y s . T h e tria l o f S a n J o s é c a m e a t a m o m e n t w h e n re la tio n s b e tw e e n P e n in s u la r a u th o ritie s a n d th e M e x ic a n c rio llo é lite w e r e g ro w in g in c re a s in g ly a c rim o n io u s . T h u s , th e te s tim o n ie s c o n ta in e d a s e v id e n c e in th e trial r e p r e s e n t th e c o n flic t b e t w e e n th e n u n s a n d th e A rc h b is h o p , a n d w ith in th e c o n v e n t its e lf, a s a c o m p e titio n b e t w e e n crio llo s a n d g a c h u p in e s a n d , c ru c ia lly , d e m o n s tr a te th e c u ltu ra l v a lu e s a tta c h e d tra d itio n a lly to e a c h o f th e s e g ro u p s .

T h e c o n v e n t, w hich s e e m e d initially th e p e rfe c t institution to tra n s p la n t to th e N e w W o rld (b e c a u s e o f its im plied reje ctio n o f a n y world) b e c a m e in s te a d a n im p o rta n t a r e n a w h e re political in flu e n c e w a s n e g o tia te d strategically b y th e N e w S p a n is h élite a n d th e p e n in s u la r a u th o ritie s . S im ilarly, th o u g h th e subject m a tte r o f th e texts a s s o c ia te d w ith c o n v e n ts w a s s u p p o s e d ly tra n s c e n d e n ta l, th e s e w ritings b e c a m e in ste a d histories o f th e cultural v a lu e s in th e colony. I h o p e to s h o w th a t th e N e w W o r ld c lo is te r, in its th e o re tic a l

d is ta n c e fro m t h e w o rld a n d in its r e a l s u b m e rs io n in it, in th e s ile n c e v o w e d b y its m e m b e rs a n d in th e ir liv ed c o m m u n ic a tio n , w ritin g , a n d s o c ia b ility p r o v id e d t h e s p a c e fo r th e r e p r e s e n ta tio n o f w h a t m o r e u s u a lly r e m a in e d s ile n t; w o m e n a n d th e ir c r e a t iv e ro le in t h e N e w W o r ld .

Chapter 1: New World Histories: the Chronicles of Colonial

Convents

¿Cómo dirá PaterNoster en tas horas, la que acaba de sepultar a Píramo y

Tisbe en Diana? ¿Cómo se recogerá a pensar en Dios un rato,

la que ha

gastado muchos en Gardlaso? ¿Cómo?

P e d ro M a ló n d e C h a id e L a c o n v e rs ió n d e M a g d a le n a ( 1 5 8 8 ) 13

