Radical Succession: Hagiography, Reform, and Franciscan Identity in the Convent of the Abbess Juana de la Cruz (1481–1534)

Pablo Acosta-García

doi:10.3390/rel12030223

Abstract

In this article, I study in depth the first vita of the Franciscan Tertiary abbess Juana de la Cruz (Vida y fin de la bienaventurada virgen sancta Juana de la Cruz, written c. 1534), examining it as a chronicle that narrativizes the origins and reform of a specific religious community in the Castile of the Catholic Monarchs. I argue that Vida y fin constitutes an account that was collectively written inside the walls of the enclosure that can help us understand themes, motifs, and symbolic Franciscan elements that were essential for the self-definition of its original textual community. I first discuss the narrative of the convent’s foundation and then examine the penitential identity of the community, highlighting the inspiration that Juana’s hagiography takes from the infancy of Caterina da Siena, as described in the Legenda maior by Raimondo da Capua, and analyzing to what extent the represented penitential practices related to the imitatio Christi reflect a Franciscan Tertiary identity in opposition to a Dominican one. Finally, I address the passages in which the hagiographer(s) discuss(es) the sense of belonging to the Franciscan order rather than the Dominicans, and the mystical figure of Francesco d’Assisi as a founder, guide, and exemplar.

Highlights

Despite the paradoxical fact that the Dominican Caterina’s vita forms the basic structure of Vida y fin, the passages that I have analyzed in the previous subsection about “torments and ulcers, wounds, pains, cold and exhaustion” (“tormentos e llagas, heridas, dolores, frío e cansancio”) need to be contextually understood as a part of a Franciscan way of life based on the imitatio Christi in a convent with an eminently Christocentric devotion
Vida y fin is a collective account of the Convent of Santa María de la Cruz in various respects
There is no documentary evidence that proves that it was composed by several nuns, the text clearly expresses the history of the community from its own perspective. This is suggested by passages that I have analyzed which make difficult to deny the role of Juana’s hagiography as a chronicle of the community

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Beyond these sources, historiography has worked mainly with three very important texts: a collection of seventytwo visionary sermons transcribed during Juana’s life entitled Libro del Conhorte (The Book of Consolation, Conhorte), compiled before 1525 18) and kept in two different copies; a collection of some of the traditions and customs of the convent with a performative character generally known as Libro de la casa (Book of the House) , and the aforementioned first hagiography of Juana, Vida y fin Both the composition of this last work and the transcription of the Conhorte have been traditionally assigned to María.

Textual Analysis

Penitential Identity

Caterina

Conclusions