Description
- Notes:
- Ms. codex.
- Title taken from modern editions of Madre María de San José's autobiography.
- Manuscript is entirely composed in the hand of Madre María de San José
- Dates of composition supplied by Word from New Spain. The spiritual autobiography of Madre María de San José (1656-1719)
- Madre María de San José, was an Augustinian Recollect nun in the Convent of Nuestra Señora de la Soledad in Oaxaca, Mexico. In this work she described the thirty-one years she spent living on her family's rural hacienda, focussing on her twenty-one year struggle to gain entrance into the convent in Oaxaca. Part 1 tells the story of her life before she entered the convent from 1656-1687 and was composed from 1703-1705. Part 2 begins with her experiences as a professed nun in the Convent of Santa Mónica in Puebla de Zaragoza, Mexico, and includes descriptions of convent life. Parts 2-10 are a chronological account of her life with part 4 containing an account of the founding of the Convent of Nuestra Señora de la Soledad in Oaxaca, Mexico. Parts 11 and 12 are a compilation of miscellaneous writings, including an account of her secular life in part 12 written for Bishop Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz, whose own confessor, Ignacio Asenxo, a canon of the Cathedral of Puebla, burned some of the writings, although her new confessor at the Convent of Santa Mónica, Padre Juan Cárdenas, requested (ca. 1696) that she continue recording her authobiography. Cf. Word from New Spain. The spiritual autobiography of Madre María de San José (1656-1719)
- For a detailed study of this work, please see "Word from New Spain. The spiritual autobiography of Madre María de San José (1656-1719)" by Kathleen Ann Myers, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1993.
- Pagination: pt. 1: [2], 118 leaves; pt. 2: 130 leaves; pt. 3: 130 leaves; pt. 4:117 leaves; pt. 5: 80, [2] leaves; pt. 6: 89 leaves; pt. 7: 88 leaves; pt. 8: 72 leaves; pt. 9: 88 leaves; pt. 10: 53, [20] leaves; pt. 11: [32] leaves; pt. 12: [16] leaves.
Citation
"[Spiritual autobiography of Madre María de San José]"
(1703).
John Carter Brown Library.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:734129/
Relations
Collection:
-
John Carter Brown Library
The John Carter Brown Library is an independently administered and funded center for advanced research in history and the humanities, founded in 1846 and located at Brown University since 1901. Housed within the library's walls is an internationally renowned collection …...