Summary

Within the walls of convents in New Spain, women wrote manuscripts. This type of writing is considered a continuation of a late medieval European cultural practice, adapted and promoted as a means of spreading Christian precepts in America. In the specific context of Counter-Reformation ideology, writing about the dialogue between God and the nun served a didactic, theological, and devotional purpose, especially during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Approaches to the historical study of manuscripts authored by women in convents have broadened greatly in the last two decades of the 20th century and the early 21st century, coming to include the process by which they were incorporated into the Christian theological framework and its underpinnings in New Spain and considering the various types of writing developed in communities of female thinkers as part of New Spain’s intellectual modernity. These writings were shaped by various levels of social interactions and narratives, the first being between the religious woman and her confessor, as well as sometimes a scribe. At other levels, the convent and episcopal authorities also played a role. Finally, chaplains, chroniclers, and religious people with ties to the monastic communities wrote, transcribed, and disseminated these materials. The cataloging of these handwritten and printed texts authored by religious women from New Spain was itself shaped by a historical process in which common elements were adapted to develop texts in different literary canons. One must bear in mind that the different conditions under which women’s convent writings were produced were determined by their purpose, the intellectual capacity of their male and female creators, and the context in which they were written. Some texts were intended to show the world God’s presence manifested through holiness in the Americas, others recounted the convent’s piety fueled by religious vocations and love of Christ, and others sought to highlight the importance of the religious order’s establishment and the feminine purity protected within its walls.