Autobiography and Letters of a Spanish Nun (Volume 51) (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series) [1 ed.] 086698559X, 9780866985598

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María Vela y Cueto

Autobiography and Letters of a Spanish Nun Ed i te d by

Susan Diane Laningham t r a n sl at e d

by

Jane Tar

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, 51

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND LETTERS OF A SPANISH NUN

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, 51

MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE TEXTS AND STUDIES VOLUME 504

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Ser ie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Ser ie S ed i to r , e ng l i S h te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

Previous Publications in the Series Madre María Rosa Journey of Five Capuchin Nuns Edited and translated by Sarah E. Owens Volume 1, 2009 Giovan Battista Andreini Love in the Mirror: A Bilingual Edition Edited and translated by Jon R. Snyder Volume 2, 2009 Raymond de Sabanac and Simone Zanacchi Two Women of the Great Schism: The Revelations of Constance de Rabastens by Raymond de Sabanac and Life of the Blessed Ursulina of Parma by Simone Zanacchi Edited and translated by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Bruce L. Venarde Volume 3, 2010 Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera The True Medicine Edited and translated by Gianna Pomata Volume 4, 2010 Louise-Geneviève Gillot de Sainctonge Dramatizing Dido, Circe, and Griselda Edited and translated by Janet Levarie Smarr Volume 5, 2010

Pernette du Guillet Complete Poems: A Bilingual Edition Edited by Karen Simroth James Translated by Marta Rijn Finch Volume 6, 2010 Antonia Pulci Saints’ Lives and Bible Stories for the Stage: A Bilingual Edition Edited by Elissa B. Weaver Translated by James Wyatt Cook Volume 7, 2010 Valeria Miani Celinda, A Tragedy: A Bilingual Edition Edited by Valeria Finucci Translated by Julia Kisacky Annotated by Valeria Finucci and Julia Kisacky Volume 8, 2010 Enchanted Eloquence: Fairy Tales by Seventeenth-Century French Women Writers Edited and translated by Lewis C. Seifert and Domna C. Stanton Volume 9, 2010 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Sophie, Electress of Hanover and Queen Sophie Charlotte of Prussia Leibniz and the Two Sophies: The Philosophical Correspondence Edited and translated by Lloyd Strickland Volume 10, 2011

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Ser ie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Ser ie S ed i to r , e ng l i S h te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

Previous Publications in the Series In Dialogue with the Other Voice in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Literary and Social Contexts for Women’s Writing Edited by Julie D. Campbell and Maria Galli Stampino Volume 11, 2011 Sister Giustina Niccolini The Chronicle of Le Murate Edited and translated by Saundra Weddle Volume 12, 2011 Liubov Krichevskaya No Good without Reward: Selected Writings: A Bilingual Edition Edited and translated by Brian James Baer Volume 13, 2011 Elizabeth Cooke Hoby Russell The Writings of an English Sappho Edited by Patricia Phillippy With translations by Jaime Goodrich Volume 14, 2011 Lucrezia Marinella Exhortations to Women and to Others If They Please Edited and translated by Laura Benedetti Volume 15, 2012 Margherita Datini Letters to Francesco Datini Translated by Carolyn James and Antonio Pagliaro Volume 16, 2012

Delarivier Manley and Mary Pix English Women Staging Islam, 1696–1707 Edited and introduced by Bernadette Andrea Volume 17, 2012 Cecilia Del Nacimiento Journeys of a Mystic Soul in Poetry and Prose Introduction and prose translations by Kevin Donnelly Poetry translations by Sandra Sider Volume 18, 2012 Lady Margaret Douglas and Others The Devonshire Manuscript: A Women’s Book of Courtly Poetry Edited and introduced by Elizabeth Heale Volume 19, 2012 Arcangela Tarabotti Letters Familiar and Formal Edited and translated by Meredith K. Ray and Lynn Lara Westwater Volume 20, 2012 Pere Torrellas and Juan de Flores Three Spanish Querelle Texts: Grisel and Mirabella, The Slander against Women, and The Defense of Ladies against Slanderers: A Bilingual Edition and Study Edited and translated by Emily C. Francomano Volume 21, 2013

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Ser ie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Ser ie S ed i to r , e ng l i S h te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

Previous Publications in the Series Barbara Torelli Benedetti Partenia, a Pastoral Play: A Bilingual Edition Edited and translated by Lisa Sampson and Barbara Burgess-Van Aken Volume 22, 2013

Tullia d’Aragona and Others The Poems and Letters of Tullia d’Aragona and Others: A Bilingual Edition Edited and translated by Julia L. Hairston Volume 28, 2014

François Rousset, Jean Liebault, Jacques Guillemeau, Jacques Duval and Louis De Serres Pregnancy and Birth in Early Modern France: Treatises by Caring Physicians and Surgeons (1581–1625) Edited and translated by Valerie WorthStylianou Volume 23, 2013

Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza The Life and Writings of Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza Edited and translated by Anne J. Cruz Volume 29, 2014

Mary Astell The Christian Religion, as Professed by a Daughter of the Church of England Edited by Jacqueline Broad Volume 24, 2013 Sophia of Hanover Memoirs (1630–1680) Edited and translated by Sean Ward Volume 25, 2013 Katherine Austen Book M: A London Widow’s Life Writings Edited by Pamela S. Hammons Volume 26, 2013 Anne Killigrew “My Rare Wit Killing Sin”: Poems of a Restoration Courtier Edited by Margaret J. M. Ezell Volume 27, 2013

Russian Women Poets of the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries: A Bilingual Edition Edited and translated by Amanda Ewington Volume 30, 2014 Jacques du Bosc L’Honnête Femme: The Respectable Woman in Society and the New Collection of Letters and Responses by Contemporary Women Edited and translated by Sharon Diane Nell and Aurora Wolfgang Volume 31, 2014 Lady Hester Pulter Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda Edited by Alice Eardley Volume 32, 2014

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Se r ie S edi to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Se r ie S edi to r , e ng l i S h te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

Previous Publications in the Series Jeanne Flore Tales and Trials of Love, Concerning Venus’s Punishment of Those Who Scorn True Love and Denounce Cupid’s Sovereignity: A Bilingual Edition and Study Edited and translated by Kelly Digby Peebles Poems translated by Marta Rijn Finch Volume 33, 2014 Veronica Gambara Complete Poems: A Bilingual Edition Critical introduction by Molly M. Martin Edited and translated by Molly M. Martin and Paola Ugolini Volume 34, 2014 Catherine de Médicis and Others Portraits of the Queen Mother: Polemics, Panegyrics, Letters Translation and study by Leah L. Chang and Katherine Kong Volume 35, 2014 Françoise Pascal, MarieCatherine Desjardins, Antoinette Deshoulières, and Catherine Durand Challenges to Traditional Authority: Plays by French Women Authors, 1650–1700 Edited and translated by Perry Gethner Volume 36, 2015

Franciszka Urszula Radziwiłłowa Selected Drama and Verse Edited by Patrick John Corness and Barbara Judkowiak Translated by Patrick John Corness Translation Editor Aldona Zwierzyńska-Coldicott Introduction by Barbara Judkowiak Volume 37, 2015 Diodata Malvasia Writings on the Sisters of San Luca and Their Miraculous Madonna Edited and translated by Danielle Callegari and Shannon McHugh Volume 38, 2015 Margaret Van Noort Spiritual Writings of Sister Margaret of the Mother of God (1635–1643) Edited by Cordula van Wyhe Translated by Susan M. Smith Volume 39, 2015 Giovan Francesco Straparola The Pleasant Nights Edited and translated by Suzanne Magnanini Volume 40, 2015 Angélique de Saint-Jean Arnauld D’Andilly Writings of Resistance Edited and translated by John J. Conley, S.J. Volume 41, 2015

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Se r ie S edi to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Se r ie S edi to r , e ng l i S h te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

Previous Publications in the Series Francesco Barbaro The Wealth of Wives: A Fifteenth-Century Marriage Manual Edited and translated by Margaret L. King Volume 42, 2015 Jeanne D’Albret Letters from the Queen of Navarre with an Ample Declaration Edited and translated by Kathleen M. Llewellyn, Emily E. Thompson, and Colette H. Winn Volume 43, 2016 Bathsua Makin and Mary More with a reply to More by Robert Whitehall Educating English Daughters: Late Seventeenth-Century Debates Edited by Frances Teague and Margaret J. M. Ezell Associate Editor Jessica Walker Volume 44, 2016 Anna StanisŁawska Orphan Girl: A Transaction, or an Account of the Entire Life of an Orphan Girl by way of Plaintful Threnodies in the Year 1685: The Aesop Episode Verse translation, introduction, and commentary by Barry Keane Volume 45, 2016 Alessandra Macinghi Strozzi Letters to Her Sons, 1447–1470 Edited and translated by Judith Bryce Volume 46, 2016

Mother Juana de la Cruz Mother Juana de la Cruz, 1481–1534: Visionary Sermons Edited by Jessica A. Boon and Ronald E. Surtz. Introductory material and notes by Jessica A. Boon. Translated by Ronald E. Surtz and Nora Weinerth Volume 47, 2016 Claudine-Alexandrine Guérin de Tencin Memoirs of the Count of Comminge and The Misfortunes of Love Edited and translated by Jonathan Walsh Volume 48, 2016 Feliciana Enríquez de Guzmán, Ana Caro Mallén, and Sor Marcela de San Félix Women Playwrights of Early Modern Spain Edited by Nieves Romero-Díaz and Lisa Vollendorf Translated and annotated by Harley Erdman Volume 49, 2016 Anna Trapnel Anna Trapnel’s Report and Plea; or, A Narrative of Her Journey from London into Cornwall Edited by Hilary Hinds Volume 50, 2016

MARÍA VELA Y CUETO

Autobiography and Letters of a Spanish Nun •

Edited by SUSAN DIANE LANINGHAM

Translated by JANE TAR

Iter Press Toronto, Ontario Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Tempe, Arizona 2016

Iter Press Tel: 416/978–7074

Email: [email protected]

Fax: 416/978–1668

Web: www.itergateway.org

Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Tel: 480/965–5900 Email: [email protected] Fax: 480/965–1681

Web: acmrs.org

© 2016 Iter, Inc. and the Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona State University. All rights reserved. Printed in Canada. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Vela, María, author. | Laningham, Susan, editor. Title: María Vela y Cueto : autobiography and letters of a Spanish nun / edited by Susan Laningham; translated by Jane Tar. Description: Tempe : Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2016. | Series: The other voice in early modern Europe. The Toronto series ; 51 | Series: Medieval and Renaissance texts and studies ; VOLUME 504 Identifiers: LCCN 2016027566 (print) | LCCN 2016039001 (ebook) | ISBN 9780866985598 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780866987271 () Subjects: LCSH: Vela, María. | Nuns—Spain—Biography. | Spiritual life—Catholic Church. | Cistercians—Spain—Avila—History. Classification: LCC BX4705.V427 A25 2016 (print) | LCC BX4705.V427 (ebook) | DDC 271/.97 [B] --dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016027566 Cover illustration: María Vela y Cueto. Frontispiece of Miguel González Vaquero, La muger fuerte… la vida de Doña María Vela… de Ávila (Madrid: Viuda de Alonso Martín de Balboa, 1618). Courtesy, Biblioteca Nacional de España. Cover design: Maureen Morin, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries. Typesetting and production: Iter Press.

To the nuns of Santa Ana who continue to watch over María Vela

Contents Acknowledgments

xiii

Introduction

1

Note on Translation

49

Vida of María Vela y Cueto

53

Letters of María Vela y Cueto

140

Appendix I Chronology of the Life of María Vela y Cueto 167 Appendix II Excerpt from La muger fuerte —The Grave Men Who Spoke with Doña María Vela, and Approved of Her Spirit, As Related in This Account 168 Appendix III Excerpt from La muger fuerte —To the Saintly Doña María Vela, from a Nun in Madrid Who is Much Devoted to Her 169 Bibliography

171

Index

183

xi

Acknowledgments This book would not have been possible without the help of the nuns of Santa Ana. A personal thank you goes to Sor María de los Ángeles, who took me to see María Vela’s tomb and placed Vela’s Vida in my hands on the first day I visited Santa Ana. I am also grateful to Mother María Luisa Gómez, who ensured that Jane and I had everything we needed from the Santa Ana archives, and to Alfonso de Vicente Delgado, whose knowledge of the archives proved invaluable. During this project, the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and United States’ Universities generously funded two research trips to Ávila, for which I am most appreciative. And, as always, I owe a debt that I can never repay to Jodi Bilinkoff and Lynda Coon, who never cease to provide me with constructive critique and unstinting friendship. Susan Laningham

I am indebted to the University of St. Thomas for its support of this translation through a Research Assistance Grant. I must likewise express my sincere gratitude to the nuns of Santa Ana for permitting me to consult Vela’s original manuscripts and manuscript copies. Alfonso de Vicente Delgado, in charge of the archives, answered many questions with patience and insight. Maria Stella Ceplecha and José Manuel de Vega González were gracious hosts in Ávila, taking me to various sites, including the shrine of Our Lady of Sonsoles, mentioned in Vela’s Vida. María made additional visits to the convent on my behalf and I gratefully acknowledge her help and José Manuel’s in deciphering a difficult passage in Alarcón’s letter, included in this volume. Throughout this project, Gábor Tar provided me with unfailing encouragement, for which I am most appreciative. Finally, I thank Susan Laningham, for inviting me to be Vela’s translator and for the insight she has consistently provided regarding Doña María and her world. Jane Tar

xiii

Introduction The Other Voice When the Spanish nun and mystic María Vela y Cueto died in 1617, her handwritten autobiography literally went with her to the grave. Vela’s confessor placed it in her coffin on the day of her burial in the convent of Santa Ana in Ávila, thus ensuring that the manuscript would be safe from the crowds and relic seekers who gathered to pay their respects to a woman already famous for her piety and patient suffering.1 Six years later, intent upon making a case for Vela’s canonization, the bishop of Ávila had her body exhumed, examined for evidence of sanctity, and placed in a new tomb in the wall between the convent chapel and choir.2 The autobiography stayed for a time in a small box in the sepulchral niche, but was eventually transferred to the more salubrious environment of the convent archive, where it has remained for nearly four hundred years. Vela’s once-buried voice— the manuscript known as a Vida (life; autobiography)—appears translated in its entirety in this volume, along with a selection of her personal letters. Ten years before her death, a forty-six-year-old Vela picked up her pen and began writing her Vida, the autobiographical and chronological account of her quest for spiritual perfection in the aristocratic Cistercian convent of Santa Ana in Ávila, Spain. Writing in obedience to her confessor’s command (the same confessor who later placed the manuscript in her coffin), Vela took full advantage of the proffered opportunity to reveal her extraordinary relationship with God and the divine locutions and visions that inspired and directed her every move.3 1. The demand for relics prompted the nuns of Santa Ana to cut Vela’s hair and remove and apportion her veil, scapular, and dress—the very clothing in which she should have been buried. Having denuded the body of its burial attire, the nuns had to dress it in a donated habit. The earliest documentation of Vela’s death and burial comes from the biography written by her last confessor. Miguel González Vaquero, La muger fuerte: Por otro título, la vida de Doña María Vela, monja de San Bernardo en el convento de Santa Ana de Ávila (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1674; 1st ed. 1618), 196–97. 2. Scholars from the university in Salamanca provided signed testimony that Vela’s body showed no sign of corruption, a condition considered characteristic of a saint. The translation of the body into a new sepulcher was ordered by Bishop Francisco de Gamarra and notarized in August of 1623. Monasterio de Santa Ana (hereafter MSA), Legajo de María Vela 3/1, pieza 3, número 5–6. 3. Many medieval and early modern nuns who insisted that they wrote only in obedience to a confessor were employing a rhetorical strategy that preserved their roles as submissive daughters of the church. Attributing to their confessors their incentive to write allowed holy women such as Saint Teresa of Ávila, Ana de San Bartolomé, and Isabel de Jesús to demonstrate their deference to the male hierarchy and the meekness appropriate to women, even as they ventured into the theological debates and self-explanations generally reserved for men. The strategies used by writing nuns in early modern Spain are discussed in Bárbara Mujica, Women Writers of Early Modern Spain: Sophia’s

1

2 Introduction On the pages of her Vida, Vela demonstrated her knowledge of scripture, church doctrine, the monastic environment, hagiography, and human nature as she described the reactions of her peers and supervisors to her efforts to live a holy and ascetic life. Although certainly not without its risks in an era when claims of celestial favors from God could be construed as spiritual arrogance or heresy, the compilation of a formal Vida allowed her to refashion herself, in narrative form, into a replica of great female saints and mystics like Catherine of Siena and Teresa of Ávila, to whom she pointedly referred as she recalled her own sufferings and achievements.4 Vela’s desire to be recognized as a woman singled out by God for sainthood informed the crafting of her Vida and the life she described on its pages.5 From a voice so focused on the personal attainment of spiritual perfection, it might seem Daughters (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004); Alison P. Weber, Teresa of Ávila and the Rhetoric of Femininity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); Gillian T. W. Ahlgren, Teresa of Ávila and the Politics of Sanctity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996); Sherry M. Velasco, Demons, Nausea, and Resistance in the Autobiography of Isabel de Jesús, 1611–1682 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996). 4. Rome canonized Catherine of Siena (ca. 1340–80) in 1461. For a discussion of Catherine of Siena’s influence on Spanish holy women, see Gillian T. W. Ahlgren, “Ecstasy, Prophecy, and Reform: Catherine of Siena as a Model for Holy Women of Sixteenth-Century Spain,” The Mystical Gesture: Essays on Medieval and Early Modern Spiritual Culture in Honor of Mary E. Giles, ed. Robert Boenig (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2000), 53–65. For Catherine’s influence on European history, see F. Thomas Luongo, The Saintly Politics of Catherine of Siena (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006); for Catherine’s literary legacy, Jane C. Tyler, Reclaiming Catherine of Siena (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). A modern English edition of Catherine’s most famous written work is provided in Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue trans. Suzanne Noffke, Classics of Western Spirituality, (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1980). For the pious biography composed by her confessor and spiritual advisor, see Raymond of Capua, The Life of St. Catherine of Siena, trans. George Lamb (Rockford, IL: TAN Books and Publishers, 2003). Teresa of Ávila (1515–82), as her name suggests, shared with María Vela a hometown. She was beatified in 1614, three years before Vela’s death, and canonized in 1622. A prolific writer, her literary corpus, including her spiritual autobiography (Vida), is available in English translation in The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Ávila, trans. and ed. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodríquez, 3 vols. (Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1976–85); for Teresa’s works in Spanish, see Santa Teresa de Jesús: Obras Completas, trans. and ed. Efrén de la Madre de Dios and Otger Steggink (Madrid: BAC, 1986). Monographs on Teresa and her social and political context include Jodi Bilinkoff, The Ávila of Saint Teresa: Religious Reform in a Sixteenth-Century City (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989); Ahlgren, Teresa of Ávila and the Politics of Sanctity; Weber, Teresa of Ávila and the Rhetoric of Femininity. 5. The original manuscript of Vela’s Vida is conserved in the archives of the convent of Santa Ana in Ávila, as is Vela’s Mercedes (Mercies), a summary of her mystical experiences, which she recorded a decade prior to the compilation of her Vida. In her Mercedes, Vela is forthright about her aspirations to sainthood, but in her Vida she more subtly reveals her ambition by comparing her experiences to those of saints. For another case of autobiography used to promote a personal quest for sainthood, see E. Ann Matter, “The Personal and the Paradigm: The Book of María Domitilla Galluzzi,” in The

Introduction 3 that little can be learned about the cares and concerns of “normal” women in late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Spain. Granted, the unusual occurrences in the life of a nun trying very hard to be atypical would not appear to lend insight into the general female condition. But once we divest ourselves of the very notion that Vela hoped to instill in her readers—that God had shaped her into an extraordinary and rare representative of her sex—we find a resourceful woman engaged in a personal struggle to control her own fate by manipulating the environment in which she lived. By arguing that God was on her side, Vela employed one of the few means toward empowerment allowed to her sex in the male-dominated and religiously restrictive society in which early modern women lived.6 Occupied as she was by efforts to negotiate her place as a mystic, ascetic, and future saint, Vela still found time to correspond regularly with her older siblings, Diego Álvarez de Cueto and Lorenzo Cueto.7 The more than eighty letters she wrote to her brothers lack the painful self-consciousness inherent in a Vida that she knew would be read by her confessor and his peers. Complaints in her letters about superiors and fellow nuns indicate a confidence that her words would be read only by the brother to whom they were written. To Diego and Lorenzo, she could describe the drama of her days and her ambition to reform both herself and her convent. The letters provide tantalizing glimpses of monastic procedure and politics, and reveal a degree of flexibility in communal living that made a cloistered ascetic life possible. Just as important, the correspondence opens a window into family relationships within Spain’s minor landed aristocracy, for Vela speaks candidly to the brothers on whom she depended for both material and emotional support.8 To ensure that persons beyond her intimate circle of family and friends understood the significance of her relationship with God, Vela used the vehicle Crannied Wall: Women, Religion, and the Arts in Early Modern Europe, ed. Craig A. Monson (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 87–103. 6. Women who successfully convinced spiritual authorities that God had entrusted them with special gifts or missions include the German abbess Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179), the Italian tertiary Catherine of Siena (ca. 1340–80), and the Spanish reformer Teresa of Ávila (1515–82). For cases in which national or communal concerns or the vagaries of politics determined the positive or negative reception of a woman’s claims of communication with God, see Cecilia Ferrazzi, Autobiography of an Aspiring Saint, ed. and trans. Anne Jacobson Schutte, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Richard Kagan, Lucrecia’s Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Judith C. Brown, Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 7. MSA, Cartas de María Vela (31 fols.). Almost all of Vela’s extant letters were written to her youngest brother, Lorenzo. 8. Vela’s brothers also supported their sister’s quest for sainthood. See Susan Laningham, “Making a Saint out of a Sibling,” Sibling Relations and Gender in the Early Modern World, ed. Naomi J. Miller and Naomi Yavneh (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), 15–27.

4 Introduction approved and even mandated by her confessor—a Vida. She always maintained that she wrote it only at her confessor’s command, and she occasionally expressed a desire to burn it, lest it fall into unfriendly hands, but to refuse to write or to destroy the written account of her life would have snuffed out her voice.9 Writing, despite its risks, gave her the opportunity to speak broadly in a world in which the words of men typically prevailed. Vela understood her environment; she knew how to operate within its constraints. The Vida and personal correspondence selected for this volume stand as testimony to her awareness and manipulation of the gendered politics and theological disputes of the world in which she lived. For that, she deserves our attention.

Life and Career María Vela y Cueto spent the last forty-one years of her life in Ávila, a city located on the high Castilian plain some sixty miles northwest of Madrid. The religious history of Ávila paralleled that of greater Iberia.10 In the early centuries of the first millennium, before Ávila existed as a political entity, Christians and Jews lived as minorities in the Romanized settlements of the region. The dismemberment of the Western Roman Empire during the fifth century CE allowed the Visigoths, who had been Christianized by the Romans, to establish rule over Spain. Christianity flourished unmolested in Visigoth Spain until 711, when the armed forces of Islam arrived. Muslim Berber armies destroyed Visigoth authority and within a decade pushed Christian military resistance to the northwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula, leaving most of Spain in the hands of Muslim overlords. Christians in the north regrouped and struck back, in a long military campaign known as the Reconquista (Reconquest).11 For seven centuries, Muslims and Christians battled for territorial and religious control. In the 1080s, King Alfonso VI seized the strategically important high plain of central Spain and put his son-in-law Ramón of Burgundy in charge of repopulating the area with loyal Christians, an enterprise 9. Weber, in Rhetoric of Femininity, 45–46, appropriates the term “double bind” to describe the paradox that bedeviled a writing nun. Vela’s need, or desire, to tell of God’s favor coupled with her need and/or desire to submit to the will of her superiors placed her in a double bind, in which “compliance with the order on one level violates it on another level.” Humility, Weber reminds us, “is tainted by self-regard,” but as Aviad Kleinberg observes, “total humility—a complete refusal to co-operate with potential admirers—would result in anonymity.” Aviad M. Kleinberg, Prophets in Their Own Country: Living Saints and the Making of Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 111–12. 10. For a history of Ávila written and published during Vela’s lifetime, see Luis Ariz, Historia de las grandezas de la ciudad de Ávila (Alcalá de Henares: Luys Martínez Grande, 1607). 11. For the general military and political history of medieval Spain, see Joseph F. O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), and Bernard F. Reilly, The Medieval Spains (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

Introduction 5 that included the establishment of the town of Ávila. Ávila’s precarious location on an ever-changing frontier prompted the erection of nearly two miles of fortyfoot-high walls punctuated with over eighty watchtowers, built with the labor of Muslim prisoners of war. The fortified city remained in Christian hands and prospered as the war against Islam moved to the south. Centrally located in the kingdom of Castile-León, Ávila played a notable part in the political controversies of the late Middle Ages. In the early 1470s, its citizens declared for the young princess Isabel, even burning an effigy of her rival and half-brother, the reigning king, Enrique IV. Having displayed such overt hostility toward Enrique, things might have gone badly for the people of Ávila, indeed, had Isabel not secured the throne in 1474. Twenty years later, during Isabel’s reign, the city served as the site of the infamous trial, conviction, and execution of several Jews accused of torturing and cannibalizing a young child in Toledo. The judicial “proof ” in Ávila of Jewish intransigency contributed to Isabel and Fernando’s decision in 1492, just months after capturing the last Muslim stronghold of Granada, to expel all Jews from Spain, including the nearly three thousand living in Ávila. By María Vela’s birth in 1561, the population of Ávila had expanded well beyond the city’s medieval walls. The local aristocracy, which included Vela’s family, counted for at least 10 percent of the total, although most Abulenses (residents of Ávila) earned their livings as artisans or manufacturers in an economy based upon the massive flocks of sheep that traversed the Castilian plain. In 1572, Ávila’s population reached a peak of some twelve to thirteen thousand.12 Yet, census and tax records of 1591 show that Ávila’s population had already begun what would ultimately be a 50 percent decline in number by 1632.13 Among the ten thousand or so residents of the city in 1591 were 136 secular clergy, 180 monks and friars, and 335 nuns.14 Santa Ana, the oldest of Ávila’s seven convents, housed fifty professed Cistercian women, among them María Vela. Eighty Carmelites lived in Ávila’s largest convent, la Encarnación, while only fourteen nuns resided in

12. Included in that number were 184 secular clergy who served the needs of the faithful in a variety of ways—as cathedral canons, chaplains to convents and hospitals, parish curates, subalterns, even grammar teachers. James F. Melvin, “Fathers as Brothers in Early Modern Catholicism: Priestly Life in Ávila, 1560–1636” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2009), 40. Melvin provides extensive statistics and analysis of Ávila’s secular priests in the decades surrounding Vela’s life. 13. By 1632, Ávila’s population had been reduced by half, as a result of crop failures, plague, the immigration of aristocrats and bureaucrats to the royal court in Madrid, and the expulsion of Moriscos (Christians of Muslim ancestry). See Jodi Bilinkoff, The Ávila of Saint Teresa, for the social and cultural effects of Ávila’s changing demographics. For a complete demographic of sixteenth-century Ávila, see Serafín de Tapia, “Las fuentes demográficas y el potencial humano de Ávila en el siglo XVI,” Cuadernos Abulenses 2 (1984): 31–88. 14. Melvin, “Fathers as Brothers,” 42–44.

6 Introduction the Reformed Carmelite convent of San José, the smallest and newest house of religious women, founded in 1562 by Teresa of Ávila. Ávila was the hometown of Teresa de Ahumada y Cepeda (1515–82), more commonly known as Teresa of Ávila or Teresa of Jesus.15 By the time María Vela entered the convent of Santa Ana in 1576, Teresa’s mysticism and reform of the Carmelite Order had made her one of the most consequential women of the sixteenth century, as attested by her swift beatification in 1614 and canonization in 1622. Born and raised in Ávila to a wealthy middle-class family, Teresa made her profession as a Carmelite nun in 1536 at la Encarnación, a patrician convent, much like the one that would later house Vela. In the mid-1550s, Teresa developed a mystical piety that prompted in her a desire for spiritual contemplation and prayer that could not be satisfied in the privileged atmosphere of la Encarnación. Thus, inspired by her conversations with God, she left la Encarnación, with its private rooms, servants, and lively social life, in order to establish a strictly ascetic and observant house of nuns. In 1562, she founded in Ávila her first convent of reformed Carmelites—the Discalced (Shoeless)—thereafter traveling throughout Spain to personally set up fifteen more Discalced convents. Teresa penned various treatises on spiritual perfection, as well as a Vida in which she described in dramatic detail her mystical experiences and spiritual progress. She died in 1582, the same year that Vela took the final vows required to become a fully professed nun in the Cistercian convent of Santa Ana. Vela’s attitudes and ambitions were shaped by Teresa’s reputation, as demonstrated by her many references to “Holy Mother Teresa,” but she also drew inspiration from the books that she read.16 Vela was fully literate in Spanish, writing it in a firm, clear hand, and seems to have been, if not proficient, at least comfortable enough with Latin to provide Spanish translations in the margins of texts, “for the benefit of those who could not read the cultured Latin,” according 15. In 1970, Pope Paul VI declared Teresa the first female “Doctor of the Church.” Scholarly biographical treatments of Teresa include Carole Slade, St. Teresa: Author of a Heroic Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Bilinkoff, Avila of Saint Teresa; Ahlgren, Teresa of Avila and the Politics of Sanctity. 16. In her Vida, Vela says that reading Holy Mother Teresa’s admonition against complaining inspired her decision to become a “new nun”; she also reports a vision of the bloody wound in Christ’s side while meditating on Teresa’s writings about the humanity of Christ. Recent investigations into literacy levels and reading habits of early modern Spanish women include Anne J. Cruz and Rosalie Hernández, eds., Women’s Literacy in Early Modern Spain and the New World (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011), in particular the essays by Darcy Donahue, “Wondrous Words: Miraculous Literacy and Real Literacy in the Discalced Carmelite Convents of Early Modern Spain,” 105–22, and Elizabeth Teresa Howe, “’Let Your Women Keep Silent’: The Pauline Dictum and Women’s Education,” 123–38. See, also, Elizabeth Teresa Howe, Education and Women in the Early Modern Hispanic World (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008); Pedro M. Cátedra and Anastasio Rojo, Bibliotecas y lecturas de mujeres (Siglo XVI) (Salamanca, Spain: Instituto de Historia del Libro y de la Lectura, 2004).

Introduction 7 to her confessor and biographer, Miguel González Vaquero.17 Vaquero noted that Vela and her confessors often read together—books such as Audi, filia (Listen, daughter) by Juan de Ávila, a favorite in her early years in the convent, and “a little book about Gregorio López,” which Vaquero brought to the convent for Vela’s perusal just ten months before her death.18 On her deathbed, Vela told the nuns keeping nightly vigil at her bedside that they should read something, rather than sit idly by, and suggested Luis de la Puente’s tract on the Blessed Sacrament. The aristocratic backgrounds of the nuns of Santa Ana ensured a level of literacy that made possible the reading and studying of such theological works. Coincidentally, early-modern artists often depicted Saint Anne, the patron saint of Vela’s convent, not only with an open book in her hand but using it to teach her daughter, the young Virgin Mary, to read.19 Vela’s family counted among the socially elite of Ávila. Kinsmen on her father’s side included a viceroy of Peru, an admiral, a member of King Felipe II’s Council of War, and a bishop of Burgos.20 Too privileged to engage in trade or the professions, men in the Vela family were diplomats, members of the upper clergy, and large landowners. As befitted their status as minor aristocrats in Spain, Vela and her parents and siblings lived on the income generated from the property surrounding the family home in Cardeñosa, five miles north of Ávila. Of her childhood, little is known. Born in 1561 to Don Diego Álvarez de Cueto and his wife Doña Ana de Aguirre, Vela was nine years old and the third oldest of five children under the age of twelve when her father died at the age of thirty-four. In spite of the emotional and financial burden of raising five minors, Vela’s devout mother found widowhood to be a spiritual advantage, for whereas during her married life Doña Ana’s prayers merited only a vision of Christ’s shoulders, her widowed and celibate state rendered her worthy enough to view Christ’s entire face.21 A mother given to mystical devotions and convinced of the benefits of celibacy surely influenced the tenor of her children’s lives, but Vaquero admits that the fourteen-year-old Vela “nearly succumbed to the devil’s temptation to stay in the world, like her mother,” rather than embrace a monastic life. Cognizant 17. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 120v. Vaquero published La muger fuerte in 1618, one year after Vela’s death. At least three more Spanish editions and two Italian ones were printed in the seventeenth century. 18. Ibid., 120r. 19. Artistic portrayals of Saint Anne holding a book contained mixed messages that reflected ongoing theological debates about the value of literacy for women and about gender roles in general. See Emilie L. Bergmann, “Learning at Her Mother’s Knee?: Saint Anne, the Virgin Mary, and the Iconography of Women’s Literacy,” in Cruz and Hernández, Women’s Literacy, 243–61. 20. Vela says nothing about her life before her arrival in Santa Ana; information comes from González Vaquero, La muger fuerte. 21. Ibid., 3.

8 Introduction of her daughter’s indecision, Doña Ana prayed for a sign from God, whereupon the teenage Vela became gravely ill, a circumstance quickly interpreted as an indication of Christ’s jealous love—Christ clearly wanted María for himself; María must enter the convent.22 Thus, encouraged by a divine warning and/or by the insistence of her mother, María Vela chose the convent. Vela began her monastic life in Santa Ana, the oldest and most exclusive of the seven convents in Ávila.23 Established in the 1320s, Santa Ana was from its inception associated with the elite of Spain, for its founder, Don Sancho Dávila, the bishop of Ávila from 1313 to 1355, had charge of the upbringing of the child king Alfonso XI (r. 1312–50). Dávila incorporated into Santa Ana both the nuns and the endowment of an older convent founded by Alfonso the Wise (r. 1252–84). The endowment appropriated by Dávila for the new convent consisted of a yearly tribute of three bushels of wheat produced from the labor of each yoke of oxen worked in the region, a boon confirmed by successive monarchs of Spain.24 Thus, from its beginning the convent of Santa Ana enjoyed a generous perpetual income and royal privileges.25 It maintained its affiliation with the Spanish monarchy over the years, most notably in the late fifteenth century, when the future queen Isabel I of Castile used it as a refuge during the civil wars that led to her ascension to the throne in 1474.26 Monarchs of Spain continued to honor Santa Ana with their royal presence: in 1531, the ceremony presenting the first pair of adult breeches 22. Ibid., 4r. 23. For information on Santa Ana and its foundation, see Ferreol Hernández Hernández, “El Convento Cisterciense de Santa Ana en Ávila,” Cistercium 11 (1959): 136–43. See Francisco Esteban Martín, Venerable María Vela (Religiosa Cisterciense), 1561–1617 (Ávila: Signum Christi, 1986), 34–35; Bartolomé Fernández Valencia, Historia y Grandezas del Insigne Templo  …  de los Santos Mártires, Ávila, 1676 (Ávila: Ediciones de la Institución “Gran Duque de Alba” de la Excma., 1992), 73–75. For the architecture of Santa Ana, see Maruqui Ruiz-Ayucar, “El Claustro del Convento de Santa Ana,” Cuadernos Abulenses 1 (1984): 143–45. For the particulars of the Cistercian observance (rule) given to the nuns of Santa Ana in the late fifteenth century by the bishop of Ávila, see Olegario González Hernández, “Fray Hernando de Talavera: Un aspecto nuevo de su personalidad,” Hispania Sacra 13 (1960): 149–74. 24. Gonzáles Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 4v; Hernández Hernández, “El Convento Cisterciense de Santa Ana en Ávila,” 142. 25. Convents received perpetual incomes from properties bequeathed to them by their patrons and donors. The financial mechanics of convents in early modern Valladolid are discussed in Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt, Religious Women in Golden Age Spain: The Permeable Cloister (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005), 47–104. 26. Scholarly treatments of Isabel I of Castile include Peggy K. Liss, Isabel the Queen: Life and Times, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Barbara Weissberger, ed., Queen Isabel of Castile: Power, Patronage, Persona (Woodbridge, UK: Tamesis Books, 2008). Isabel seems to have maintained a strong affection for Ávila. She and Fernando buried their only son (d. 1497) in the church of the Dominican monastery of Santo Tomás, in Ávila, from whence came many of the confessors to the nuns of Santa Ana.

Introduction 9 to the child later to become Felipe II took place in Santa Ana, and King Felipe III visited in 1600, three years before Vela began writing her Vida.27 With its illustrious heritage, Santa Ana catered not only to royal tastes, but also to the needs and desires of elites like the Vela and Cueto family. In Ávila and elsewhere in Spain, the interests of patrician families intersected with those of the church: both upheld the uncompromising notion of social order and hierarchy; each confirmed the authority invested in the other. Spanish aristocrats who became friars, monks, or nuns typically maintained their cognizance and expectation of social privilege—as indicated by the prefix doña used by nuns in Santa Ana—and families extended their patronage networks into the monasteries or convents where their sons and daughters resided. Family members who took monastic vows often joined the same religious Order or even entered the same religious house; in Santa Ana, Vela and her younger sisters joined their paternal aunt, Isabel de Cueto. The Vela men similarly combined devotion to the church with duty to the family. Soon after the Vela sisters entered Santa Ana, their brother, Lorenzo, second son of the family, began his tutelage in the household of their uncle, Cristóbal Vela, the bishop of Burgos, one of Spain’s premier prelates. Like his sisters, Lorenzo Cueto took monastic vows that joined him to the Cistercians. He also became a priest, which allowed him to act as Vela’s confessor during the difficult years in Santa Ana when no other cleric dared risk his career for her sake. Both of Vela’s brothers championed her cause. Diego Álvarez de Cueto, as the oldest male and only sibling outside the religious life, oversaw the family’s finances and thus regularly sent money to his sister—alms to cover her daily expenses in addition to the installments of the dowry and provisions required by convents.28 Until his death in 1608, Diego concerned himself with his sister’s well-being and reputation, personally going to the bishop of Ávila on her behalf and declaring her sanctity in public.29 Vela belatedly took her vows in 1582, after an unusually long novitiate of over five years, extended perhaps by her precarious health. She suffered from a variety of life-threatening ailments—pleurisy, epilepsy, and intermittent fevers— and was often too weak to walk without the support of others. When she came to 27. Hernández Hernández, “El Convento Cisterciense de Santa Ana en Ávila,” 141. 28. Vaquero mentions as evidence of Vela’s piety that she never had money in her hands, knew the value of only two or three different coins, and preferred that the alms sent to her by her brother Diego be given into the care of the abbess. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 48r. Although nuns relinquished all claims to family inheritance when they made their final vows, a new novice’s family did enter into a financial contract with the convent. The contract stipulated the amount of the dowry and funding for provisions that would be paid either in full or, more typically, in yearly installments for the life of the nun. For specifics of the contract between a novice’s family and the convent, see Lehfeldt, Religious Women in Golden Age Spain, 83–86. 29. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 104v.

