In the 60s, when religious vocation was still considered an option to consider and nuns were not considered, girls also sang “I want to know what my status will be: single, married, widow or nun”. In order not to close institutions, they are imported from other latitudes. Although we have experienced decades of secularization since then, the old idea of the monastery as a place of confinement for single mothers, women escaping abusive husbands, or causing direct distress to family members is undergoing a shift. A new favorite of recent times with a curious, vengeful and feminist perspective.
Of course, the monastery was in many cases a place of punishment for them, but not always. Today, the perspective on forgotten women has changed. Suddenly, in the 21st century and the Metoo, the old monastic life becomes attractive, or at least the nun is seen from a new historical perspective. The podcast called Felipe’s Daughters, directed by two thirty-something women with different novels and even doctorates in Baroque Literature from Brown University, proves the rightness of women, and especially nuns, during the Counter-Reformation, in an entertaining yet knowledgeable style. The 16th and 17th centuries were the period when they gained the most power. Ana Garriga and Carmen Urbita describe what current feminism can save from the religious: “There are so many ways to relate to each other, to care for each other, to visit each other. They also represent a pedigree of celebration that encourages us to do the same now.
The thesis here is that the nuns, despite their seclusion, knew how to create a paradoxical space of freedom in prison and could devote themselves to writing, music, or research if they chose. Inspired by the figure of Catalina de Erauso, a nun who dressed as a man fighting as an ensign during the conquest of America, Argentinian writer Mariana Cabezón Cámara, author of her latest novel The Naranjel Girls, assures that choosing the convent is “the only way” to the birth to which marriage leads you Escaping the machine situation is a way to devote yourself to what you choose.
Latin America has an indisputable icon: Mexican Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz, a 17th-century nun who transformed her cell into one of the greatest philosophical libraries and intellectual center of the time, free from the dictates of the church. contention. From here we now recover Against the Ignorance of Women (Taurus), a little book which brings together two indisputable letters; one to Sister Filotea de la Cruz, the pseudonym of a bishop who rejected philosophical studies of women, and the other to the Portuguese Jesuit António Vieira, “full of feminist thoughts.” Moreover, her figure is also considered from the LGTBI perspective when the numerous poems addressed to the viceroy of New Spain, the friendly and patron Countess of Paredes, are read through this prism.
In Spain, and a century ago, the great icon is Teresa de Jesús, whose film adaptation of Juan Mayorga’s play Teresa has just been released. He is an intellectual of the first order and also a saint who was persecuted by the suspicions of the Inquisition for his determination and independence. Five novels about him were published in 2015, when the 500th anniversary of his birth was celebrated. The most original and radical perspective was that in Bad Words (later rescued by Anagrama as Últimas afternoons with Teresa de Jesús) Cristina Morales, putting herself in the shoes of the Ávila mystic, wrote a made-up diary in which she reflected on the place. What happened to her as a woman in a society ruled by men with an iron fist and forcing religious women into obedience. How could an order be created under such adverse conditions? According to Felipe’s daughters, monasteries were extremely porous places and the walls could be figuratively torn down by letters. St. Teresa did not stop traveling throughout her life, despite the closure order.
Santa Rosa de Lima
Returning to Latin America, Peruvian Santiago Roncagliolo, in his latest novel, The Year the Devil Was Born (Seix Barral), tells the story of another saint, Rosa de Lima, patron saint of the new world and viceroy of Peru, who narrowly escaped the crime of witchcraft. , but this does not constitute an obstacle to its consecration later. Roncagliolo’s interior drawing does not leave aside the disturbing aspects of sexual life in the monastery, such as how it sometimes turns into a male fantasy, and has little to do with reality. All you have to do is watch Paul Verhoeven’s latest film, Benedetta, which takes aim at the old exploitation style that proliferated in 70s cinema. look, masculine. Benedetta’s case was inspired by a real possession case because that’s how they experienced it. We tried to reconstruct this simple view from our podcast.
Urbita and Garriga are preparing a book on the subject: Convent Wisdom, which will be released in early 2025 under the Blackie Books label and is one of the most desired projects at the last Frankfurt Fair, as it received more than 25 offers in eight years. different countries in addition to the auction of seven American publishers.
“Not all the nuns came to the convent to highlight their vocation, others just wanted to live quietly,” they say. We are currently investigating the case of some saints, Cañitas, who had an affair that forced them to flee from town to town. One of them created a house of saints that allowed them to live an independent life outside the obligations of marriage and the dangers of childbirth.