T h e r e a d in g o f s e c u la r lite ra tu re b y o s te n s ib ly p io u s w o m e n in th e E a rly M o d e rn p e rio d c o m p ro m is e d th e d is c ip lin e fe lt to b e n e c e s s a r y fo r th e ir o rth o d o x s p iritu a l b e h a v io u r . S u c h r e a d in g g a v e ris e to d o u b ts a n d s p e c u la tio n a b o u t h e te ro d o x y a n d this a n x ie ty n a tu ra lly e x te n d e d to a n y w ritin g u n d e r ta k e n b y s u c h w o m e n , a n d to its re la tio n to p r o fa n e texts. B o th r e a d in g a n d w ritin g c o u ld b e p e rilo u s a c tiv itie s . T h is c h a p te r lo o k s a t th e w ritin g o f c o n v e n t c h ro n ic le s b y N e w S p a n is h w o m e n a n d e x a m in e s th e w a y s in w h ic h th e ir re c o rd in g of re lig io u s h is to ry s h o w s s tro n g s e c u la r in flu e n c e s . T h e c h ro n ic le s o f th e N e w W o rld c lo is te r p r e s e n t no t o n ly th e p o s s ib ility o f s tu d y in g th e re la tio n s h ip b e t w e e n d iffe r e n t g e n r e s o f w ritin g c o n s id e r e d m o re o r le s s s u ita b le for n u n s , b u t th e y a ls o s itu a te th is s tu d y in a v e ry s p e c ific c u ltu ra l a n d g e o g r a p h ic c o n te x t. T h e c h ro n ic le s a r e c o m p le x te x ts in w h ic h 'id e n tity ' is fa s h io n e d in m u ltip le w a y s - s p iritu a l (th e re c o rd in g o f c o m m u n itie s o f b e lie f), s e c u la r (th e h is to ry o f th e N e w S p a n is h e lite 's p a tr o n a g e ), in s titu tio n a l (th e c o n v e n t a s a so c ia l s tru c tu re ) a n d s u b je c tiv e (th e liv e s o f in d iv id u a l n u n s ). T h e y d o th is , m o r e o v e r , at w h a t is a n e x tra o rd in a rily r e v e a lin g c o n ju n c tu re in tim e a n d s p a c e ; th e fo r m a tiv e y e a rs o f S p a n is h ru le in th e N e w W o rld . T h e c h ro n ic le s e x a m in e d w e r e in te n d e d to n a r ra te th e history o f th e s u c c e s s fu l im p la n ta tio n o f O ld W o rld c o n v e n ts . T h e y h a v e a s a n id e a l th e m o d e l o f a n im m u ta b le in s titu tio n tra n s p o rte d to a d iffe re n t s p a c e (th e c o n v e n t a s tra n s -h is to ric a l, tra n s -c u ttu ra t s p iritu a l c o m m u n ity ) but r e v e a l in s te a d th e m u ta b ility o f th e c o n v e n t a n d , c o n s e q u e n tly , th e in te re s t o f s tu d y in g its s p e c ific ity a s a N e w W o rld in s titu tio n .

T h e N e w S p a n is h c o n v e n t c h ro n ic le , th e 'history* o f a h o u s e o f n u n s , b e a r s a d istin c t r e la tio n s h ip to th e k in d s o f w ritin g fo u n d in th e d ia ry , th e p a m p h le t a n d t h e

13 [How will she say the Our Father at the right times, she who has come from burying Piramus and

Thisbe in the

How will she retire to think of God for a moment, she who has spent many on

Garcilaso? How?]. La

a novel by Jorge de Montemayor was first published in 1559, and re-

printed every three or four years until 1585. A second version by Alonso Pérez (1564) and a third by

Gaspar Gil Polo (1574) were also very popular, ft is not clear which version Malón de Chaide refers to,

but the book's immense success is evident

m e m o ir. M a n y c o n v e n t c h ro n ic le s c o u ld in fa c t b e d e s c rib e d a s c o lle c tiv e o r c u m u la tiv e in s ta n c e s o f t h e s e k in d s o f w ritin g , in te n d e d to im m o rta lis e t h e w o m e n a n d th e ir in s titu tio n .14

The Convent and the City

A c o n s ta n t a n d o v e rrid in g c o n c e r n o f th e c h ro n ic le w a s to in s is t u p o n a p u b lic m is s io n to b e fu lfille d in s p e c ific w a y s w h ic h d id n o t v io la te th e p r iv a te a n d d e v o tio n a l v o c a tio n s o f th e w o m e n w h o p ro fe s s e d in th e c o n v e n ts . T h e a b ility o f th e c h ro n ic le to r e g is te r th e ‘o p e n n e s s ’ o f th e c lo is te r in its p u b lic m is s io n w h ile p ro m o tin g th e p r iv a te p ie ty o f its in h a b ita n ts is p e r h a p s m o s t a p p a r e n t in t h e d e s c rip tio n o f p u b lic c e r e m o n ie s . T h e c o n v e n t o f J e s ú s M a r ia in M e x ic o C ity , fo u n d e d in 1 5 7 8 , w a s o rig in a lly m e a n t to c a te r f o r th e d a u g h te rs a n d f e m a le r e la tiv e s o f c o n q u s ita d o re s w h o w e r e to o p o o r to m a rry ‘h o n o u ra b ly ’, i.e . in a c c o r d a n c e w ith th e ir s o c ia l a n d r a c ia l s ta tu s . H e n c e , in a v e ry re a l s e n s e t h e c o n v e n t w a s c o n c e iv e d o f a s a fo r tr e s s fo r S p a n is h ra c ia l a n d c u ltu ra l v a lu e s a n d th is e x p la in s th e e a g e r n e s s w ith w h ic h C a rlo s d e S ig ü e n z a y G ó n g o r a ( 1 6 4 5 - 1 7 0 0 ) , M e x ic a n s c h o la r , ro y a l c o s m o g r a p h e r a n d th e a u th o r o f th e c o n v e n t’s p r in te d c h ro n ic le , e x p lo its th e ro y a l c a c h e t th a t th e K ing's p a t r o n a g e c o n fe rs o n J e s ú s M a r ia .15 It is a c u r io u s fa c t t h a t h e s h o u ld a ls o r e p ro d u c e th e a p o c ry p h a l s to ry t h a t th e p r e s e n c e o f P h ilip It's ille g itim a te d a u g h te r in th e c o n v e n t is th e m o tiv e fo r t h e C ro w n 's p r e f e r e n c e ; a s to ry w h ic h is o b v io u s ly no t c o n s id e r e d to d e tra c t, b u t in d e e d to c o n firm t h e a b s o lu t e le g itim a c y c o n fe r re d on th e c o n v e n t b y ro y a l fa v o u r.