10 Introduction the convent in 1576, she had to be carried in a chair, which prompted the nuns who observed her arrival to comment that the young woman had come to them only in time to die.30 Vela lived, but her mother’s death in 1581 was followed by that of her youngest sister Isabel in 1583 and her sister Jerónima in 1585, and, with the passing of her aunt in the mid-1590s, Vela found herself without any principal female kin. Ironically, it had been her health that concerned family and friends, yet she continued to survive. Vela’s physical survival may have surprised a number of her peers, but not nearly as much as her claims, in 1598, of personal communication with God. She insisted that God had promised her a crown of sainthood, if she would forgo meals on days she received the Eucharist. Fasting on communion days was not an impossible or life-threatening act of devotion, unless one insisted upon taking communion every day. According to Vela, God wished her to do just that—communicate daily and take the wafer, the flesh of Christ, as her only food. As proof of God’s desire, whenever Vela knelt at the communion window on days she was forced to eat meals, her jaws locked. For the next five years, from 1598 to 1603, a succession of abbesses, confessors, local priests, and famous theologians attempted to determine the veracity of Vela’s claims through a series of “tests” that included commands that Vela fast, or not fast; take communion, or forgo communion. The tests succeeded only in increasing speculation, rumor, resentment, and fear. Each new abbess took a different approach, some accusing Vela of obstinacy and disobedience, others helping to facilitate her efforts to obey the directives she received from God.31 A number of confessors tried to resolve the situation—Francisco Salcedo from 1596 to 1598, Julián de Ávila for two months in 1599, and Gerónimo de San Eliseo from 1600 to 1603. All resigned their appointments, finding themselves ill equipped or disinclined to handle the controversy and criticisms they encountered. Prominent theologians and monastic officials from across Spain offered their opinions; their proffered remedies ranged from exorcism to sugared melon. Vela’s emotional and physical health deteriorated as she struggled to obey both earthly supervisors and God—a difficult task, since divine and human instruction often contradicted. Throughout, accusations of demonic possession, fraud, heresy, and insanity competed with assertions of Vela’s godliness. 30. Ibid., 4. 31. An abbess whom Vaquero does not identify vouched for the accuracy of Vela’s written account of these tumultuous years. Ibid., 114r. Vela and Vaquero occasionally provide names of abbesses and dates of election, but otherwise identification is difficult, due to the absence in the Santa Ana archives of an official record of office holders prior to 1714. Normally, the convent elected a new abbess every three or four years, but resignations and ill health could result in more than the usual number for any given time. Vaquero says that the abbess elected on March 8, 1598, was the first of four (unnamed) who served within three years. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 71v.

Introduction 11 The turning point came in the spring of 1603, when several nuns reported Vela to the Holy Office of the Inquisition. The inquisitor appointed Father Juan de Alarcón, prior of the Dominican monastery of Santa Tomás, to investigate. After speaking with Vela, Alarcón, who up to that point had been an outspoken critic of what he called her “excesses,” admitted that he had based his previous negative opinion of her on rumors. He declared her to be blameless, but the encounter left Vela severely depressed. Miserable and filled with self-loathing, she remained inconsolable and “fit only for hell,” as she put it, when a chance encounter brought Dr. Miguel González Vaquero into her life. Years later, Vela recorded in her Vida that during their first conversation, “I felt such great satisfaction and gladness of heart that I scarcely knew myself.” Vaquero took charge of the beleaguered nun, becoming her confessor and spiritual director. To her critics, he presented her as a woman whose desire to draw close to God had inspired savage attacks by a jealous devil. He convinced the nuns of Santa Ana that Vela’s devotion and sufferings were genuine, and that she was, above all else, properly obedient. His skillful handling of the controversial nun soothed concerns, and soon the nuns of Santa Ana collectively came to terms with Vela’s extraordinary piety.32 The supervision of a strong confessor, the exoneration by the Inquisition, the assistance provided by her brothers, her popularity among the younger nuns, and her own persistence earned for her the respect of her peers and supervisors. Vela spent forty-one years cloistered in Santa Ana, where, in spite of frequent illness and debilitating pain, she performed the duties and exhibited the virtues generally expected of nuns. As organist for the choir, Vela contributed in an essential way to the convent’s status, for it was music that often drew visitors and potential donors.33 She also directly abetted the day-to-day operation of Santa 32. On the significance of confessors in the lives of controversial holy women, see Jodi Bilinkoff, Related Lives: Confessors and Their Female Penitents, 1450–1750 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005); John W. Coakley, Women, Men, and Spiritual Power: Female Saints and Their Male Collaborators (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006). For Vaquero’s management of Vela, see Susan Laningham, “Maladies up Her Sleeve?: Clerical Interpretation of a Suffering Female Body in Counter-Reformation Spain,” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal (University of Maryland Center for Renaissance and Baroque Studies) 1 (2006): 69–97; Jodi Bilinkoff, “Confessors, Penitents, and the Construction of Identities in Early Modern Ávila,” in Culture and Identity in Early Modern Europe (1500–1800): Essays in Honor of Natalie Zemon Davis, ed. Barbara D. Diefendorf and Carla Hesse (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 83–100; Darcy Donahue, “Writing Lives: Nuns and Confessors as Auto/ biographers in Early Modern Spain,” Journal of Hispanic Philology 13 (1989): 230–39. 33. For nuns and their music in early modern Spain, see Colleen Baade, “Music and Misgiving: Attitudes towards Nuns’ Music in Early Modern Spain,” in Female Monasticism in Early Modern Europe, ed. Cordula van Wyhe (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008), 81–95; Baade, “Music and MusicMaking in Female Monasteries in Seventeenth-Century Castile” (Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 2001). Studies of music in early modern Italian convents include Craig A. Monson, Divas in the Convent: Nuns, Music, and Defiance in Seventeenth-Century Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2012); Colleen Reardon, Holy Concord within Sacred Walls: Nuns and Music in Siena, 1575–1700 (New

12 Introduction Ana by holding appointed and elected offices. As sacristan she was responsible for the maintenance and handling of the holy vestments and vessels used by priests who performed the mass for the nuns. At age thirty-nine, she became mistress of novices, a position usually held by much older nuns, since the office entailed the care, instruction, and proper influencing of the young women who would soon take their final vows. In many ways, Vela’s career as a nun reflected the vitality of the Counter-Reformation. Even the rumor, actually true, that she wanted to start a new, reformed convent was met with approval and enthusiasm by a number of Santa Ana’s nuns, who viewed her as a vehicle through which they might all participate in the early modern trend of monastic renewal.34 For the last fourteen years of her life, Vela communed with God and worked on her Vida in the tranquility of a supportive convent. Her reputation as a holy woman grew; reports circulated that she performed miracles. When she died in 1617, she did so with the patience, fortitude, and insight expected of a future saint. To Vaquero, who stayed at her bedside during her final seven days, she revealed certain proofs of a posthumous reward—a vision of herself with a rich crown of gold and jewels, and a divine revelation that the devil, “who had made threats about the hour of her death,” was in a rage, having been defeated.35 Vela’s death on September 24, 1617, elicited the sort of response often generated by the passing of saintly persons. The people of Ávila gathered en masse at the doors of Santa Ana, begging for a glimpse or even a relic from her body. In order to comply with the wishes of the increasing crowds, the nuns acted swiftly, stripping Vela of her habit and veil and cutting her hair in order to produce the much-desired relics of their now-revered holy woman.36 The nuns were not alone in facilitating the acclaim of their most popular sister. The process to have Vela beatified—the first step toward canonization—began immediately, with the bishop York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Robert L. Kendrick, Celestial Sirens: Nuns and Their Music in Early Modern Milan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Monson, Disembodied Voices: Music and Culture in an Early Modern Italian Convent (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). For a modern recorded adaptation of compositions written by early modern nuns and/or performed in the convents, see Lucrezia Orsina Vizzana, comp., Songs of Ecstasy and Devotion from a SeventeenthCentury Convent, audio CD, Linn Records, 1999. 34. See González Hernández’s introduction to Vela, Autobiografía, 7, ft. 8. In Vela’s letter to her brother Lorenzo about the enthusiasm in Santa Ana for a reformed convent, the implication throughout is that she generated the desire for reform. 35. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 194r–196. The death expected of a candidate for sainthood is discussed in Carlos Eire’s analysis of Saint Teresa of Ávila’s last hours. Carlos M. N. Eire, From Madrid to Purgatory: The Art and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth-Century Spain (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 370–424. 36. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 196–97, describes the reaction of the people of Ávila; the handling of the body by the nuns of Santa Ana; and the funeral. See Eire, Madrid to Purgatory, 425–68, for treatment of a saint’s body after death.

Introduction 13 of Ávila himself conducting the proceedings.37 Several nuns, townspeople, and priests testified to her saintliness, as did the last surviving member of her immediate family, her brother Lorenzo. But having Vela declared a saint required a long and sustained effort, and the initial fervor ultimately waned in the face of economic and social upheaval in Ávila.38 The movement lost momentum, although Vela remained a celebrated holy woman in Spain and beyond, with a reputation disseminated and maintained by Vaquero’s biography and the determination of the nuns of Santa Ana not to forget their would-be saint. The reactions of nuns, confessors, visiting theologians, and the townspeople of Ávila to the claims set forth by Vela stemmed from a uniquely Spanish spiritual culture, in which traditional family values, monastic idealism, mysticism, saintmaking, and the Inquisition all played a part. Vela lived and died in an environment that fostered the development of mystics, visionaries, and living saints, but not all who aspired to sainthood could expect a warm reception in CounterReformation Spain. The religiously charged atmosphere of the times exacted a heavy toll on those who avowed supranatural gifts, inasmuch as the burden of proof was always on the claimant. Yet, throughout her life, even when her peers and superiors considered her a nuisance, a menace, or just plain delusional, Vela could rely on a religious sensitivity in Spain that acknowledged the possibility of divine favor visited upon individuals.

Religion in Counter-Reformation Spain Religious Uniformity María Vela composed her Vida in a Spain noted for its Catholic homogeneity. The Spanish church brooked no compromise with the tenets and reforms of Protestantism that spread across Europe in the sixteenth century. On points of doctrine, it remained thoroughly wedded to Rome. When asked how his kingdom survived the Protestant threat, Spanish monarch Felipe II (r.1556–98) gave credit to the Inquisition that had been established by his great-grandparents Fernando and Isabel. But while the Holy Office of the Inquisition did, indeed, vigorously prosecute those suspected of the Lutheran heresy, few could be found who actually espoused the teachings of Martin Luther. “Lutherans,” or the equivalent, made up only 7 percent of those arrested by the Holy Office between 1540 and 37. Bilinkoff proposes that the bishop of Ávila saw opportunities for his own advancement in his campaign to have María Vela canonized. Bilinkoff, The Ávila of Saint Teresa, 194–96. In hopes of seeing Vela beatified, her supporters provided over 500 pages of evidence. The testimonies are still in manuscript in the archives of Santa Ana. MSA, Legajo de María Vela 3/1, pieza 3, número 1–4. 38. For a corollary between Ávila’s economic situation at the beginning of the seventeenth century and an abatement of public interest in María Vela, see Bilinkoff, The Ávila of Saint Teresa, 184–99.

14 Introduction 1614.39 During the height of prosecution for Protestant beliefs, from 1558 to 1562, the Holy Office convicted fewer than three hundred Spaniards and foreigners for alleged adherence to Luther’s teachings. Fewer than fifty cases came before the Inquisition prior to 1558, and only two hundred were accused in the later decades of the century.40 In a population of approximately eight million, visible dissenters were few. But rather than credit the Inquisition, Felipe might have looked to Spain’s unique historical experience as a principle motivation for Catholic uniformity. When Visigoth rule disintegrated before the invading armies of Islam in 711, the vast majority of Spanish Christians (and Jews) found themselves relegated by Quranic law to a legal, social, and literal second-class status. As Christian warlords and kings gradually succeeded in regaining territory during the slow and many-pronged military response of the Reconquista they inherited the potentially explosive conglomerate of religions, and like their Muslim counterparts adjusted their attitudes and laws for the benefit of a stable realm. The political necessity of accommodating such religious diversity resulted in a unique cultural amalgamation, fostered by the vicissitudes of conquest and reconquest, maintained in the interests of peace, and occasionally punctuated by violence.41 For seven hundred years, there existed in the Iberian Peninsula a situation peculiar to the rest of Europe: three religions inhabiting the same secular space.42 But during centuries 39. Henry Kamen, Spain, 1469–1714: A Society of Conflict (London: Longman, 1983), 185. 40. Kamen argues that Protestantism made virtually no headway in Spain. He maintains that although Lutherans were occasionally executed for their beliefs, the Reformation “remained, for Spaniards, a phenomenon that did not affect them.” See Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 83–102. 41. Violence, like law, helped to establish identity, and should not be seen as a mere product of competition, exclusion, or fear. See David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). 42. For the cultural and social history of medieval Spain, see Roger Collins and Anthony Goodman, eds., Medieval Spain: Culture, Conflicts and Coexistence (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002); and Mark D. Meyerson and Edward D. English, eds., Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Medieval and Early Modern Spain: Interaction and Cultural Change (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000). Scholarship that focuses on Muslims and Moriscos in Iberia includes Richard Fletcher, Moorish Spain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992, 2006); Brian A. Catlos, The Victors and the Vanquished: Christians and Muslims of Catalonia and Aragon, 1050–1300 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007); L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500–1614 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); Mary Elizabeth Perry, The Handless Maiden: Moriscos and the Politics of Religion in Early Modern Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). For the Jewish experience in medieval and early modern Spain, see Pamela A. Patton, Art of Estrangement: Redefining Jews in Reconquest Spain (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012; Jonathan Ray, The Sephardic Frontier: The “Reconquista” and the Jewish Community in Medieval Iberia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008); Gretchen D. Starr-LeBeau, In the Shadow of the Virgin: Inquisitors, Friars, and “Conversos” in Guadalupe, Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).

Introduction 15 of living alongside their Islamic and Jewish counterparts in territories newly won or lost, most Spanish Christians kept the faith. The tensions of coexisting and competing with Islam guaranteed that they developed a religious homogeneity that could withstand the advances of sixteenth-century Protestantism. A determined monarchy also worked to ensure a uniform Catholic faith. When Fernando and Isabel captured the last Muslim stronghold of Granada in January of 1492 and in March of that year expelled all Jews from Spain, toleration ceased to be a political necessity; religious heterodoxy became a requirement. Jews who wished to live under the aegis of the Catholic monarchs could do so only by converting to Christianity. In 1502, what Muslims remained received the royal order to convert or depart from Granada and Castile; those in Valencia and Aragon were given the same choice in 1526 by Carlos I, grandson of Fernando and Isabel. Whether New Christians (descendants of Jews or Muslims) or Old Christians (those with no trace of Jewish or Muslim ancestry), all Spanish Christians faced scrutiny by the Holy Office of the Inquisition.43 Spain did not invent the inquisitorial process; papal appointees had been investigating, trying, and convicting heretics in Christian Europe since 1231. But developments in Spain during the fifteenth century convinced Isabel and Fernando that extraordinary measures were needed to rid their realms of false Christians, in particular former Jews who had converted to Christianity but still secretly practiced Judaism. Having accepted Christian baptism rather than endure deportation or worse, converts from Judaism (conversos) were often suspected of “judaizing”—holding to Jewish beliefs, observing Jewish rituals, and even attempting to entice true believing Christians into error. In the eyes of church and crown, the heretical judaizers flouted the authority of God and the Catholic monarchs. Thus, in 1477, Isabel, queen of Castile, and Fernando, king of Aragon, petitioned Pope Sixtus IV for permission to appoint inquisitors to ferret out false Christians.44 The pope complied, and the monarchs established state-sponsored tribunals equipped with office buildings and prisons in strategic cities throughout their realms. 43. Useful studies of the Spanish Inquisition include: Kamen, Spanish Inquisition; Mary E. Giles, ed., Women in the Inquisition: Spain and the New World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); Joseph Pérez, The Spanish Inquisition: A History, trans. Janet Lloyd (New Haven: Yale University, 2005); Helen Rawlings, The Spanish Inquisition (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005); Lu Ann Homza, ed. and trans., The Spanish Inquisition, 1478–1614: An Anthology of Sources (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2006). For specific cases, see Francisca de los Apóstoles, The Inquisition of Francisca: A SixteenthCentury Visionary on Trial, ed. and trans. Gillian T. W. Ahlgren, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Sara Tilghman Nalle, Mad for God: Bartolomé Sánchez, the Secret Messiah of Cardenete (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001); StarrLeBeau, In the Shadow of the Virgin. 44. The Inquisition had no jurisdiction over Jews or Muslims, but any Jew or Muslim who became a Christian was subject to the same religious discipline as a Christian with “pure” blood.

16 Introduction The Holy Office had wide and far-ranging authority, which tended to overshadow any leniency shown.45 In addition to heresy and Judaizing, chargeable offenses included superstition, blasphemy, sacrilege, bigamy, and sexual misconduct. The majority of cases, in fact, dealt with the more “mundane” sins. In Catalonia, where the Inquisition prosecuted over half of all cases in Spain between 1578 and 1635, no convictions for heresy appear in the surviving records. Instead, sexual offenders made up 20 percent of those sentenced; another 20 percent were Inquisition officials who had abused their authority; 19 percent were clergy who had similarly corrupted their offices; 15 percent were blasphemers; 13 percent were laypersons who had shown disrespect to the church and church property; 11 percent were found guilty of superstition, and 2 percent were horse thieves.46 Anyone could initiate an investigation by the Inquisition. Accusers made depositions under oath and presented them to the tribunal of the Holy Office or to an appointed local agent, usually a parish priest or monastic official. The appointee made an inquiry, which often enough culminated in his decision that no heresy, blasphemy, sacrilege, or other sin had been committed and therefore no further action need be taken. When several nuns in Santa Ana accused María Vela of heretical propositions and nonconformity, the Holy Office sent Juan de Alarcón, the Dominican prior from the nearby monastery of Santo Tomás, to conduct the interview. After speaking at length with Vela, Alarcón declared that she had committed no offense and the matter should be closed. Had the Holy Office’s representative not found Vela to be blameless, inquisitorial procedure would have moved relentlessly forward.47 In cases where the accused failed to defuse concern, theologians met to further assess the merits of the case and interview witnesses. An arrest resulted in a formal trial, which usually, but not always, resulted in a conviction. Punishments varied according to the crime: fines; lashes; confiscation of property; confinement in a monastery or convent; the perpetual wearing of a special penitential garment called the sanbenito that thereafter marked one as an offender; service in the galleys of the Spanish fleet; or execution.48 Death sentences were rare and typically reserved for the most 45. Attitudes could vary, even in the Holy Office, toward unorthodox religious theory and practice. See Stuart B. Schwartz, All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008). 46. Kamen, Spanish Inquisition, 258–59. See Jaime Contreras and Gustav Henningsen, “Forty-Four Thousand Cases of the Spanish Inquisition (1540–1700): Analysis of a Historical Data Bank,” in The Inquisition in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Sources and Methods, ed. Gustav Henningsen and John Tedeschi (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986), 100–129. 47. For the particulars of the process, see Kamen, Spanish Inquisition, 174–213. 48. Those condemned to death or other physical penalties such as lashes were relajado al brazo secular—turned over to the secular arm of the government—so that the church did not bear the guilt of shedding blood or taking life. Likewise, inquisitors and clergy did not apply with their own hands the torture that seldom played a role during interrogations, but assigned it to municipal employees.

Introduction 17 stubborn heretics or those who had relapsed into grievous errors for which they had been previously prosecuted. In 1561, the year of Vela’s birth, the Inquisition issued its first official instructions for the proper method of conducting an auto de fe (act of faith): the ceremony, often public, during which the Holy Office revealed the convicted and their crimes. The auto functioned as a grand gesture of the sacrament of penance, which had been stripped of its sacral nature by Protestants. In Catholic Spain, onlookers and participants witnessed the entire penitential process of contrition, confession of sins, and judgment.49 The punitive spectacle that followed—the procession through the streets, the humiliating garments, public censure, and fines or physical punishments—served to dramatize the penance and conformity required of all Spaniards.50 In sum, the auto and its aftermath educated and warned of the consequences of defying church and crown. The church demanded doctrinal compliance and reverence toward the sacraments, yet provided its members with some leeway for the performance of personal piety. Whether or not a Christian took monastic vows, went on a pilgrimage, or eschewed all but the most basic obligations imposed by the church typically depended upon one’s circumstances, qualifications, and desires (unless the pious act was enjoined upon a sinner as a form of penance). Even the decision about how often to take communion rested largely with the individual. The Fourth Lateran Council had declared in 1215 that Christians must communicate at least once a year, thus establishing a minimum requirement but not a limit on how often one could receive the body of Christ. By the fourteenth century, monastic orders in particular and also such notables as Jean Gerson (1363–1429) and Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471) advocated more frequent, even weekly, reception, and a few pious Christians made daily communion a goal. Thus, when the traditional definition of the Eucharist came under attack by Protestant reformers in the sixteenth century, the practice of frequent communion was not unknown, although usually observed only in monasteries and convents.51 The Company of Jesus (Jesuits), founded in 1534, proved instrumental in fostering a renewal of Eu49. In her consideration of the auto de fe as an enactment of the ultimate and final judgment of souls by God, Maureen Flynn notes that the penances were so constructed that “one could virtually experience the underworld prior to one’s death.” Maureen Flynn, “Mimesis of the Last Judgment: The Spanish Auto de Fe,” Sixteenth Century Journal 22, no. 2 (1991): 291. 50. See Edward Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 207–9. Muir points out that because the penitents wore special garments, they were “stripped of the normal indicators of their status.” The convicted literally lost their place in society when they could not wear their own clothing. Flynn observes that this “inversion of fashion” prompted the convicted to feel alienated, even from self. Flynn, “Mimesis of the Last Judgment,” 286. 51. For the Spanish context, see Donald F. Marshall, “Frequent and Daily Communion in the Catholic Church of Spain in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries” (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1952).

18 Introduction charistic piety that included a demand for more frequent communion.52 As popular preachers and confessors, Jesuits were well placed to encourage and intervene when necessary on behalf of those who wished to partake of Christ’s body on a regular basis. Vela’s desire for daily communion coincided with a Jesuit, Francisco Salcedo, becoming her confessor in 1598, and it was Salcedo and fellow members of the Company who lobbied for her right to do so, notwithstanding vigorous opposition from the Dominicans in Ávila. Disapproval and even hostility toward the practice and encouragement of frequent communion rested chiefly upon the argument that a constant reception of the Eucharist would inure communicants to its significance and lessen the gravity of the occasion, an apprehension only strengthened by the disproportionately high number of women who sought and consumed the consecrated host.53 But the church permitted its members a choice in the matter, to take communion daily, or monthly, or as advised by a confessor of one’s own choosing. Always, and regardless of how often a communicant approached the altar, the doctrine of the Eucharist remained inviolate. Doctrinal hegemony did not mean, however, that Spanish Christians fully understood theological tenets, or even cared to learn them. Ignorance and apathy, rather than deliberate unorthodoxy, prompted many an inquiry by the Inquisition, but a populace uneducated in the principles of its faith was not peculiar to Spain. Throughout Europe, errors in the exposition of doctrine and religious observance, committed unintentionally or with purpose, proved more and more disconcerting to a church already feeling the effects of schism and well aware of the failings of an alarming number of venal and exploitive clergy. Thus, in 1545, in order to address the ignorance, corruption, and discord undermining Catholic unity, Pope Paul III convoked the most important ecumenical council since the thirteenth century: the Council of Trent. The council of Catholic bishops that met in 1545 in the small Italian town of Trent for the purpose of correcting abuses in the church, clarifying doctrine, and repudiating the teachings of Protestants did so under the protection of the 52. The Company’s stance on the reception of the Eucharist is discussed in John W. O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 152–57. Ann Astell suggests that the Jesuit proclivity for frequent communion revealed itself, from the beginning, in the group’s name, Compañia de Jesús (Company of Jesus)—compañia, literally, those who eat pan (bread) together. Ann W. Astell, Eating Beauty: The Eucharist and the Spiritual Arts of the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 203–4. 53. Detractors worried that women who demanded frequent communion would also demand undue attention from their confessors. The welfare of the confessors, rather than the women, seems to have been the larger concern. See Bilinkoff, Related Lives, 92–95. Stephen Haliczer notes in his study of thirty “approved” Spanish female mystics that 40 percent of them took daily communion, while 41.7 percent of fifteen “unapproved” mystics (those whom the authorities declared frauds) also received the Eucharist each day. Stephen Haliczer, Between Exaltation and Infamy: Female Mystics in the Golden Age of Spain (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 214.

Introduction 19 grandson of Fernando and Isabel: Carlos I, king of Spain and Spanish America, who also ruled the Holy Roman Empire as Charles V.54 Having inherited the throne of Spain in 1516 and the elected position of Holy Roman Emperor in 1519, Charles witnessed, quite literally, the birth of the religious dissent that would split Europe, for as emperor he presided over the Diet of Worms in 1521, at which Martin Luther declared himself unwilling to reconcile with the church of Rome. As the most powerful monarch in Europe, Charles utilized both his political and military strength to defend Catholic Christianity, using Spanish troops to battle Protestant forces in the Holy Roman Empire and the Netherlands. The Council of Trent could not convene without Charles’s approval. Even the pope had to negotiate with the ruler of half of Christendom.55 The Council of Trent stands out as the last major assessment and reorganization of the Church, until Vatican II in 1962.56 The European bishops who met between its convocation in 1545 and conclusion in 1563 discussed, debated, and ruled on theological and operative issues. They confirmed the doctrine of original sin, justification by faith and works, transubstantiation, the efficacy of the seven sacraments, and upheld the use of the Vulgate, the veneration of saints, clerical celibacy, and the existence of purgatory.57 In addition, the Council passed measures to ensure conformity of ritual: a new mass, a new prayer book, the training of missionaries, and the establishment of seminaries for parish priests in every 54. The town of Trent was located just within the border of the Holy Roman Empire, over which Charles V ruled from 1519 to 1556. Charles kept intact and expanded a realm that eventually stretched west from the eastern Danube to the South Pacific, and included the Spanish Americas (the Caribbean, Mexico, Peru), Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, the Franche-Comté, Luxemburg, half the Italian peninsula (the Kingdom of Naples and the Duchy of Milan), the Tyrol, Bohemia, the major Mediterranean islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and the Balearics (he donated the Maltese Islands to the Knights of Saint John in 1530), Tunis and Oran in North Africa, and territories claimed by the Ottoman Turks, such as Transylvania. For Charles’s reign, see James D. Tracy, Emperor Charles V, Impresario of War: Campaign Strategy, International Finance, and Domestic Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 55. In 1527, Charles’s anger over Pope Clement VII’s support of the French-led League of Cognac resulted in the sack of Rome by imperial troops. The pope’s dependence upon the emperor’s good will is reconsidered by Barbara McClung Hallman, “The Disastrous Pontificate of Clement VII: Disastrous for Giulio de’ Medici?,” in The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture, ed. Kenneth Gouwens and Sheryl E. Reiss (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005), 29–40. 56. Trent’s long-term effects are seen in perspective in Raymond F. Bulman, Frederick J. Parrella, and Jill Raitt, eds., From Trent to Vatican II: Historical and Theological Investigations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). General studies of the Council of Trent and the Counter (or Catholic)Reformation include John W. O’Malley, Trent: What Happened at the Council? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013); R. Po-chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540–1770, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); and the useful and varied collection of essays in David Luebke, ed., The Counter-Reformation: The Essential Readings (Walden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 1999). 57. The complete Tridentine decrees, in English, are provided in The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, trans. H. J. Schroeder (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 1978).

20 Introduction diocese. Having thus declared the doctrine and observances of the church, the Council then looked to Catholic monarchs to put its decrees into practice. Charles’s son and heir to the Spanish throne, Felipe II, followed his father’s policy of enforcing strict adherence to Roman Catholicism. Only two weeks after Pope Pius IV formally issued the final decrees of Trent in the winter of 1564, Felipe became the first European monarch to give royal assent to the Council’s program of reforms.58 Felipe had no intention, however, of allowing the pope to dictate, let alone implement, religious improvements in Spain. He insisted upon the traditional royal rights of patronage over the church enjoyed by his greatgrandparents, Fernando and Isabel. With characteristic thoroughness, Felipe began overhauling the monastic communities in his realm. Spanish monasteries and convents found to be lax or corrupt were closed or occupied by Felipe’s soldiers until they complied with reforms; the most grossly negligent houses were disbanded altogether, their residents expelled, and their property surrendered to the crown. All nuns had to be cloistered in compliance with Trent’s decrees, even those who earlier made their solemn profession in convents that permitted freedom of movement beyond the monastery walls. As hoped, Felipe’s emphasis on improvement invigorated Spanish monasticism. The number of monasteries and convents across Spain increased significantly, with new versions of the traditional orders appearing.59 The Carmelites, for example, witnessed a reform movement spearheaded by Teresa of Ávila that resulted in the establishment of the Discalced Carmelites.60 Religious innovation was not impossible in Spain, as long as orthodox tenets remained inviolate. The Reformation sweeping across northern Europe did not result in a reactionary atrophy of ideas in Spain. Novel forms of pious Catholic expression were more carefully controlled, but continued nonetheless. Significantly, the possibility of the encroachment of Protestant “heresy” had much the same effect on sixteenth-century Spaniards as the reality of Muslim “occupation” had had on previous generations: the threat helped to solidify religious homogeneity. In the end, Spain was Catholic, doctrinally orthodox, devoted to the saints, committed to the reforms of Trent, and buttressed by its monarchy, its Holy Office, its clergy, and its monastic orders. 58. The dissemination and effectiveness of Tridentine reforms in Spain are discussed in Anne J. Cruz and Mary Elizabeth Perry, eds., Culture and Control in Counter-Reformation Spain (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992); Allyson M. Poska, Regulating the People: The Catholic Reformation in Seventeenth-Century Spain (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1998); Alain Saint-Saëns, Art and Faith in Tridentine Spain, 1545–1690 (New York: Peter Lang, 1995). 59. Helen Rawlings, Church, Religion and Society in Early Modern Spain (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 73–76; see table 3.5 of compiled data on male religious orders, 75. 60. Teresa’s reforms were not without controversy. See Ahlgren, Teresa of Ávila, and Bilinkoff, The Ávila of Saint Teresa.

Introduction 21

The Counter-Reformation Convent Maria Vela resided with fifty other Cistercian nuns in el Real (royal) Monasterio de Santa Ana, where piety found expression in lifelong vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.61 The nuns’ primary duty was to pray, both for their own salvation and the salvation of the world. Eight times a day they joined together as one body to recite aloud the prescribed divine offices: matins (between 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning); lauds (before dawn); prime (daybreak); terce (around 9:00); sext (noon); none (about 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon); vespers (sunset); and compline (before retiring for the night). The divine offices consisted of prayer, hymns, and the reading or recitation of scripture.62 Nuns, like monks and friars, followed a monastic rule specific to the order to which they belonged—in Santa Ana, the nuns found guidance in the Benedictine rule, composed in the early sixth century by the Italian saint Benedict of Nursia, which provided a schedule for the eight divine offices, as well as instructions for eating, sleeping, recreation, clothing, elections, and entertaining guests. Overall, the rule of Saint Benedict called for moderation, never excess, and it enjoined upon its followers a personal humility consistent with a life devoted to prayer.63 The detail and flexibility of Benedict’s early medieval charter made it an immensely useful rule, but it was not without its drawbacks. The rule’s emphasis on the productive use of time and its exhortation to do all things well helped to ensure that the Benedictines were at least comfortably self-sufficient, but further 61. Scholarship on sixteenth and seventeenth-century convents include Lehfeldt, Religious Women in Golden Age Spain; P. Renée Baernstein, A Convent Tale: A Century of Sisterhood in Spanish Milan (New York: Routledge, 2002); Sharon T. Strocchia, Nuns and Nunneries in Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009); Cordula van Wyhe, ed., Female Monasticism in Early Modern Europe: An Interdisciplinary View (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008); Helen Hills, Invisible City: The Architecture of Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Neapolitan Convents (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Mary Laven, Virgins of Venice: Broken Vows and Cloistered Lives in the Renaissance Convent (New York: Viking, 2002); José Sánchez Lora, Mujeres, conventos y formas de la religiosidad barroca (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 1988). 62. For the symbolism, variety, and changes in the performance of the offices, see Margot E. Fassler and Rebecca A. Baltzer, eds., The Divine Office in the Latin Middle Ages: Methodology and Source Studies, Regional Developments, Hagiography (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Gregory W. Woolfenden, Daily Liturgical Prayer: Origins and Theology (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004). 63. Scholarly treatments of Benedictine monasticism include James G. Clark, The Benedictines in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2011); Giorgio Agamben, The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013). For general histories of monasticism in pre-modern Europe, see Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom, Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200–1000, rev. ed. (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013); C. H. Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism: Forms of the Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages, 3rd ed. (New York: Longman, 2000); Peter King, Western Monasticism: A History of the Monastic Movement in the Latin Church (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1999).

22 Introduction provision in the rule for the acceptance of endowments from affluent patrons could result in the monastery becoming not only wealthy but entangled in the financial and political affairs of the surrounding countryside and towns. The rule also allowed monasteries and convents to house and train children, typically the young sons or daughters of the local aristocracy, which further fused the interests of Benedictine monks or nuns with those of the secular world ostensibly left behind. By the end of the eleventh century, concerns that the majority of Benedictine monasteries had strayed from their original purpose inspired a reform movement inside the order—the formation of the Cistercians. In 1098, twenty-one Benedictine monks, determined to return to the Christlike poverty and prayer originally intended by Saint Benedict, left their monastery and took up residence in a French wasteland. The name by which they became known, Cistercians, derives from their first foundation at Cîteaux. Also known as the White Monks, because of the undyed robes they wore in protest against the expensive black dyes used by the Benedictines, Cistercians dedicated themselves to a strict and secluded ascetic routine and observance of the Benedictine rule, in which physical labor filled the hours not devoted to prayer. Houses of Cistercians proliferated, from France to the British Isles, across western and central Europe, and throughout the Christian Mediterranean.64 Within thirty years after the men’s foundation at Cîteaux, houses of women dedicated to the Cistercian version of Benedictine observance had adopted the rigorous asceticism and ceaseless prayer of the White Monks, in spite of apathy or even resistance from those they sought to emulate.65 In 1125, the abbot of Cîteaux approved the foundation of the equivalent of a Cistercian convent at Tart, in the Dijon region of France, and just nine years later, in 1134, the first Cistercian women appeared in Spain, at Tulebras in Navarre. In 1187, the king of Castile guaranteed the status and further establishment of Spanish Cistercian convents throughout his realm when he founded Santa María la Real, popularly known as las Huelgas, where royal princesses presided as abbesses.66 Over the next two 64. See Constance H. Berman, The Cistercian Evolution: The Invention of a Religious Order in Twelfth– Century Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000); Janet Burton, The Cistercians in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2011); Martha G. Newman, The Boundaries of Charity: Cistercian Culture and Ecclesiastical Reform, 1098–1180 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996); Louis J. Lekai, The Cistercians: Ideals and Reality (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1977). 65. For the disinclination shown by Cistercian men to include women, see Constance H. Berman, “Were There Twelfth-Century Cistercian Nuns?,” Church History 68, no. 4 (1999): 824–64. The determination and agency of Cistercian women is discussed in Anne E. Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns: The Women’s Religious Movement and Its Reform in Thirteenth-Century Champagne (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011). 66. The name, las Huelgas, originates from a medieval term for pasture lands or lands not cultivated, hence, land de huelgo, lands “at leisure,” an appellation that indicates the nuns’ commitment to the example set by the first Cistercians who settled in wastelands. For the architectural significance of las

Introduction 23 hundred years, at least seventy more female Cistercian houses appeared in Spain, among them the monastery of Santa Ana in Ávila. Santa Ana’s foundation in the late fourteenth century ensured that its nuns were not required to engage in the strenuous ascetic practices of the earliest Cistercians, for earlier in that century Pope Benedict XII had mitigated the demands of many monastic rules, including the rule of Benedict. Self-flagellation, prolonged fasts, hair shirts, and other physical mortifications were moderated, if employed at all, in Santa Ana. But on one point all Cistercians insisted: enclosure of the nuns. In its strictest application, enclosure, clausura, prohibited any sister, regardless of her social status, from leaving the confines of her convent. Similarly, the inner rooms and cloister of the convent remained off limits to all but the nuns, their servants, a doctor required in an emergency, or a priest giving last rites. Ideally, the cloister walls were as impenetrable as the virginal bodies of the brides of Christ that they encircled. In reality, the enclosing circle was quite porous.67 Passive enclosure, which forbade entrance except to essential personnel, lent itself to easy and frequent violation; many convents not only allowed but encouraged visits from family, friends, and distinguished guests. Such an “open door” policy made it possible for nuns to transact business affairs, participate in social and political intrigues outside the convent, engage in flirtations, and in general immerse themselves in the cares and pleasures of the world. The strictures of active enclosure, which prohibited nuns from leaving the convent, also yielded to the needs and desires of the nuns. Economic or social necessity might call for a nun, or nuns, to work, beg, or even live for extended periods of time outside the convent, caring for family members, aiding the various local charities, or serving as companions to wealthy and lonely women. Abbesses, in particular, violated active enclosure in their efforts to find and appease benefactors. Nevertheless, the monastic enclosure remained a representational environment in which the symbolically charged bodies of the nuns prayed for mankind. Although the women who associated themselves with the earliest Cistercians had moved about quite freely, the governing council of Cistercian men, collectively known as the General Chapter, declared in Cîteaux in 1213 that houses of Cistercian women would observe clausura. Cistercian women were thus already accustomed to the idea, if not the total application, of enclosure when, in 1563, Huelgas, see James D’Emilio, “The Royal Convent of Las Huelgas: Dynastic Politics, Religious Reform, and Artistic Change in Medieval Castile,” in Cistercian Nuns and Their World, ed. Meredith Parsons Lillich, Studies in Cistercian Art and Architecture (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2005), 191–282. 67. Lehfeldt’s work on the convents of Valladolid effectively demonstrates the difference between ideal and reality with respect to enclosure. It should be noted that the majority of her examples of violations of active enclosure deal with the movements of abbesses, not nuns, outside their convents. An abbess’s mobility reflected the patriarchal role that she assumed over a “family” bound to obey religious and social norms.

