Neither Saints Nor Sinners

Abstract

Abstract This book brings together the portraits and autobiographical texts of six 17th-century Latin American women, drawing on primary sources that include Inquisition and canonization records, confessional and mystic journals, and legal defenses and petitions. These sources illustrate how the development of institutions that examined individual merit according to a set of guidelines resulted in an “autobiographical boom” in which people began to dictate or write their life stories for confessors, bishops, lawyers, and judges. These writings provide a window through which we can see the interaction of women with religious and civic leaders and study the voices of early modern women, voices often absent from the more formal literary and historical genres of the period. In every case, the book finds, the women's stories are intricately woven with the larger political and religious movements of the period. The book examines the influence of the Counter Reformation, the interplay between colony and Empire, and the interface of individuals and institutional codes. The book shows that the ideal model for 17th-century Hispanic women was that of the women religious—silent, obedient, cloistered, and virginal. This role is the common ground for all six women studied. Each spent part of her life living as a nun or lay holy woman, yet many deviated significantly from the ideals of silence and obedience. The book concludes that women were neither entirely free from the limits of imposed models of behavior, nor totally constrained by them.

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