T h e is s u e o f S ig ü e n z a y G o n g o ra 's political p o s itio n vis á vis th e S p a n is h ru lin g p o w e r s is c o m p lic a te d h o w e v e r , fo r his s y n c re tis t a p p r o a c h to M e x ic a n h is to ry m e a n s h e in tro d u c e s p a e a n s to A m e r ic a n n a tu re a n d A z t e c c u ltu re to c o n s o lid a te his e x a lta tio n o f J e s ú s M a ria 's n o b ility a s a fo u n d a tio n .16 T h e n u n s a r e lin k e d in a

14 Indeed, they have recently been identified as an intrinsic part of Early Modern and Baroque piety.

See for the Italian context the various essays in Calvi Ed. (1992) and in Gabriella Zarri Ed., Finzione e

santità: tra Medioevo ed Età Moderna

(Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1991). For Spain see the work of

Alison Weber, particularly Teresa of Aviia and the Rhetoric of Femininity

(Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1990).

15 Cf. SigOenza y Góngora's opinion of New Spain as overrun with heretics and Jews: inficionada la

Nueva España con bastante copia de Hereges y Judfos

... Carlos de SigOenza y Góngora, Parayso

Occidental Plantado y Cultivado por la Lberal y Benéfica Mano de los Muy Cathólicos y Poderosos

Reyes de España Nuestros Señores en su Magnifico Real Convento de Jesús María

(México: Juan

Luis de Ribera, 1683)115. Hereafter Parayso Occidental.

SigQenza y Góngora clearly conceives of the

cloister as a bastion which will withstand such an invasion.

16 For a review of SigQenza y Góngora's cultural syncretism see Irving A. Leonard, Don Carlos de

SigOenza y Góngora: A Mexican Savant of the Seventeenth Century

(Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1929) and for a more general review of the syncretist debate and its philosophical implications,

p re -h is to ry to A z te c v e s ta l v irg in s , S ig ü e n z a y G o n g o r a d e d ic a tin g th e first c h a p t e r of th e c h ro n ic le to this c o m p a ris o n . B y th e e n d o f th e firs t b o o k , w h ic h d e a ls w ith th e p o litica l a n d e c o n o m ic n e g o tia tio n s n e c e s s a ry f o r th e fo u n d a tio n , th e c ru c ia l r o le o f th e c o n v e n t in N e w S p a in 's c la im to 'c iv ilis a tio n ' is a p p a r e n t:

lMéxico, ciudad]... dignamente merecedora de que en los ecos de la Fama

haya llegado su nombre a los más retirados términos de! Universo, aún no

tanto por la amenidad deleitosísima de su sitio; por la incomparable

hermosura de sus espaciosas calles; por la opulencia, y valor de sus

antiguos Reyes; por la copia y circunspección de sus tribunales; por las

prendas que benignamente les reparte el cielo a sus ilustres hijos;