24 Introduction the Council of Trent delivered its most stringent ruling regarding convents. Trent reinstated the papal decree Periculoso, first issued in 1298 by Pope Boniface VIII (and seldom observed), which called for a strict enclosure of nuns.68 The Council declared in its fifth decision of the twenty-fifth session that bishops must enforce clausura, “even summoning for this purpose, if need be, the aid of the secular arm.” In Spain, King Felipe II placed soldiers around unenclosed convents until such time as the nuns acquiesced with the required locks, barred windows, and spiked grilles that formed the necessary barriers between them and the outside world. Enclosure of the convents proclaimed the determination of Trent to realize structural reforms while signaling a victory for Catholic ideology by its reinforcement of the fifteen-hundred-year-old Christian ideal of chastity. Perpetual celibacy—virginity—remained the highest state of corporeal existence. A corollary existed between freedom from sexual activity and freedom from death: the chaste body suggested prelapsarian immortality; virgins resembled angels.69 The sexually uninitiated also reenacted with their bodies Christ’s own physical condition, in keeping with the church’s position that the human Christ resisted temptations of the flesh; in order to truly imitate Christ, one must be sexually pure. Chastity defined the spiritual status of women to a much greater extent than for men, due in part to the association made between the intact female body and salvation, explicit in the virgin birth and Incarnation.70 Moreover, a woman’s virginity had always been an indication of her submission to the authority of men. Christianity came of age in the patriarchal Roman Empire, which helps explain why the church’s consecrated virgins acted as social and cultural markers in much the same way as Rome’s virgin priestesses, whose lives exemplified what a noted scholar has identified as “male-defined idealized womanhood, which disempowers women according to their nature and empowers them according to male social values. They exist because of male interest and initiative.”71 68. Periculoso’s ambiguity prevented its universal application. See Elizabeth Makowski, Canon Law and Cloistered Women: Periculoso and its Commentators, 1298–1545 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1997). 69. Virgins resembled angels: Matthew 22:30, “[The resurrected] neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven.” Theologians spent a great deal of time and effort defining virginity (and celibacy) as an angelic condition. See Dylan Elliott, “Tertullian, the Angelic Life, and the Bride of Christ,” in Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe: New Perspectives, ed. Lisa M. Bitel and Felice Lifshitz, The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 16–33; Ellen Muehlberger, Angels in Late Ancient Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 148–74. 70. “Without the porta clausa, the coming of Christ would be not a mystery, but a natural birth.” Helen Hills, Invisible City, 47. Hill provides an insightful introduction to the significance of female chastity in Christianity. 71. Deborah F. Sawyer, Women and Religion in the First Christian Centuries (New York: Routledge, 1996), 127.

Introduction 25 Of course, to monitor a nun’s body within the confines of her convent was much more easily accomplished than to regulate her mind, which may explain why Trent so vigorously sought to enforce that which it stood a chance of controlling. The ruling of the Cistercian General Chapter in 1213; the Periculoso of 1298; and the 1563 decree of the Council of Trent guaranteed that the reputation of a community of nuns rested more upon what could be measured—an adherence to enclosure—than on what could only be surmised. Clausura provided tangible and recognizable proof of obedience, submission, and, by implication, virtue. With no other way to gauge a convent’s spiritual maturity, the public made assumptions based upon the rigor with which the nuns applied enclosure to themselves. A convent’s status—and the generosity of benefactors—might well depend upon its nuns never being seen. Although certainly a flawed indicator of piety, clausura did have the desired effect of ensuring that communities of women were fully dependent upon men who could move freely in the world.72 Trent’s restrictions notwithstanding, Catholicism provided women with an alternative that the Protestant movement did not offer. Protestant reformers emphasized the reproductive duty of the female and her obligation to be a good wife and mother, but Catholic women could opt out of marriage and childbirth for a monastic life. A convent afforded a rare opportunity for intellectual and personal fulfillment, and guaranteed an extraordinary degree of self-government. Nuns elected their own administrators, determined their own living arrangements, and enjoyed an autonomy and privacy from men seldom afforded women in the outside world. In the convent, women could make decisions unencumbered by the coercive power of fathers, brothers, or husbands, who imposed their will, by law and by custom, in private homes, where technically everything belonged to male heads of households. The convent, unlike the socially oriented Spanish household, need not open its doors to uninvited or unwanted visitors. For many, the cloister became a refuge, a place where the eyes and demands of the public could not penetrate. The normal activities of the day—the praying of the divine offices, business meetings in the chapter house, meals in the refectory, the work assigned to each nun—took place in a private environment, constructed for the benefit and use of its female residents. On the other hand, life in the cloister could be a virtual prison sentence for women who had no real interest in a monastic vocation.73 The dissolution of con72. Changing attitudes about the effectiveness of claustration on the piety and spiritual development of nuns are discussed in Doris Gottemoeller, “Religious Life for Women: From Enclosure to Immersion,” in From Trent to Vatican II: Historical and Theological Investigations, ed. Raymond F. Bulman, Frederick J. Parrella, and Jill Raitt (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 227–40. 73. Extricating oneself from monastic vows could be difficult, but not impossible. Anne Jacobson Schutte finds that between the years 1668 and 1793 women were far more likely than men to be granted release from their vows. See Anne Jacobson Schutte, By Force and Fear: Taking and Breaking Monastic Vows in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011).

26 Introduction vents in Protestant-controlled areas delivered a welcome escape to nuns who had taken vows either under duress or from desperation, or who had come to doubt the spiritual value of a celibate life. Former brides of Christ joined protest groups stationed outside convents or utilized their pens in campaigns against what one disillusioned German nun described in a letter to her aristocratic cousins as a “peculiar and fabricated spousehood.”74 Women who remained loyal to the monastic ideal were equally fervent. Nuns who refused to forsake their vows barricaded themselves behind the walls of their convents and resisted threats and violence until physically forced into the streets.75 Seeing the eagerness with which nuns cast off their veils when an opportunity arose through Protestant intervention, the Council of Trent took steps to decrease the number of women unsuited to life in the cloister, starting with those who had been coerced into taking monastic vows. The twenty-fifth session of the Council promised to anathematize—condemn through expulsion from the church, as done to heretics—any person, “of whatever character or rank they may be, whether clerics or laics, seculars or regulars,” who forced a woman to enter a convent against her will.76 Furthermore, Trent prohibited women younger than sixteen years of age from making a full profession of vows; only with the bishop’s special permission could girls as young as twelve take the habit as novices. By such means, a girl could still obligate herself, even before the onset of menses, to a life-long cloistered existence. For aristocratic nuns, preserving the amenities and social rituals of home helped to counter any sense of isolation from the world. Consciousness of one’s place in society did not diminish in convents such as Santa Ana, where nuns addressed each other, as noted above, with the socially distinctive and formal title of doña. In his 1618 biography of Vela, Miguel González Vaquero noted that allegations of “inequality”—partiality for one woman over another—plagued Santa Ana and prompted some families to choose other convents for their daughters.77 Unequal treatment might well have been common in aristocratic convents, where

74. Ursula of Münsterberg wrote in 1528, after leaving her Freiberg convent. Merry Wiesner-Hanks, ed., Convents Confront the Reformation: Catholic and Protestant Nuns in Germany, trans. Joan Skocir and Merry Wiesner-Hanks (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1996), 47. 75. The memoir of the Genevan nun Jeanne de Jussie illustrates the tensions and violence that accompanied the rise of Protestantism. The harassment visited upon her convent between 1526 and 1535 induced de Jussie and her fellow nuns to escape to Catholic territory. See Jeanne de Jussie, The Short Chronicle, ed. and trans. Carrie F. Klaus, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). Letters of four nuns explaining their decisions to leave or stay in their convents are translated in Convents Confront the Reformation. 76. Twenty-fifth Session, Chapter 28, Canons and Decrees, 221. 77. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 5r.

Introduction 27 a woman did not leave her status at the door on the day she entered the cloister.78 Cliques, purchased positions, and efforts to retain privileges and family endowments existed side by side with vows of poverty.79 Servants, multiple changes of clothing, portraits, rugs and other decorative items appeared in private and spacious rooms. Such worldly possessions violated the bans on private property and luxury enjoined upon the various orders of nuns, but many women who took monastic vows, particularly in aristocratic convents like Santa Ana, had every intention of maintaining the same social advantages they had enjoyed “in the world.” As in preceding centuries, lax adherence to the rule inspired movements of reform. Organized efforts by Cistercian women to return to strict compliance with the Benedictine rule began in the late sixteenth century in the city of Burgos, north of Ávila, in the convent of Santa María la Real, known as las Huelgas, which had been founded in 1187 by King Alfonso VIII of Castile and declared by Cîteaux to be the “mother” of all Cistercian convents in the kingdom of Castile.80 Las Huelgas served as the burial place of medieval kings and their kin and had the further distinction of having the highest population of nuns from royal families, and princesses who typically served as abbesses. In 1595, a group of las Huelgas nuns of noble blood initiated a movement to return to strict observance of the Benedictine rule, and with the support of the abbess began founding a number of reformed Cistercian houses for women across Spain. The reformed sisters were collectively known as Bernardas Recoletas, or Recollects.81 A letter from Vela to her older brother Lorenzo indicates the extent to which the movement at las Huelgas inspired nuns across Spain—in her letter, Vela invites Lorenzo to join her and other nuns of Santa Ana in forming a new convent of Recollects.82 She never do so, but in 1615, two years before her death, her confessor and biographer, Miguel González Vaquero, went to Madrid at the request of the king’s personal favorite, the duke of Uceda, to help in the establishment of a new house of Cistercian Recollects, called El Sacramento. 78. In the convent, as in the secular world, a woman’s identity often remained irrevocably tied to that of the men in her family, “constructed in accordance with their class and status in the world,” as Roberta Gilchrist points out. Gilchrist’s investigation of the archeology of late medieval English convents shows that aristocratic nuns in England often chose to physically separate themselves from those in the convent who came from less distinguished families. In many cases, nuns from the most elite families used separate dormitories and refectories, just as they would have used segregated facilities for sleeping and eating in their secular households. Roberta Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Female Monastic Houses (New York: Routledge, 1994), 169. 79. See Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt, “Convents as Litigants: Dowry and Inheritance Disputes in Early Modern Spain,” Journal of Social History 33, no. 3 (Spring 2000): 645–64. 80. Lekai, Cistercians, 348–50. 81. Ibid., 358. 82. MSA, Cartas de María Vela (31 fols.), carta 53.

28 Introduction The topic of monasticism figured prominently in the ideological battles between Catholics and Protestants. Protestants pointed to corruption in monasteries and convents as evidence of the unnatural state of celibacy, and singled out nuns, in particular, as aberrations of their sex. Considered to be both victims and predators, the nuns wielded a power, both real and symbolic, at odds with the Protestant emphasis on wifely submission. Reformation theologians decried the lack of scriptural evidence to support celibacy, monasticism, or the perpetual virginity of the mother of Christ. Virginity, except in young women awaiting marriage, had no place in the Protestant design for a well-ordered universe. But if anything, the Protestant assault on Catholic theology, doctrine, rituals, and monastic institutions sharpened Spain’s adherence to Rome and served to inspire, not inhibit, grassroots monastic reforms, like the Recollects and the Discalced Carmelites, and new orders, such as the Jesuits.83 When the Council of Trent reemphasized the essentiality of female celibacy by ordering the enclosure of nuns, Spanish authorities responded quickly and in the affirmative, but Spain had recognized the valuable role played by its brides of Christ long before the bishops at Trent sat in session. Tridentine decrees simply reflected a long and proven Spanish commitment to the monastic ideals of poverty, chastity, and obedience.

Asceticism Devout Christians in search of spiritual perfection sought to become “one” with God by emulating his incarnate life and suffering (imitatio Christi: imitation of Christ). The most exact simulation of Christ’s suffering came through martyrdom, but with dying for the faith not always an option, a Christian could imitate Christ through rigorous asceticism (from the Greek askēsis: “discipline”). An ancient Greek athlete understood askēsis as the means whereby the physique could be perfected and celebrated. A Christian ascetic sought not to celebrate the body but to denigrate it, for the good of the soul, to transform his or her body into an “exactly calibrated instrument,” depleted of vanity and capable of transcending its own naturally willful, indulgent state.84 Self-imposed mortifications that evoked and imitated Christ’s travails helped one to obliterate bodily desires and worldly attachments. Ascetics thus sought the pain and deprivations endured by Christ the man—sleepless vigils, extreme fasting, prolonged solitude, scourged flesh—in

83. The Jesuits were not organized for the purpose of combating Protestantism, but their mission to teach made them an indispensable weapon against “error.” 84. Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 223.

Introduction 29 order to focus their minds on God and render themselves “more vulnerable to spiritual invasion.”85 María Vela’s efforts to discipline her body and open herself to spiritual invasion provoked a variety of emotional reactions in Santa Ana: bewilderment, admiration, suspicion, disgust, outrage. Friction first began in the refectory, the convent’s dining hall. The Benedictine rule followed by the Cistercians of Santa Ana recommended that meat be provided for the nuns on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, and allowed the infirm, such as Vela, to eat meat regularly, for health’s sake.86 But Vela desired an existence fueled only by Christ’s flesh as manifested in the communion wafer; she did not want to eat meals at all.87 She hoped to add fasting on the Eucharist to her already strenuous ascetic regime, which included all-night vigils spent kneeling on the floor; a hair shirt; raw wool cords tied around her joints; and a barbed crucifix worn pressed against her chest. Vela’s asceticism reflected an ideal developed twelve hundred years earlier by Christian saints in the deserts of Syria and Egypt.88 Yet, in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, when Vela attempted to discipline her body through physical mortifications and prolonged fasting, the nuns of Santa Ana “bellowed.”89 The rigorous asceticism that had made women and men into saints and power brokers in earlier centuries did not have the same happy effect in the Spanish convent of 85. Nancy Caciola, Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 155. 86. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 47v. Santa Ana’s community practice relied upon the Benedictine rule and upon the late fifteenth-century directives given to Santa Ana by Hernando de Talavera, bishop of Ávila (1485–1492). The bishop’s directives were somewhat vague concerning fasting, thus leaving them open to interpretation. For the complete list of the regulations, or Constitution, see González Hernández, “Fray Hernando de Talavera,” 149–74. 87. Vela’s motivation for fasting was strikingly similar to that of female saints in the Middle Ages. Classic studies on women and fasting are Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), and Rudolph M. Bell, Holy Anorexia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). 88. Asceticism in late antiquity has been analyzed, not without controversy, by a number of scholars over the last two decades. See Brown, Body and Society; Sebastian Brock and Susan Harvey, trans., Holy Women of the Syrian Orient (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); Gillian Clark, Women in Late Antiquity: Pagan and Christian Lifestyles (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Elizabeth Clark, Ascetic Piety and Women’s Faith: Essays on Late Ancient Christianity (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1986); Elizabeth Clark, Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); Susanna Elm, Virgins of God: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); Conrad Leyser, Authority and Asceticism from Augustine to Gregory the Great (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Benedicta Ward, Harlots of the Desert: A Study of Repentance in Early Monastic Sources (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Press, 1987); Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis, eds., Asceticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). 89. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 83v.

30 Introduction Santa Ana in 1598. The austerity of the desert dwellers presented early modern Christians with a prototype, but it was an exacting standard that many found to be no longer practical or even desirable. This is not to say that asceticism had “gone out of style” during the CounterReformation, for holiness was still achieved through self-denial and self-sacrifice. Discussions at the Council of Trent, however, reflect uncertainty about the extent to which the body should be disciplined. The Council chose to do little more than issue a general prescription for all monks, friars, and nuns, directing them to “adjust their life in accordance with the requirements of the rule which they have professed.”90 Trent offered no instructions as to an appropriate degree of physical mortification or fasting. Lack of specificity about physical mortifications in the various monastic rules opened the way for broad interpretation, but the Holy See, under increasing attack by Protestant critics, sought to curb excesses and exhibitionism and reinforce its own authority. In particular, Rome exercised its right to determine the definition of holiness and to classify certain persons as holy. No longer were saints made by “local, unofficial, or wildcat devotions.”91 The papacy canonized not a single saint for sixty-five years, from 1523—the start of the Protestant Reformation—until 1588, twenty-five years after Trent concluded its last session. Among the persons selected for canonization after 1588 were two Spaniards: Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, canonized in 1622, and Teresa of Ávila, founder of the Discalced Carmelites, also canonized in 1622. Loyola died in 1556; Teresa in 1582. Thus the acclaim afforded to them so soon after their deaths attests to their compliance to Counter-Reformation ideals. Perhaps nothing, then, better illustrates the church’s stand on ascetic performance during the sixteenth century than the guidelines on bodily mortification proffered by Teresa and Loyola, who admonished their acolytes to pursue a policy of moderate asceticism. When Teresa instructed her nuns to “remember our holy fathers of the past, those hermits whose lives we aim to imitate,” she pointed to the solitary desert ascetics as examples, not of specific ascetic practices, but of silent suffering in the face of illness.92 With her characteristic wry humor, Teresa soothed the concerns of those who worried that the nuns in her reformed convents would overdo their ascetic regime: the nuns could not go too far, she assures her audience, because

90. Twenty-fifth Session, Chapter I. Canons and Decrees, 217. Neither the Benedictine rule nor the directives issued by the bishop of Ávila to the nuns of Santa Ana in the late fifteenth century gave particulars about physical mortifications, their frequency, or application. See González Hernández, “Fray Hernando de Talavera.” 91. Peter Burke, “How to Be a Counter-Reformation Saint,” in Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800, ed. Kaspar Von Greyerz (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984), 47. 92. Teresa of Ávila, “The Way of Perfection,” in Collected Works, vol. 2, 81.

Introduction 31 “our confessors will at once be afraid that we may kill ourselves.”93 To the readers of her Vida, she admits that “there is some austerity because meat is never eaten without necessity and there is an eight-month fast and other things,” but “this is still in many respects considered small by the Sisters.”94 The Carmelite rule observed by the Discalced, based on statutes created by the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem in 1209 and modified in 1247, did indeed forbid meat and call for an eight-month fast on bread and vegetables, but never allowed a nun to endanger her health. Likewise, Ignatius Loyola discouraged, even prohibited, strenuous ascetic practices. With regard to the “ill treatment of the body for our Lord’s sake,”— the imitatio Christi that defined the ascetic—he instructed Francis Borgia, the future superior general of the Company, to “avoid anything that would cause the shedding even of a drop of blood.”95 Instead of penances that drew blood, Loyola advised seeking the “gift of tears.”96 Loyola explained his position thus: God bestowed both body and soul; if a man allowed his body to grow weak, the interior self could not achieve its potential. The body was not to be denied its power, in spite of its secondary status to the soul. In the late fourth century, Saint Augustine of Hippo would have argued that the “exactly calibrated instrument” needed for salvation resulted from a mature internal spirituality, rather than an emaciated and stripped-down ascetic body. Augustine’s theology advocated a Christ-centered interior and a “transparent” body that attracted neither attention nor comment.97 Yet, Augustine’s advice notwithstanding, efforts to obliterate physical desires for the sake of the soul quite often had the obverse effect of focusing attention on the much more visible exterior, with the condition of the body ultimately serving as a perceivable indicator of the invisible interior. And the suffering required to imitate Christ simply intensified physical experience, making the corporeal that much more important.98 The 93. Ibid., 78. 94. Teresa of Ávila, “The Book of Her Life,” in Collected Works, vol. 1, 321. 95. Letter to Francis Borgia, in Ignatius Loyola, St. Ignatius’ Own Story, As Told to Luis González de Cámara, with a Sampling of His Letters, trans. William J. Young, S.J. (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1956), 96. In 1555, Loyola allowed Luís Gonçalves da Câmara, the Portuguese Jesuit, to record his reminiscences, to which da Câmara added commentary nearly twenty years later. For the most current English translation of Loyola’s memoir and da Câmara’s commentary, see Remembering Iñigo, Glimpses of the Life of Saint Ignatius of Loyola: The Memoriale of Luís Gonçalves da Câmara, trans. and ed. Alexander Eaglestone and Joseph A. Munitiz (Saint Louis, MO: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2004). 96. See William Christian, “Provoked Religious Weeping in Early Modern Spain,” in Religious Organization and Religious Experience, ed. J. Davis (London: Academic Press, 1982), 97–114. 97. Andrew Louth, “The Body in Western Catholic Christianity,” in Religion and the Body, ed. Sarah Coakley (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 119. 98. Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 194.

32 Introduction ascetic’s body was, after all, the dwelling place of God, where the death and resurrection of Christ and the liturgy of the church were all encoded.99 In the sixteenth century, María Vela knew well her body’s ability to be her “other voice,” to speak volumes, even with her jaws clamped shut. A lack of consensus among ancient, medieval, and early modern saints and theologians as to what constituted an appropriate degree of asceticism created an uncertain atmosphere in some convents. Nuns in Counter-Reformation Spain could look to a number of saints and find precedent for almost any type or degree of ascetic behavior: Saint Catherine of Siena in the fourteenth century barely sustained her body with bits of vegetables and sips of cold water; Saint Radegund in the sixth century branded her torso with a brass crucifix. But a saintly ideal was frequently at odds with the exigencies of communal life, as clearly revealed in the letter written by the Dominican father Juan de Alarcón of the monastery of Santo Tomás to the abbess of Santa Ana in 1603 regarding the behavior of María Vela.100 In the letter, Alarcón refers to Vela’s physical mortifications as “foreign to usage and law of the Order.” Alarcón argued that to permit such mortifications would be a sin, because they did not result in perfection but in vanity. He pointed to the example of Saint Bernard, founder of the Cistercians, who prohibited even the ubiquitous hair shirts because they attracted too much attention, and Alarcón reminded his audience that Saint Augustine had himself declared that “whoever, in dress, eating and behavior proceeds outside of the custom of the community … is evil and a trouble-maker.” Yet, Alarcón was no enemy of Vela. When the Inquisition assigned to him the task of interviewing her, he cleared her of any wrongdoing. By seeking to determine if she was, indeed, in perfect submission to church authority, Alarcón was simply upholding the spirit of the Council of Trent. In Counter-Reformation Europe, the institutional church spoke for God. Physical demonstrations of piety had to be approved and the significance of bodily mortifications had to be articulated through official channels. The anchorite and anchoress—secluded, unsupervised, answering only to God—could not be easily managed. Solitary ascetics threatened not just the homogeneity outlined by Trent, but also the solidarity of the monastic community. Thus, the church favored cenobites—ascetics who lived in an organized community. Convents designed to monitor and control women who desired to imitate Christ provided the necessary management of female ascetic performance. Eccentric ascetics, a dying breed, found themselves replaced by compliant moderates.

99. Gavin Flood, The Ascetic Self: Subjectivity, Memory and Tradition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 227. 100. MSA, Cartas de María Vela (31 fols.), carta 56.

Introduction 33

Mysticism Christian theologians agreed that God might penetrate the soul and engage a person directly and interiorly. Mystics excited the imagination, for they confirmed that God did bestow personal and extraordinary attention on individuals. And because the mystic drew close to God through spiritual revelation, not through logic, reason, or study, union with the Divine was not exclusive to persons well versed in the intricacies of theology. The most humble of Christians, the uneducated, even women, could know and experience God in mystical union. But claims of mystical encounters with God could also generate suspicion and hostility. Mysticism challenged traditional forms of sacral oversight, for the mystic served as his or her own mediator and communicated with God without benefit of priest or institutional safeguards. Furthermore, the spiritual union with God often revealed itself in physical or affective ways that could be faked—visions, voices, ecstasy, levitation, bleeding, stigmata, inexplicable pain and suffering. Wary of these demonstrations, clerical authorities subjected claimants to rigorous tests in order to determine the authenticity and origin of supernatural communications and corporeal displays. In some cases, investigators determined the physical “evidence” to be the work of the devil. Nonetheless, Christian mysticism boasted scriptural authority and centuries of precedent. The sixth-century philosopher Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite explained that ultimate union with God could only be found in the “truly mystic darkness of unknowing.” Mystics and visionaries of the high and late Middle Ages pointed to Saint Paul’s warning that “we see dimly now through the glass” (1 Cor. 13:12) as proof that simple intellectual cognizance of the Divine—a “dim” understanding—prevented a deeper and more complete ultrasensory union with God. By eschewing intellectualism and reason, one’s soul was free to experience God in the fullest sense. If the soul progressed beyond reliance upon academic or sensory perception of the Divine, it would achieve its own level of deification.101 Thus, advocates of affective spirituality emphasized an emotional and antiintellectual “unknowing,” which, though hailed as knowledge of God surpassing that provided by the senses, was often provoked by visual and aural prompts and enhanced through stimulation of the body: fasting, scourging, and other forms of asceticism. In return, the much sought after mystical union with the Godhead typically manifested itself upon the human body in physical ways. The Church acclaimed and canonized a number of “unknowing” women during the Middle Ages and early modern era, most of them nuns whose disciplined focus on the humanity of Christ prompted mystical perception of God. 101. A useful synopsis is found in Bernard McGinn, “Love, Knowledge, and Unio Mystica in the Western Christian Tradition,” in Mystical Union and Monotheistic Faith: An Ecumenical Dialogue, ed. Moshe Idel and Bernard McGinn (New York: Macmillan, 1989), 59–86.

34 Introduction Meditating on Christ’s life could generate the powerful mental images desired by Christians who wished to develop a more profound empathy with the human Jesus. Because the crucifixion served as the climax of the Son of God’s entire mortal experience, a fixation on Christ’s passion proved especially effective.102 Holy women prayed or meditated in front of painted or sculpted depictions of the broken and bloody body of Jesus in order to keep the suffering Christ foremost in their minds.103 An artistic representation of the swaddled baby Jesus, usually in the arms of the Virgin Mary, elicited tender, even maternal, responses, while the full-blown masculinity of the adult Christ provided nuns with a more plausible “bridegroom.”104 The popularity of affective spirituality among women owed much to the efforts of early Cistercian writers and preachers, who boldly inverted gender stereotypes and effectively “feminized” many of the fundamental concepts of Christian

102. According to the sixteenth-century physician and mystic Bernardino de Laredo (1482–1540), whose treatise Subida del Monte Sión (Ascent of Mount Zion) significantly influenced the great Spanish mystics Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross, the violent physiological experience of the passion determined the relationship between God and mortal. Jessica A. Boon demonstrates how Laredo’s medical and scientific training informed his conception of an “embodied soul” that could achieve a visceral union with Christ in his passion. See Jessica A. Boon, The Mystical Science of the Soul: Medieval Cognition in Bernardino de Laredo’s Recollection Method (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 93–105. See also Elizabeth Rhodes, “Spain’s Misfired Canon: The Case of Fray Luis de Granada’s Libro de la oración,” Journal of Hispanic Philology 15 (1990): 43–66. Rhodes calls Luis de Granada’s 1554 publication a “do it yourself manual for mysticism,” in which the “grotesque realities” of the passion are central to effective devotion. The medieval precedent for enlisting the passion in the spiritual maturation of holy men and women is discussed in Richard Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-Century Saints and Their Religious Milieu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 89–121. 103. Teresa of Ávila confirms that her Jesuit confessor told her to base her prayer “each day on one incident of the Passion, and get all I could out of it.” Teresa of Ávila, The Life of St. Teresa of Ávila by Herself, trans. J. M. Cohen (New York: Penguin Books, 1957), 169. Cohen’s translation of this particular passage illuminates both Teresa’s personality and the simplicity of the Jesuit method of prayer. 104. The extent to which convent art and architecture influenced spiritual experience is discussed in Mindy Nancarrow Taggard, “Picturing Intimacy in a Spanish Golden Age Convent,” Oxford Art Journal 23, no. 1 (2000): 99–111. See also Hills, Invisible City, and Anabel Thomas, Art and Piety in the Female Religious Communities of Renaissance Venice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003). For a room-by-room examination of one Venetian convent’s décor, see Benjamin Paul, Nuns and Reform Art in Early Modern Venice (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012). For art as a didactic tool of orthodoxy, see Christopher C. Wilson, “Teresa of Ávila vs. the Iconoclasts: Convent Art in Support of a Church in Crisis,” in Imagery, Spirituality and Ideology in Baroque Spain and Latin America, ed. Jeremy Roe and Marta Bustillo (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), 46–70. For music as a facilitator to mystical union with God, see Tess Knighton, “ ‘Through a Glass Darkly’: Music and Mysticism in Golden Age Spain,” in A New Companion to Hispanic Mysticism, ed. Hilaire Kallendorf (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2010), 411–34.

Introduction 35 theology.105 In the generative female body, Cistercians found a useful exemplar of the womb of God wherein souls are kept, and an evocative model for the nurturing godhead. The Cistercian mystic Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), whose spiritual and political influence resonated even in royal courts, envisioned Christ as a nursing mother. Bernard and his fellow Cistercians, both male and female, also employed the language of sexual experience in order to impress upon their listeners the intensity of Christ’s love. The coitus and orgasm denied to celibates could still be referenced for the sake of describing, in ordinary terms, the total physical abandonment and ecstasy of becoming one with the Divine. The biblical Song of Songs—an erotic love poem that never mentions God—became the text of choice for medieval mystics.106 In mystical exegesis, the ardent bridegroom of the Song of Songs who bestows caresses upon his beloved functioned as an embodiment of Christ the divine, who similarly aroused and fulfilled those who submitted to his will. Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross, two Spaniards elevated to sainthood on the strength of their reforms and mysticism, relied upon images found in the Song of Songs to explain their spiritual union with God.107 María Vela—mystic and Cistercian—also frequently extrapolated from the Song when describing her supraliminal encounters with Christ, as when she declared herself embraced by an ardent and jealous spouse who desired her for himself. Mystics possessed an authority based upon proximity to God, and thus many enjoyed the patronage of early modern Spanish kings, cardinals, and bishops.108 Foremost among the illustrious supporters of mystics—and a staunch advocate 105. Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), chap. 4. 106. See E. Ann Matter, The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990). See also Nancy F. Partner, “Did Mystics Have Sex?,” in Desire and Discipline: Sex and Sexuality in the Premodern West, ed. Jacqueline Murray and Konrad Eisenbichler (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 296–311. 107. Teresa of Ávila, “Meditations on the Song of Songs,” in Collected Works, vol. 2, 207–60. John of the Cross (1542–91) began writing his “Spiritual Canticle,” a poem and commentary on the Song of Songs, while imprisoned by the Carmelites for disobedience to the antireform directives of the Carmelite Order. Inspired and aided by Teresa, John of the Cross implemented her Discalced reforms in houses of Carmelite men. He was canonized in 1726 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1926. John of the Cross, “Spiritual Canticle,” in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodríguez (Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1991), 461–630. 108. Undoubtedly, eschatological revelations that featured the king of Spain as deliverer of Jerusalem and converter of the heathen figured prominently in the monarchy’s decision to protect and promote mystics and visionaries. See Geraldine McKendrick and Angus McKay, “Visionaries and Affective Spirituality during the First Half of the Sixteenth Century,” in Cultural Encounters: The Impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World, ed. Mary Elizabeth Perry and Anne J. Cruz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 93–104; Kagen, Lucrecia’s Dreams; Francisca de los Apóstoles, The Inquisition of Francisca; Haliczer, Between Exaltation and Infamy; E. Allison Peers, Studies of the Spanish Mystics, 3 vols. (London: SPCK, 1960).

36 Introduction of affective spirituality in general—was Francisco Jiménez Cisneros (1436–1517). Cisneros’s appointment as confessor to Queen Isabel in 1492 and promotion to the archbishopric of Toledo in 1495 left him well situated to influence religion (and politics) in Spain, even more so after his elevation to cardinal in 1507 and his appointment by King Fernando, that same year, to the position of grand inquisitor of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. As grand inquisitor, Cisneros controlled the printing presses and could thus suppress or promote theological views. His sponsorship of the publication of Spanish translations of the writings of famous medieval mystics such as Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153), Angela of Foligno (d. 1309), Catherine of Siena (d. 1380), and Vincent Ferrer (d. 1419) ensured that for much of the sixteenth century Spaniards had the information needed to model their lives upon the examples set by the great mystics and to attempt for themselves an “alternative” piety. The support and impetus given by men such as Cisneros guaranteed mysticism its place in Spanish religiosity, but mystics came under closer scrutiny in the wake of Martin Luther’s attack on the Catholic Church. In 1546, the Inquisition convicted the famous Córdoban mystic and abbess Magdalena de la Cruz of fraud and sentenced her to solitary imprisonment for the rest of her life.109 Before her arrest, Magdalena de la Cruz had been hailed by kings and bishops, but Spain’s position in the vanguard of the fight against heterodoxy placed its unconventional mystics, and their writings, in an increasingly precarious situation. The availability of books and treatises on visionary piety and mysticism began to decline when the Spanish Inquisition put into effect a censorship of the press in 1559 by issuing its first Index of Prohibited Books. The Index proscribed specific titles and topics and at its most stringent prohibited the publication, dissemination, and reading of all but the most orthodox texts.110 The Holy Office also directly reversed the precedent set by Cardinal Cisneros when it forbade Spanish translations of difficult or controversial religious works, a prohibition that greatly reduced women’s access to theological and mystical works because virtually all of the allowed texts were written in Latin, and women like María Vela, who could read Latin, were vastly outnumbered by those, like Teresa of Ávila, who could not. Teresa found 109. Magdalena de la Cruz (1487–1560) is discussed in Mary Elizabeth Perry, Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 82–84, and Alison P. Weber, “Saint Teresa: Demonologist,” in Culture and Control in Counter-Reformation Spain, ed. Anne J. Cruz and Mary Elizabeth Perry (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), 173–74. Documentation related to the trial of Magdalena de la Cruz is found in Jesús Imirizaldu, Monjas y beatas embaucadoras (Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1977). 110. Between Vela’s birth in 1561 and her death in 1617, the Holy Office issued four more Indexes, in 1564, 1571, 1583, and 1612. The 1583 Index, often referred to as the Quiroga Index for the cardinal who sponsored it, was most extensive, but primarily singled out foreign printed works. Kamen gives a concise summary of the aims and effect of the Index in Spanish Inquisition, 108–33; Ahlgren examines the Index’s treatment of Teresa of Ávila’s Life, in Teresa of Ávila and the Politics of Sanctity, 48–52.

Introduction 37 herself even more directly affected by the Index when she received the order to submit her Vida to inquisitors for assessment. The censors found no heterodoxy in the text, but, bothered by its visionary content, refused to return it or to allow Teresa’s nuns to read copies of it. Only after her death in 1582 did the Holy Office relent and allow Teresa’s writings to become the first new mystical treatises to be published in the Spanish language since the Index of 1559. The experiences of Magdalena de la Cruz, Teresa of Ávila, and María Vela illustrate the uneasy relationship between the Church and its mystics in early modern Spain. Mystics walked a fine line, not least of all because their union with God came through intuition and contemplation, methods that resembled those employed by the notorious alumbrados, the “illuminated ones.” Alumbrados derived their name from Scripture: “those who have once been enlightened” (Heb. 6:4), but the church deemed them heretics.111 Originating from a late fifteenth-century Franciscan reform movement that stressed meditative prayer, the alumbrados of the sixteenth century extended the Franciscan method of interior prayer to include dejamiento, a passive “abandonment” of the soul whereby God revealed theological truths directly to an individual.112 The church decried the relinquishment of responsibility inherent in alumbradismo; orthodoxy required that one came to the “truly mystic darkness of unknowing” through active prayer and physical and mental discipline. The Spanish Inquisition convicted the first alumbrados in 1524 and the next year published a formal edict against the teachings of the “illuminist heresy.”113 According to the edict of 1525, alumbrados declared the state of dejamiento to be of greater value to the soul than confession or communion or any external devotion or service to God. Sounding suspiciously like Lutherans, alumbrados also denied the efficacy of penance and indulgences, refused to venerate religious images, and declared good works unnecessary for salvation.114 In spite of a long tradition of mysticism in Spain, the alarm generated by the presence of alumbrados rendered suspect all who claimed direct communion with God. Accusations of illuminism plagued Teresa of Ávila and Ignatius Loyola 111. For the history of alumbrados in Spain, see Alastair Hamilton, Heresy and Mysticism in SixteenthCentury Spain (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992). Hamilton calls alumbradismo, which began around 1512 in the Guadalajara region of Spain, a “native heretical movement.” Also, Antonio Márquez, Los alumbrados: Orígenes y filosofía, 1525–1559 (Madrid: Taurus, 1972). 112. Alastair Hamilton describes the forms of “abandonment” practiced by alumbrados in “The Alumbrados: Dejamiento and Its Practitioners,” in A New Companion to Hispanic Mysticism, ed. Hilaire Kallendorf (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2010), 103–23. 113. Alumbradismo was not a homogenous belief system, as evident in the variety of accusations leveled against suspects. The 1525 edict, which listed forty-eight alumbrado propositions is discussed in Hamilton, Heresy and Mysticism, 27–29, and provided in detail in Márquez, Los alumbrados, 229–38. 114. See Ahlgren, Teresa of Ávila and the Politics of Sanctity, 13–14, n. 23, for a synopsis of the argument for a Lutheran influence on alumbrado beliefs. Also, Hamilton, Heresy and Mysticism, 73–74.

38 Introduction throughout their lives, in spite of the church’s approval of their spiritual devotions and innovations.115 In the 1570s, concurrent with Vela’s entrance into the convent, the number of alumbrados convicted of heresy reached a record high. Vela did not overtly embrace beliefs associated with the “illuminist heresy,” but when supernatural locutions began commanding her to act contrary to the wishes of her superiors, the nuns of Santa Ana considered themselves justifiably alarmed. Vela thus faced several challenges: to pursue the ascetic life she believed vital to her salvation, convince her peers that God spoke directly to her, and distinguish herself as a mystic without being accused of illuminism or worse.

Women and the Devil María Vela’s locutions and her inexplicable maladies forced her peers and supervisors to grapple with the terrifying possibility that what appeared to be transcendent in Santa Ana might derive not from God, but from the devil.116 Their fears stemmed from a conviction that demons relentlessly stalked every one of them and took special pleasure in debasing seemingly incorruptible persons and holy places. Convents, in particular, attracted the machinations of the Evil One.117 Thus, the abbess, nuns, and confessors of Santa Ana viewed with apprehension Vela’s abnormal bodily manifestations, her catatonic trances, levitations, swoons, and maladies that defied diagnosis. Fear of the devil’s presence informed every decision and every remedy proffered for Vela’s recovery.118 Contemporary accounts of the demonic possession of nuns or even entire convents in early modern Europe serve as evidence of the effective dissemination of Catholic (and Protestant) theology concerning Satan and demons 115. For Teresa’s continual efforts to avoid an indictment for alumbradismo, see Ahlgren, Teresa of Ávila and the Politics of Sanctity. For accusations of illuminism leveled at Loyola and the Jesuits, see Hamilton, Heresy and Mysticism, 92–97. 116. The difficulty of determining the divine or diabolical origin of physical manifestations is discussed in Alison Weber, “Between Ecstasy and Exorcism: Religious Negotiation in Sixteenth-Century Spain,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 23, no. 2 (Spring 1993): 221–34; Moshe Sluhovsky, Believe Not Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism, and Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 236; Sarah Ferber, Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern France (New York: Routledge, 2004); Brian P. Levack, The Devil Within: Possession and Exorcism in the Christian West (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013); Caciola, Discerning Spirits. 117. See Michel de Certeau, The Possession at Loudon, trans. Michael B. Smith (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000); Moshe Sluhovsky, “The Devil in the Convent,” in Believe Not Every Spirit, 233–64; Ferber, Demonic Possession, 89–105. Ferber associates the outbreak of demonic possession in a convent in Louviers, Normandy, in 1642–54 with a vigorous anti-illuminist campaign then being waged in France. 118. Significantly, Vaquero emphasizes in La muger fuerte that when Vela lay dying, no demon dared show its face. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 194–96.

