Sor Maria de Jesus Tomelin (1579--1637), concepcionista poblana: La construccion fallida de una santa.
Item
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Title
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Sor Maria de Jesus Tomelin (1579--1637), concepcionista poblana: La construccion fallida de una santa.
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Identifier
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AAI3047212
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identifier
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3047212
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Creator
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Drago, Margarita.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Raquel Chang-Rodriguez
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Date
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2002
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Language
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Spanish
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, Latin American | Women's Studies | History, Church
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Abstract
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This thesis explores the relationship between the discursive creation of a saint and the search by the criollos of New Spain for a cultural and religious identity. The thesis posits that the construction of the Vidas espirituales of the nuns, written by clergymen, is based on the appropriation and adaptation of discourses, and on the manipulation of popular beliefs.;Nuns were crucial in the colonial city; the patriarchal society assigned them the role of providing feminine models of virtue. Forced into the cloister and encouraged to aim toward the achievement of spiritual perfection, many of the women religious developed visionary faculties. On the "spiritual journey" they received divine revelations, saved souls from purgatory, and worked miracles. Monastic women participated actively in the evangelization project of the Church. Such was the case of the Conceptionist Maria de Jesus Tomelin of Puebla de los Angeles. A woman with a deep inner life, this nun became famous as a visionary. For this reason she attracted suspicions of heresy and was persecuted and interrogated by confessors and bishops. At the end of her life the Church recognized her as an exemplary nun. After her death the people of Puebla revered her and venerated her relics. The interest of the Church in creating American saints gave support to the construction of a model of female sainthood. Between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, to gain the beatification of their compatriot, relatives, ecclesiastics, and city leaders commissioned nine European and American churchmen religious authors to write biographical works or Vidas on Maria de Jesus Tomelin. The project failed. On two occasions Rome recognized the virtues of the nun but questioned the orthodoxy of her visions.;This study of the construction of the Vidas of Maria de Jesus by Francisco Pardo (1676), Diego de Lemus (1683) and Felix de Jesus Maria (1756) establishes that the three works were based on and drew from the biographical manuscripts by Agustina de Santa Teresa, the Conceptionist nun's amanuensis and by Miguel Godinez, her confessor, and proposes that the principal cause of the failure of the hagiographic model for sainthood they all created was the exaggerated self-representation by the nun in her visions, and the hyperbolic portrait of the visionary created by her biographers so far from the image of poverty, humility and chastity demanded of women by the Counter-Reformation Church.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