conseguido ser la Cabeza y Metrópoli de la América; cuanto porque

beneficio de éste, y de otros innumerables Templos, con que se hermosea

su dilatado ámbito se puede equivocar con el Cielo Empíreo, cuando desde

ellos, sin intermisión, se le envía a Dios Nuestro Señor el sacrificio y

holocausto de sus debidos elogios, y a donde viven los que los habitan con

pureza celestial.* 17

G iv e n th is fa n ta s tic id e a lis a tio n of c iv ic s p a c e , it b e c o m e s c le a r th a t th e d e s c rip tio n of la v is h fo u n d a tio n a n d p ro fe s s io n c e re m o n ie s in c lu d e d in a ll th e c h ro n ic le s a r e n o t on ly a n a c c u r a te d e p ic tio n o f th e b a r o q u e ta s te fo r d is p la y , b u t a s tra te g y to a ffirm e c o n o m ic a n d p o litic a l p o w e r .18

In th e s e c e re m o n ie s , th e c o n v e n ts a re r e p r e s e n te d n o t o n ly a s 'p r o d u c e r s ’ o f s a in ts ( a s in t h e h a g io g ra p h y o f v irtu o u s n u n s ) b u t a s re p o s ito rie s o f a ll th e p o w e r a ttrib u te d to im a g e s a n d re lic s in t h e p e rio d . T h e s e re lic s a n d im a g e s , m a n y o f w h ic h w e r e a c q u ir e d fro m th e O ld W o rld a n d tr a n s p o r te d to th e N e w , p la y e d a cru cial ro le in th e a c c re tio n o f ’o rth o d o x y ' b y a p a rtic u la r c o n v e n t, a n d h e lp e d to e s ta b lis h it a s a p u rv e y o r o f C h ris tia n c u ltu re . N o n e th e le s s , a n in d ig e n o u s

cf. Octavio Paz,

(México: Fondo de Cultura

Económica, 1990) especially Part One: 'El Reino de la Nueva Esparta’.

17 [Mexico; a city deservedly honouring that her name has reached the remotest parts of the universe

on the echoes of Fame. She has become the head and metropolis of America not so much because of

the wonderful pleasantness of her location nor for the incomparable beauty of her spacious streets, nor

the opulence and courage of her ancient Kings, nor the number and gravity of her courts, nor the gifts

which heaven has benignly distributed to her sons, but thanks to this and innumerable other Temples

with which her expansive area is adorned and could thus easily be mistaken for the empyrean heaven,

both because of the sacrifice and tribute owing to God which are sent continually to Him from them in

the form of praises and because they are inhabited by those who live in celestial purity] SigOenza y

Góngora (1683) conclusion to 6k. I.

18 Cf. José Antonio Maravall,

(Barcelona:

Ariel, 1990) and M. Gloria Martellucci 'Città del Messico, feste religiose e struttura urbana’ in Vittorio

Minardi Ed.,

(Roma: Istituto Italo Latino

Americano, 1984) vol. Il: 13-30. Also Virginia Tovar Martin,

(Madrid: Ayuntamiento, Delegación de Cultura, 1985). Cf.

Jérôme Monnet '¿Poesia o urbanismo? Utopias urbanas y crónicas de la Ciudad de México, siglos

XVI a XX* in

39 no.3 (1990): 727-766.

p ro d u c tio n o f b o th th e s e k in d s o f o b je c ts is re c o rd e d in t h e c h ro n ic le s a n d c a n c e rta in ly b e lin k e d to th e lo c a l c h a r a c te r o f th e cult o f s a in ts .19