Introduction 39 and of common assumptions about the nature of women. The effectiveness of a demon was only limited by the resistance of its prey, and European theorists tended toward the consensus that women could not or would not resist the wiles of the devil as vigorously as would men. For proof of female gullibility and lack of judgment, Christians pointed to the biblical Eve in the Garden of Eden. The pseudo-Pauline letter of First Timothy, inspired by ancient Greco-Roman attitudes toward women, provided the “official” Christian rearticulation of the fall from Paradise: “Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.” Eve, the prototype of all women, had readily succumbed to the silver-tongued Tempter; her “daughters” inherited the weak character and feeble body that essentially predisposed them to an unholy alliance with the Prince of Darkness.119 The dichotomy of male and female revealed itself especially in cases of demonic possession. Women, even good women, suffered from diabolic penetrations into their bodies; men performed the necessary exorcisms. Only a very few female saints could boast of casting out demons.120 With rare exception, the power to save was in the hands of privileged males who could use that power to rescue Satan’s typically female victims. The relationship between exorcist and the one possessed became yet another traditional male-female interaction in which man dominated woman. When the devil appeared in the convent, nuns were forced to cede ground and privacy to men, with the result that the female-gendered spaces of the cloister were transformed into loci of male intervention and power. Centuries of scientific and religious discourse provided early modern Christians with a number of irrefutable “reasons” for women’s susceptibility to demons. Medical understanding of female physiology still relied upon the ancient treatises of Hippocrates and Galen, which described women’s bodies as altogether more cold and clammy than those of men and thus more prone to melancholy and hysteria. A woman’s sexual appetite—feared to be virtually insatiable—resulted in irrational behavior, even an unhinged mind if not controlled. The weaker sex could be saved from its own proclivities only through constant vigilance in the form of taboos, or laws, or violence. 119. Beatriz Moncó Rebollo, “Demonios y mujeres: Historia de una transgresión,” in El Diablo en la Edad Moderna, ed. María Tausiet and James S. Amelang (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2004), 187–210. For a discussion of the development of the Christian doctrine of Eve as the original transgressor, see Sawyer, Women and Religion, 149–51. 120. Saint Radegund exorcised a woman invaded by the “Adversary” by commanding the embodied demon to lie on the ground in a posture of subordination and then stomping the possessed victim’s neck, whereupon the demon left the woman through a bloody flux. Saint Catherine of Siena freed a young girl from a demon who “was in the habit of speaking a very elegant form of Latin,” which he used to declare the mighty Catherine to be “the greatest enemy I have in the whole world.” Raymond of Capua, Life of St. Catherine of Siena, 242–49.

40 Introduction A rise in the number of recorded cases of demonic possessions of women coincided with the outbreak of witch hunts in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Europe, when thousands of female “witches” lost their lives.121 To be possessed was not the same as to be a witch, but the human signaled out by the devil for either purpose tended to be female. Satan, it was believed, made witches of women because women were more lustful, deceitful, and “needier” than men and submitted themselves more eagerly to his sexual advances. A general distrust of the female sex exacerbated fears of demons, and vice versa. Prevailing theories about the sexual penchants and moral weaknesses of women rendered suspect the entire female half of the population. The possibility that women might resent the vilification or subordination of their sex occurred to at least one Spanish friar, who warned in 1529 that “women are particularly attracted to the devil, because, since they lack a man’s strength, they need diabolical powers for the purpose of revenge.”122 Perhaps there were, indeed, women who sought supernatural help in efforts to avenge themselves on the patriarchy, but one thing is certain: members of the female sex, whether witches or possessed, wives, mothers, or nuns, had in common one debilitating condition: they were not men. Theology, medical theory, and art emphasized the dichotomy and inequality of the sexes, with male artists sometimes depicting the female body as grotesque or defective in its dissimilarity to the physique of a man, implying, yet again, an association between women and the devil, whose own visage represented the antithesis of male perfection.123 Some theorists offered alternative explanations for the inclination of women, particularly those in convents, to become possessed or act as if possessed. Theologians, confessors, and priests agreed with abbesses and nuns that the very fact of living in a convent could provoke psychological disturbances.124 The rigors 121. Scholarly treatments of the intersection of belief in demons and fear of witches include Walter Stephens, Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002; Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark, eds., Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Period of the Witch Trials (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002); Lyndal Roper, Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004); Linda C. Hults, The Witch as Muse: Art, Gender, and Power in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); Brian P. Levack, ed., Demonology, Religion, and Witchcraft, vol. 1, New Perspectives on Witchcraft, Magic, and Demonology (New York: Routledge, 2001). 122. Fray Martín de Castañega, Tratado de las supersticiones y hechicerias, trans. and quoted by Kagan, Lucrecia’s Dreams, 114. 123. For a provocative discussion of the historical association of gender and the grotesque, see Margaret R. Miles, Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), 145–67. 124. For the precautions taken by Teresa of Ávila in her convents, see Weber, “Saint Teresa, Demonologist.” Teresa worried that excessive acts of devotion and mystical trances could result in a nun falling prey to the devil or, at the very least, being suspected of such.

Introduction 41 of monastic life and its ascetic regime, loss of free agency, bitter conflicts between cliques of nuns, and constant meditations on suffering, hell, and one’s own shortcomings led to any number of mental, emotional, or psychosomatic problems. Confessors and abbesses understood that depression resulted when nuns were unhappy, lonely, or self-absorbed, and not necessarily because the nun suffered from an imbalance of bodily humors or an unfulfilled uterus. The enforcement of enclosure ordered by the Council of Trent had all the potential of contributing to even greater numbers of miserable women, for one’s imagination could take a turn for the worse as the secular world receded on the other side of barred doors. Spiritual supervisors recognized the effect that convent culture could have on a nun’s mind and spirit, but they still viewed enclosure, malnutrition, self-loathing, or depression as “preconditions” rather than reasons for possession.125 In their opinion, possession occurred because the devil raged in a person’s soul; the cause was supernatural, not organic. They must deal with it accordingly. To relieve the demonically possessed, the Church turned to experts, those with the knowledge, skill, and authority to exorcise demons. Early in the Middle Ages, lay persons as well as clerics attempted to banish by command any evil spirits that resided in the souls of Christians, but by the fifteenth century the Church began to restrict the practice of exorcism to a select few. Priests, and only priests, were deemed qualified to deal with the devil. Concerns that nonclerics wished to bypass the intermediary authority of priests resulted in a total ban on lay exorcisms. Like the alumbrados, who emphasized mental prayer and direct communication with God, lay exorcists threatened sacerdotal privilege. Significantly, efforts to eradicate the alumbrado heresy in the early sixteenth century coincided with priests receiving exclusive rights to cast out demons. By the middle of the sixteenth century, only specially trained clerics could perform the procedure, which had taken on the look of an “eighth sacrament” and garnered much more attention than the hallowed seven; it was simply more exciting to see a priest battle with a demon than to witness a baptism or mass.126 In such a dramatic contest, the priest who triumphed over the devil stood to reap more than spiritual benefits. The ability to exorcise had a positive effect on a man’s professional and personal status, which may explain why Vela’s confessor and biographer Miguel González Vaquero devoted one-third of La muger fuerte to his successful handling of the demons that plagued her.127 125. Sluhovsky, Believe Not Every Spirit, 236. 126. The role of theologians and clerics in the sacramentalization of exorcism is discussed in Sluhovsky, Believe Not Every Spirit, 72–78; the advantage of exorcismal skills to the status and career of a priest, in Ferber, Demonic Possession, 64–68. Ferber points out that the uncertain outcome added to the excitement that accompanied attempts to cast out demons. 127. Vaquero divided his nearly 500-page biography of Vela into three sections; the final section is essentially an advice manual for dealing with demons. Donahue, “Writing Lives,” 233–35, suspects

42 Introduction The process of exorcising demons resembled a sacramental ritual in a number of ways. In 1530, Pedro Sánchez Ciruelo’s Reprobación de los supersticiones y hechicerías (Condemnation of superstitions and sorcery) suggested a course of action that called for the officiating priest to don the proper clerical garb and arm himself with a crucifix, holy water, and occasionally the Eucharist.128 Priests typically interrogated the demon, or demons, for name and purpose, although rites were not uniform and relied generally upon medieval or even ancient texts. But in 1576, the Italian Franciscan friar Girolamo Menghi began compiling all hitherto-known information about demons, possession, witchcraft, and rites of exorcism into several volumes that quickly became bestsellers and required reading for many priests. Menghi’s second volume, Flagellum daemonum, seu exorcismi terribiles, potentissimi, et efficacies (Scourge of the devil: terrible, mighty, and efficacious exorcisms), provided exorcists with the traditional “how to” when it came to casting out demons, listing such tried-and-true methods as insulting the demon; applying a fumigant of fire and sulfur; drawing an image of the demon and then burning it; and purging the body of the evil spirit through concoctions of garlic, frankincense, and other ingredients designed to induce vomiting. The procedures were to be combined with the traditional liturgical elements of holy oil and holy water, scriptural recitations, prayer, and, always, the making of the sign of the cross, which indicated to both demon and victim that Christ’s power, obtained through his suffering on the cross, could and would defeat the Prince of Darkness once again.129 In 1598, when María Vela’s superiors decided that her condition warranted exorcism, the convent chaplain took charge of the process. For nine days, whenever Vela appeared at the communion window to receive the holy wafer, the convent chaplain placed a sanctified stole around her neck and, according to Vela, “recited every exorcism in his book.”130 But her physical ecstasies increased and her jaws remained locked, whereupon the chaplain concluded that Vela suffered from epilepsy, not demon possession. Like numerous confessors and priests across Europe, he acknowledged that what appeared to be supernatural might be physiological in origin. Vela’s last confessor, Miguel González Vaquero, disagreed. With all the persuasive skills expected of a man with a doctorate in law, Vaquero argued that demons, motivated by jealousy, physically attacked the pious Vela. He Vaquero’s biography of being little more than a vehicle to display his extraordinary talent as an exorcist. Bilinkoff refutes this position in “Confessors, Penitents, and the Construction of Identities in Early Modern Ávila.” 128. See Sluhovsky, Believe Not Every Spirit, 72–74, for Pedro Ciruelo’s guidelines, and 78–86 for a discussion of Girolamo Menghi’s influence on early modern exorcism. 129. Sluhovsky, Believe Not Every Spirit, 83: “The exorcism is, in fact, a repetition or a reenactment of the salvific passion of Christ himself.” 130. For Vaquero’s account of the exorcisms, see González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 107r–108v.

Introduction 43 managed to assuage the diabolic assaults she suffered, only to fall victim himself, when the devil turned his fury on him and caused him to break two bones in a fall down the stairs.131 To Vela and Vaquero, the threat of injury from demons was both real and immediate. Despite its dangers, fighting demons had its appeal, for it allowed the exorcist and the afflicted to act out their theological interpretations and social anxieties, and in some cases realize their personal ambitions. A priest who successfully performed an exorcism and saw his credibility rise in such matters might even earn an international reputation as an expert demonologist, a possibility that surely drew a number of men into difficult or sensational cases of possible possession. Similarly, a godly person assaulted by a devil underwent unspeakable tortures but exhibited through such intense suffering a more perfectly achieved imitatio Christi. The afflicted might even gain a reputation for holiness, if the devil’s attack appeared to be a jealous maneuver against one of God’s favored few.132 Hagiographical accounts, which served as patterns for holiness, almost always included dramatic scenes of encounters between holy persons and demons.133 Regarded as a rite of passage for would-be saints, a battle with the devil replicated the war in heaven described in scripture.134 The mystic’s body, penetrated by both God and Satan, became the epicenter of an extraordinary display of supernatural power. Thus, regardless of how frightening or disruptive Vela’s demons, the possibility that God had chosen her as the site of yet another victory over Satan made it impossible for her peers and associates to dismiss her claims of divine communication or alienate themselves from her concerns. They had to proceed cautiously, because she might be a saint.

131. Vela, Vida. Vela viewed Vaquero’s injuries as an “act of charity” that required Vaquero to shed his blood for the sake of her soul. The illusion to the blood sacrifice of Christ is unmistakable. 132. The stakes were high enough to compel some to feign demonic assaults or possession. Haliczer equates faked possession with self-inflicted stigmata, each a “performance-based tactic” designed to force others into acknowledging one’s piety. Haliczer, Between Exaltation and Infamy, 189. 133. Ferber, Demonic Possession, 144–45. Ferber notes that the “traditional presence of the devil in the lives of saints” provided a “fertile tradition,” wherein demonic possession could be seen as a positive affirmation of one’s piety. In turn, the popularity of ecstatic spirituality effectively elevated demonic possession to a form of pious expression. Sánchez Lora notes, also, that the saint needs the devil; Satan’s appearance proves, by contradiction, the presence of holiness. José Luis Sánchez Lora, “Demonios y santos: El combate singular,” El Diablo en la Edad Moderna, ed. María Tausiet and James S. Amelang (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2004), 171. 134. Rev. 12:7–9: “And war broke out in heaven,” wherein Michael and his angels defeated the dragon, “who is called the Devil and Satan,” and threw him and his angels down to earth. Not only Vela, but Vaquero, too, battled against demons; Vaquero’s given name of Miguel (Michael) may not have gone unnoticed.

44 Introduction

María Vela y Cueto—Her Legacy María Vela showed no reluctance to declare her ambition to be a saint.135 When two nuns remarked that nothing less than sainthood would satisfy her, she responded that they were correct, and admitted shortly before penning her Vida that “whenever I hear it said that I am far from being a saint, I do not believe it.” She recalled how, one day, while in mystical communion with God and filled with great yearning, she boldly declared, “Lord, I would like to be a saint!,” and forthwith was made to understand that the desire would be granted. Her course thus approved by God, Vela carefully structured her behavior, her relationships, her speech, and her written words toward the fulfillment of her goal. In the first years after her death in 1617, it looked as if Vela’s hope might become reality. The official inquiry into her qualification for sainthood began in Ávila in 1619, stimulated, at least in part, by the swift publication of the biography written by her last confessor, Miguel González Vaquero, who referred to her throughout his text as la Santa. The bishop of Ávila, Francisco de Gamarra, also a supporter of Vela, presided over the official inquiry, interviewing witnesses and amassing a considerable number of testimonies from those who attested to her holiness or to miracles performed as a result of her intervention. Testimonials came from a variety of persons—Vela’s brother Lorenzo; the abbess of the Recollect Cistercian convent in Madrid; famous clerics and obscure friars; Ávila’s common folk and aristocracy, and, of course, the nuns of Santa Ana—who joined with the bishop and Vaquero to prove Vela worthy of beatification, the first step in the process toward canonization. The documents were dispatched to Rome, but Vela was not beatified or made a saint. Perhaps the Holy See in the early seventeenth century required more evidence of sanctity or saw no political advantage in declaring yet another Spanish saint, having already canonized Isidore of Seville in 1598 and being even then in the final stages of canonizing four more: Teresa of Ávila, Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, and Isidore the Laborer, who would receive their crowns of sainthood in 1622.136 Vela’s written works disappeared more rapidly than the documents in support of her sainthood. For this, the responsibility largely rests upon Miguel González Vaquero, to whom Vela entrusted her personal papers—presumably the compilation of mystical experiences that she had recorded in 1598 and called 135. María Vela y Cueto, The Third Mystic of Ávila: The Self-Revelation of María Vela, a SixteenthCentury Spanish Nun, trans. Frances Parkinson Keyes (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1960), 173, 231, 205. 136. The nuns who currently reside in Santa Ana believe that the official documents were lost on the way to Rome when the courier died en route. They still hope to see Vela canonized, and to that end have thrice had her body exhumed and examined by Vatican officials for the purpose of providing the necessary evidence that her body remains uncorrupted by time.

Introduction 45 her Mercedes (Mercies). When Vaquero ordered her to write her life story, her Vida, he returned her earlier manuscripts, with instructions that she use them to prompt her memory. At Vaquero’s insistence, Vela labored over the Vida for several years, keeping it and the previously written text in a leather bag inside a cloth sack, tucked away in a secret place. On her deathbed she told Vaquero where she had hidden the papers and beseeched him to “take them quickly.”137 Vaquero chose not to edit and publish Vela’s Vida—perhaps in compliance with her wishes—but instead decided to follow a centuries-old tradition of confessors with unusually devout female penitents: he wrote a biography of his most remarkable charge, explaining or eliminating as he saw fit the information gleaned from Vela’s writings and their conversations during the fourteen years he acted as her confessor and confidant. He entitled the nearly five-hundred-page biography La muger fuerte (The strong woman), and published it a year after her death.138 Vela’s Vida, Mercedes, and personal correspondence were soon placed in the archives of Santa Ana, as cloistered as the nuns who guarded them. Modern interest in Vela’s writings began in 1959, when the popular American author Frances Parkinson Keyes received permission from the abbess of Santa Ana to view the cache of original works written in Vela’s own hand. The abbess allowed Keyes, a devout Catholic, to temporarily remove a seventeenth-century copy of the Vida and Mercedes from the convent and take it to the United States, while an eighteenth-century copy went to the prior of the Dominican house of Santo Tomás, the same Dominican house that supplied most of the confessors for the nuns of Santa Ana during Vela’s lifetime. The efforts of Keyes and the prior of Santo Tomás produced a one-volume English translation of Vela’s works, heavily edited and abridged by Keyes, in 1960.139 In 1961, a priest of Ávila, Olegario González Hernández, published the first critical edition in Spanish of Vela’s writings.140 Thirty years after Keyes and González Hernández made Vela’s autobiographies available to a public readership, scholars began to place her in historical perspective. In 1989, Jodi Bilinkoff included Vela in a book-length study of the

137. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 194v. 138. La muger fuerte enjoyed considerable success, as indicated by subsequent new Spanish editions in 1627, 1640, and 1674, and by Italian editions published in Milan in 1632 and 1635. 139. Vela, The Third Mystic of Ávila, 14–18. The Third Mystic lacks numerous passages from the original text and the notes assume the literal truth of Vela’s supernatural claims. Keyes makes it clear in the introduction that she was motivated to translate and publish the text by a desire to reveal the blessings God had bestowed upon Ávila. 140. María Vela y Cueto, Autobiografía y Libro de las Mercedes, ed. Olegario González Hernández (Barcelona: Juan Flors, 1961). For the most recent Spanish edition of Vela’s works, see The Spiritual Diaries of Doña María Vela y Cueto, 2 vols, trans. Margaret Ann Rees (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2007).

46 Introduction social and political environment of sixteenth-century Ávila.141 Subsequently, Vela has been the primary focus of, and discussed in, several more scholarly works.142 Vela’s memoirs and personal correspondence provide information that is supported or augmented by Vaquero’s biography and by the testimonies of friends, family, nuns, clergy, and townspeople given at the hearings in support of her sainthood, thus a basic outline of events is readily ascertained. Of all the sources, the Vida would seem, at first glance, to be the most reliable, even sufficient on its own for uncovering the authentic María Vela, since it is her life story told in her own words. But readers must situate the Vida—Vela’s most important literary legacy—in historical context and understand it not as reportage or a diary but as a continuation of a sixteen-hundred-year tradition of constructed and symbolic vitae of female saints. In many respects, Vela’s Vida is a self-authored hagiography and perhaps more accurately categorized as autohagiography rather than autobiography.143 Vela interpreted the events of her life in light of what she knew about the saints. She placed herself on the page as both narrator and subject, admitted her shortcomings, and detailed her spiritual progress within a frequently hostile environment. In so doing, she followed in the footsteps of the fifth-century saint and theologian Augustine of Hippo, whose widely-read Confessions set the standard for spiritual autobiography and influenced numerous authors, including Teresa of Ávila, whose Vida, first published in 1588, provided Vela with a contemporary model of Augustinian autobiography.144 141. Bilinkoff, Ávila of Saint Teresa. 142. For works in English that deal exclusively with María Vela, see Laningham, “Making a Saint out of a Sibling,”; Laningham, “Maladies up Her Sleeve?”; Margaret Ann Rees, Doña María Vela y Cueto: Cistercian Mystic of Spain’s Golden Age (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004), and Rees, “Doña María Vela y Cueto and Infused Knowledge,” in Belief and Unbelief in Hispanic Literature: Papers from a Conference at the University of Hull, 12–13 December 1994, ed. Helen Wing and John Jones, 1–7. Warminster, UK: Aris & Phillips, 1995. 143. Kate Greenspan, “Autohagiography and Medieval Women’s Spiritual Autobiography,” Gender and Text in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Jane Chance (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996). Greenspan’s observation that “in autohagiography as in other medieval religious literature, the sex of the author was ultimately beside the point,” does not seem applicable to Counter-Reformation texts by women. For gender as a determining factor in the crafting of a text, see Weber, Teresa of Ávila and the Rhetoric of Femininity. Elizabeth Rhodes argues that the term autobiography carries with it certain modern expectations of full disclosure and thus a work such as a Vida is better understood as a spiritual journal. See Elizabeth Rhodes, “What’s in a Name: On Teresa of Ávila’s Book,” in The Mystical Gesture: Essays on Medieval and Early Modern Spiritual Culture in Honor of Mary E. Giles, ed. Robert Boenig (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2000), 79–106. Describing such a text as a spiritual journal, however, still yet implies reportage, when in fact this type of self-“revelation” is less a memoir and more a statement of intent. 144. For Teresa’s emulation of Augustine, see Slade, Teresa of Ávila, 34–38.

Introduction 47 In writing her Vida, Vela emulated a time-honored tradition and contributed to the most prolific genre of female discourse in early modern Spain.145 But a surge of female-authored vidas should not be understood as conclusive evidence of a burgeoning self-determination among early modern women. On the contrary, men who functioned as guardians of orthodoxy ordered these compositions so that they could peruse the women’s testimonies for evidence of heterodoxy and then pass them on to others for inspection and/or censure. Scholars today refer to an autobiography like Vela’s as a “vida por mandato,” (autobiography by mandate), so called because such memoirs were routinely required by confessors of the nuns in their care who claimed to be recipients of divine grace.146 If the vida passed inspection, it stood as proof of a woman’s piety. If it contained errors in doctrine, it could become an indisputable piece of material evidence in an ecclesiastical suit. Recording in writing one’s extraordinary relationship with God could be dangerous. Pages might be passed from hand to hand, given to one’s superiors, or used by the Inquisition to prosecute the author. Once committed to paper, words that smacked of hubris, defiance, or heresy could not be denied. Therefore, a truly uncensored voice is understandably absent in life narratives. Instead, there emerges from the page a careful self-expression that one scholar defines as “politically correct,” by virtue of its acquiescence with the prevailing concerns of a theocratic government.147 Self-censoring—the act of carefully selecting one’s own words in the interest of a specific self-portrayal—certainly compromises an authentic representation of the author. But self-censored works are of immense value to the historian, because the words and subjects avoided by women such as Vela indicate an awareness of the restrictions imposed upon them by men and by the church. The significance of María Vela’s literary legacy lies in her grasp of the parameters of the world in which she lived. Her Vida testifies to her mindfulness of social mores, of the tolerable limits of self-advancement, of the responsibilities 145. At least one hundred early modern spiritual autobiographies authored by women have come to light, most of them by women in religious orders, with Franciscans and Carmelites producing over half. Cistercians, like María Vela, account for slightly over ten percent. Isabelle Poutrin, Le voile et la plume: Autobiographie et sainteté féminine dans l’Espagne moderne (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 1995), 351. 146. The “vida por mandato” is discussed in Alison Weber, “The Three Lives of the Vida: The Uses of Convent Autobiography,” in Women, Texts and Authority in the Early Modern Spanish World, ed. Marta V. Vicente and Luis R. Corteguera (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), 107–25, and in Weber’s introduction to María de San José Salazar’s Book for the Hour of Recreation, ed. Alison Weber, trans. Amanda Powell, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 17–18. Also, Sonja Herpoel, A la zaga de Santa Teresa: Autobiografías por mandato (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999) and most recently in Fernando Durán López, “Religious Autobiography,” A New Companion to Hispanic Mysticism, ed. Hilaire Kallendorf (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2010), 15–38. 147. Durán López, “Religious Autobiography,” 38.

48 Introduction and advantages that came from being part of an elite family and monastic institution, and of the role that men must play in proving her a model of Counter-Reformation female piety. Vela knew how a Catholic woman, nun, and saint should be portrayed, and she realized that a well-crafted vida could be the first step toward making a saint out of a misunderstood, beleaguered misfit. She understood that her written words exposed her to certain perils, but could give her exactly what she wanted. Forced or quite possibly relieved to tell the story of her life, she placed herself within the larger context of sixteenth-century religious trends and in the company of medieval and early modern spiritual giants, thus deftly providing evidence of her own that God still spoke through the “other” voice. Susan Diane Laningham

Note on Translation Base Texts Our English translation of María Vela’s spiritual autobiography takes as its base text the 1961 Spanish edition prepared by Olegario González Hernández, of the Seminary of Ávila. With ample access to the Santa Ana conventual archives, González Hernández was able to painstakingly examine Vela’s autograph manuscript and two extant copies—one undated, probably transcribed shortly after her death, and the other dated and certified by the bishop of Ávila in 1744.148 By comparing the original manuscript and subsequent transcriptions, González Hernández produced a sound scholarly edition, one that noted deletions and additions found in the original manuscript, but which also incorporated the useful chapter divisions and summaries provided in the 1744 copy. In the present edition, we mention several of the textual concerns brought to our attention by González Hernández, and we have included the chapter divisions and summaries added in 1744. While our project was under way, Dr. Margaret Rees published a second Spanish edition of María Vela’s autobiography in 2007; we have found it useful for comparison. Similarly, we have, on occasion, consulted the first English translation of Vela’s autobiography, produced by Frances Parkinson Keyes in 1960. Although an engaging translation, it is now out of print and remains incomplete insofar as it was based on a transcribed copy that omitted entire passages found in the original manuscript. Only one autograph copy of María Vela’s epistolary correspondence has survived the centuries. Letters included here are based on transcribed copies made by Santa Ana nuns who had access to the originals. For the benefit of readers, we have added paragraph breaks to the letters. We also include in this volume a translation of Vela’s response to the Inquisition’s agent, Father Juan de Alarcón. That letter appears in Miguel González Vaquero’s 1618 manuscript of La muger fuerte, preserved in the Santa Ana archives, and in subsequent seventeenth-century editions of the work. Our translation of Vela’s response (and the letter Father Alarcón penned in return), follows the 1640 edition of La muger fuerte, accessible online via the Biblioteca Nacional de España. Translations of texts included in the Appendices—a list of “Grave Men” who dealt with Vela and a panegyric sonnet penned by an anonymous nun from Madrid circa 1618—correspond to the same edition. 148. The 1744 copy is certified as “following to the letter” another copy of the Vida (no longer extant) that once belonged to the Count of Oropesa. The count was an admirer of Vela and a “great friend” of her last confessor, Miguel González Vaquero, to whom he sent a letter of condolence upon Vela’s death in 1617. See González Hernández’s introduction to Vela, Autobiografía, 107.

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50 Note on Translation

Vela’s Style and Language As a member of Ávila’ aristocracy, Doña María Vela received a better education than most women in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Spain. She was an accomplished musician, possessed at least a rudimentary knowledge of Latin, and was an avid reader of religious works in the Spanish vernacular. In Vela’s Vida and in her letters, she cites prose works and poetry that she was reading or wished to receive.149 Employing a clear and elegant calligraphy (as the original manuscript of her spiritual autobiography reveals), Vela could expound quite eloquently upon sermons that she heard or on the mystical understanding that she achieved as a result of mental prayer (see, e.g., chapter 10). Nonetheless, like other Spanish nun autobiographers of the period, including Teresa of Ávila, Vela claimed that she found it difficult to write, citing ill health or poor memory as a hindrance. Indeed, her often debilitating illnesses may well account for the stylistically less polished passages of the Vida. Like her contemporaries, Vela also incorporated into her life narrative the particular favors (mercedes) that she regularly received from God in prayer, which appear as abbreviated notes, containing scant elaboration or commentary. Consistent with norms of early seventeenth-century Spanish prose, Vela characteristically produced long sentences in her autobiography. These contain numerous clauses, linked by the repetition of the conjunction y (and) or que (because, for, and). We have intentionally left some of Vela’s longer sentences intact, in order to give readers an idea of her seventeenth-century style, modifying them only slightly whenever appropriate modern punctuation (such as colons, semicolons, parentheses, or dashes) could be easily inserted.150 For the most part, however, our goal has been to render Vela’s narrative more reader-friendly in the twenty-first century. Thus we have broken up many sentences, but without sacrificing fidelity to the textual content. This is not to say that Vela herself never employs shorter sentences. After narrating a particular experience, she might add, quite succinctly, in order to emphasize the continuous nature of her mystical experiences, “This happened many times.” Vela also makes use of the simple sentence to lend a decidedly dramatic tone to the narrative. For example, in chapter 1 she declares, “This I greatly regretted” and “I had to suffer all of this.” Vela’s writing poses further grammatical and lexical challenges. One problem is that she, like other Spanish women religious writers of her era, occasionally changes the subject in mid-sentence, without always indicating clearly what the 149. In addition to Teresa of Ávila’s autobiography (Vida), Vela seems to have had access to other texts by or about Teresa. González Hernández reports that in 1640 a Santa Ana nun offered testimony that the convent possessed a transcription (now lost), in Vela’s hand, of a letter sent by Juan de Ávila to Teresa regarding the latter’s spiritual autobiography. Vela, Autobiografía, 107. 150. The autograph manuscript contains punctuation, but it is not consistent.

Note on Translation 51 new subject is.151 In such cases, we offer our best reading or note an alternative. Another difficulty arises from Vela’s reports of the visions and locutions she has received. In chapter 2 of her Vida, Vela mentions for the first time that God communicates to her through hablas interiors, or interior locutions. She does not use the term hablas interiores, again, but instead employs phrases such as me dijeron (they told me) or me dieron a entender (they gave me to understand), for which we often substitute “I was told” or “I was given to understand,” and add the bracketed phrase “in a locution.” Throughout the translation, Vela’s abbreviations—such as “N.S.” (Nuestro Señor) and “V.M” (Vuestro Merced)—have been replaced by complete terms in English translation. Spanish titles (religious or otherwise) have also been translated, with the exception of a few, such as Fray or Doña, that are commonly retained in English language translations of Spanish texts. At times, we have preferred to use the original Spanish term, such as aljuba or coracha, when there is not a short English equivalent readily available, and furnish an explanatory note. Vela’s Latin quotations, with which she embellished and supported her narrative, remain in the original, translated in the notes. Various reference works essential to the translation process are listed in the bibliography. Of these, Sebastián de Covarrubias y Orozco’s Tesoro de la Lengua Castellana of 1611, contemporaneous to Vela’s writing of her autobiography, and the Complete Oxford English Dictionary (with its list of historical examples) have proved particularly helpful in determining what Vela meant to say at the turn of the seventeenth century and in conveying this to readers in modern English. As Vela put her quill pen to paper and began her spiritual autobiography, she commented, “I will declare it all, as best as I know how.” The same caveat applies to our translation of her works. Jane Tar

151. See Darcy Donahue’s discussion of the writings of Mother Ana de San Bartolomé and the abrupt shifts of subject in mid-sentence, which Donahue describe as “foregrounding aspects of the spoken language.” Ana de San Bartolomé, Autobiography and Other Writings, ed. and trans. Darcy Donahue, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 21.

Vida of María Vela y Cueto Chapter 1 (How God began to call her to perfection from the first year of her novitiate and what happened to her during the entire twenty years she spent under the direction of her first confessor. This confessor was a cleric, a very faithful servant of God, named Gaspar Dávila.) Jesus Mary1 I am writing this because Your Grace has placed me under express obedience.2 Although it is very difficult for me, I will declare it as best I know how, with divine favor, for the glory of the Lord. After I made a general confession in the year I came to take the habit— thirty-one years ago, at the age of fifteen, on the Feast of Our Lady’s Presentation—Our Lord, through his goodness alone, began to instill in me a great desire for perfection.3 I placed myself totally under the direction of my confessor, Father Gaspar de Ávila, with great faith that by this path the Lord would fulfill my desire.4 My confessor used to help me mortify myself whenever the occasion warranted, and it seemed to him that a good way to do this would be to give my aunt, who is now in heaven, a similar authority [to his] over me. Therefore I took communion only when she allowed it, which was every two weeks. I can only remember four 1. Vela uses the common invocation “Jesús Ma[ría],” calling upon Jesus and Mary for guidance. 2. Vela speaks directly to Father Miguel González Vaquero (1565–1636), who served as her confessor from 1603 until her death in 1617, and upon whose order she began in 1607 to write her Vida. In her Vida, Vela addresses Vaquero as Vuestra Merced, literally “Your Mercy,” more commonly conveyed in English as “Your Grace.” In her letters, Vela refers to him as “the Doctor,” in recognition of his advanced university degree. In 1618, Vaquero published his biography of Vela, entitled La muger fuerte (The strong woman), which he based on information told to him by Vela and on her personal papers, including her Vida. Miguel González Vaquero, La muger fuerte: Por otro título, la vida de Doña María Vela, monja de San Bernardo en el convento de Santa Ana de Ávila (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1674; 1st ed. 1618). 3. A general confession—sometimes written—entailed the admission of a lifetime of sins, not just the sins committed since the last confession, and typically signaled the start of a renewed determination to serve God. Pious Christians often made a general confession before a momentous and often irreversible decision, such as marriage or the taking of priestly or monastic vows. Vela arrived in Santa Ana in 1576; the Feast of Our Lady’s Presentation is November 21. 4. Gaspar de Ávila (Dávila), a secular priest and cathedral chaplain, would have confessed a number of penitents, including nuns in various convents in Ávila. He was one of ten confessors in 1567 who served the Carmelite nuns of la Encarnación, the largest convent in Ávila, where Teresa of Ávila began her religious vocation in 1535. James F. Melvin, “Fathers as Brothers in Early Modern Catholicism: Priestly Life in Ávila, 1560–1636” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2009), 22.

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54 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO times when I took it weekly during the six years that I was a novice.5 In prayer and penance, it was the same. She granted me permission to do a few secret penitential exercises, but I used to do some that she did not know about. The time spent in prayer was very limited, scarcely an hour a day, and sometimes I was not allowed more than a quarter of an hour for it. At other times, she ordered me to pray the rosary and do nothing else. I obeyed everything in silence. But I would cry about it to Our Lord and ask him to bring about a time when I could do and suffer much for His Majesty, because, when my mother died6 and I had implored him to grant me that virtue of hers that had pleased him the most, he instilled in me a desire to suffer.7 It seemed to me that even though I might suffer as much as anyone possibly could in this world, I would never tire of it. But since everything was done to pamper and protect me, I could not be satisfied and thus went about in perpetual torment; this was not what I had envisioned. In contemplating Christ Our Lord in his life and death, and seeing myself so dissimilar, I would weep fountains of tears. I thought that there was no one more unfortunate than I, because everyone else had something to suffer—whether penances, disdain, poverty, or illnesses. Any of these things I would have taken on quite willingly. Thus one Lenten season, when I was not allowed to perform any penance at all, I turned to the Lord, imploring him to give me a penance from his own hand, because I could not rest from so much rest. So he gave me an illness that lasted until Easter, and with it [I felt] a spiritual delight in having suffered something for his love. Looking always upon the Infinite One, I would tell him that the cause of my desire to suffer, it seemed to me, was that he had suffered so much on my behalf. After some time, Our Lord began granting me recollection through prayer, more or less whenever it pleased him, making me yearn for more time to devote myself to prayer.8 But probably twelve years passed, during which time I do not 5. A novitiate typically lasted two or three years. Vela’s six-year delay may have been caused by her fragile health or by a disinclination for the monastic life. Vaquero admits that the young Vela was tempted to live “in the world, like her mother” and that even after spending five years in the convent she still resisted taking final vows until her brother Diego and her aunt, Isabel de Cueto (who served some years as abbess of Santa Ana), insisted. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 12r. 6. Doña Ana de Aguirre died on December 5, 1581, in Vela’s hometown of Cardeñosa. Vaquero says that when news of her mother’s death reached her during choir, Vela did not falter or miss a chord at the organ. Ibid. 7. In the original manuscript, the words deseo de padecer, “desire to suffer,” are underlined and written again in the left margin. 8. Sixteenth-century mystics understood recollection as a spiritual gift that enabled one to recognize the presence of God in the soul. Recollection might be received involuntarily or self-encouraged by focusing on religious objects or art. In The Way of Perfection, Teresa of Ávila instructs her nuns, particularly those whose minds were “constantly wandering,” to concentrate on the face of Jesus or “a good book, written in the vernacular” as an aid to recollection. Teresa of Ávila, Way of Perfection, chap. 26.

