Embodying the Sacred: Women Mystics in Seventeenth-Century Lima by Nancy E. Van Deusen

Abstract

Reviewed by: Embodying the Sacred: Women Mystics in Seventeenth-Century Lima by Nancy E. Van Deusen Evan C. Rothera Van Deusen, Nancy E. Embodying the Sacred: Women Mystics in Seventeenth-Century Lima. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018. Nancy E. van Deusen, currently a professor of history at Queen's University, has published extensively on the history of colonial Latin America. In particular, her The Souls of Purgatory: The Spiritual Diary of a Seventeenth-Century Afro-Peruvian Mystic, Ursula de Jesús (2004) offered an accessible translation of the spiritual diary of the Afro-Peruvian donada Ursula de Jesús and extensive discussion of her world. In Embodying the Sacred, van Deusen analyzes women's spirituality and early modern Iberian Catholicism by examining "the variety and complexity of the individual and collective spiritual pathways taken by renowned and lesser-known women religious figures" in seventeenth-century Lima (1–2). Some of the women in this book have been written about at great length. Nevertheless, she offers many innovative ideas about both well-known and more obscure women. The trenchant analysis in this volume will fascinate readers and will stimulate additional study of the subject matter. Part I—"Material and Immaterial Embodiment"—begins with Isabel Flores de Oliva, or Santa Rosa de Lima. Rosa was "central to the education of a select group of protégées living in the viceregal capital" (25). The women around Rosa learned through imitatio morum—learning from and imitating a wise elder's behavior. Then, during diocesan and beatification hearings, they "rendered the sensorial experiences they had had with their beloved spiritual mother into visible narratives" (45). Early modern readers had a broad understanding of the nature of texts. In addition to creating narratives about Rosa, women also read both the biographies of pious women and the bodies of women in an altered state of consciousness called arrobamiento, or communicating with divine beings. Interestingly, "because mystical transport fell outside the range of conventional behavior," witnesses had to develop a new vocabulary to describe these experiences (61). The final chapter in Part I focused on Ángela de Carranza, who encouraged people to "find meaning in her body and thus own parts of it, while also objectifying, fetishizing, and fragmenting it" (73). People venerated bodily fragments of deceased saints, but Carranza, a living being, made herself into a reliquary. She distributed her nail clippings to grateful people. She bathed publicly and people collected her [End Page 368] bath water. People even fought over her urine and feces. Eventually the Inquisition became involved. After a six-year trial, they condemned her in a 1694 auto-da-fé to silence and enclosure for four years. Part II—"The Relational Self"—begins with a chapter that utilizes a prosopographical approach to analyze hundreds of donadas. A donada had either been donated by someone or donated herself to a monastery in order to engage in service to God and the community. van Deusen offers a nuanced depiction of donadas. Some slave women refused to become donadas, even if doing so meant gaining their freedom. Other women, both free and enslaved, cherished the thought of suffering to gain eternal glory. "These supposedly subjugated women," van Deusen asserts, "did not simply accept the world imposed on them, but neither did they always resist" (115). In the following chapter, van Deusen explores how María Jacinta Montoya, the widow of Nicolás de Ayllón, "understood quite well the politics of sanctity in colonial Lima" (120). She pursued many different goals, most notably promoting her husband's candidacy for sainthood. In addition to corresponding with people throughout Europe and the Americas in pursuit of her goal, María Jacinta portrayed herself as a Mary Magdalene figure saved from her sinful ways by her husband's goodness. Her bid to make Nicolás a saint ultimately failed. She denounced herself to the Inquisition, who maligned her character and exposed her scheming. However, after her death, some came to see her as a visionary blessed by God. The final chapter offers another fascinating case study focused on Josefa Portocarrero Laso de la Vega's epic struggle to choose a religious vocation. The daughter of Viceroy Melchor...