Colonial Angels: Narratives of Gender and Spirituality in Mexico, 1580-1750

Abstract

The book Colonial Angels deals with Hispano Mexican women in holy orders who contended with the blended ideologies of the New World and Christian Spain. An introductory chapter discusses the various vidas (lives) of Spanish cloistered nuns and demonstrates their tendency for mystical visits to exotic places, especially the Indies. Presumably all these trips were metaphorical, but in any case there were nuns, traveling more conventionally, who actually reached Mexico by around 1530. The author then turns to an actual New World foundation, that of the Carmelite convent of San José in Mexico City. This early seventeenthcentury convent was engineered by two Spanish nuns, Inés de la Cruz and Mariana de la Encarnación. They were primarily influenced by the g reat reformer and Discalced Carmelite, Teresa of Avila. Fortunately for the founders of San José, a new archbishop of Mexico, Juan Pérez de la Serna, became a patron of the convent. Pérez was an enthusiast for Teresa of Avila, who was proclaimed a saint in 1622 (Elisa Sampson Vera Tudela says 1618), shortly after the convent was founded.