Vida 55 remember being allowed more than an hour a day for it. At night, I would sit on my bed and pray, and I would tie my feet and hands and neck together with a cord in such a way that I would be roused if I became tired. I went about with such yearnings that I would sigh, and sometimes tears of regret would flow from me because I was unable to achieve the level of prayer to which I aspired.9 If, on occasion, my aunt found out, she would become alarmed that what I was doing would lead to extreme behavior on my part or that I would have some spiritual sign such as a sort of ecstasy or similar thing. Thus she would try to distract me by making me run a skein of thread through the corridors. At other times, she made me count the tiles of a roof, carry stones from one place to another, sweep, or do similar things. Since I was always ill, she would not let me join the community at matins or in the refectory.10 This I greatly regretted. After my profession, Our Lord gave me the courage and determination to overcome this obstacle, but neither the Lady Abbess nor my confessor wished to upset my aunt, so they dared not order anything against her wishes.11 I had to suffer all of this. But there was an even heavier cross to bear that left me quite disconsolate. For while Our Lord was granting me favors and leading me along the way of love and trust and granting me supernatural things, my confessor was not following along the same path. At the best moment, he would take the food from my mouth and clip the wings with which I could fly in freedom of spirit. He always wanted me meek and fearful. Although I saw very well that there was safety in this, I did not dare partake of what was being offered me. When I had some interior locutions (all tender and true gifts that served to encourage me and lead me along the way of obedience and mortification), my confessor ordered me to resist them, telling me that they were an illusion of the devil and that I was not to consent to a thing that he did not review.12 9. Many theologians and reformers, including Teresa of Ávila, described a hierarchy of prayer that consisted of increasingly effective levels achieved through practice. Vela speaks frequently of a desire to imitate Teresa and may be referring here to the highest level of prayer, as defined by Teresa, in which one is conscious of nothing but God. 10. Matins is the first of eight divine offices (matins/vigils, lauds, prime, terce, sext, none, vespers, compline) performed at designated times in a twenty-four-hour period. An office (literally, a “duty” to God) consists of the recitation of prayers, the reading or recitation of scripture, and the singing of hymns. Of the eight divine offices, matins is generally regarded as the greatest duty to God, as it is based upon an early Christian practice of keeping vigil in the middle of the night in anticipation of Christ’s return. Because it occurs around 2:30 to 3:00 a.m., it is known as the night office and typically observed only in monasteries and convents. 11. Vela took her final vows of profession in 1582, two years after her aunt’s election as abbess. Even when Isabel de Cueto’s tenure in office ceased, her influence continued to exert itself upon her niece’s confessor and on the subsequent abbess. 12. This is Vela’s first reference to supernatural communication from God. Her descriptions indicate that the “interior locutions” sometimes came in the form of conversation and sometimes as unspoken

56 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO I always recollected myself with a verse from Scripture that would come to me when I began to pray. This he also tried to take from me, telling me that I was beginning far above myself, from the rooftop, and to leave that [level] to the Church. He gave me some pause for concern, but I saw no other way to begin. I remained on the lookout for what might be offered me, without daring to accept it until he came around to granting me permission. He told me not to receive particular things, but often this was not in my hands. If I went to tell him something of it, he and I would argue, and thus I would not tell him about some things, but rather let them pass. Once he told me that I should not think that I was pleasing God by what I was doing. This upset me so greatly that my heart sank. It seemed to me that I had no strength to do anything good, for if God was not pleased, then why should I kill myself over it? I only did what I did because it seemed to me to please God. Another time, I had a very tender feeling regarding these words: Ostende mihi faciem tuam, sonet vox tua in auribus meis: vox enim tua dulcis et facies tua decora.13 It seemed to me that the Spouse was addressing them to my soul, making it understand that through his goodness alone he had removed all ugliness and taint of sin from it, beautifying it with his grace in order that he might gaze upon it, coveting its beauty. I told my confessor about this and it cost me dearly. He reprimanded me, telling me that it was arrogant to believe that God would grant me such a favor. He said similar things that left me disconsolate and confused, but never did I fail to obey him in everything or to believe it best that I should. Through prayer, it was always made clear to me that this was the true way: obeying with the resignation of the intellect and the will, taking Our Lord as my model, whose labors and virtues I must learn to imitate. Thus I constantly contemplated myself in the mirror of Christ and therein saw reflected my desires and what virtue I lacked. I was given a great desire to make my life conform to that of Our Lord’s and to have the strength to mortify myself; and thus I had no other study or care except how to deny my will and opinion in everything.14 To this end, a penitential exercise occurred to me that gave me much to consider. It was this: whenever I was supposed to go to prayer (I was now allotted two hours for it, one in the morning and another in the afternoon), I would first seek my aunt’s advice about it. This seemed a nonsensical thing to do, because God was calling me interiorly to prayer and the time reserved for it was already set, so why should I make myself seek instruction from someone who did not know anything about what was happening in my soul? But in this revelation. As she says, the locutions “taught me many things… whether through words or not.” 13. Song of Sol. 2:14: “Let me see your face, let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely.” Verses from the Song of Solomon (Song of Songs) were the scriptures most frequently employed by mystics and Cistercians. See E. Ann Matter, The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990). 14. The words are underlined in the original manuscript.

Vida 57 way, I would mortify my understanding. I explained this plan to my confessor and it seemed fine to him. He then became very serious about making me put it into practice. It seemed to him that by performing this act, I would arrive at prayer selflessly and totally resigned to the will of another; also, by this means, I would be exercising humility while waiting to learn God’s will. This proved to be very much an uphill struggle for me. In the ten years I performed the exercise I could never surmount the obstacle of my own will without a great deal of difficulty.15 Sometimes my inability to overcome it was the cause of great distress. I always clung to God, hoping that he might grant me this favor, but he refused. He preferred to keep me humble by letting me see how very little I could do for him (for I was not even doing this), so that I might know that everything must come from his hand. One day, when for this reason I was very afflicted, I decided that it was all a waste of my time, for sometimes an hour was lost to me in deciding to go to my aunt and in shedding tears before her so that she could see my rebellion, and more time was lost in going to search her out wherever she was in the house. I wanted to stop this exercise, but was unable, because it would have contravened my obedience. Once when I was very distressed before the Holy Sacrament, these words were said to me: Quod ego facio tu nescis modo scies autem postea.16 Through them I was able to find the spirit to carry on until my aunt died.17 About six years before she died, I suffered from heart palpitations, which in the beginning were very extreme. I took them as a cause for thanksgiving and for spiritual enjoyment, wanting to believe that there was a good reason for having been given this gift. The best days were when I took the hardest hits and suffered from the worst of pains, because I generally had more consolations in prayer when I was truly in pain. After the death of my aunt, I offered to suffer any affliction that the Lord wanted to send me in order to be granted the privilege of releasing her from purgatory. On the night of my offer to him, I awoke to these words: Dignus est Agnus accipere virtutem et potestatem.18 I understood that she had been absolved and was rejoicing in the Lord by virtue of the blood of the Lamb. This caused me immense delight when I paused to consider it, because I had gone to bed having shed many tears, imagining her in pain. With this, the trial came upon me and I began to suffer intensely.19 About three months later, Our Lord began to grant me more 15. Vaquero confirms that Vela never overcame the repugnance she felt about seeking her aunt’s permission. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 20r. 16. John 13:7: “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” 17. Isabel de Cueto’s death likely occurred in 1596. 18. Rev. 5:12: “Worthy is the Lamb to receive honor and power.” 19. In her Vida, Vela speaks only of this one instance of successfully releasing a soul from purgatory through personally suffering the punishments deserved by the deceased. According to Vaquero,

58 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO continuous favors. As I was unable to communicate with my confessor (since for the last five years all communication had taken place only through the notes he sent me), it became necessary to start over with another confessor.20 And thus, having spent twenty years under [Father Gaspar de Ávila’s] direction, and with his approval, I took Father Salcedo as my confessor.21

Chapter 2 (Concerning what happened to her while under the direction of her second confessor, Father Francisco de Salcedo of the Company of Jesus—a very great religious, as everyone who saw and who dealt with him knows.)22 When I began with Father Salcedo, I was so ill that I did not follow my community and I rarely attended matins. During the day, whenever the tremors ceased, I went [along with the community]. I always ate meat because of my weakened state and I had special permission to do so on days of communal abstinence.23 however, Vela endured incredible pains on behalf of souls in purgatory on other occasions, once for a young girl and later for an elderly nun. Vaquero argues against those who believe it easy to be released from purgatory, but he refuses to give details of Vela’s torments, explaining that he fears the Inquisition might misunderstand her sufferings in the same way that people misunderstand “scribbles in the margins of a book.” González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 36–38. 20. In 1591, Father Gaspar de Ávila suffered what Vaquero describes as an illness that left him without the power of speech and caused his head to be twisted over his left shoulder. The affliction left him impaired for the remaining twelve years of his life, although he regained the ability to write six months after being stricken. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 27. 21. Vaquero says that Gaspar de Ávila and Isabel de Cueto intended that Vela have a new confessor identical to Father Gaspar in outlook and counsel. 22. The use of present tense—‘everyone who knows’—seems to confirm that the chapter summaries first appeared in the (no longer extant) copy made between 1618 and 1621 for Vaquero’s friend, the Count of Oropesa (d. 1621), when those who had known Salcedo were still living. Vela’s new confessor, Francisco de Salcedo, was the nephew of Baltasar Álvarez (1533–80), confessor to Teresa of Ávila. According to Vaquero, Salcedo confessed “all the great pious people in town,” but the nuns of Santa Ana thought him “very young and inexperienced.” González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 42–43. For the confessional methods of the Company (Society) of Jesus, see John W. O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 136–52. 23. According to Vaquero, the nuns of Santa Ana ate meat on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays; Vela wanted “to return to the Rule,” the early medieval Benedictine rule, which forbade absolutely the meat of four-footed animals. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 47v. The Cistercians, in their Summa Cartae Caritatis of 1119, sought an even stricter interpretation of the Benedictine rule, prohibiting dishes prepared with lard or other animal fats. The rule made allowances for the ill and infirm, however, so Vaquero may be referring to ailing sisters, like Vela, who were permitted to eat meat three times a week, although it is more likely that he is emphasizing the extent to which Santa Ana had strayed from a rule that in Vela’s opinion should have been enforced. For selections from the various monastic

Vida 59 But the desires that Our Lord instilled within me were greater than my strength. If only I had had someone to help me, I would have overcome the obstacles and tried to follow my profession. For five years, the only thing I did was wear a hair shirt under my habit, and no one knew about that except Doña María.24 When I read in [the writings of] Holy Mother Teresa of Jesus about how much it harms us to complain of minor ailments and about how God will help the individual who for his love possesses a great determination to overcome such difficulties, I felt within myself a renewed spirit and a strong will to try to do just that, trusting in Our Lord.25 I communicated this to Father Salcedo, and with his approval I began to become a new nun. Our Lord gave me more faith and spirit every day, along with greater physical strength, so that I was able to observe fasts, sleep in the habit, attend matins, and fulfill all my obligations. In addition to this, I had seven hours a day reserved for prayer, and spent most of that time on my knees. I scourged myself every day and some days placed a metal chain around my waist that would cut into my flesh. This order of things lasted from All Saints’ Day until Pentecost, when they began to give me permission to undertake the greater mortifications that I had been inspired to perform.26 And thus I wore the chain around my waist

rules, see Daniel Marcel La Corte and Douglas J. McMillan, eds., Regular Life: Monastic, Canonical, and Mendicant Rules, 2nd ed. (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2004). 24. The nobly born María Dávila (always referred to as Doña María by both Vela and Vaquero) remained Vela’s closest friend for thirty-eight years. Vaquero says that Vela initially had reservations about befriending María Dávila, possibly due to the rule’s warning against exclusive friendships between nuns, but the relationship between the two women was such that even when Vela periodically placed herself under a vow of silence, she would still converse with Doña María. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 9. Vaquero remarks that the other nuns “marveled” at the steadfast friendship between two nuns who were “so different,” inasmuch as María Dávila’s nature was “tolerant and peaceful,” an assessment which implies the opposite for Vela. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 75v. In letters to her brother Lorenzo, Vela often asks for prayers for the “very busy” Doña María. Dávila served as abbess shortly after Vela’s death. 25. The nuns of Santa Ana possessed the original manuscript of Teresa of Ávila’s spiritual autobiography (Vida), which had been left in their care by Teresa’s Dominican confessor, Domingo Báñez. See Doña María Vela y Cueto, Autobiografía y Libro de las Mercedes, ed. Olegario González Hernández (Barcelona: Juan Flors, 1961), 79–80. Vela repeatedly demonstrates in her writings a thorough acquaintance with Teresa’s Vida and likely saw her own experience reflected there, for, as Elizabeth Rhodes points out, Teresa’s Vida is a text that “re-constitutes not her life, but her struggle for credibility.” See Elizabeth Rhodes, “What’s in a Name: On Teresa of Ávila’s Book,” in The Mystical Gesture: Essays on Medieval and Early Modern Spiritual Culture in Honor of Mary E. Giles, ed. Robert Boenig (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2000), 79–106. 26. All Saints’ Day is November 1; Pentecost (also known as Feast of the Holy Spirit, or Whitsunday) is celebrated on the seventh Sunday after Easter and commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Christ’s followers (Acts 2:1–4).

60 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO every day, scourged myself three times a day, slept only four hours a night, and spent communion days on my knees. As I was saying, during this time I was the recipient of constant favors. I experienced suspensions of the soul, before which I always felt some sign, like a longing that made me moan or shed tears. On other occasions, it felt as if an arrow was piercing my heart. When these mercies overcame me in public, even if they happened during divine office, I was ordered to return to my cell and lock myself inside, and that is what I did.27 If I could not return to my cell, I would sit down, pretending to be ill. My soul also received numerous locutions that taught me many things concerning my greater perfection, whether through words or not. They reproved my faults, inspired me to greater work, comforted me when disconsolate, and quieted my doubts. And they did this with so much love and familiarity that I am not at all surprised that others did not believe them to be from God. Many might well be scandalized if they did not know of the infinite goodness of Our Lord, and how through it alone he deigns to communicate with his creatures, despite the many faults that he knows that their souls, like mine, contain. May he be forever blessed and glorified in his works. After having spent four months as my confessor (during which time he had observed how the favors granted my soul were increasing), Father Salcedo decided it prudent to discuss these things with the Father Rector of Salamanca, José de Acosta.28 In order to facilitate their discussion, Father Salcedo ordered me to provide him with a written account of what had happened to me, including the spiritual favors that I had received.29 He then set off, with my account in hand, to Salamanca. This took place during Lent, when mercies were raining down upon my soul. After having seen what I had written, Father Acosta approved its spirit. Although he later found out about the many different and contradictory opinions concerning these favors, he never doubted their divine origin. When I became afraid, the locutions I received in prayer served to reassure me, but later I would start to fear all over again. But because my confessor told me that I should persevere in what I was doing, I did not do anything other than ask God to always enlighten my confessor as to his will concerning me. While Father 27. It is unclear who gave the order, Salcedo or the abbess, or if Vela means that the command came in a locution. 28. Located about sixty miles from Ávila, Salamanca boasted one of Spain’s premier universities. Before becoming rector of the Jesuit college in Salamanca, José de Acosta had been the Jesuit provincial of Spain’s most valuable overseas possession, the vice-royalty of Peru. Vaquero admits that Acosta suspected that some of the supernatural voices and visions that Vela experienced might have been the result of her own imagination. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 70v. 29. Unsure of the veracity of Vela’s claims, Salcedo ordered her to write down “everything,” presumably the mystical communications that formed her Mercedes, (Mercies), which Vaquero used when writing La muger fuerte. Ibid., 43v.

Vida 61 Salcedo was away in Salamanca, I endeavored to obtain permission from the Lady Abbess, Doña María de Mercado30 (may she be in heaven), to undertake public mortifications.31 She granted my wish, imposing them on me as penance during a chapter meeting. Some of the nuns were scandalized. Father Alarcón found out about it and was troubled and so the public mortifications came to an end.32 At that time I greatly wished to be despised and reprimanded, and that is why I had attempted these exercises. It turned out just as Our Lord had ordained: because of the scandal, I was denounced from the pulpit as an ignorant and foolish girl and berated for believing that what I was doing was pleasing to God when all I was doing was offending him. I was greatly upset and distressed, but later, when recollected, Our Lord comforted me, encouraging me not to abandon the mortifications if I was given permission to perform them. I followed this way of life up until the Day of Saint Catherine of Siena.33 While reflecting upon this saint’s life and the favors that Our Lord had granted her, I was told: I will also grant these to you. Recollecting myself, I said: If I could only serve you, Lord, as did she. And I heard: That would not be so great a thing; what is great is that without your deserving it, I treat you as if you were. When the favors I have mentioned began, I asked the Lord to perfect the virtues in my soul and to advance me in his service. In reply, I was told: Follow my divine motion. Do not stop for any earthly reason and along the way you will thrive. After this encouragement, whenever I felt effectively moved to an act of virtue and had a particular inspiration to perform it, I always understood that it was in accordance with God’s will. But never did I do anything, nor would I do anything, 30. María de Mercado, the niece of the bishop of Ávila, became abbess in 1595. Ibid., 40r. She was elected again in 1601 and may have served additional terms. In his 1961 transcription of Vela’s Vida and Mercedes, Olegario González Hernández provides election dates for a number of Santa Ana abbesses during Vela’s lifetime, taken from what he calls El Libro de elección de Abadeses, but such a document no longer remains in the archives of Santa Ana. Doña María Vela y Cueto, Autobiografía, 25, n. 36. Santa Ana’s archival record of abbesses dates from 1718. 31. A public mortification was an act of penance and self-abasement done in full view of others. On one occasion, Vela appeared before the nuns with a rope around her neck and a gag in her mouth. 32. Father Juan de Alarcón, prior of the Dominican monastery of Santo Tomás in Ávila, exercised considerable influence in Santa Ana. Santo Tomás, the largest and most influential male religious house in Ávila, had over fifty professed friars in residence and functioned as a brother institution to Santa Ana, since there was no men’s Cistercian house in the city. Vaquero treats Alarcón rather circumspectly in La muger fuerte, emphasizing the friar’s piety while also admitting that Alarcón’s fervent opposition caused Vela no little trouble. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 71v. 33. April 29, 1598. Saint Catherine of Siena (d. 1380) was the most popular role model for early modern women seeking spiritual perfection. See Gillian T. W. Ahlgren, “Ecstasy, Prophecy, and Reform: Catherine of Siena as a Model for Holy Women of Sixteenth-Century Spain,” in The Mystical Gesture, ed. Robert Boenig (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2000), 53–65.

62 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO without first proposing it to my superiors. If they ordered me to do something, I did it. If I was not given permission, I would not do it, and if the contrary was ordered of me, I did that instead, believing that this was also God’s will. Nonetheless, I always knew that at some point in the future I would be ordered to do what I had understood to be God’s will. This happened to me countless times with respect to fasting and communion. After some penitential exercises were agreed upon that I had to perform, according to the way I have just described, I was told: Obey my will as you understand it, and if it seems difficult to you, I will be with you and help you, and through my virtue you will be able to do anything. This consolation was so driven into my soul that on many occasions, when I felt as though I could not do a thing, I would remember it and immediately feel within myself the strength and spirit to do much more. After I had that feeling on the Day of Saint Catherine, I implored and petitioned the Lord to give me a new heart, as he had given her, because I had a great desire to imitate her in the virtues.34 It seemed to me that everything to which I was interiorly moved was directed toward imitation of Saint Catherine. Like her, I was devoted to silence, to prayer, and to keeping vigil. Like her, I would not go to bed until midnight; I performed three disciplines a day and always wore a hair shirt; I slept on a mat of cork and ate only greens.35 To this was added the ability on certain days to sustain myself on the Eucharist alone, without any other kind of food. Although I experienced great faints that brought me near to death’s door, these ended without my having eaten [anything other than the host], and my spiritual and physical strength increased so that I was filled with delight and peace. After many trials and much time had passed, the understanding came that God was permitting this in order to test my faith. When I lacked faith and ate, I received an interior reproof from God and could not recover from the trial as when I relied on faith. But when I suffered all trials with joy, and with the hope that Our Lord would be contented and lighten his hand, that is what would happen. I experienced both kinds of trials and their distinct outcomes, countless times. Once, as communion had just ended, I felt remaining upon my tongue the flavors of the commingling of the two sacramental species, and with them the holy body of Our Lord. This had happened during the time when I was Father Gaspar Dávila’s confessant, about three years earlier, and that is the reason that 34. For a description of Catherine’s exchange of hearts with Christ, see the biography written by her confessor: Raymond of Capua, The Life of Saint Catherine of Siena, trans. George Lamb (Rockford, IL: Tan Books, 2003), 165. Many religious women hoped for an experience identical to that of Catherine’s. For a purported mystical exchange of hearts that resulted in the trial and imprisonment of a nun for fraud, see Judith C. Brown, Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 35. Catherine of Siena, according to her confessor, slept on bare boards and eventually trained herself to sleep only one hour a night. Catherine’s diet consisted mainly of “herbs,” or greens. Raymond of Capua, Life of Saint Catherine, 53–54.

Vida 63 I could in no way eat on communion days. Eating was a great torment to me, because on communion days my soul was entirely recollected and focused on its Spouse, entertained in loving him and in thanking him for the very great favor that he had bestowed upon it by desiring to accompany it. I greatly regretted that I would have to forfeit that gift by being forced to eat other food, but that is what would happen to me—my superiors would order me to eat or to drink. Sometimes, however, the Lord chose to remain with me throughout the afternoon and early evening, despite my having been forced to eat or drink. As I was saying, on that particular day my recollection was so great that after I took communion at High Mass, I could not move from where I was until three o’clock in the afternoon, and therefore I could not go to refectory. I asked the Lord to reveal his will to me concerning whether I should try to muster the strength to go or whether I should remain silently, because he knew that I had been ordered not to miss a meal. I understood from him that no one would order me to go on this occasion and that I was quite fine as I was, because the Lord was with me, within my soul, and that although I did not eat, the Holy Sacrament would sustain me, just as it had Saint Catherine: Non in solo pane vivit homo, sed in omni verbo quod procedit de ore Dei.36 At this I was filled with peace, my senses became suspended, and my soul inflamed by divine love. Later, at another communion, the same thing happened. When it was time to go to refectory, I became recollected and could not go. On the one hand, it seemed to me that Our Lord wanted me to fast until evening on the day of communion. On the other, it seemed that there would be a thousand difficulties in doing so, because this could not be done secretly. Then I heard: If this is what I desire, who can resist me? And I recalled how Elijah had been comforted and sustained by that subcineritious bread and had carried on for forty days.37 How much more so, therefore, could this living bread of the Holy Sacrament sustain me? Other things that transpired that day made me believe that this was Our Lord’s will. Feeling lightheaded, I lifted my eyes to an image of Saint Catherine that I had in front of me, and I realized that the same thing had occurred to her and to other saints during their fasts and that they had never become weakened because of it. That day, the Lady Abbess told me that I should not fail to go to refectory, because my absence would be noted. When I answered that sometimes it was impossible 36. Deut. 8:3; Matt. 4:4; Luke 4:4: “For man lives not only by bread, but by every word that proceeds from God.” 37. Subcineritious: literally, under cinders, as in bread baked under heaped ashes in a small fire pit. Vela refers to the biblical account of an angel providing the fugitive prophet Elijah with one cake of bread baked on the hot stones (and under the ashes) of a campfire, a small amount that provided Elijah with the energy to make a forty-day trek to the holy mount of Horeb (1 Kings 19:4–9). A similar episode, in which God sent ravens with food to sustain Elijah, would have undermined Vela’s effort to have scriptural authority for her dietary prescriptive, for in that story the ravens brought not only bread to Elijah but also meat (1 Kings 17:1–6).

64 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO for me to go, she understood that it was because of the recollection of my soul, and thus she gave me permission to absent myself. I turned to the Lord, saying: Consider, Lord, the stir that will be raised. And I was told: Do not be sorrowful: follow my divine motion and take no notice of what they may say. This happened to me many times. Whenever some contradiction or difficulty arose, I would pray and be told not to be fearful or sorrowful, but rather to have faith in the Lord who would help me overcome my trials. One day, when I offered to obey his will concerning fasting and everything else that he might want of me, I was told: You will be able to do everything through me. In the lives of the miraculous saints of old, nature sustained them by providing them with what they needed to eat. Who can now prevent me from doing the same for you? Later, during another communion, as I was tearfully resigning myself to God’s will and greatly regretting that my absence at refectory would be noted, I understood: And what if this is what I want? I did not know at first what to do, but then I understood that even if I went to refectory, I could dissimulate by pretending to eat. It was an effort to do so, because I was already beginning to become recollected, but the mouthful of bread I ate in refectory made the nuns think that I had eaten. I continued in this manner for as long as my fasts lasted, without anyone ever finding out about it. All this happened while Father Salcedo was absent. Upon his return, I told him about it. Since he found the practice already established and he realized that it could be done without raising alarm, he gave me permission to continue. It seemed to him, having spent much time in prayer over it, that it was the Lord’s will that I do this. During this period, I was taking communion three times [per week], and then it was ordered of me to take it once more, four times. The vehement desires for Holy Communion that I experienced and the considerable interior strength it gave me resulted in my being ordered to take it whenever I felt that way. But I rarely did so, because I did not dare to communicate two days in a row, even though I found myself reprimanded for not wanting to receive the favor that Our Lord was offering me.38 This happened numerous times and made me shed many tears. One communion day after this schedule had been established, around the Day of the Visitation,39 while I was serving in the refectory and feeling the presence of Our Lord through the exterior sign of the Eucharist, it occurred to me that with this meal, [the Eucharist] alone, I could go all day without eating another thing. Recollecting myself after a long prayer, it came to me, as it had on other occasions, that the reason the Lord remained with me was in order to serve as sus38. Vela means that she receives interior reprimands, from God. 39. July 2, in commemoration of the visit made by the Virgin Mary to her cousin Elizabeth after the Annunciation, as recorded in Luke 1:39–56.

Vida 65 tenance for my body and soul, and that the Lord would have provided my entire sustenance over the course of the years, if only my superiors had permitted me to fast as I was then doing. I therefore resolved to fast in this way, if given permission, although I remained somewhat fearful that I would not have the strength for it. And this was said to me: Will you not confess that I am all-powerful? If I can do anything, then what do you fear? I answered: My sins, my Lord. Then I understood: They have already been washed away with my blood. I also was given to understand that another reason that the Lord did not want me to eat at all on the day I took communion was so that he might more greatly manifest his power. Up until now, he had gone along, little by little, with my eating once a day, because this was in accordance with nature. But when I related this to my superiors, they would not give me permission to undertake a complete fast until further evidence confirmed that it was God’s will. One day while I meditated in prayer on the subject, I was told [in a locution] that the Lord wanted to grant me the special privilege of having no need for corporeal sustenance on the day I was to partake of his body, because it alone was sufficient for me. He wanted to sustain my strength, which was ordinarily gained from natural nourishment, with his divine nourishment, just as through his sacrifice and virtue the life of grace had been preserved. By this and other things that I was told, I was ordered to refrain from eating anything on communion days, even if I took communion on two consecutive days, such as on a Saturday and Sunday. Our Lord seemed to confirm that this was his will. And it so happened (I do not remember whether it was the first day of this particular fast or not) that I had a terrible fainting spell, the kind that I often had, which left me so weak that it was necessary to give me something to eat in order for me to return to my senses. But that day, without having eaten all day, and without having eaten supper, lain down, or stopped my mortifications (even after having spent a full four hours on my knees), I felt so full of strength and my head so clear that Doña María and I could not stop crossing ourselves—such was our amazement at God’s works! This happened to me on a number of days. Then there came a new trial that challenged me greatly, causing me to experience such terrible faints that I often felt myself on the brink of death for a few hours’ duration and sometimes over the course of entire days and nights. But after suffering through such periods, and without having eaten, the spells and weakness would cease and I would regain my strength. Although I fasted and fell ill, if the occasion mandated that I sing or fulfill another obligation, I complied as if there were nothing wrong with me. And if asked to speak of God, I would entirely forget my suffering. If at times I lacked faith and ate, I was reprimanded interiorly, so that I would recommit myself to the fast. I spent some days in this way, until my superiors, fearing that I was becoming terribly weak, made me eat an evening meal, but then the fainting spells grew worse. When they saw that eating did not

66 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO help me, particularly when they had ordered me to eat after taking communion, they ordered me not to communicate at all. This was completely the opposite of what they had previously ordered. No matter how weak I had been when fasting prior to taking communion, at least when I was allowed to communicate I was always better and stronger, because Our Lord granted me many favors. Now, with my fasts prohibited, there was no way for me to enter into prayer, either with communion or without it. I was disconsolate, yet I always asked the Lord to enlighten those who governed me, so that they might do what was correct, in accordance with his will. One day, I was told [in a locution] that as a result of these faints I would be able to fast again, as I had before, and that I should eat for the sake of obedience until [my superiors] ordered me to do something else. Another day, around this same time, when in prayer and prostrated at the feet of the Lord, I offered to obey his divine will in everything. It seemed to me that he then threw his arms around me, asking if I was prepared to carry out a partial fast for a week. I resigned myself to the divine will. Although everything took place quickly, the feeling of love that he instilled in my soul remained. I carried on in the same way for a few days, experiencing faints and feeling so weak that I was good for nothing. Finally, Father Salcedo decided that I should return to a total fast. After this, Our Lord began to grant me the same favors as before and my soul felt more satisfied, knowing what the Lord wanted of me; indeed, there have been many occasions when he ordered me to return to this kind of fast. But as Father Salcedo was not so certain that this was God’s will, he decided that Father Luis de la Puente should come here and examine me very carefully and render an opinion on everything, with it being understood that I must follow his advice.40 Meanwhile, one day when it occurred to me that my faints might be coming to an end (since Our Lord had accomplished what He had wanted with them, which was that I should return to fasting), I was told: Your trials will continue and they will serve to fashion a crown for you. This crown, like Saint Catherine of Siena’s, would be made of thorns that would pierce and wound me. The thorns, I understood, would be the contradictions and temptations that I would experience—not only those caused by men and demons, but also those caused by God himself. I accepted my crown, saying that I would as willingly take thorns as flowers from the hand of the Lord. And it seemed to me that God placed the crown upon my head, with his divine hands. Once, as I was asking the eternal Father for illumination concerning his beloved Son, I said the words: Respice in faciem Christ tui.41 And he presented 40. Luis de la Puente, the Jesuit theologian and author, traveled from Valladolid to Ávila in order to help Salcedo evaluate Vela’s claims. In 1615, de la Puente published a biography of Salcedo’s uncle, Baltasar Álvarez. 41. Ps. 84.9: “Look on the face of your anointed.”

Vida 67 him to me, made ugly and disfigured. Whereupon I recalled these words: haec est hora vestra et potestas tenebrarum!42 Then it came to me that not only was Christ placed in the hands of sinners through the will of the eternal Father, but that he was also placed there by the devil himself, to be put to death through all kinds of inventions, injuries, and torments. I also understood: If this is what is done to the Master, what can the slave expect? If the innocent is thus treated, of what can the guilty complain? I was made to understand very clearly that the Lord had given the devil permission to make me suffer weakness and in this way put my faith to the test. The devil would try to make me break my fast by encouraging a lack of faith on my part. But God’s will was that I overcome temptation by not eating, trusting in His Majesty, who is true to his word. Thus, he would fulfill his promise to me that I would not need any corporeal sustenance on the day of communion. However close to death I came, I should not fear, for if my strength faltered he would renew it and increase it. When Father Luis de la Puente came, I provided him with a written account of my entire life, which he considered very carefully. At last he decided that my spirit was good. He found nothing that could have been inspired by the devil, although he believed that some things could be attributed to my own imagination. He decided that my fasting on communion days should not continue, believing as he did that if these fasts were in accordance with Our Lord’s will, the Lord would give other, clearer signs than he had up to this point. He said that I could abstain from eating meat and could forgo supper, unless it was a feast day for the community. He also ordered me to eat eggs or fish, because he did not want me to eat only greens. I relinquished my will and obeyed, although I always believed that at some point I would be allowed to resume fasting on communion days. He conveyed all of this to the Lady Abbess. She gave me permission to abstain from eating meat, because she already knew that I had not eaten any for half a year and was fine in spite of it and had enough strength to perform my duties, and also because no one else up until then had found out about the fainting spells that I had been suffering. This routine began during Christmas and I adhered to it until Lent. My fainting spells did not go away, however; rather, I sometimes experienced such great pains that I was placed in a serious predicament. My superiors therefore ordered me to eat when I felt this way, but even when I did my condition did not improve. I could only break my fast in the greatest secrecy and eat at odd hours, because if others in the convent found out about my fainting they would not let me go without meat. It cost me no small amount of work having to go about covering up necessity. But the greatest trial was an interior one. When I would arrive at prayer, some interior reprehension would arise concerning my lack of faith in Our Lord. For if I believed that those faints were proof of what Our Majesty was granting me, then why was it fine for me to dissimulate and not embrace the gifts? 42. Luke 22:53: “But this is your hour, and the power of darkness!”

68 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO One day, when I experienced such a great feeling of weakness that I thought I would have to eat, I was told: Will you not trust in my providence? I replied: They tell me, Lord, not to expect miracles: that it is against your will to add something extraordinary when I feel this way. Then I understood: It would please me more if you had faith in me. This happened many times. Another day, I implored the Lord not to deny me his presence because I did what others ordered of me by eating and indulging myself. Then it occurred to me that His Majesty abhors indulged flesh, preferring that which has been mortified, punished, and afflicted for his love. This is what Christ Our Lord himself taught us through his holy life and divine person, for he never gave his holy body any respite. Throughout his entire holy life he endured hunger and thirst, cold and heat and exhaustion, and spent all night in prayer on our behalf. This, too, was exemplified in the lives of the saints. Then I was told: The saints, with only the illumination that came from their self-mortification and from the harshness of their lives, undertook great things, while you, who have received so many signs of my will, do nothing. I replied that my will was ready to act, but that others would not let me do what was necessary, for fear that I would lose my life in the process. Then I understood: You have had a great many favors bestowed upon you by me in order to make you trust in me; I have sustained you for a year with my virtue and I will sustain you for ten if you have faith. When I asked the Lord to enlighten my confessor concerning what His Majesty wanted and not to leave us in this confusion, I was told: That is not desirable, for in this way you must be tested and examined in the forge of love. In it faith, charity, hope, patience, humility, and obedience are put to the test. Then I understood that I must remain as firm as a rock in the midst of the sea’s tempests (even though I might see my hopes diminished) and believe that the Lord would keep his promises. Another day, when I was extremely faint after having just taken communion, it came to me that I was wrong in relaxing the rigor of my penance, even though I felt weak. Instead, I should try to comply with everything and dissimulate without complaining to anyone. In this way, I would oblige Our Lord to complete within me what he had begun, for if I failed to do so I would impede his grace and his promises to me would not be kept. At this, I became distressed and pleaded with the Lord to extricate me from the fasting exercises and the faints, because these were undignified things, and to let me instead employ all my effort for his love. Then I was told: It is not a small but a great thing to conform yourself to my will in this matter. I never was virtuous enough to do what I understood God wanted, because whenever a fainting spell came upon me I thought it was going to kill me. Afterward, I would tell Father Salcedo or Doña María so that they would make me eat something. Although I had some scruples regarding my failure to suffer through

Vida 69 my test, I thought that if I did not tell them I would be letting myself die and that this would amount to suicide. Thus I led a life of great distress. Around this time, which was Lent, the Lord desired that the provincial of the Company [of Jesus], who had a great reputation as a holy man, should pass through here.43 Father Salcedo saw the provincial’s visit as an opportune time to confer with him regarding my experiences, and so he did. [The Father Provincial] came to see me and he told me that no more proof was needed, for it seemed quite clear to him that it was Our Lord’s will that I forgo food on communion days. But he also told me that I should not fast in secret, as I had done before, but openly, after obtaining the abbess’s permission, as this was necessary. I received her permission, but because I had so much difficulty, given my weakness, and because this was such an extraordinary and singular thing, the Lady Abbess, who was at that time Doña Isabel de Vivero, withdrew her consent, having given it without first informing Father Fray Juan de Alarcón and her confessor, Fray Pedro Martínez.44 Much bad publicity resulted, since everyone was scandalized by my fasting, especially Father Alarcón, who said that it was the devil’s work. In the end, I observed my fast for a few days without fainting and with much interior peace, although the nuns who knew about it were not at all pleased. But they did not protest openly, because they saw that I was well and could attend to what I had to do without excusing myself from any task that was assigned to me. Our Lord, however, was not content with the state of things as they were. Therefore, during Lent, he permitted the trial of my jaws to befall me, which has given everyone so much to discuss and debate. On the second Sunday of Lent, as I was about to go to communion, was the first time that my jaws became rigid and fixed so that I could not open my mouth. I could not understand at all how this had happened. It remained like this for a while, but by mealtime it had returned to normal. I believe that I went along fine that week until Friday, when the same thing happened again. This time, my hands also became as stiff and inflexible as if they were bound tightly together with a cord. I became very distressed and when I pleaded with the Lord to allow me to receive him in Holy Communion, it was said to me: Why are you distressed? Do you no longer yield your will to me? I then recalled how I was told that I would be a martyr for divine love and how divine love would be my executioner. I was also told that through all these trials I must have faith in His Majesty, because he knew 43. Vela refers here to Cristóbal Ribera, the provincial of the Jesuits in Old Castile, who brought with him to Santa Ana a provincial from the Indies, Rodrigo Cabredo. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 73r. Cabredo was provincial of Peru (1598–1604) and of New Spain (1611–16). 44. The Dominican friars Juan de Alarcón and Pedro Martínez came from the monastery of Santo Tomás, the largest men’s religious house in Ávila (with over fifty professed friars), founded in 1482 and chosen by the monarchs Fernando and Isabel as the burial site for their only son and heir, Juan (1478–97). The young prince’s ornate alabaster sepulcher is located in the transept of the monastery’s church.

70 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO what was best for me. Even if I did not take communion, he would not remove from me the virtue of the sacrament. I was also given to understand that he would govern me by his will, in this as in everything else. He would make it understood: on the days when he wanted me to receive him, I would not experience impediments. I replied that my confessors would not agree to my taking communion one day after another. In reply, I was told to inform them of it. At this, I became calm and experienced interior peace, for it seemed to me that the Lord wanted me to suffer this trial. I carried on in this manner for a few days, but Father Salcedo thought it a very bad idea to add another communion to my schedule. To him, there were two disadvantages: first, I was already communicating four times a week and another time would be noted; secondly, he did not want me to go without food on so many days. Meanwhile, I carried on very peacefully, suffering whatever befell me. Our Lord always granted me many favors whenever my jaws became rigid and fixed. When this happened to me, I felt a renewed spirit to suffer and I would become very resigned to the divine will. One day, as I was reflecting upon how the Dominican fathers had agreed that I should be allowed to take daily communion, provided that I lessened the severity of my fasts, it came to me that the Lord had imposed a schedule of strict fasting upon me so that things would turn out as they had. For some months I had been given to understand that I should eat bread and greens at sunset, and that I would be imitating Saint Catherine of Siena in doing so. I became deeply touched and marveled at the divine sign, saying: O altitudo divitiarum.45 Some days the Lord wanted to give me permission to receive him, because, if it were not for some inconveniences, Father Salcedo would not fail to give his approval. When I informed [Father Salcedo] of this, he decided to bring it to the attention of the Father Provincial, because without his approval he could not grant me permission. Meanwhile, I would have to suffer as much as the Lord wished. Well, around that time, on one particular day, I pleaded with the Lord not to make my fasting common knowledge, but to mitigate its severity, because Father Alarcón had ordered me to ask this of him. Whereupon I understood: If they give you daily communion you will be able to eat in the manner I have already described to you, and when I do not want you to eat, I will let you know. After this, [my superiors] ordered me not to take communion more than three times a week, in accordance with the instructions of the Dominican fathers, so that I would not fast so much. [The locutions] told me that if I could not communicate on those days, it was so that [my superiors] would understand that no one can resist the divine will. Thus it was that I was unable to take communion even once during the entire Holy Week. [Some persons] became scandalized: they 45. Rom. 11:33. In full, the passage reads, “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!”

Vida 71 said it was the devil’s work. But Our Lord gave me to understand that when the soul is resigned to the divine will, the devil can do nothing; when there is some property of God in the soul, there is nothing that the devil can grasp in order to trick it. On Easter Sunday, while wondering whether I would be able to take communion, it occurred to me that until my spiritual fathers were in accord with the divine will, I would not be able to communicate. Thus, I do not recall having communicated except once, prior to the week of the Ascension. At that time, they agreed to allow me to take daily communion on a two-week trial basis.46 Later, it was discovered that on the very same day they had agreed to this, a license to the same effect had also been signed in Salamanca. The Father Provincial was there with his colleague, both of whom had spoken to me and had knowledge of my things, as was Father Luis de la Puente, and the rector, Father José de Acosta. These four signed the license that the Father Provincial had prepared. Having their permission and the approval of the Dominicans, Father Salcedo decided that I should take communion daily [while fasting], but that [first] I ought to be tested for a period of two weeks [without fasting] in order to see if the jaw impediment that had prevented me from taking communion for so long had now ceased. Everyone agreed with this. Meanwhile, I begged the Lord to allow me to communicate on the days that they had ordered me to do so, saying: Look, Lord, the worst sign that they could find is that I am unable to obey them when they know that you are such a friend of obedience. Then I understood: And what if I want to remove you from the common rules? Thus I understood that I would not be free of the impediment while they tested me; rather, the impediment would last for as long as the test. Despite it all, I tried every day to take communion as I had been ordered, but there was no remedy to be had. At about this time, Father Salcedo left here, having asked Father Torres to obtain permission for the two-week trial [of daily communion while fasting] from the archdeacon of Ávila, who was presiding over the vacant see [of the bishop]. He granted it, and Father Alonso Dávila, in Father Salcedo’s place, ordered me to undertake it. Thus, I was able to take communion, without any difficulty whatsoever. I ate greens at night and went along in such good health and with so much strength that everyone marveled and could not fail to realize that this was God’s work. Even Father Torres, who had been one of the most contrary religious superiors that I had, became convinced.47

46. The trial included fasting until sunset and then a small meal of bread and greens, in imitation of Catherine of Siena, as Vela mentions, above. 47. Torres and Dávila were Jesuits. According to Vaquero, Juan de Torres had been the first person to declare that Vela’s peculiar maladies were “the work of the Devil … done to upset the community.” González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 76.