W h a t k in d o f p re s tig e a n d v a lu e d id th e d is p la y o f s u c h im a g e s b rin g to t h e c o n v e n t? T h e d is p la y o f a n im a g e s ig n a lle d n o t o n ly th e c lo is te r ’s s p iritu a l w o r th a s a re p o s ito ry o f su c h holy o b je c ts , b u t a lso b ro u g h t m o r e ta n g ib le p ro fits b y e n c o u r a g in g th e p io u s to m a k e d o n a tio n s a n d o th e r g ifts .20 T h e f a c t th a t th e p rio re s s o f S ta . C a ta lin a m e n tio n s Z o d ia c o M a ria n o, a b o o k d e a lin g w ith t h e im a g e s of th e V irg in th ro u g h o u t N e w S p a in , th e ir p o w e r a n d t h e d e v o tio n s a c c o r d e d to th e m , m a k e s a p p a r e n t th e g e o -p o litic a l d im e n s io n s o f th is is s u e .21 Z o d ia c o is c le a rly p a rt o f N e w S p a in 's 'M a ria n ' c u lt, w h ic h h a d e x p a n d e d r a p id ly s in c e th e s ig h tin g o f th e V irg in a t T e p e y a c , ju s t o u ts id e M e x ic o C ity , in 1 6 4 8 . T h e fa c t th a t O u r L a d y o f G u a d a lu p e w a s first s e e n b y a n In d ia n a n d th a t h e r c u lt a t t r a c t e d th e d e v o tio n o f b o th c re o le s a n d In d ia n s a n d s p r e a d th r o u g h o u t th e c o u n try , a ffir m e d th e o rth o d o x y o f th e v ic e ro y a lty in te rm s w h ic h , th o u g h o f c le a r re lig io u s s y m b o lis m , a r e a ls o o f t e n ‘p a trio tic ’ in to n e .22

T h e c h ro n ic le o f S ta . C a t a li n a p r o v id e s a g r e a t d e a l o f in fo rm a tio n a b o u t t h e p la c e o f th e im a g e in th e c o n v e n t. A la r g e p a rt o f B e a tr iz d e la s V ir g e n e s ’s L ib ro d e M em orias, w h ic h fo r m s th e m a in p a r t o f t h e c h ro n ic le , is g iv e n o v e r to th e h is to ry o f th e e s ta b lis h m e n t o f d e v o tio n s to th e V irg e n d e l R o sa rio . T h e h is to ry ta k e s th e fo r m o f a first p e r s o n n a r r a t iv e b y B e a t r iz h e r s e lf, e x p la in in g h e r r e a s o n s fo r t h e in itia tio n of s u c h a c u lt. T h e p o w e r o f t h e im a g e o f th e V irg in e x te n d s to c o m m u n ic a tin g

19 For the exportation of the decrees of the Council of Trent to the Americas see Gabriel Guarda, ‘La

liturgia, una de las claves del Barroco Americano’ in Minardi Ed. (1984) vol. II: 470-481. Fernando

Cervantes emphasises the huge importance of the cult of saints in the conversion of the New World;

The process of conversion in New Spain was carried out not so much by the teaching of the new

doctrines as by the manifestation of a new power.” in The Devil in the New World: The Impact of

Diabolism in New Spain

(New Haven: Vale University Press, 1994)62. Cf. Stephanie Wood, ‘Adopted

Saints: Christian Images in Nahua Testaments of Late Colonial Toluca’ in The Americas

47, no. 3

(1991): 259-294 tor

how the instructions left in indigenous people's wills in the period reveal a syncretic

spirituality in which the cult of saints played a key role. Cf. Victoria H. Cummins, 'Blessed

Connections: Sociological Aspects of Sainthood in Colonial Mexico and Peru’ in CLAHR

3, no. 1

(1994): 1-18 for an analysis of the high politics which could influence the production of saints in the

New World. She compares the careers of Pedro Moya de Contreras (15307-1592), the third

Archbishop of Mexico and Toribio Alfonso Mogrovejo (1538-1606), the second Archbishop of Lima.

Contreras died in relative obscurity, despite many a hagiographic narrative of him, while Mogrovejo

was eventually canonised.

20 Cf. the miracle in the province of Zumpango when a devoids harvest is saved and he sets up a

confraternity in thanks. Sta Catalina Crónica

68.

21 Francisco de Florencia SJ, Zodiaco Mariano

(México: Colegio de San Ildefonso, 1755).

22 For an analysis of the birth of Latin American nationalism and its connection to religiosity see

Jaques Lafaye,

(Paris: Gallimard, 1974) and David A. Brading,

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). See

also the review article. Jaques Lafaye & James Lockhart, 'A Scholarly Debate: The Origins of Modem

Mexico • Indigenistas vs. Hispanistas’ in

48, no. 3 (1992): 315-330.