72 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO On the Day of Saint Catherine of Siena, which fell during the days I was taking [daily] communion as a test, I was told: Now your real trials will begin. The year was 1598. When the license expired, [my fathers] asked me whether I thought I could continue in this manner, if they were to extend their permission. Following those two weeks of communion, the nuns in the convent became scandalized, because I only ate at night. They said that this was a singularity and not in keeping with the community; they thought that what I was doing was not in a good spirit, and that it would be better if I were to do what everyone else did. In addition to this, my fainting spells returned, coming over me while in choir, resulting in my falling to the floor. This was the real reason that the nuns were scandalized. They said that it was the fault of my imprudent confessors, who should not have allowed me to carry out my penance unless I ate. A great commotion was stirred up, but when I asked the Lord how he had permitted this to happen, since they would not allow me to go forward with my penitential exercises, I understood: So that they see the strength of my hand, prevailing against all those who resist me. When I asked the Lord to grant me permission to eat with the community so that my fainting spells would stop, I was told: My thoughts and plans are very different from yours and so is my design. Quis intelligit sensum Domini aut quis consiliarius eius fuit?48 When I pleaded with the Lord to allow me to eat, even for one day or until the nuns would have forgotten about it (since later, through dissimulation, I could abstain from food as I had been doing), I understood that my fasting mattered not so much for my own sake, but insofar as it set an example for others. If others murmured about me, the Lord would permit it as part of my penance, for his holy life had also scandalized many, and the saints had gone through the same thing. I was not at fault if I did not conform to the community, because I was not following my own will. Rather, the Holy Spirit was ordering me not to conform, as others had been ordered before me. I was not the only nun to abstain from food for a whole week, because Saint Euphrasia had done so and had also fasted on other days, which caused gossip.49 And other religious people had likewise been unable to conform themselves to their [monastic] communities. When I asked the Lord for permission to conform to the ways of the community, it was not to excuse myself from obedience to him, for I complied silently with whatever was ordered of me. My confessors, however, decided not to force me to eat, because when I had previously [eaten] my health had failed me and my jaws had locked and I could not take communion. Anyway, this time Our Lord wanted me to eat at midday, without incurring any of these inconveniences. 48. Rom. 11:34: “For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” 49. In hagiographical tradition, Saint Euphrasia (ca. 380–410), the young daughter of a senator of Constantinople, embraced a life of extreme deprivation in a convent in Egypt. She gave the emperor her entire fortune, rather than accept his offer to provide her with a husband from the senatorial class.

Vida 73 After this, I was told: They are not letting me do what I want with you. I said: Lord, who can resist you and your wishes? Then I understood that since things were going smoothly, he would let them continue in this manner. I regretted this deeply, since it seemed to me that God’s design was being impeded. Then it came to me that no one could impede the Lord’s will without him permitting them to do so, and thus it was his desire to relinquish his power and place it in the hands of his ministers and that he would support their orders concerning me. I said: Lord, I have no will of my own; it is your will to which I desire to comply perfectly. Then I was told: My will is that you follow me and obey me in this matter, because they will change their minds when they see other marvels and I do not want to influence their free will. When it seemed to me that the Lord wanted to remove me from my confessors’ jurisdiction, I pleaded with great insistence that he not permit me to be deceived about his will in this matter. I said that I valued the favor that he desired to grant me through governing me himself, but that I wished that His Majesty would enlighten [my confessors] so that they would give me their permission, for this was in accordance with the order that he had established in his Church and it was the order by which the saints had lived. At this, I was told: In earlier times, the saints were governed by my spirit, and [I was told] that saints must trust in God, totally; but in trusting His Majesty to take charge of their governance, they must not think that they are forfeiting the merit of obedience. The Lord did not want me to trust just anything that I might understand, but to consult my confessors about it. He wanted me to obey whatever they ordered, even though it might be contrary to what I understood. By obeying in this way, I would exercise a high degree of humility, because I would be submitting to the opinion of men, although I knew God’s will. If [the Lord] were to impose some impediment upon me that prevented me from doing as [my confessors] ordered of me, I should consider it a penitential exercise: for the fears that overcome the soul only aid it in asking more fervently for illumination. I was to exercise faith, trust, resignation and humility. In doing so, not only would I benefit, but so, too, would those who dealt with me. No matter how often the locutions I received in prayer assured me, I always went about fearfully, wondering whether I was deceived or whether my will played some part in my inability to obey. Thus, I clung tightly to God, pleading with him not to let me be deceived, and to enlighten my confessors. One day when I was reflecting upon a very holy Discalced nun, I said: How could you have made her path so sure, when you want mine to be so uncertain and doubtful? Then I heard: Why does the path have to be doubtful? I am not removing you from the rules governing the saints. From the common rules, yes, because I want to grant you this special favor. If you do contrary to what the saints have done, that would be doubtful. I replied: Lord, not obeying my superiors is what causes me grief, because through them you commonly display your will. I was then told that sometimes

74 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO superiors give commands that are not God’s will, but it is his will that they be obeyed, and this I must do. And I was told that when it seemed that they were punishing me by taking communion from me or when food made me ill after having broken a fast, I must understand that I was not being punished due to some fault on my part, since I was obeying; rather, the Lord sometimes likes my superiors to understand that what they order of me is not his will. Then I experienced great faints, and the Lady Abbess, observing my weakness, ordered me to eat. She wanted me to eat meat or at least eggs and other such delicacies. She forbade my eating only greens, and made me eat a midday and evening meal. But when I did this, I could neither take communion nor attend choir. My confessors at the time, Father Alonso Dávila and Father Salcedo, truly believed that my fainting was not due to any natural cause but that Our Lord was permitting it as a penitential exercise for my own mortification. They said this to the abbess, asking her to reverse her decision, but she did not believe what they told her. She would only permit me to undertake a fast for a period of one week at a time, [with a caveat that] if she saw me faint, she would put an end to it. As always, I carried on, even though I was not permitted to persevere in anything, plagued though I was by countless fears because so many were against me. I was accused of being willful, of challenging obedience to my abbess, and of refusing to conform to my community. This was said because I was not eating what the other nuns ate, and because of the Lady Abbess’s disapproval. Although I did nothing without her express permission, she nonetheless would say to those with whom she spoke about me that the situation was not to her liking. From this, others inferred that I was breaking my vow of obedience to her and that my confessors were only encouraging me by contravening her orders. Father Gonzalo Dávila happened to come by here when things were at this point.50 I was in a very bad way—unable to make any progress—because my fasts had been forbidden. When he found out about this, he managed to persuade his sister to reverse her decision, in the belief that it was God’s will that I follow along this other way. Later, before he left Ávila, my condition had improved so dramatically that he could only marvel and reiterate his support for me. But my abbess’s satisfaction did not last long, for she had contact with friars who held a different view.51 Thus it all came to nothing and the Lord permitted it so that I might suffer.52 50. Gonzalo Dávila, provincial of the Jesuits in New Castile, was the abbess’s brother. Vaquero describes Dávila, as “a man of great authority, because of his noble lineage,” and “very friendly,” who admitted “that if he had looked on these things from afar, he would have doubted, too.” González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 85v. 51. The friars in opposition to Vela were Dominicans from Santo Tomás. Ibid., 86r. 52. Suffering enabled a Christian to more fully experience what Christ had endured (imitatio Christi; see introduction), and would thus be welcomed by an ascetic and mystic like Vela, who might also

Vida 75 I continued until August, in a very sorry state indeed, when I was given to understand that Our Lord wanted to grant me the favor of sustaining me for a few days on the Eucharist alone. I regretted this and pleaded with the Lord not to bestow this favor upon me, because I was not worthy enough for him to perform something so extraordinary on my behalf. But I was told that the Lord wanted to ostentatiously make his omnipotence known by sustaining me with his virtue. By my example, he would undo the timidity of others, making them acknowledge that it was he who had operated within his saints in earlier times, and that he could do the same now for those who surrendered and relinquished themselves to him. Father Salcedo decided not to grant me permission to undertake this fast and went about dissimulating for some days. As part of his plan, he absented himself from here in order to see if all would be forgotten. Meanwhile, I became very ill and was unable to take communion. Upon returning and finding me in such a state, he decided to give his permission. It had been made known to me [in a locution] that I should not eat anything until I felt about to faint. I went from one Sunday to the next without eating and without feeling any weakness, whatsoever, as if I had eaten both the midday and evening meals. But on that Sunday morning after Mass, I felt very faint. When I was wondering whether or not the Lord now wanted to grant me permission to eat, I was told: There is not enough faith. I did not understand this, although I went to eat. Later, I received a letter from Father Salcedo, in which he told me that he had retired to his room, greatly concerned that my fast was lasting too long and fearful that it would harm me. He wished that Our Lord would grant permission for me to eat. At this, I understood what had been told to me earlier—that I must have sufficient faith. Although I had never lacked faith, I now went about with great energy, trusting that the Lord, through his virtue, would enable me to do much more. Nothing caused me sorrow. I returned to my exercise of fasting, but I was not allowed to persevere in it. Thus I carried on, clinging to Our Lord. When I pleaded with him to release me from such an undignified thing as this trial and to employ me in more important works (because others had been saying this to me), I was told: Oh, my daughter, if you only knew how much my saints esteemed such things; there is no task, however small it may be, that is not of great value, if it conforms to my will. I went on like this until October, when I began to receive notice [in locutions] that it was Our Lord’s will that I should now fast three days a week. I was told that my fasting during that other week had been for the purpose of letting others see that the Lord was all-powerful. I had done what I had with his help; with it, I could do the same again. [Father Salcedo and I] were dismayed, because I could not observe this fast without first informing the abbess and obtaining her consent. Such was the way things were done, but considering the current state view her tribulations as penances sent from God in order to strengthen her faith.

76 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO of affairs and her displeasure with me, she would think that I was throwing it all back in her face. Then Our Lord made the situation even worse by locking my jaws three times a week over a period of two weeks. When that happened, I was unable to eat. I think the trouble was caused by my inability to dissimulate when I sat down to eat in refectory, therefore all the nuns could observe me. Even so, the Lady Abbess continued to pretend that nothing was wrong with me. I fell ill with a fever, was confined to my bed, and ordered to eat meat. The doctors said that I had an abscess and undertook to cure me.53 It seemed to Father Salcedo that [the situation] was greatly opposed to God’s will and so he decided to speak to the Lady Abbess in my presence, in an effort to pressure her into giving me permission to travel along the route that God was calling me. He told her that this was clearly God’s will, because countless tests had already been conducted. He also said that whenever I had been allowed to adhere to a severe life, I was always fine and able to perform my communal duties. After trying unsuccessfully to reason with her, he then attempted to instill the fear of God in her, citing examples of punishments that Our Lord had imposed on superiors who had not allowed their subordinates to follow their inspirations. The Lady Abbess heard him out, although she was quite displeased, but afterward she granted me permission [to do as Father Salcedo asked], despite her even greater displeasure. That night I experienced a great recollection that encouraged me to undertake my exercises. Thus, I rose for matins and began to do everything that I had usually done. But I became so ill that I had great difficulty in continuing. When I pleaded with Our Lord to grant me enough health and strength to do what [my superiors] ordered, as this seemed fitting for his glory, I was told: I have never failed you and I will not do so now. When I importuned him to postpone what was required of me until a later time when his power could be greater manifested, it came to me that not all the miracles that Our Lord performed, even when he was in the world, had occurred immediately and by his command alone. Sometimes his miracles took place gradually, because he wanted the very people on whom he performed them to also play some part. That was what he did with the blind man in the gospel account, whose sight was restored. The Lord had anointed his eyes with mud and then sent him to the pool to wash it off. But just as the mud could have impeded the blind man’s sight, if he had had sight, I could also die by being ordered not to eat when I was so thin and frail and experiencing faints. Then I understood that the Lord would restore my health by these means: I must drink boiled water infused with a herb called hyssop.54 I took this drink, 53. Vaquero describes the abscess as a swelling in her abdomen that caused her to arch her spine, thus giving her the appearance of a deformity. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 89v. 54. Hyssop is a bushy herb mentioned several times in the Bible as an essential element in Jewish purification rites. It evoked the Passover, thus salvation, and took on pointed significance in the gospel description of Christ’s crucifixion, when Roman soldiers affixed a sponge soaked in wine to the end

Vida 77 twice, and my fever lifted. At this, everyone became pacified, taking it as a sign of God’s will. At my recovery, I greatly regretted having escaped death. One day, I brought this concern to the Lord, telling him that it seemed to me impossible to live so many years in this earthly exile without being able to delight in his presence. I was then told [in a locution] that the greatest form of perfection was to have a vehement desire to delight in God, and to conform oneself to living as long as Our Lord wished, and to embrace work in imitation of Saint Martin, who said: Domine, si adhuc populo tuo sum necesarius, non recuso laborem.55 At this, I was encouraged. Another day, when I was thinking it was possible that I still had some years yet to live, I afterward understood: Why do you upset yourself so, when you have my mother? You are ignorant, but my wisdom is infinite; you are weak, but I am strong and virtuous. I will accompany you in everything.56 Since that day, I have never despaired. After this happened, I was told [in a locution] that Our Lord would punish someone who had strongly opposed me. I was very sorrowful, and said: Lord, they are not at fault, for their intentions have been good. Then I was told: They are to blame for not revering God’s works. When I pleaded with the Lord to pardon them and not to cause them to suffer for my sake, I was made to understand that I was not the offended party, but rather His Majesty. Much saddened by this, I did not stop pleading with the Lord to allow me to suffer on their behalf, for I would gladly try to satisfy him, if he would only pardon them. It seemed to me that my prayers were heard, because, only two weeks later, on the Day of Saint Simon and Saint Jude,57 I experienced a severe illness that brought me to the brink of death. I remained in grave danger for many days and five times they brought out the oil of unction, because they expected me to expire at any moment. But I would not let them anoint me with it, telling them that it was not yet time. I managed to do this, despite the feverish state I was in and not knowing what I was saying. As a result of this illness, everyone lost faith in me, even those who had been most firm in their support of me. The story was that I was deceived and was killing myself through my willfulness. Countless things of this nature were repeated within and without, causing Father Salcedo to suffer greatly, since he was the only one who took my side, while everyone else opposed him. The Lady Abbess, resolute in her own opinion, was angry with him and with me. There was hardly a soul of a branch of hyssop and extended it to the thirsting Christ (John 19:29–30). Vela’s shared experience with Christ of suffering, purification, and salvation underscores the hagiographical nature of her Vida. 55. “Lord, if I am still necessary to you, I do not refuse to labor.” 56. The locution and the following account of God’s intention to punish a person who opposed Vela are crossed out in the original manuscript, likely a result of Vaquero’s caution. The twenty-two lines are included in the 1744 copy. 57. October 28.

78 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO in the convent who was not hurling darts at me, and those who were secretly on my side did not dare to speak up. Doña María suffered the most, because she was watching me expire before her very eyes. The rest of the convent, as stirred up as it was, blamed her, saying that she had helped me to do whatever I wanted. They held such a harsh opinion of me that they were convinced that I was going straight to hell and so they saw fit to tell the confessor of the convent, Father Cuevas (may he be in heaven), to warn me that I was in a state of mortal sin.58 My illness passed, but everyone’s judgment of me remained the same, as I have just described. The Lord’s treatment of me was also unchanged, for he continued to give me much to suffer. Throughout my entire illness he had closed himself off from me, erasing all memory of the past favors he had granted me. When I was in bed and extremely weak, and afraid that if I were to get up, I would suffer a fall, I was told: If you do not get up now, you will never be well and new troubles will befall you. I made the nuns dress me, since I could not do it myself, trusting in Our Lord, because that day I was in an extremely bad way. I later improved, but on the days when I was ordered to stay in bed, I suffered new pains. One day, in prayer, I told the Lord how everyone within and without was of the opinion that I should not continue my penance. I said that if it were for his greater glory, I would obey, although this would be contrary to my desire to do and suffer much for his love. Then I understood: Why would doing what others want of you be for my greater glory, if I myself do not wish it? I was also given to understand that if I had to stop [my penance], it would not be my fault, but rather the fault of those who, having witnessed it, did not possess the high degree of illumination required to understand it. What they thought would serve them as a remedy was a poison that would harm them. Another day, after having taken communion, I understood: Receive me whenever you are able. I was so weak that I could not go to Mass, even on feast days. When I asked the Lord how I could possibly receive him more frequently, since I could not comply with what had been ordered of me, I understood that faith can do everything and that I should make an effort, because the Holy Sacrament would comfort me. And thus it was that I had no need to eat all morning. With this medicine, I quickly returned to my former self. Around this time, Father Luis de la Puente passed by here. When informed of what had happened (of how everyone was of the opinion that I should not be allowed to do anything, and how everything had been an illusion caused by the devil), he once again became involved in the matter. He spoke to the Lady Abbess and asked her to give me permission to forgo meat when I improved. But he did

58. Vaquero also mentions that several nuns advised Father Pedro de las Cuevas to warn Vela that she would go to hell for her behavior. La muger fuerte, 92v. Cuevas served as a confessor in Santa Ana and as a chaplain at the Discalced Carmelite convent of San José.

Vida 79 not dare pressure her further, since things were so inflamed.59 I started to improve and could go down to choir during Lent, but they did not give me permission to forgo meat. Instead, I was made to eat it three times a week. With the arrival of Holy Week and Saint Joseph’s Day,60 my jaws became rigid and fixed after taking communion. I understood [in a locution] that since [my superiors] did not want to grant me permission for the three-day fast, Our Lord would use these means to make me fast. Thus, for ten weeks straight, my jaws would lock on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. They would begin to stiffen while taking communion. When [my superiors] saw that I was unable to eat all day long, they ordered me not to attempt to take communion until I was given something to eat in the morning. But one day, even before they tried to give me something to eat, I was already impaired. It troubled me a little, seeing that I could not take communion, and so I turned to the Lord. I was told [in a locution] that I should not be sorrowful, despite my condition, because if I went to communion in good faith, I would not fail to take it. After this, my jaws would clamp shut from matins onward and sometimes they were already that way when I woke up. Despite it all, I never failed to take communion, although it cost me countless tears. Sometimes this would happen after I had put on my veil and arrived at the little window. And sometimes this happened even before I had time to consume [the host]. Our Lord was not content to impose only this trial upon me. The very same week, I experienced such terrible vomiting that I could retain nothing whatsoever in my stomach. I became so extremely weak that I once again found myself on the brink of death. During Holy Week they purged me, but as that was not the means by which Our Lord wanted to cure me, it did not help at all.61 That was on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I went down to choir and took communion and went without eating for the rest of the day. On Thursday, I scourged myself and was cured.62 And thus I was able to attend to my duties on the Friday of the Crucifixion. From Easter Sunday onward, I secretly gave up eating meat. I cannot remember if I asked the Lady Abbess for permission or not. The friars and also the others attached to this house told her to assign some conventual duty to me, in order to distract me and make me forget about everything. I was ordered to help the person in charge of bread. I accepted the duty, but I was to suffer much 59. While this passage indicates the convent’s respect for the opinions of male scholars and administrators, it also reflects the concerns of highly placed clergy to avoid encroaching upon the authority of the abbess and the self-governance of the convent. 60. March 19. 61. Vaquero says that the purge was also opposed by the physician, Dr. Madrigal, who thought that the vomiting was caused by the devil in order to prevent Vela from taking communion; Madrigal said that he had seen a similar thing in three other cases. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 94r. 62. Vaquero refers to it as a “very bloody discipline.” Ibid., 95r.

80 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO mortification, for in the bakery I could not keep secret my jaw impediment, because I had to speak with all the nuns and the bakers. Everyone had something to say about my condition: some said it was an illness, others a weakness, while others felt that I was faking it. This led to their persuading Doctor Madrigal to try to pry open my mouth. Although he had at first adamantly refused, he finally decided to do it, exerting as much strength as he could, until he made my teeth grate. But he could not pry my teeth apart; instead, they became even more tightly clenched together. Now, even more confirmed in his opinion, he defended me in front of everyone and asked his female friends not to oppose me.63 I went about like this for several days, and during that time Father Frías happened to come by here. Father Salcedo wanted to speak to him and for me to speak to him as well. Father Frías did not think that what I was doing was in a good spirit. Regarding my method of prayer, he said it seemed that I was studying to become a preacher on the subject of penance and asked me what sins I could have committed to make it Our Lord’s will that I do this. He ordered me to abandon interior prayer and to pray only vocally or in an exterior manner, which would have set me back twenty years. I think it was also he who told me that I should give up interior prayer for a month at least. I heard him out, but, as I did not owe him any obedience, it did not cause me any regret that he spoke like that. Although I tried to do as he instructed me, I was told: No daughter, do not do so. Do not withdraw from me, do not stop conversing with me, for how will you withstand the trials and difficulties that you will experience without the help that is afforded you in prayer?64 While this father was here, Father Salcedo decided that it would be a good idea to relinquish his direction of me, before the Father Provincial arrived. Both Father Frías and Father Salcedo were awaiting him, and Father Salcedo was certain that he would be ordered to stop serving as my director, because a number of the fathers believed that he had not been successful in his handling of my affairs, and they had told him so. Even Father Luis de la Puente, who often agreed with him, decided that it was best that Father Salcedo stop dealing with me, having seen how displeased the Lady Abbess and the whole convent were with him. Everyone agreed with this judgment. Thus, the day came when, with Father Frías at his side, Father Salcedo called for the Lady Abbess. Then, having also called me, he told her that he was tired of testing my spirit and that he no longer had the will to torment 63. According to Vaquero, the nuns made the decision in a chapter meeting to have Vela’s jaws forced open, in spite of Dr. Madrigal giving “a thousand reasons” why it should not be done. Madrigal, who thought Vela was a saint, had “instruments” to pry her jaws apart, but was so afraid of hurting her that he “shed many tears.” Ibid., 95v. His “female friends” were probably nuns in Santa Ana. 64. Interior prayer was silent and extemporaneously composed, rather than prescribed and spoken aloud. The practice of interior prayer often caused unease among members of the church’s hierarchy, because such prayers were virtually impossible to monitor. It fell to the lot of confessors to query practitioners about the content of their silent devotions, if indeed the confessors permitted such prayers.

Vida 81 me further. He said that I should start over with another confessor who would be able to do more than he. And he listed many other reasons, while I listened as serenely as if the matter had nothing to do with me. Thus, I had no one but God to turn to in my time of great need, because everyone else was against me.

Chapter 3 (How Father Salcedo stopped serving as her confessor) Our Merciful Lord granted me the favor of helping me ignore what others said about me, whether they spoke well of me or ill. To me, it was as if they were talking about some neighbor of mine. I used to say that I did not know why others thought their words would affect me, since I never took them to heart. After Father Salcedo left me, I went three days in a row with my jaws clamped shut. For the first two days I could not take even a mouthful of food, but I did not feel weak at all. The following day, however, after I had taken communion, I collapsed and fell to the floor in a great faint. [The nuns] came to my aid, carried me to my cell, and made me sip some broth. I spent the rest of the day in such misery that I did not know what to do. My teeth were clenched together so tightly that the nuns could not understand a word I said. During communion that day, I had been given to understand [in a locution] that my fainting spells would last until I was given permission for fasting and other exercises. It seemed to Father Frías that at this point everything was tumbling to the ground, so he told me to tell the Lady Abbess, but I did not know how to tell her about the locution I had received, nor did I trust my understanding of it. Since I no longer had someone with whom I could discuss this, I found myself in a very difficult position. On the one hand, if I kept the locution secret, I would surely die from weakness and the inability to eat. On the other, I was obligated to relate what I had understood. But I also knew that it would not be taken well, because if my impediment continued, they would think that it was some whim of mine, but if it ended, they would see it as confirmation of my fakery and deceit. Anyway, when I saw that it was already night, I asked the nuns to call the Lady Abbess to me. When we were alone, I told her how I had understood that if I were given permission to resume my penitential exercises, my impediment would end and I would be able to eat. In view of my condition, she consented to this only for the duration of the week, which coincided with the Feast of the Holy Spirit.65 Thereupon, I was fine. I could tell by the way they looked at one another that both the Lady Abbess and her friends (who had been waiting outside my cell) were astonished. I found out afterward that this did not mean that they took my recovery as an example of God’s work and a miracle for which His Majesty should be congratulated; instead, they thought 65. Also known as Pentecost, or Whitsunday, the seventh Sunday after Easter.

82 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO that I had either faked my condition or that the devil had been responsible for it. I ate supper and the following day arose early to perform my office in the choir.66 I continued to be fine for the remainder of the week. At Pentecost, while taking communion, my soul became greatly recollected and I was told [in a locution] that since I did not have a confessor, Our Lord would take away my jaw impediment and that I would be able to do everything that the abbess ordered of me. I was also told other things of great consolation. I discussed all of this with the Lady Abbess, because Father Salcedo had ordered me to relate everything to her, for he thought that if I did this, relations would improve between us. But I found that this only served to mortify me and I regretted it greatly, because it seemed to me that she took it as a joke or that she thought it was all a product of my imagination. She ordered me to eat meat again. After this, I began to lose strength and experienced such fainting spells that I could not fast for the four times required for the Feast of the Holy Trinity.67 At the Feast of the Blessed Sacrament,68 she ordered me to speak to Julián de Ávila—may he be in heaven!69 I bowed my head and said I welcomed the opportunity, although I knew that he was one of those who had condemned me most severely, having announced publicly in the convent that he had received illumination during prayer that the devil was responsible for my condition. During the two hours I spent with him, I gave an account of all I could remember, but everything I said to him he interpreted badly and he became only more confirmed in his opinion of me. He told me that I should understand that those things I related to him were an illusion, and that I should not dare to say that I was dying, since my soul lacked the proper disposition for death. He said many other things that upset me tremendously. I was extremely distraught by all of this, and even more so when I learned that the Lady Abbess wanted me to take him as my confessor. 66. Vela played the organ for the nun’s choir. For a discussion of choir nuns, who enjoyed a status above that of other women in the convent, see Colleen Baade, “Nuns’ Music-Making in Early Modern Castile” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 2002); Baade, “Music and Misgiving: Attitudes toward Nuns’ Music in Early Modern Spain,” in Female Monasticism in Early Modern Europe, ed. Cordula van Wyhe (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008), 81–95. 67. The Feast of the Holy Trinity occurs on the eighth Sunday after Easter, one week after Pentecost. 68. The Feast of the Holy/Blessed Sacrament (also known as the Feast of Corpus Christi), is celebrated fifty-six days after Easter, on the first Thursday (Holy Thursday) after Trinity Sunday; thus it occurs between late May and late June, relative to the date of Easter. 69. Julián de Ávila had been Teresa of Ávila’s confessor and traveling companion for twenty-two years. He served as Vaquero’s confessor for seventeen years and left to Vaquero the original manuscript of his biography of Teresa. When Julián met Vela, he was seventy-two years old and still served as chaplain to Teresa’s first foundation of Discalced Carmelites at San José in Ávila. Vaquero admits in La muger fuerte that because Julián did not approve of Vela at that time, he, Vaquero, did not approve of her either. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 85v. Vaquero notes that Julián had “a notable aversion to extraordinary paths,” such as those pursued by Vela (and certainly by Teresa). Ibid., 102v.

Vida 83 All I could do was turn to the Lord and plead with him to enlighten Father Julián de Ávila, so that the two of us might comply with God’s will. I had great hope that His Majesty would do this, although it might cost me dearly. During the time that I dealt with him, Father Julián de Ávila ordered me to resist interior locutions and to believe that I had been deceived. I could do neither of these things, although I tried. He said that he was amazed that I had not become a Lucifer, in view of all the notions that I had in my head and what my previous confessors had made me think. He ordered me to eat meat and not to take communion more than three times a week. When I asked the Lord to notice how they were forbidding me to receive him, I was told: Carry on in this way for now, for another time will come. Once, during prayer, with the eyes of my soul fixed on Christ Our Lord tied to the column, it came to me that God abhors regaled flesh. Christ Our Lord had wanted his own most innocent and pure flesh to be wounded and afflicted, so that it might better please God. Such had been Christ’s example and spirit and that of his saints, and thus he wanted me to follow along the same way. I also understood: Now that you please me, you will undergo the true test, for you do not have anyone on your side and he who directs you opposes everything that you have done up to this point. Now I will see if you are faithful. Will you allow faith to serve as your foundation, while not breaking your vow of obedience? What you and your confessor will hear will be me. When I told all of this to the Holy Father Julián de Avila, it only confirmed him in his opinion. One day he told me that saying that God was taking me by the hand to govern me by himself was the kind of statement that anyone with even a little knowledge would judge to be inspired by the devil. After taking communion, I was told [in a locution] to tell him that he should reflect upon this verse: Qui habitat in adjutorio Altisimi, in protectione Dei coeli commorabitur.70 And I was told that the truth of another verse, Scuto circundabit te veritas eius,71 would serve as my defense, and that I should not fear the darkness or the doubts that came to me. Neither should I fear vainglory, signified by the arrow that flies by day, nor the meridian devil transfigured into an angel of light, for God would defend me from everything and would serve as my shield.72 I suffered greatly when my penance and fasts were taken away, and so I pleaded with the Lord, in the names of the Holy Mother Saint Teresa of Jesus and of the Holy Fray Pedro de Alcántara,73 to restore my health so that my confessor 70. Ps. 91:1: “You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty.” 71. Ps. 5:12: “You cover them with favor as with a shield.” 72. Vela borrows from Ps. 91:5–6: “You will not fear the terror of the night, or the arrow that flies by day, or the pestilence that stalks in darkness, or the destruction that wastes at noonday.” “Meridian” refers to high noon: thus, the devil that appears even in the full light of day. 73. Teresa of Ávila credited the Franciscan friar Pedro de Alcántara with inspiring her to found her first convent of reformed Carmelites and giving her sound counsel and encouragement during his

84 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO would come to have some understanding of the favors that the Lord had granted my soul. I understood that the Lord would do this in honor of his saints, if my superiors gave me permission to perform penance and not to eat meat. They did not give me permission for this, but they did for other things. I began to improve, but later on I suffered new attacks until they gave me permission to forgo meat. Afterward, I was fine. Despite the clear proof of that experience, two weeks later my father [Julián] ordered me to return to my cell and to tell Doña María to prepare a little stew for me. He told me to eat the meat, because it was good for me. These things were done accordingly. Later the same day, I experienced such severe muscle spasms that my jaw became dislocated. Thereafter, my jaw would become dislocated every day, and the dislocation would last for hours on end. I was in such a state that I could not go down to the confessional or leave my cell. Even on the days when I managed to go to communion, my jaws would still lock and I would not be able to take it, and once I could not take it for an entire month. It seemed to my father that my bad state was a result of my unhappiness with him. And thus he sent for me on the Day of the Transfiguration, about two months after I first began to confess to him, and bade me farewell.74 One day, when I pleaded with the Lord to guide me and enlighten me so that I would know what was most pleasing to His Majesty and so that my trials would come to an end once and for all, I was told that the outcome would be left up to Father Salcedo. God had reserved this victory for him, because of what he had suffered by conforming himself to the divine will. After [Father Julián] left me, I became so ill that I could not attend choir. All the nuns expressed great concern and everyone wanted to give advice, but most held the opinion that the Dominicans should deal with me. The Lady Abbess gave me no orders, but I understood that this would please her. Thus, I decided to ask my brother to speak to his friend, Father Ledesma, and ask him to take charge of my affairs.75 Father Ledesma said that he would do it, since he was my brother’s friend. He came here one day and I must have spent around a quarter of an hour with him. I do not think that we discussed anything in particular, except communion, because many days had passed since I was able to do it. He replied that he would return later and would try to do what he could, but following my interview with him, he told my cousin, Don Francisco Vela, who then told my brother, that

visits to Ávila. Pedro de Alcántara was beatified in 1622 and canonized in 1669. 74. August 6. 75. Vela’s oldest sibling, Diego Álvarez y Cueto, secured the services of his friend Pedro de Ledesma, the Dominican priest and theologian. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 104v. Ledesma’s credentials as a spiritual director were sound, as indicated by his commission by the bishop of Ávila in 1588 to write a catechism for parish priests, which was later published. Melvin, “Fathers as Brothers,” 27–28.

Vida 85 it was his opinion that I was not entirely sane.76 My spirit carried on while in the hands of these powerful men and despite the even greater mortifications that I experienced. Father Ledesma refused to ever see me again. I was pleased that he did not stay here for my sake, because it already seemed to the abbess that I only wanted to speak to those who were on my side. Around this time, I was afflicted by interior fears that the Lord had abandoned me and I nearly went mad. It seemed to me that others must be telling the truth—that I was deceived and that the devil held dominion over me. It seemed to me that my soul was filled with demons and that God had indeed abandoned me. This was confirmed by the fact that I had no one to govern me and no one wanted to take me on. I had countless thoughts like these and all I could do was weep. I had no consolation in heaven or on earth, because everything was closed to me. One day Father Domingo Báñez came by here and the Lady Abbess ordered me to speak to him.77 I made him a written account of some particular things that had happened to me, which he kept. He told me that I was traveling along a very dangerous path and that I should do whatever the abbess ordered of me.78 In conclusion, he said that I could be deceived and mistaken, despite my good intentions. I related to him some of my experiences while fasting.79 He did not believe me. I replied that if he would not believe what I was telling him, I had no reason to stay, and so I said goodbye to him and left. Afterward, they made me speak to Father Labata of the Company of Jesus. This father ordered me to eat a slice of melon and a little bit of sugar, and he told me that I would do very well to stop talking to others, so that I would not cause them to become scandalized. He told the Lady Abbess that it was sufficient for me to take communion twice a week, while Fray Domingo Báñez had said three times, and Father Alarcón, once a month. Well, for many days I had been suffering from a sense of great helplessness and interior persecution. When I was rebuked for the fainting spells and the physical decline that this caused in me, I recovered and began to meditate upon the verse Exurge, quare obdormis Domine,80 and to appeal to the Lord unceasingly. Another day, when my jaws became locked and I could not take communion, I 76. Ibid. According to Vaquero, Father Ledesma announced publicly in another convent that Vela was mad, which prompted Diego to declare that his sister had been a saint since the day she was born. Vela later wrote to her brother, Lorenzo, that Ledesma had come to the convent to beg her forgiveness, an event she called “an even greater miracle” than the favor of the abbess. 77. Domingo Báñez, a Dominican and former confessor to Teresa of Ávila, served as chair of theology at the University of Salamanca. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 105v. 78. In the original manuscript, the next four lines are heavily edited, probably by Vaquero. 79. The next sentence was deleted from the original manuscript, but restored in a copy. 80. Ps. 44:23: “Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord?”

86 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO heard, Do not be sad. At this, my heart became tender and illuminated, and I saw that I had erred in attempting so eagerly and anxiously to find a way to extricate myself from the distress I felt. I realized that it was best for me to take him at his word and to await his promises in silence, in humility, and in resignation. I knew that I had erred, and I said, Lord, in lacking you, I lack counsel. Ne avertas faciem tuam a puero tuo, quoniam tribulor, velociter exaudi me.81 Then I recollected myself with these words: Do not be sorrowful, for I am all that is good for you. When you have me, you will have little need for creatures. On another occasion, when I was sorrowful because I had no one to whom I could relate these things, I was told: If I myself now want to teach you what I used to teach you through men, what harm will it do you? I understood that this was because I had been eagerly writing letters to be sent to Father Salcedo, asking him to deal with me again, since it seemed to me that there was no other way except through my own diligence that the matter of my spiritual direction could be resolved. But Our Lord was waiting for me to give this up and to take him as my spiritual director. Thus it seemed to me that the best way was to give myself over wholly to God and await his providence in silence. That is what I did, and he began to grant me new favors. I took communion three times a week when I could, but then the Lady Abbess ordered me not to take it more than twice. I was unconcerned about this, but I was told [in a locution] that Our Lord was not pleased that my superiors were resisting his will. I was also told that my impediment would return and that I would not be able to take communion. In this way, he would show them (as he had at other times) that he did not want them to take communions away from me. Later, on the next communion day, my jaws became locked. For the next eight weeks, I could not once take communion. Since I had no confessor during this period, I waited for Our Lord to provide a remedy. Meanwhile, during prayer, I suddenly began to receive many and continuous favors, and I went about very peacefully, lacking for nothing. I did not dwell on what I had suffered in the past, nor did I concern myself about the present. I experienced many suspensions of the soul, and in public, without being able to resist them.82 This troubled me, but when I pleaded with the Lord to let this happen at another time, I was told: Let me work, do not resist me. And again: What does it matter whether they speak well or ill of you? If they speak well, it is because of me, and mine is the glory. I was also told that I was doing nothing but receiving, and that anyone else who had received what I had would be more grateful.

81. Ps. 69:17: “Do not hide your face from your servant, for I am in distress—make haste to answer me.” 82. The raptures and suspensions mentioned by Vela are levitations of body or spirit, both of which would produce physical changes readily apparent to others.

Vida 87 I feared being deceived and wondered whether the impediment I experienced was an illusion. When I asked the Lord for help, I was told [in a locution] that Our Lord did not want me to have any assurance in this life, and that it was better for me to walk the path between fear and hope, that since I had received more gifts than most by being in his grace, I must suffer the torment of not having any certainty with respect to these things. One day, when I wished to take communion, it came to me that my impediment might have been an illusion of the devil, but I was told to have confidence, because I was in the hands of His Majesty, who had set me on this path and would lead me safely to its end. It was not good for me to know the when or the where of it; rather, I must leave it to his divine arrangement. One day, when I was somewhat weak, I had a desire to take communion, but feared that I might be prevented by the illusion of an impediment caused by the devil. Then I was granted great confidence that Our Lord would fulfill the promises that he had made me and that everything would turn out fine. Then it seemed to me that this might have already happened, and so I said: Lord, let it be later. And I understood: Be content with your suffering, for you will suffer more. Three days after this, they decided that I was possessed by demons and had need of some exorcisms. I offered myself up for the cure, unperturbed and with much joy and interior peace. I confessed [during that time] to the Father Chaplain, who also held the opinion [that I was possessed].83 Another day that summer, the same rite took place. I was at the confessional window, as Mass was being said in the chapter assembly, when a seizure prevented me from taking communion and the Father Chaplain tried to cure me. It must have seemed to him that since an exorcism had only been performed once before, it had been insufficient to cure me. Thus, he determined to perform a daily exorcism upon me, over the term of a novena.84 After High Mass, he would enter the confessional box and through the little window he would place a stole around my neck and pronounce over me all those passages concerning exorcism that are in the missal. I responded very serenely, and afterward departed from there in the same manner. I returned to choir, where I was granted a suspension, which often happened, in which Our Lord comforted me and furnished my spirit with a greater determination and desire to suffer. The Day of Our Lady’s Presentation, I arrived at the confessional for my daily exorcism, but my jaws had already become locked.85 This had already happened twice that day, when I tried to take communion. When the chaplain saw me in this state, he told me that the demon responsible must be one that would not depart without prayer and fasting. He therefore instructed me to pray and fast, because then the demon would likely depart. 83. Francisco Díaz served as senior chaplain in Santa Ana. 84. Nine consecutive days set aside for a specific devotional purpose. 85. November 21.

88 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO Around this time, the Lord also consoled me with locutions that told me not to be sorrowful, because what was happening to me was best in order for the Lord to be more glorified in me. At this, I underwent a suspension, during which I could not extricate my head from the confessional window. The servant of God86 said that I had epilepsy and told me to drink some aguardiente.87 In this state of recollection, it seemed to me that Our Lord was kindly making me into a portrait of himself, for His Majesty had been considered possessed by demons, and others thought also of me. He had been treated like a madman and I, too, was considered mad. It was said of him that he was a rabble-rouser and that he ate of prohibited meat, and of me that I disrupted the convent and that I indulged myself while making others believe that I fasted. Christ was met with calumny and his words twisted, while my words were taken and twisted as others wished. Christ was considered a blasphemer who wanted to become the Son of God, while I was considered proud and haughty and I was accused of wanting to seem like a saint and be esteemed as such. Just as he had been hated and some had wanted to banish him from the world, others now wanted to see me cornered and with no recognition on earth, despite the verse Lapis quem reprobaverunt aedificantes, factus est in caput anguli.88 It seemed to me that if I could resemble Christ in one respect, then perhaps I might be allowed to resemble him in another. I considered myself so favored by the contempt that I hoped to die from it as he did. Thus I said that this was what I was choosing to do. I resigned myself completely to whatever these suspensions might bring, for they could scandalize others, but they began to be taken as good and as favors granted by Our Lord. Although I dissimulated as much as I could, so that others would attribute the suspensions to some kind of illness, they watched my face and my demeanor so closely that nothing could be covered up. About three weeks after my cure, when I was the same as before, I asked the Lady Abbess for permission to take daily communion for one week, because when I had done so at other times, I had been fine. Thus I asked her if she thought we could try this. She said that she would either ask the chaplain about it or have me speak to him. I spoke to him, but he strongly opposed the idea. Among the reasons he gave me was that if my impediment could cease like that, then it would seem that it was something that I had up my sleeve, to take out as I wished. At any rate, he said that he would investigate the matter further. He came back another day, saying that he had consulted books from cover to cover and could find no argument anywhere as to why such a thing could not be done and done well. From then on, he defended me on the subject of communion, and whenever someone 86. Probably the chaplain. 87. A strong alcoholic beverage, such as rum, brandy, or a liqueur. 88. Mark 12:10: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.”

Vida 89 said something to the contrary, he took my side.89 Many times when I was unable to take communion successfully in his presence, he would say that the devil was the reason why I had been impeded. He ordered me to take daily communion for one week, and so did the Lady Abbess, and later I could do this without any difficulty. Everyone was so delighted that they congratulated me. They began to believe that the matter was God’s business and that it had nothing to do with a bad spirit, as they had previously believed. This was at Advent, when I had permission to abstain from meat, but not for anything else. Around this time, someone related this to Father Fray Tomás and he condemned its spirit. When I said to the Lord that everyone was abandoning me, I was told: I will receive you. I decided to speak frankly with the Lady Abbess and place myself completely in her hands, trusting that Our Lord would move her to order me to do whatever was for his greater glory; such is what I had been given to understand— that I should have confidence in her. I told her that on some days, with the approval of my brother, Fray Lorenzo, I had been performing penance, since Her Grace had not specifically ordered me not to do so.90 She responded that she had thought that I was doing something, because she had noticed that I was in better health and could attend choir. She gave me permission to do everything that I usually did, to take communion daily, and to abstain from eating meat until Easter, although she told me that I must do this secretly, in order not to scandalize others. This made me extremely glad and I gave thanks to the Lord, because he was fulfilling his promises.

Chapter 4 (How she once again took Father Salcedo as her spiritual director.) Another day, after prime,91 the Lady Abbess called for me and told me that she had not had a moment’s rest the previous night, because she had been so concerned about me. She understood how great my distress must be at not having a spiritual director and she also knew that Francisco Díaz was not up to the task. She said that if it would comfort me to speak on occasion to Father Salcedo, she would write to him and ask him to visit me in secret.92 I replied that if His Grace 89. The chaplain is Francisco Díaz, whom Vaquero refers to as the Capellan Mayor, the highest ranking chaplain in the convent. 90. “Her Grace” refers to the Lady Abbess. Vela’s sibling, Lorenzo, was a Cistercian friar, studying for the priesthood. 91. The office of prime occurs right before daybreak. 92. Vaquero gives 1600 as the year when the abbess arranged Salcedo’s clandestine visits to Santa Ana. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 121v.

90 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO would grant me that favor, I would be happy to see him from month to month. Afterward, she sent for him and she herself kept watch at the door during the visit. We were greatly surprised at this and could not praise the Lord enough. Thus I spoke with him several times until Lent, when the Lady Abbess decided that she also wanted to discuss her soul’s progress with him. This did her so much good that she often spoke to him before I did. I continued in this way until the Feast of the Visitation, when Father Salcedo went away.93 As my suspensions in public continued, coming over me during divine office, it seemed to Francisco Díaz that they were the devil’s doing, because God would never permit them to overcome me at such a time. I told him that tests had been conducted with respect to obedience, and that he should tell the Lady Abbess that when this happened to me during divine office she should order me to come out of the suspension, and that if I did, it would be seen that this was God’s will. At Epiphany, when I was fearful that the test would not turn out well, I was told that I should not be afraid, because Our Lord would see me through this test as he had all others. I was comforted, because that is what happened—every time the Lady Abbess ordered me to come out of a suspension, I was immediately able to do so. And even if she sent another nun to relay her orders to me (such as go to communion or to divine office or to stand up or sit down, which happened many times), I was always able to comply. Our Lord granted me this mercy so that others would stop thinking that I was disobedient and so that their good opinion of me would be restored. After Father Salcedo left, I wrote to him every week, and thus I carried on, although countless doubts and fears plagued me until his replies arrived. During this time, I suffered some great falls when walking distractedly through the cloister, refectory, or choir, [on occasion] hitting the floor so hard that it was a miracle that I did not crack my head open. When this began to happen to me, I had a locution in which I was told that I should not be afraid, because the Lord would help me and I would not be hurt, in accordance with the verse Cum ceciderit justus, non collidetur, quia Dominus supponit manum suam.94

Chapter 5 (How she began to confess to the Discalced Carmelite, Father Fray Gerónimo de San Eliseo.) 93. Vaquero says that the Jesuits transferred Father Salcedo to Valladolid in July of 1600, after his tenure ended as rector of the Jesuit college in Ávila. Ibid., 122v. In letters to her brothers, Vela sometimes refers to Salcedo as Father Rector. 94. Vela’s Latin verse is a variation of Ps. 37:24: “Though we stumble, we shall not fall headlong, for the Lord holds us by the hand.”

Vida 91 I persevered in this way until Epiphany, when Father Fray Gerónimo came here.95 The Lady Abbess spoke to him concerning some of the sermons he had preached and she was so impressed that she decided to place me under his direction; she told me that this was her will. I did not at all feel like giving yet another account of myself to someone else, but I did have a need to discuss many things and it would bring me no satisfaction if I did not discuss them. At the same time, I fully understood the abbess’s wish and was inclined to do it. I therefore decided to relate to Fray Gerónimo everything of importance that had happened to me. He listened to me and consoled me greatly, saying that he thought that everything was in a good spirit and that he would defend me against all those who might claim otherwise. He was very attentive in his direction of me; he could deal with me at that time, because no one was impeding him in his house.96 He terminated the permission that the Lady Abbess had given me to fast in public and to eat only greens, experimenting by making me break my fast and eat meat. What happened was what always happened—I became ill, my jaws became locked, and I could not take communion. He greatly regretted this impediment. One day he ordered me to go take communion when my jaws were locked, in order to test me, because he feared that my inability to do so would be a very bad sign. I was deeply distraught, thinking about what might happen if Our Lord did not grant me this mercy, and I shed many tears while beseeching His Majesty, with great faith, to allow me to receive him. At any rate, I was able to do it. Then I was told [in a locution] that because I had obeyed with such faith, the Lord would now grant me the mercy of taking away my impediment, and thus it has never again stopped me from taking communion. After this, when arriving to take communion, I began to experience seizures and falls that prevented me from trying to receive it. At other times I would fall while in the process of taking it, although I never lost my peace of mind. Thus, I remained interiorly resigned and quiet, by which I mean that there was light in my soul. And when my soul was not illuminated, disorder was the result. That Lent, I asked the new prelate, Lady Doña María Mejía, for a penance, to atone for a fault on my part.97 She told me to undertake public penance, because by now others would have forgotten about my past mortifications. I discussed 95. Epiphany (the Feast of the Kings) occurs on January 6, in commemoration of the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus. The year is 1600. 96. Father Gerónimo de San Eliseo’s house, or Order, was that of the Discalced, or Barefoot, Carmelites, founded in the 1570s by Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross, also of Ávila. The Discalced Carmelite houses of men and women followed the original and primitive Carmelite rule. When Fray Gerónimo came to Ávila, the Discalced Carmelite men still visited convents for the purpose of confessing the nuns, although the Order rescinded permission in 1603. 97. Vaquero gives 1601 as the year for this incident. He says that the new abbess, here identified by Vela as María Mejía, was the aunt of Vela’s best friend, María Dávila, and had “a very peaceable nature, with a particular affection for María Vela.” González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 125r.

92 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO this with my father [Fray Gerónimo], who was pleased with the idea. He ordered me to enter the refectory with a rope around my neck and a gag in my mouth, to pronounce my faults publicly, and to prostrate myself until she who was presiding told me to leave. That is what I did, but it caused a great stir.98 Later, they told Father Alarcón about it and he wrote a letter of condemnation containing weighty arguments.99 Father Fray Gerónimo saw it and wrote a letter contradicting it, which both Father Alarcón and Father Frías saw and disagreed with. It had long been my wish to dress in the coarse habit prescribed by Our Holy Rule, and to wear simple sandals rather than platform shoes made of cork. I discussed this with my father [Fray Gerónimo] and he ordered me to write to the bishop and request his permission. He would deliver my letter himself, as they were great friends, and if the bishop gave his consent, the nuns in the convent could not prevent it. I wrote the letter, and in it I also asked if I might be allowed to stop eating meat. The bishop replied that because the Rule stipulated that meat should not be eaten, it was unnecessary to seek his permission. Regarding the habit, he said that he would like to speak to me in person about it, at such a time when he could visit the convent. After asking Father Fray Gerónimo some questions, he told him that he was pleased to hear his response, for he had been misinformed about me. Since the bishop did not come to see me, having forgot all about it, I broached the subject with some of the older nuns. They thought that [the habit] was a novelty and that we should drop it, for now, and Father Fray Gerónimo ordered me not to talk about it. Time passed and Father Fray Tomás de Jesús arrived in Ávila.100 My father [Fray Gerónimo] ordered me to speak to him, without telling me who he was. I spent two hours with him, giving him an account of my experiences. He told me that he found nothing to condemn; moreover, with regard to the past, it seemed to him that Our Lord had wanted to keep me thus occupied until granting me the perfection of love. He also told me that in my present state I might attain a very great level of perfection, if I had someone to help me, but that if I did not I would suffer a very great fall. He advised me not to dwell on the good or the bad, and not to perform penance, but that all my attention should center with loving affection on an aspiration of divine union. He told Father Fray Gerónimo to make me eat 98. Vaquero comments more fully on Vela’s public mortification in La muger fuerte. He reveals that although such penances were no longer practiced in Santa Ana, Father Gerónimo decided that Vela should perform the mortification because she was mistress of novices. Vaquero says that a “to-do” had erupted in the convent as a result of Vela’s election during Advent of 1600, because “since time immemorial, it had been agreed that the office holder should be an elderly nun, around seventy years of age, and [Vela] was not yet forty.” Ibid., 123v. 99. Father Juan de Alarcón’s letter to the abbess concerning Vela is included in this volume. 100. Tomás de Jesús, who had recently served as provincial of the Discalced Carmelites in Old Castile, was by request of the pope to become the new provincial of Flanders and Germany. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 128r.

Vida 93 eggs and fish, because in this way I would have more strength to concentrate on interior prayer than if I fasted. He also said that if I became ill because of my diet, it would not matter, because this was ultimately the safest way to proceed. Around this time, Father Fray Gerónimo left for Salamanca, after ordering me to follow Father Tomás de Jesús’s recommendations. Soon after his departure, I came down with a fever and returned to my cell, unable to take a step further. When the Lady Abbess (who had so much experience with regard to my condition) saw how ill I was, she told me to do whatever I thought necessary in order to recover my health, because she did not want to see me confined as an invalid. I was told [in a locution] that I would make a recovery, if I were permitted to take off my platform shoes, to dress in coarse cloth as prescribed by the Rule, and to fast on bread and water during Advent and Lent. I told the Lady Abbess, in front of Lady Doña María de Mercado (may she be in heaven!), that if I were given permission to take these religious vows, I expected that God would restore my health. The Lady Abbess was initially hesitant, thinking that the nuns would gossip about my dress, but Lady Doña María encouraged her to give me permission.101 She argued that since my dress was part of the Order’s Rule, it should give no one cause for concern. On the very day that the Lady Abbess gave me permission, which was the Feast of the Holy Cross, I was able to help in the choir.102 From then on, I adhered to the strict vegetarian diet that I had previously followed. On the Day of Saint Francis,103 I came out dressed in what we call here an aljuba, a habit made of rough cloth with a thick woolen cowl, and without my platform shoes.104 Everyone looked at me disapprovingly, and many nuns gossiped about it being a singularity. There were even some who put on a similar cowl to mock me, and they went to the infirmary to laugh and joke about it with the nuns who were ill. I was deeply mortified, but because my desire had been to make the other nuns disparage me as the least worthy of our community, this did not sadden me; rather, I was pleased by whatever the outcome might be. I wrote to Father Gerónimo about what had occurred, since he did not know anything about it, and he replied that he was very glad about the way it had turned out. He wrote that he had ordered me to eat eggs because, at the time, he had wanted me to follow the advice of others, but that he had not himself been of that opinion and that now he would not take the advice of others. With regard to everything else, he thought it was well done and he gave me his blessing and permission to undertake anything that seemed to me to be God’s will. He was certain that everything would turn out well with [God’s] help. At this, I was comforted. I 101. María Mercado had been abbess in 1595. Ibid., 40r. 102. September 14. 103. October 4. 104. Aljuba is a Moorish word used to describe a tight costume of rough cloth. Its specific design and original purpose is unknown.

94 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO carried on for four months, until the nuns finally tired of giving me their opinions and left me alone. Around this time some of the nuns, among them Lady Doña Juana de Toledo, decided to try making aljubas. The abbess gave them license to put them on. I made one for the [future] Lady Abbess, Doña Juana,105 and dressed her on the day she appeared before the nuns in it. The entire convent rose up against the [presiding] abbess because she had consented to this and against me as the inventor. The scandal was so great that an account was relayed to the Dominican fathers, and the prior came to the grille to impose his authority on our house. He called for the abbess and many nuns and said that this singularity must stop, that the abbess was committing a mortal sin in consenting to it, and that we must remove the aljubas. The Lady Abbess ordered everyone to do as he said, except me, since I had already worn one for some time and she saw no reason for me to stop. But the nuns in the opposite camp were not happy with her decision, because it seemed to them that if I were to continue wearing mine, then the others who had worn them would eventually want to put theirs on again. When they could not persuade the Lady Abbess of this, they spread the rumor among the fathers of Santo Tomás that I was the only one who did not want to obey, because I had not removed mine. When the Lady Abbess found out about this, she decided that it was best that I take mine off in order to quell the unrest. She sent for me to tell me so, just when, dressed in this fashion, I was about to take communion. I refused to take communion until I changed, so I left and came back dressed in my former habit and footwear. Later they told me to take these off and to add sleeves to the thick cowl and to make a skirt of the alujba. Thus it was done and I am to this day dressed accordingly. But to the other nuns it was as though I had dressed as a clown and was profaning the habit of our Father Saint Bernard, and so the gossip continued within and without the house. They even wrote to Father Salcedo, who wrote to me quite angrily about it. Nothing could quell his anger until he came here to the convent grille and saw me in the habit, himself. This persecution took place at Epiphany. At Lent, when I wanted to fast on bread and water as I had sworn to do, they ordered me to continue eating as usual. I experienced great fainting spells and since I had no regular confessor, I asked the Lady Abbess to send for the prior of the Discalced Carmelites, who was Father Eutropio. He came and spoke to me and ordered me to fast on bread and water for the three remaining weeks of Lent. He told me to ignore the fainting spells and he also related to me some of the experiences that he had of similar things. We got along very well and he never wanted to know that I was Doña María Vela.106 He visited me twice during Lent. I wanted him to become my spiritual director, but he did not want to do so. 105. Juana de Toledo served as abbess at a later date, probably when Vela was writing this account in 1607–8. 106. Father Eutropio apparently had no interest in Vela’s status or in convent gossip.

Vida 95 After this, around Pentecost, I experienced another trial. Francisco Díaz thought that I should not be allowed to take communion, but the Lady Abbess thought that I should. She sent for Fray Eutropio and he consoled me greatly. He told me that I should not forgo communion for any reason. I told this to Francisco Díaz and took communion, despite his dissatisfaction. He tried to pressure me by telling me that I had been ill advised, that I had not been making proper confessions, and that God would punish me, because that is what he usually did when one was badly confessed. I was disconsolate, and since the prior [Father Eutropio] was away at the time, I was forced to speak to Father Villena.107 He encouraged me as best he could, but whenever I spoke to him upon arriving for communion, I would have a seizure and was not once able to receive successfully during the two weeks that he directed me. Around this time, Father Fray Gerónimo returned from Salamanca. Before I knew that he was here, I had been given to understand [in a locution] that my impediment would not cease until he ordered me to take communion. That same day, Father Fray Gerónimo told Father Villena to command me to communicate, because [commanding me] was the only solution to my problem. Father Villena was doubtful, but he wrote to me and placed me under a vow of obedience to communicate. I replied that I would try to do as he ordered, but that I had understood [in a locution] that until Father Fray Gerónimo came to the convent in person [and ordered me], I would be unable to do so. He wrote to me, again, to tell me to have more faith and to let me know that he had written to me after having already conferred with Father Fray Gerónimo, in whose name he was now ordering me to take communion.108 Later, on another day, I was able to take communion, but when Father Fray Gerónimo arrived I had already fainted, having fallen right after taking communion. He sent to tell me that I must get up right away and come see him. I stood up, went to see him, and related to him what had happened. He strongly encouraged me to persevere through my suffering and to set aside my doubts. The Lord saw fit, three or four days after that, to put an end to this particular trial. Later, everyone suffered greatly at not being able to see this father, because the friars’ permission to visit convents was taken away; this was also to the prior’s great regret.109 107. Vaquero notes that Father Diego de Villena, the rector of the Jesuit college in Ávila, was an “avid listener” at Vela’s funeral mass in 1617, and that Villena “knew her great virtues and trials.” La muger fuerte, 197v. Villena had served as confessor to the elderly secular priest Julián de Ávila and preached at Julián’s funeral in 1605. Melvin, “Fathers as Brothers,” 330. 108. The collaboration between clergy—in this case a Discalced Carmelite and a Jesuit acting as spiritual directors to a Cistercian nun—was not unusual, as Melvin shows in “Fathers as Brothers.” 109. The governing council of the Discalced Carmelites in Spain issued a general mandate prohibiting their friars from entering and ministering to convents.

96 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO A month before the Feast of our Father Saint Bernard, I began to faint again upon going to communion. I was given to understand [in a locution] that I would be unable to take communion successfully until the Day of our Father Saint Bernard, and only then at Father Fray Gerónimo’s orders.110 But there was no help for that, because I could not bring him here by writing [to his superior] or by having the Lady Abbess request that he see me at least once. There was no way that he could be granted permission. I decided to write to him and to send the note along with Father Villena, so that he could ask him to reply to me. Father Villena was kind enough to deliver my note and return with Father Fray Gerónimo’s reply. In it, [Father Fray Gerónimo] expressly ordered me to take communion, and added that my inability to do so was God’s punishment for my laxity in doing my spiritual exercises. The same afternoon that this reply came, the chaplain told me to tell the Lady Abbess that it seemed to him that I should be exorcised again. She laughed at this, saying there was no reason to consider it. Another day, shortly afterward, the Lord wanted me to take communion, which I did, and thus everyone stopped worrying about me. But because I still did not have a regular father confessor, and it had been such a long time since I had taken communion, everyone wanted to give me advice. The chaplain told me that I should thank our Father Saint Bernard for having granted me this mercy. Later, an attempt was made to secure permission for Father Fray Gerónimo to come to the convent every two weeks to hear my confession. But after finally getting permission—which in itself had caused a great upset—I do not believe that he was here for more than two months. That Lent, he wanted to test me. At the beginning, he ordered me to fast on bread and water, which I did, I believe, for a period of three weeks. Then he ordered me to add broth to my diet. I fell so ill that for three weeks I could not leave my cell; I think I ate eggs. On Palm Sunday, after having scolded me for being ill, he ordered me to fast on bread alone for the duration of Holy Week and not to drink a drop of water, and that is what I did without feeling any weakness. Even though my duties involved considerable work, I performed all of them and also my [spiritual] exercises.

Chapter 6 (How her confessor went away and what happened to her until she had a permanent confessor.) Later, on Wednesday of Easter Week, Father Fray Geronimo went away.111 By then, I had become so tired of the subject of fathers that I did not want to say 110. August 20. The Cistercian Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) was revered especially for his mystical union with Christ, thus his feast day a significant choice of date. 111. Gerónimo de San Eliseo left Ávila in April of 1603. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 135r.

Vida 97 another word about it. Since Father Lorenzo, my brother, was in Ávila, I related to him what occurred to me and did what he ordered of me. By the time he left at Advent, I had already met Your Grace, although I had not yet made a vow of obedience to you.112 Thus I was in no way troubled, but rather pleased to be free to deal with whatever might occur. Prior to this (I think it was around the Feast of Saint John),113 the inquisitor came to this place and to our house, to read the sort of edicts that inquisitors read. I was not at all worried about what others would have to say to him regarding me. As his agent in our house, the inquisitor appointed Father Alarcón, to whom all the nuns went with their concerns, most of which, I understand, had to do with me.114 The chaplain told me that I should watch out, because some nuns had come to him and said the sort of things about me that he used to believe. He suspected that they would say the same things to Father Alarcón and so I ought to go to the father and defend myself. I informed the chaplain that because I had a clear conscience, I felt no need to see Father Alarcón or to defend myself, and that as far as I was concerned the nuns could say whatever they liked about me. He told me that in a situation like this it was only right to go and give an account of myself, so I went. Father Alarcón received me and said it was good that I had come to see him, because if I had not, he would have considered me damned. He said that he had become confirmed in his opinion that I was impertinent and scandalized the convent. The nuns had told him many things about me, but he had only thought eight of them credible. These were: 1. That I said not to commend oneself to the saints, because the saints do not hear our prayers. 2. That I said God inspired me in everything that I did and that I therefore had no need of anyone’s advice. 3. That I said that I did not want to place myself under obedience and that I was not obliged to do so, because God governed me and he was above any earthly religious superior. 4. That I said that vocal prayer did me no good and was unnecessary for me, because mental prayer was what mattered and it was enough. 5. That I said that my penance should not be performed in secret, but rather in public, where everyone could see it. 6. That I said that I would be glad if they brought me before the Inquisition. 112. Vela addresses Vaquero, for whom she is writing her Vida. Vaquero met her in 1603 and shortly thereafter began to confess her. 113. June 24, 1603. 114. An inquisitor who arrived in a city often chose a local clergyman or monastic official to assist in the investigation. Dominicans figured prominently in the hierarchy of the Holy Office, thus Father Juan de Alarcón, as prior of the prestigious Dominican house of Santo Tomás, would have been an appropriate and likely appointee.

98 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO 7. That once when I was weak and they had begged me to eat, I replied, “Why will you not let God perform his works?” 8. That when they had asked me to plead with God for the conversion of a soul, I had said that it had been revealed to me that this soul would not be converted so quickly and that I had thus stopped praying to God on its behalf. I replied that while I did not recall having said any of these things, I could have said something similar, but with a different meaning intended. Regarding the first thing that had been said—about the saints hearing our prayers—I told him that I recalled that some nuns had on one occasion asked me to pray to a saint on behalf of a person who was ill, because God would hear his saints and restore a person’s health through their intercession. I had replied to them that I had heard Father Julián de Ávila say that when Our Lord does not wish to concede what we ask of him through the intercession of the saints, he makes it appear that the saints do not understand our prayers so that we do not continue to beseech him.115 That was all I had said, nothing more. And regarding everything else, although it might have been the case, I did not remember. Father Alarcón, having listened to my response, was shocked that others had given him such a different account, so he decided not to pay any attention to what else they had said about me. We then spoke of other things, including a particular concern I had at the time. Finally, he told me that as far as the past was concerned, he had not approved of me because of what others had told him about me, which is why he had said what he did. I showed no resentment at this and we both parted with a sense of peace. A few days later, he wrote me the letter that Your Grace saw, in which he affirmed his belief that Our Lord had been defending me during all my trials.116 After I left my interview with this father, however, I began to feel a cloud in my soul and a great affliction. The thought came to me that it was impossible for so many to condemn me without me being to blame. Because of my soul’s carelessness I had not realized this, so my trials would have to start anew. While oppressed by this thought, the devil tried to drown me. There was no remedy for my wretchedness. I could do nothing but weep, because I did not know what else I could do or what advice to take. It seemed that darts were being hurled at me from all directions, and that heaven and earth had closed their doors to me and only hell would receive me. I spent an entire night afflicted by such thoughts. The following morning I found myself incapable of calming myself sufficiently to take communion. The nuns, who had all the while been observing me, went to the Lady Abbess to request that she order me to take communion. I said 115. The Spanish in the original text is ungrammatical and thus the meaning unclear, but a comparison to González Vaquero’s account of the same incident supports the translation used here. 116. Alarcón’s letter and Vela’s written response are included in this volume.

Vida 99 that I would comply if I could speak with Francisco Díaz, so they left me alone.117 After High Mass, I spoke with him concerning my affliction and my recent experience. He listened compassionately to me and consoled me with words that Our Lord gave him, encouraging me much. He implored me at great length to eat and to soothe myself, because he saw that I was on the verge of death from my anguish and all the tears that I had shed. It seems to me that this was one of worst trials that I have ever faced in my life. And thus I put an end to this tragedy of trials, since Your Grace already knows of the greater ones that came later. Trusting in the Lord’s mercy, I will say only this: that all the fathers and persons who thought badly of me in the past had good intentions and wanted only what was best for my soul. As such, I have never complained about any of them, nor have I shown any resentment or sadness at what they said or did, nor lost any peace over what happened to me because of it. I believe that I have nothing therefore to confess in this respect. May the Lord be praised for everything. May he be served by what I have suffered, and may he give me strength to suffer what is to come, so that he may be glorified. And I beseech you, Your Grace, my father, to also ask this of him on my behalf. May he keep you and continue to fill you with his divine love. Amen.

Chapter 7 (In which she explains how she began to tell Doctor Vaquero about the things her soul was experiencing.) Since Your Grace orders me to continue my account, I will do so for the love of the Lord. I do not know why, but I feel that this will be extremely difficult. Anyway, let me say that from the first day I spoke to Your Grace, your spirit squared so with mine and I felt such great satisfaction and gladness of heart that I scarcely knew myself.118 At last I had found what I had been longing to meet: a person who had some experience of the interior workings of the soul and of supernatural prayer. But despite such consolation, as I say, I had no intention of placing myself under obedience to anyone, although when I saw that I had some doubt or need I went to Your Grace to speak about it. I attributed your desire to listen to me and give me your advice to Our Lord’s great mercy. Thus I saw you during the three months when you came to see Doña María, not so much to discuss my things as hers, because Our Lord had begun to make her aware of the love and esteem that he had for her soul, whereas mine, at that time, remained dry and distracted.

117. Francisco Díaz, the senior convent chaplain who had earlier accused Vela of deception, had by this time become her supporter and defender. 118. Vela was forty-two years old when she first met the thirty-eight-year-old Vaquero in 1603.

100 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO One day, when I prayed to the Lord for illumination and help regarding a particular thing, as I always used to do (because, as I have said, I had not then made a vow of obedience to anyone), I received no response from His Majesty— he had closed himself off to me. For the next few days, I thus implored him to grant me this favor. Afterward, having taken communion, I was told: Hic est filius meus dilectus in quo mihi complacui, ipsum audite.119 I took these words to refer to Your Grace. Through them, I understood that it was God’s will that I should listen to you, and obey you, and that in this way, the Lord would give me the illumination that I sought. Amazed by this, I continued to receive the same confirmation in the days that followed. Whenever I asked Our Lord to show me his will in the matter, I saw very clearly that he did not want me to resist placing myself in Your Grace’s hands. Determined to comply with God’s will, I therefore asked you to be so kind as to take charge of my soul. Your Grace charitably assented, despite the numerous inconveniences that this would cause you and that could have excused you. It was more than clear that the Lord wanted it thus, because whenever I recited these words in prayer, In the end, Lord, you have placed me in the hands of another, I was told: Although I seem to have abandoned you, I have not; rather, I have given you a confessor who will now govern you.120 I was very consoled by this mercy. At that time I was experiencing great faints and began to wonder if it was because Our Lord wanted me to act on something that had occurred to me three months previously, when I had been made to understand that I should fast on bread and water for three years to atone for people’s sins. Unsure of God’s will in the matter, I turned to Your Grace for guidance. In prayer, you received the following illumination from the Lord: that if you yourself were to undertake prayers and penance, these would serve to put an end to my fainting spells. You also understood that the sacrifices that you made would serve to atone for the sins of others and benefit the poor. Your offering must have pleased Our Lord, because I was never again asked to fast and I believe my faints ended and I became better.121 Thus I carried on for some months, disclosing everything of importance to Your Grace, although I did not officially make my confession to you because it was not the right time for it to be known around here that you were dealing with

119. Matt. 17:5: ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!’ The words are deleted in the original manuscript, but restored in a later copy. 120. Vaquero’s name is crossed out in the original manuscript. 121. When Vela joined the others at mealtimes, criticism of her ascetic practices abated, although it is likely that tempers were also soothed by her submission to Vaquero and the cessation of public scandal and outside interference. See Susan Laningham, “Maladies up Her Sleeve? Clerical Interpretation of a Suffering Female Body in Counter-Reformation Spain,” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 1 (2006): 69–97.

Vida 101 me.122 Meanwhile, my way of life was not all altered; I had felt interiorly a great dryness since the Feast of the Purification and this lasted until Holy Week, when I undertook a spiritual retreat.123 Each day, after leaving choir and going to eat, I withdrew to a room where I remained until I went to matins the following morning. During this time, I was oppressed by a sense of helplessness and melancholy, and I came out of [the retreat] worse than when I had begun it.

Chapter 8 (Concerning the seizures that she began to experience and that prevented her from taking communion, and how through obedience to her confessor these ceased and she was able to take communion.) Seizures also came over me as I would arrive to take communion, preventing me from receiving, and sometimes I collapsed even before arriving. I had great faith that if Your Grace were to place me under obedience, I would be able to take communion. For in addition to what I had been given to understand, Your Grace had also heard these words or words similar to them: Have faith and order what you wish. You paid little attention to the message until I finally decided to write to Your Grace to inform you that Father Fray Gerónimo’s solution in similar situations had been to place me under obedience to him. I enclosed a copy of the note that he had written me so that Your Grace could see it. Although I did not know it, you then issued an order for me to take communion while you were [elsewhere] engaged in prayer. At that very moment I was able to communicate without spasms or falling. I had been in a very bad way, but I recovered immediately and my soul was filled with much light and interior peace. I was amazed at the rapid change in my condition, until Your Grace arrived here and filled me in on what you had done. If I recall correctly, the good health and interior peace that I experienced lasted for about four or five months. Then my falls returned, until you ordered me not to fall or if I had fallen to get up. In addition to the seizures, I also suffered from other grave ailments that at times made me retire to my cell. Your Grace paid little attention to the seizures, because you believed that they would stop if I carried on with my fasting, and that is what happened. With respect to my other ailments, you only had to give the

122. The nuns did not consider Vaquero an unworthy choice, but Vela’s history of constantly changing confessors would undoubtedly affect the response to her taking yet another spiritual advisor, particularly since each previous confessor had seemed to provoke in her a new physical or emotional crisis. Nuns could freely choose their own confessors; Teresa of Ávila urged her nuns to change confessors until they secured men who met their spiritual and emotional needs. 123. Vaquero says this occurred at the end of April, 1604. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 144v.

102 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO order and you could make me return to choir and complete my exercises. This has happened many times, to everyone’s amazement.

Chapter 9 (How she openly took Doctor Vaquero as her confessor, who until that time had been her confessor only in secret, and how she had no other confessor for the rest of her life.) After having dealt with Your Grace secretly for ten months, as I have said (which, considering our house, was a miracle in itself!), I received word that Father Gerónimo was returning here. I wanted to remain under your direction, but it was necessary for Father Julián of Ávila (may he be in heaven) to first give his consent. Since we were both concerned that he would withhold it because of past events, I decided to speak to him in person, confident that if this were Our Lord’s will, he would approve.124 I spoke with him at some length about the matter, giving him an account of my desire and determination, and asking him to hand-pick a confessor to whom I could entrust my soul, which I was placing in his hands. He was very pleased that I did not want to return to Father Fray Gerónimo, and he told me that Your Grace would be sufficient and that he would order you to take charge of me. But he also warned me to make sure that I be a woman who could be taken at her word, because he would not permit me to change confessors again if he allowed me to confess to the Doctor. I promised to do as he wished. With the Lord’s favor, I will keep that promise. I was greatly comforted now that the path ahead was smooth and I could confess openly to Your Grace whenever I had the opportunity to see you.125 I found myself put to the test once again, however, when the saintly father [Julián de Ávila] ordered that Francisco Díaz also have some part in my direction.126 But Our Lord and the diligence of Your Grace put things right. Following Pentecost, I made a general confession, which I deemed necessary in order to see me through whatever trials might befall me. For although faith, hope, and love, along with the virtue of obedience, continued to grow stronger within me, Our Lord was now giving the devil permission to torment me, sometimes with falls that prevented me from taking communion and sometimes 124. Vaquero owed obedience to Julián de Ávila, his spiritual director and confessor, and apparently suspected that Julián would forbid him to direct a woman whom Julián had not been able to successfully mentor in 1599. Julián died in 1605, two years after approving Vaquero’s request to confess Vela. 125. Vela’s next comment is crossed out in the original manuscript. 126. Julián de Ávila confided to Vaquero that Vela was “a saint,” but that “her path would be difficult,” which may explain why he insisted that Vaquero have the assistance of the convent chaplain. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 143v.

Vida 103 with seizures. Sometimes the devil tried to afflict my soul with interior turmoil and doubts, so that I would disobey you. But throughout these trials, the Lord’s goodness always illuminated my soul, preventing the devil from succeeding in his schemes. When the devil finally realized that nothing he had done had achieved its purpose, he resolved to kill me. He tried to do so on many occasions. His first attempt came at the Feast of our Father Saint Benedict, when he made a silver crosier fall, striking me on the head and fracturing my skull.127 It was a miracle that I was not killed on the spot. When the surgeon saw the indentation it had made, that is what he said. But as Our Lord was keeping me for greater trials, he healed me miraculously that same night. As I was devoted to the Blessed Virgin, I placed the rosary that Your Grace had given me on my head, and in recollecting myself I was told that this Lady would take charge of my cure, and that she would heal me through the rosary. The following morning, the imprint of the crosier had closed. Only the puncture wound made by its tip remained, but that wound also healed quickly, without producing any pus, and I did not experience any fever because of it or spend more than two days in bed, nor did I eat meat of any kind.128 Within a month, I went to matins and returned to my spiritual exercises. The devil’s first attempt to kill me had not gone well for him and so he devised a new method to do away with me: he tried to strangle me. One evening in choir he constricted my throat to the point that I began to choke. The sisters with me thought that I was dying. This befell me three more times before Your Grace was able to see me. Later, it seemed to you that the devil was behind it, so you placed me under obedience to be well, and for some time after that the devil left me alone. Around Epiphany, I was stricken with a severe pain in my side and became extremely weak.129 I was told [in a locution] that I would not die, but instead would be healed through my obedience to you, as had happened during previous trials. Your Grace was also told: Videbitur Deus deorum in Sion130 and that marvels would be seen.131 I attributed everything to Our Lord, because I had been assured that it was God’s will that I be cured in this way. Thus, I wanted Your Grace to believe it, too, and to place me under a vow of obedience. But Your Grace was more prudent and you thought caution should rule. To me, it seemed that you were either lacking in faith or resisting God’s will. I also wondered whether Your 127. March 21. 128. Vaquero says that the nuns were under the impression that Vela was actually eating meat, on his orders, but he admits that he allowed her to abstain from meat, secretly, per Julián’s advice. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 146r. 129. According to Vaquero, in January of 1605 Vela developed a great pain in her side that remained until her death. La muger fuerte, 152v. 130. Ps. 84:7: “The God of gods will be seen in Zion.” 131. The last phrase, “and that marvels would be seen,” is crossed out in the original manuscript.

104 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO Grace wanted to avoid the talk such a novelty might occasion. This saddened me, because it seemed to me that nothing should prevent God’s will from being carried out. What I failed to see was that you were trying to shield me. While I was preoccupied with such thoughts, Your Grace wrote to me, ordering me (because I had been failing in this respect) to try to resign myself to the divine will, for God would arrange things. You wrote that you would call on me to let me know when the time was right, giving me to understand that the present state of things was not one in which God would work his wonders. I was distressed at your letter, because I did not understand it. I did not recognize that I was lacking in resignation. Nonetheless, I believed that this must be so. I performed good works, but these were not enough, for they are insufficient by themselves: pure grace is also necessary and it is given when God desires and through his goodness alone. Anyway, that night, without my knowing how it happened, I found myself without troubling thoughts and desires, with no care for my concerns, having abandoned myself to God’s desire. But this state did not last long. For even though I tried to disregard my troubles and to resign myself to what you had said God wanted of me, I still could not understand how maintaining obedience to both you and to what I had understood to be the divine will could be contrary. Plagued by such thoughts, I became ever the more distraught, because it seemed to me that it must be through some fault of my own that Our Lord’s will and my obedience to Your Grace were not in accord. After having been granted this mercy, whenever something is ordered of me that depends on God’s will, I fix the eyes of my soul on the Lord and abide by his divine ordination concerning everything, with faith that if what my superiors order of me does not turn out as planned, then that is what is right for his glory. Thus, I remain at peace, no matter what happens. Well, returning to my story: I must have spent two days with my soul thus disposed when the Feast of the Purification arrived and you sent a message to me, instructing me to get dressed and go make my confession.132 I had been taken ill and was feeling badly; the day previously had marked the twenty-first that I had been in pain. Despite this, I got up, went down to the confessional, and did not stop once on the way there. I took communion very peacefully and went to choir to preside over the music at Mass. Later, I went to serve in the refectory, to the amazement of everyone and especially to that of the doctors. One week later, at the beginning of Lent, I stopped eating meat and I never missed choir. May the Lord be praised for his works. During Holy Week, faints came over me at matins. I could not attend Mass or even get up from my bed until it was over, and thus I could not take communion. Your Grace let me suffer, although you knew very well that the devil was 132. February 2. The feast day celebrates the post-partum purification of the Virgin Mary in the Temple in Jerusalem (Luke 2:2139).

Vida 105 responsible and that this was an invention of his to take communion away from me. I met this with interior peace and joy, as I was prepared to suffer as long as Our Lord wanted. This must have angered the adversary, because I do not remember another occasion when he was so angry. The despicable one has employed a variety of schemes and tricks over the past fifteen months to try and separate me from God and make me break by pledge of obedience to Your Grace, but only great confusion rains down on his head. By the virtue of Christ Crucified, he has been conquered, despised, confounded, and thrown down to hell, where he rages and trembles at the power that God gives his faithful ministers. Anyway, following this threat, on the Day of Saint Philip and Saint James, on the first day of May, I did not faint when I got up to make my confession. After I left the confessional, my soul became troubled and I was unable to concentrate on what I was doing or to calm myself. The sadness and despair I felt led me to believe that some trial was soon to befall me. I told Your Grace how I was feeling and you ordered me to take communion. But although I wanted to obey at High Mass, I collapsed in a faint before I could do so. Although afflicted, I resigned myself to the divine will, and my trial in its usual form began again. Day by day, my difficulties and distress increased, with the result that I was unable to take communion for thirteen days in a row. Your Grace was kind enough to see me every day and to console me by telling me that the Lord would be my fortress and there was nothing to fear. You had much sympathy for me and it grieved you, for it seemed to you that if this went on for a month, I would most certainly die, because, naturally, I could not live. Thus, I believe that it was due to divine providence that you were taken away from here for a few days. This was for our relief and so that our hearts could become fortified and our wills better disposed to suffer the second part of the trial. Well, after thirteen days of terrible affliction on my part, on the Friday before Pentecost, Your Grace came here, determined to say Mass and to give me communion, with great faith and trust that this could be done and that the trial would end. You placed me under obedience and I took communion very peacefully. The cloud was lifted from my soul and light returned. The Lord granted me a great favor by that communion, so that I would be encouraged to suffer and to trust in his goodness and to know that he would not abandon me. My trial was lifted for two weeks, but it returned with greater fury on the Saturday of the octave of the Feast of the Blessed Sacrament.133 I could not attend choir, because of all the confusion and shame that I felt, and I dared not lift my eyes to the Holy Sacrament. I broke down in tears over this great torment brought upon me. By 133. The Feast of the Blessed Sacrament (Corpus Christi) takes place on a Thursday, sixty days after Easter, thus it falls between late May and late June. An octave is the eight-day liturgical celebration that begins on the feast/holy day and continues for seven more days, thus ending on the same day of the week that it began.

106 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO Wednesday I was confined to my bed with such great weakness that it seemed that I was dying. Thus Your Grace was sent for, and you confessed me at my bedside, very fearful that my life was at an end. On Friday you returned to give me communion, and said Mass. While the two of us were giving thanks, Your Grace was told: Why should it distress you if I am pleased by her suffering? And I was told: Let my grace be sufficient for you. At this, I was very consoled and encouraged to suffer. And because you trust in His Majesty and are always so attentive to prayer, the Lord granted me this favor: he faithfully enlightened you concerning every doubt and difficulty, supplying you with the right words to encourage me and assure me of his help and favor. Having been given faith in your words and in my obedience to you, I was thus kept from tripping over many obstacles. My trial increased a thousand times over, but this is what pleased the Lord. Seven demons emerged from the shadows to torment me.134 Then the specters of people with whom I had once dealt also returned to haunt me. But I always remained fearful of offending the Lord, and at my most trying hours always called out to him. On the Eve of the Visitation,135 the shadow cast by that animal had been lifted. But then another [shadow] was cast over me, the one that caused me so much sorrow. It was of the greatest importance that I tell [you] about it, because if I remained silent, it would be the cause of my total perdition—that was the devil’s goal, and he made it very difficult for me. I did not tell you for three days, but on the fourth day I had some reservations concerning my silence. Thus, I said to Your Grace that neither could I be reconciled to my trial nor could I tell you of my need, because something was preventing me. Then I asked you to pray to Our Lord for illumination about that which I could not speak. Afterward, His Majesty provided Your Grace with illumination. You informed me that this had happened, and you encouraged me and comforted me as if the matter did not trouble you in the least. I marveled at this, because it was a favor from God and the work of the Almighty. The devil was outraged and embarrassed. But the Lord gave him permission to conduct a greater test and he caused Your Grace to injure yourself in a fall down some stairs, so that you bled. Our Lord accepted this as an act of love on your part, because you had been made to spill your own blood for the sake of my soul.136 Despite the extent of your injuries, you made it a point to see me soon after your fall, for you were more concerned for me than for yourself. But the devil was not happy with this, and thus, nine days later, he made you fall down the stairs again, with the result that you broke two bones and suffered greatly dur134. The seven demons that assailed Vela are consistent with the number appearing in many hagiographies and are intended to recall the prototype of possession and exorcism found in Mark 16:9 and Luke 8:1–3, in which Jesus expels seven demons from Mary Magdalene. 135. July 2. 136. Vela interprets Vaquero’s injury as blood atonement, equating Vaquero once again with the beloved Son.

Vida 107 ing your recuperation. I was very distressed, as was natural, since it was my fault that Your Grace had been hurt. But I also realized that what took place resulted not only in the greater consternation of the devil, but also in your greater glory, because afterward Your Grace was even more determined to help me through my trials, no matter if these should last a lifetime. Over the past fifteen months you have done everything in your power for me, such as coming to see me every day, smoothing over any difficulties that have arisen, and suffering my bouts of melancholy and madness. I truly hope that the Lord will give you a most deserved reward in heaven, since everything that Your Grace has done (as you well know) has been because of your love for me and your desire to please Our Lord. May the Lord be blessed. My trials increased a hundred times over. Most frequently, they would last just a day, but there were very many times when they lasted for two days. Often they continued for three days, and less frequently they went on for four and even five days. I became weaker and weaker, until it seemed that I would not be able to last another day. I spent most of the time bedridden, but when I was able I would go to high choir and see Your Grace and take communion. But many days I could not do it, either because my trial would come upon me and you were away or because I suffered a seizure and you would decide not to place me under obedience to take communion, although you later would. On the Eve of the Feast of Saint James,137 I had become greatly afflicted by my trial and felt a great despair. When I went to take communion, I was stricken with a seizure in the presence of Your Grace. In view of things, you left. But Our Lord wanted to grant me the favor of restoring me so that I could receive him, and I found myself later with such energy and strength that it seemed that I no longer had any malady and that it was God’s will that I go down to choir. Since I found myself so well disposed, I went down for terce and in the evening to vespers. I was present at the matins of the Lady Saint Anne,138 attended to my obligations all day long during the divine office, and took communion that day. Then the devil began to persuade me that I should not write to Your Grace, because I no longer had need of you. He argued that Our Lord had taken away my trial and wanted things to change, that he wanted to give me a new life and to be my teacher and guide. He said that if I could take communion, I should; I did not need to wait for Your Grace to signal me and if I did I would not be able to take it. I feared that this was a temptation and thus I vowed that even if it meant that I could not take communion, I would write to Your Grace to learn your will. I did this without realizing what was happening; I only knew that I was fine. When Your Grace 137. July 25. Tradition held that the body of Saint James, or “Santiago,” lay buried in the far northwest corner of Spain, in a shrine that came to be known as Santiago del Compostela (Saint James of the Field of Stars). Only Rome and Jerusalem rivaled Santiago del Compostela as a pilgrimage site. 138. July 26.

108 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO arrived that morning and ordered me to take communion, I went down to the choir with that intent. On another day, after the Feast of Saint Anne, which was a Thursday, I was prevented from taking communion during the first Mass and I fainted. Since I could not continue my fast until High Mass, I thus had to break it. Doña María had sent for Your Grace to come here, because she felt that she needed to make a general confession to you. I wanted to see you, too, because I had not seen you since the morning of the Feast of Saint James. Thus, I had written to you, in order to also give you an account of my soul and to tell you what had been happening. You attributed your coming to the house that morning as part of the Lord’s providence, because it seemed to you that one of the greatest temptations and most dangerous things that could happen to me (given the state of my soul), would have been to forgo confession. From this, you deduced that the devil had wanted to take the act of confession away from me; that is what you told me. Another day, on a Friday, I went down to take communion, but my trial returned before I could take it, causing me great despair and interior turmoil. We notified Your Grace and you came to the little grille. Despite my great affliction, I was determined to obey whatever Your Grace might order of me and not to hide anything from you. I asked you to hear my confession and give me communion, but you were not very convinced that this would help. You finally relented, however, and we soon had confirmation of just how necessary this had been. For when I began to confess to you, the devil, in a rage, threw me to the floor, rendering me incapable of uttering so much as a word. Only through my vow of obedience to you was I revived enough so that I could hear you pronounce absolution over me. What I had been told the day before turned out to be true.139 From that day forward and for the remainder of the year, it was necessary for you to specifically order me to make my confession to you. But there were many times when ordering this once was insufficient. Sometimes, when I would begin my confession or begin to kneel, the devil would throw me violently to the floor and you had to command me to get up and continue. I would tremble, weep, and be so afflicted in spirit that sometimes I would only be able to utter a few words; Your Grace would have to say the rest and finish my confession for me. The same thing happened with respect to communion. There were very few days when I was able to take communion if Your Grace was not present. The Lord has granted me the favor of making you want to use the power that he has given you to alleviate my trials and to prevent the devil from taking communion away from me. He has given you the power to combat him, but the eternal foe has never stopped tormenting me because of this. It happened that on one morning the devil caused me to have a seizure three times, but Your Grace restored me by 139. Vela is likely referring to the warning she received from the devil (above) that obeying Vaquero would render her incapable of taking communion.

Vida 109 the name of Christ Crucified. Many times when I have attempted to take the Host from your hand, the devil or his demons have wrenched my head back so far that I have been unable to receive it. He and his minions would have sent me hurling a hundred leagues from here, if they had gotten their way. But the devil’s hands have been tied, and he cannot do anything unless he is first given permission. For this particular trial, he had been given permission, and thus he went about employing diverse methods in order to wear me down. About one week before the Feast of Saint Michael, on the Feast of Saint Matthew,140 I suffered such a severe bout of melancholy that I thought I would die from it. The devil tried to play this to his advantage by making me think that he had secured a victory over me. He insinuated that I would die before the night was through and that my soul would be forever condemned. It seemed to me that there were many demons surrounding my bed, awaiting my end so that they could seize my soul and bear it to hell. Troubled greatly both interiorly and exteriorly, I struck out with my arms and said such words that the nuns broke down in tears. Still, no one remembered to send for Your Grace or thought it necessary, since you were expected the next morning. My torment increased because of this, and I thought that I would not last through the night. Thus I screamed out, saying that if the nuns did not bring you to me, then and there, I would go to hell. When they saw me in such a state, they managed to secure Your Grace’s entrance, although it was already night. Our Lord wanted me to make my confession, and [when I did] I became calmer and much improved. For a number of days, I had wanted Your Grace to say Mass for me, because I had faith that if you did, the trial I was experiencing would be lifted. You delayed doing so for two weeks; it seemed that the devil was preventing you. Meanwhile, one of the episodes that I have already disclosed took place. The Eve of the Feast of Saint Michael arrived and Your Grace said Mass.141 Although I had been feeling very weak, Our Lord granted me good health for the next four weeks, and along with it came much illumination, peace, and great interior recollection. When Your Grace consulted Our Lord as to whether or not I should go down to choir, you were told: Let her be. What does it matter to you? Let others judge her as they wish. At the end of these four weeks, my soul became troubled by a new intimation that a great trial would soon befall me. Your Grace consoled me by telling me that if such a trial were necessary in order to purify my soul, then I must accept whatever would come and conform to the divine will. I replied foolishly that perhaps my soul had already been purified. Your Grace reprimanded my pride and Our Lord punished me by permitting the devil to resume his torment of me. By the time the Feast of Saint Simon and Saint Judas arrived,142 I was acting as though I were 140. September 21. 141. September 29 is the Feast of Saint Michael the Archangel. 142. October 28.

110 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO out of my mind, refusing to either see or communicate with you. I remained in this state for many days, which was what the devil wanted. No doubt he would have succeeded in securing my total perdition, had I not remembered the vow of obedience I had made to you. The devil employed many schemes to prevent my confession to you, but they and the great difficulty I felt were not enough to prevent me from acting upon the scruples I had. I made my confession and, in doing so, the clouds that had darkened my soul disappeared, and tranquility and peace were restored to it. Around this time, I was much consoled by revelations I was receiving, and with each passing day I hoped to have some news of my death. My soul, however, was lacking the disposition that the Lord required of it. Indeed, the day of my death has not yet arrived, nor will it arrive, I hope, until His Majesty sees fit to put the house of my soul [which is his] in order. I have been entertained by these [revelations and thoughts] and I have also suffered because of them. On Christmas Eve, Your Grace ordered me to go down to choir, and I attended vespers and compline. On Christmas morning, I awoke early to take communion, and although at first I felt peaceful, I began to have doubts that I would be able to take it. I went to the confessional and made my confession, and entered the choir to communicate, but I had a seizure and could not do it. I notified Your Grace, and you came to say Mass in the upper choir and to give me communion. That was the first of many times that demons wrenched my head back so far that I could not take it. Nonetheless, on that occasion, it served Our Lord that I should receive him, as I have many times since, by taking the Host from your hand. On the Feast of Saint John,143 the same thing happened. I went down to make my confession and afterward I collapsed in choir with a seizure. Although Your Grace was presiding at Mass, I did not recover and I could not take communion. At midday, I could not return to my cell or eat, because my teeth were so tightly clenched together. You had to come and place me under obedience in order for me to recover. Later that day, my trial returned and it continued to afflict me greatly. On New Year’s Eve (or New Year’s Day), I became so gravely ill that I was convinced that my death was imminent. A day later, Your Grace came to hear my confession. When you saw how extremely weak, but peaceful, I was, you feared that I had little time left in which to make a confession. As the hour of my death did not arrive, we now braced ourselves for more suffering. I became greatly tormented by obscure visions of Christ Crucified.144 I knew that I would be remiss not to revere him, but I also feared that I might commit idolatry if I did. Despair and rage overcame me, turning me into the 143. December 27. 144. Vela uses the word sombras—shadows, or shades. She feared that the visions were not of divine origin.

Vida 111 living portrait of a soul in hell. In anguish, I cried out to the Lord, but he turned a deaf ear to me. It seemed to me that he cast me from his presence. I broke down in tears, not knowing what to say or do. All the doors that led to Our Lord had been closed to me. If Your Grace (in whose words I always had great faith) had not visited or written to encourage me as you did when I was in this state, I have no doubt that I would have gone mad—and that would have been the least of my troubles. Lent arrived and I was greatly afflicted.145 One day, while I was already quite helpless, as I have said, I suffered a fainting spell and such an extremely painful constriction of the throat that my speech was entirely impaired. The nuns sent for Your Grace, because they had no idea what else to do for me and you were their last hope. You quickly realized that the enemy had me in his grip. Applying the usual remedy, you made me obey you and recover. Afterward, I felt as if I had never been afflicted. The same thing happened to me on the Feast of our Father Saint Benedict, when [demons] tried to convince me that they were going to kill me.146 I recollected myself in Our Lord, and for some time after this I enjoyed his presence within me, filling me with peace and delight. Later, however, my trial returned: I had a seizure and once again my throat became constricted, but even worse than the day before. This time, my screams shook the entire convent. The nuns wanted to give me some medicine, but I would not consent to it. They sent for Your Grace, but you were nowhere to be found that day. I was in extreme anguish, because it seemed to me that the devil had placed a noose around my neck and was choking me to death with it, and I wondered whether I would die at his hands by permission of Our Majesty. Our Lord ordained that you arrive that night. You liberated me from my torment through the prayers you said and by the virtue of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Thus I carried on, suffering some days more than others. If I were allowed to rest one day, then the next the devil would return to attack me with even greater fury. During the Feast of Saint John, in May, Our Lady of Sonsoles was brought to Ávila.147 Your Grace decided to say Mass for me and to offer up to God your own health in exchange for mine. Our Lord heard your prayer and you became afflicted with a high fever. I improved for three or four days, but then my trial 145. Throughout her life, Vela’s worst depressions and physical maladies occurred during Lent, a time when fasting and reflection on the impending crucifixion of Christ dominated religious life. Her jaws locked for the first time during the Lenten season of 1598. 146. March 21. 147. May 6 commemorated an apocryphal episode in the life of the apostle John, in which John survived an execution attempt by emerging unharmed from a vat of boiling oil. The Marian image referred to as Our Lady of Sonsoles was preserved in a shrine outside Ávila and carried in procession to the city on holy days and in times of turmoil or disaster.

112 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO returned. Greatly afflicted by this course of events, I turned to the Lord, pleading with him to put an end to your fever, because there was no way that I could rest peacefully if you were ill. Our Majesty cured Your Grace, but you were unable to see me for two weeks. I spent those days peacefully enough, although I could not take communion without Your Grace’s presence. By the Feast of the Ascension, the storm had passed.148 On that day, Your Grace ordered me to go down to choir. I forced myself to spend so many hours there during the divine office that even though I had been able to remain seated, the toll it exacted of me was very great. When I returned to my cell, I was so exhausted that I became confined to my bed for the next three days. A week after this, Your Grace had to come here, because my condition was so dire that I had been screaming out unceasingly in the utmost affliction. Whenever I experienced such extreme states of distress, the devil, by taking away the light of my understanding and casting darkness over it, would try to make me believe that I was to blame. He did this so that I would not realize how far my will was from consenting to such a thing. But “the Lord held me by his powerful hand,” as those say who have received much light. The Feast of the Blessed Sacrament arrived.149 It so happens that whenever a major feast day occurs, my trials also increase, so that I may better appreciate the favors Our Lord wants to bestow on me. One night, around this time, when I was afflicted and was praying to heaven for mercy, it occurred to me that if Your Grace were to make a little card for me, on which you inscribed an order for the devil to leave me alone, then the devil would do it, and that through this method Our Lord would grant me the favor of relief. I mulled the idea over for the next two or three days, until I decided that I was doing wrong in not telling Your Grace about it. You commended this to the Lord and you did it at just at the right time, so that my trial was lifted. Afterward, my trial did not return for the next three and a half months, except for two days out of the fifteen that you were away in Madrid. Right before your departure for Madrid, I was nearly driven mad by thoughts concerning our relationship. Thank God that the nuns notified you in time, so that you could deal with me before leaving. When the nuns told me that you had been at the convent grille the previous afternoon and had expressed regret because you were going to be unable to see me before you left, I began to reflect upon whether I was perhaps too much attached to you. The devil, in his malice, took advantage of the opportunity, as he saw it, to torment me further. He tried to make me think that you were the only obstacle to my spiritual progress, despite the fact that there were a thousand other causes impeding God’s grace and causing me to stumble along the way, not the least of which was me. As my soul had been untroubled for some time previously, I could not persuade myself that 148. Forty days after Easter. 149. The Feast of the Blessed Sacrament (or Corpus Christi) is celebrated sixty days after Easter, on the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday.

Vida 113 this could be true. But the very notion that it might be true made me collapse and break down in tears. Anyway, Your Grace knows better than I the peril that my soul was in that day, how close it came to error and perdition, and how much it cost you to steer it through those dark storm clouds to light. For the entire two weeks that Your Grace was in Madrid, I could not take communion. Although the devil had been tied up and prevented from doing some things, he was at liberty to hinder me from receiving the Holy Sacrament, because I could not take communion without Your Grace being present. One day, while in prayer, I was told [in a locution] to tell Your Grace to order the devil in writing not to impede my confession and communion as he had done on earlier occasions. For a few days, Your Grace refused to do this, because you believe that this is an easy way to excuse us from our trials. I said nothing, hoping that the Lord would move Your Grace to comply with his will, since no one can resist it, and that is how it turned out. On the Feast of Saint Lawrence,150 Your Grace brought me a written order, although you only referred to the Eucharist in it, not to confession. Since then, I have been able to take communion without Your Grace being present, although I continue to be put to the test regarding confession. Recently, when I began to confess to another father, demons threw me to the ground. They also caused another impediment of my jaws to occur, which prevented me from finishing my confession. Thus, I am now waiting to see what the Lord will order of me, having placed my trust in him. I do not want to partake of him, only to love him with detachment and purity. May the Lord bring this about in me, for his greater glorification. I want to set down, here, the illumination that Our Lord has been giving the Lady Abbess and me [and you], through Your Grace’s prayers, since the beginning of this trial, in order that we might have more reason to praise the Lord for the care that he has shown he has for my soul.151 In making my distress known to the Lord, you were told: What consolation did I have on the Cross? And when you asked the Lord to allow me to receive him: Only she who is my true spouse is embraced by my will. I will be her strength; you need not fear—this was repeated many times. I love her more than you: Durum est enim contra stimulum calcitrare.152 150. August 10. 151. The ink and handwriting of the original manuscript indicate that Vela wrote this section at a later date. She begins by recording the locutions received by Vaquero, and then shifts, it seems, to those that were granted to her. In the following lines, Vela’s frequent use of third-person subject and object pronouns and the equally ambiguous possessive pronoun and possessive adjective makes it difficult and sometimes impossible to determine of whom or what she speaks. She was, after all, writing for Vaquero, who knew what she meant. Not having Vaquero’s advantage, then, we have chosen the subjects and pronouns that seem most logical to us. 152. Acts 26:14: “It hurts you to kick against the goads.”

114 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO I will come and I will cure her; do not be sorrowful.153 It was made known that my trial would last until I demonstrated perfect resignation. When you asked the Lord to make me able to take communion, you were told: That is what will most purify her. You were shown with great illumination how different God’s plans are from our own, through these words: Qui dat nivem sicut lanam. Who can turn snow into fire and fire into snow?154 By this, you were made to understand that my soul was like those of the children in the furnace of Babylon and that His Majesty wanted to cleanse it, leaving no stain upon it.155 Illumination was given to you, concerning how much God loves this soul and how much delight he takes in having made it conform to his heart, in order that it may help bear his cross. It was said that the Lord would be faithful and would never fail those who had always desired to serve him, and that he would be pleased if Your Grace attended to my consolation. Christ Crucified was presented to you, giving you to understand that Our Lord wanted the soul to conform thus. I have already told you that there is no need to fear. Let her be dead to everything, for I will give her a new life in me. Haec mutatio dexterae Excelsi.156 By this it was understood that the soul must submit itself to fire and be annihilated in order for it to be purified. The soul that does not bear its cross is not worthy of me.157 Portae inferi non prevalebunt adversus ean.158 Just as the body cannot live without its head, so the soul cannot live without someone to govern it. There is nothing to fear, because God is in our midst. You were told that Our Lord is pleased that Your Grace encourages me and helps me to bear this cross, and you were asked why His Majesty would ever fail the one who tired only in trying not to offend him. The soul in the arms of the Lord Almighty was shown to me, and it was said: Who will take it from me? Who will separate it from me? My glory will come soon. Does it not please you that your soul suffers for my glory? 153. Matt. 8:7: “And he said to him, ‘I will come and cure him.’ ” 154. Ps. 147:16: “He gives snow like wool.” 155. Vela refers to the story found in the third chapter of Daniel, in which three young Jews (Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego) emerge unharmed from the flames of a furnace into which they had been cast by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar for having refused to worship a golden idol. Ancient and medieval artists frequently depicted the three youths in the fire. 156. Ps. 77:10. In its entirety: “And I say, ‘It is my grief that the right hand of the Most High has changed.’ ” 157. Matt. 10:38: “And whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” 158. Matt. 16:18: “And the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”

Vida 115 Her soul’s trial will not yet end, but I will give her my mother to be her helpmeet and companion. [And you were told] that I should not stop repeating this verse: María mater gratiae, mater misericordiae.159 How could he abandon the one whom he has chosen? Fear would keep me safe, but without it I would be in great danger. Have I ever broken my promise? [The promise] was this: Clamavit ad me et ego exaudiam eum; cum ipso sum in tribulatione.160 A very high rock was shown to me, and although waves crashed below, no harm could be done to it. Tell her not to fear, because my mighty arm is with her. Manus enim mea auxiliabitur ei, et brachium meum confirmavit eum, et concidam a facie ipsius inimicos eius et odientes eum in fugam concertam.161 You saw such a high mountain that its summit could not be seen. You will soon see my will fulfilled within her. She is my beloved. Who will separate her from me? When asking for [my] health, you were told: It pleases me more as it is. Let her be; there is no need to heed the opinion of others. Does gold lose its worth if it is cast into the fire? When I said that I was unworthy to be his wife, you were told: The lashes experienced by Our Lord were more unworthy of him, and you were shown Christ Our Lord tied to the column. When you asked in prayer that a temptation be removed, you were told: There is always danger in temptation without my help. Where the danger is greater, the victory will be greater still. Tell her to prepare herself to suffer more. Now she is my true daughter. You were shown Christ Crucified and told: If I have given her all that I possess, how else can I show her the love I have for her? Tell her that I will be her true friend. Wheat must be ground, in order for it to be placed on my table. My soul saw a mountain peak emerge from the waters and rise toward heaven. My soul saw itself dangling by a hair over the mouth of hell; and God held the hair in his hands, giving it its strength. I was told: Whatever you may suffer will purify you, thereby removing any stain upon your soul. 159. “Mary, mother of grace, mother of mercy.” 160. Ps. 91:15: “When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble.” 161. Ps. 89.21, 23: “My hand shall always remain with him; my arm also shall strengthen him… . I will crush his foes before him and strike down those who hate him.”

116 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO A rose looks more beautiful among the thorns. Aquae multae non potuerunt extinguere caritatem.162 You have given me your heart and I have not removed my hand from yours; thus you will not sin, because you will have my grace.163 Let my grace be enough for you. What I want is for you to repay me what you owe me; you must trust in me, for I will be your true friend. The fire has not touched you; nec odor ignis erit in te.164 I once gave you my hand and now I will give it to you again, for I will never fail you. I will be your right arm—with my strength you will conquer my enemies and with my virtue you will be able to do anything. Now is the time for purification; thus gold is purified by fire. Now you will become dead to everything, in order to live in God. Now your betrothal to Christ will take place, and you will remain united with him for all eternity. The longer the test lasts, the greater God will be glorified. I do not want to heal you; I want you to be lovesick for me and to delight in me. As long as you keep calling for me, you will continue to find me. Even though I afflict you, I will not leave you. If I could, I would feel your affliction as much as I feel the love I have for you. But it is fitting that this is happening, so that you will be purified and emerge untainted, because in this way you will become forever united with me. This is the purgatory that you asked of me. Soon you will experience great happiness, delighting in me forever. A few days later, on the Feast of the Eleven Thousand Virgins,165 when things were in the state that I have described, Your Grace ordered me to go down to choir. This I had wanted to do for some time and I had been regretting that you had not encouraged me to attend to my obligations. I was happy with this order, but before I could get up in the morning, I suffered a seizure. If it had lasted any longer than it did, it would have been impossible for me to hear Mass that day. I learned such a lesson that I implored Your Grace not to order this of me again. Then, one day, when I was recollected, I was told: Why does he delay in providing you with a written order to attend choir? Tell him that this is what I want. I was also told that it was the devil, who, by these attacks, was impeding me from going 162. Song of Sol. 8:7: “Vast floods cannot quench love, nor rivers drown it.” 163. The last half of the sentence was deleted from the original, but restored in a later copy. 164. Dan. 3.27: “Not even the smell of fire came from them,” another reference to the three young men who did not burn in the furnace. 165. October 21.

Vida 117 down to choir. Your Grace wanted to determine Our Lord’s will in the matter. When moved by him, Your Grace supplied me with a written communication, in which you ordered the devil not to impede me, and you ordered me to make an effort to fulfill my obligations and not to let my confession be hindered. Later, on another day, the eighth of November, the Feast of Saint Theodore Martyr,166 I went down to choir and I was able to follow [the community] throughout the day, and to perform my office, albeit with great difficulty, for I was very weak. I went on peacefully, until the beginning of December, when the devil began to afflict me with doubts and fears for my salvation. These marked the beginning of the great tribulation that awaited me. And thus, on the Day of the Conception of Our Lady,167 my trial returned with its dark effects. In order to seek a remedy, Your Grace left for Madrid two days later. Although I was encouraged, the usual storm returned that day. I was greatly afflicted, even more so by your being absent—and this was the reason why the trouble lasted so long. On top of this, new fears overcame me, which tormented and afflicted me for the three weeks that Your Grace was absent. The day you came to see me, the enemy’s rage was so great that he tried to strangle me to death, as he had attempted to do at other times, and it was necessary for Your Grace to come in here and free me from his grip. After this, I was fine until Fat Saturday168 (the day the soul traditionally begins its spiritual penance), when the devil determined to exact his revenge on me, because he was angry at me. Despite his attempts to wear me down over the course of the next three days, he could not disturb my peace. When Lent began, Your Grace ordered me to fast, and I was able to do this and get up in time for matins on some days. This goes to show the virtue of obedience, because my state was such that I feared I would not be able to go down to choir. May the Lord be blessed in his works. Amen. On the first Saturday of Lent, having taken communion, I was told: You already know that your trials are not your own; rather, they belong to your fellows. Make an effort, because through my virtue you will be able to do anything. The will that I have to help you now is the same as always. I understood this to refer to my fasting and penance. With respect to my trials not being my own, I understood that this was because I renounced any merits for myself, leaving the matter in the hands of the Lord, for His Glory and for the good of the living and the dead. Later, Your Grace left for Olmedo. You were there for four days, and during that time I was able to take communion peacefully and make my confession. I had never been able to do this before, but [this time] I obeyed the written command 166. The feast day for Saint Theodore Tyro, also known as Theodore Stratelates, is November 9. 167. December 8. 168. Fat Saturday, like Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras), occurs in the week preceding Lent.

118 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO you left me. Now I am waiting for the Lord to call me to him. Let me delight in him for his unequalled goodness and mercy. May the Lord do as it pleases him, in everything, for this is best for us, and it is what I want and for what I beseech him. May he be forever blessed. Amen.

Chapter 10 (She continues to tell her life story and to relate how a great trial, similar to the one she has already described, befell her. It was so great that those who knew about it say that she could not have survived for more than two days without supernatural aid. Sometimes she endured it continuously for three months, and sometimes it would stop and start again for eight months or more.) On the Feast of Saint Vincent and his brethren, on the occasion of the completion of one year’s time, at August’s end.169 The preceding account that I wrote at the express command of Your Grace was completed by the end of Lent in 1608. Since then, two years and four months have passed, more or less, during which Our Lord has wanted to prolong my life so that I might continue to suffer. May his name be blessed. Now, while still possessed of the same hope I had then of departing soon from this earthly exile, I am ordered by Your Grace to continue the subject of my trials.170 At one point I might have said much concerning them, but as I did not take any notes and my memory is so poor, I believe that I will be able to say little. I will relate what I may be able to remember, with the Lord’s help. On Easter Sunday, I took communion. Wishing to imitate Our Lord Jesus Christ and to suffer the affronts and scorn of others for his love, I was given to understand that if I suffered another trial like those of the past, I could fulfill my desire. Through Christ’s image, the great scorn that one could endure in this life was shown to me. If it was the Lord’s will that such a trial befall me, I volunteered to suffer it for as long as His Majesty was served, helping myself with his virtue. It was as though I was preparing myself for battle, for before the day was done, a first assault had been launched upon me, with all the usual consequences. The little strength I had left to follow my community began to fail me. At times I was forced to return to my cell, and to make my confession and take 169. Vela probably means September 1, the feast day of Saints Vincent and Laetus, two Spanish saints especially popular in Toledo. A number of saints named Vincent are revered in Spain: the feast day for Saints Vincent, Orontius, and Victor, martyred near Gerona, is January 22, a date shared by the broadly venerated fourth-century martyr and bishop Saint Vincent of Saragossa, patron saint of Spain; the feast day for the Dominican saint Vincent Ferrer is April 5. 170. Vela began writing this last installment of her Vida in the summer of 1610. In the manuscript, her handwriting is more distinct, as a result of the ink that she used, and her penmanship is somewhat altered.

Vida 119 communion [later] in the upper choir. This I greatly regretted. Later on, I could not take communion if Your Grace was not present, as had previously been the case. Many days, after taking communion, my jaws would clamp shut and I would be unable to eat until Your Grace saw me and ordered the devil, in virtue of Christ Crucified, to leave me alone, whereupon I would feel fine. I remember that on one occasion Your Grace wanted to perform an experiment to discover if these things were a product of my imagination. Without my knowledge and without the usual act of faith, you placed me under obedience to you.171 This had no effect upon me and my jaws remained as rigid and fixed as before. Then, with the act of faith, you placed me under obedience to you and I was fine. When you told me what you had done, we could only marvel. May the Lord be forever praised. A similar thing occurred with regard to my seizures. When speaking with Your Grace, while waiting for the Blessed Sacrament to be brought up [to the upper choir], a seizure would come over me or I would fall. Then you would order the enemy to leave me alone; and you would order me to make an effort to recover and I would. This has happened countless times, and if Your Grace had not been present and helped me in this way, I would not have been able to take communion for many months. Anyway, at that time, Our Lord was not holding open any other gate for me, so this was the only remedy. But because it was so extraordinary, there was no shortage of those who became suspicious and doubted that what was being done was correct and proper. And so the gossip began [again] and we faced some very upsetting moments. Your Grace was not unaware that your presence at communion was being discussed, but you nevertheless understood the trials that I was suffering and my soul’s need to receive help from the Blessed Sacrament. You did not dare to abandon me, for I had not once been able to take communion successfully without you, although this had been tried. Thus, it so happened, on the eighth day of the Blessed Sacrament, a feast day in this house, Your Grace went away. When the chaplain came up to give me communion, I had a seizure that made my head fall, and I could not raise it to take communion. On top of this, I experienced such a severe fit of coughing that everyone in the church (and there were a great many people present) must have heard it; there were many people present at the time. With the nuns supporting my weight, they returned me to my cell, which Your Grace had to enter in order to cure me by ordering the devil to leave me alone. Whenever the devil has me thus in his grip, I always fear that he will strangle me to death. He would have already done so, if God had ever given him permission.

171. The “usual act of faith” refers to the words (or ritual) whereby Vaquero, “through the name of Christ Crucified,” banished the devil. Vela did not believe that simply placing her under obedience— ordering her to take communion—would be sufficient to drive the demon away.

120 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO My condition improved and this storm ended, but the peace that followed did not last long. Well, Your Grace saw that for long periods of time I was unable to take communion unless you were present, and you were also concerned that the extraordinary nature of my trial could give cause for scandal, so you decided to consult a religious, a very learned and spiritual man. He replied that as long as the Lady Abbess did not order the contrary, you should not leave me, because I had need of Your Grace. He thought that I could dissimulate and carry on as before, as this was a sure method. He also said that I should not have to worry that my confessor and the Blessed Sacrament would be taken from me. Your Grace was very happy with this opinion. But a few days later, the Lady Abbess, for reasons that seemed justified to her, related all this to a different learned man of the same Order. [This father and the Lady Abbess] told you that you needed to inform them about what was going on. After Your Grace had done so, the father decided that it would be better if Your Grace were not present when I communicated, even if this meant that I would be unable to successfully take communion for an entire year. He told the Lady Abbess not to grant Your Grace permission to enter the convent at all, even if I were dying. I did not find out about this last part until long afterward. At the time, I only knew that it had been decided that Your Grace should no longer see me. I resigned myself to the divine will, trusting that His Majesty would permit me to receive him through some other means, but I was unable to take communion for many days. I became confined to my bed with a fever and although I was so weakened from my various illnesses, trials, and the toll that my emotions were taking upon me, I dared not request permission for Your Grace to see me, nor could I show regret for what had happened. At any rate, when my condition became extreme, they relented and granted permission for Your Grace to visit me, without my having made such a request. Your Grace came and gave me communion. Afterward, I became better and could get up from bed. But my soul’s trials continued to multiply. Although I desperately needed to talk to Your Grace, you steadfastly refused to come to High Mass to see me, because it had only been a few days since your last visit. A great despondency overtook me, because it seemed to me that Your Grace wanted to distance yourself from me and that if you did not come to my aid as you had in the past, my enemies would seize upon this opportunity to wage an even greater battle against me. And that is what happened. For three days I had no respite from my trial. I was convinced that the rage and despair that I felt could only be comparable to that experienced in hell. I was confined to my bed once again and was so beset by illness that I thought my life was at an end. I was so convinced of this that at one point I requested that a confessor be sent to me, even if it was only the convent chaplain. When they realized the gravity of my condition, permission was granted, Your Grace was summoned, and I became better. This was on the Feast

Vida 121 of Saint Francis.172 A week later, as I recall, Your Grace came here to say High Mass and you gave me communion. Prior to this, I had been unable to take communion for many days. I would always faint and fall to the floor before I could arrive to receive the Host; thus, a nun always had to go to communion with me in order to support me. I believe that I must have spent six or seven weeks in this fashion. I tried every day, but was unable to do anything. I could only hope that God would show me another path to take, since that one had been barred to us. Around this time, the Lady Abbess wanted some person well skilled in the discernment and exorcism of evil spirits to come here to cure me. In this, she was following the advice of that religious to whom I have already referred, and whom I held responsible for the current state of things. Although she must have believed that this was the correct course, she preferred that Your Grace, rather than that religious, locate such a person and bring him to me. But you were so far from being persuaded that this would cure me that you refused to do it. You only consented that I be put to the test, and you did more than a little to convince them. At any rate, as they were not satisfied, Lady Isabel de Vivero173 took matters in hand and sent for a religious who was staying at the old monastery of the Order of our Father Saint Benedict, who had performed many cures and healed many people whose souls were possessed by demons. He came and said Mass, but I suffered the usual attack of locked jaws, preventing my reception of the Host. He then began his conjurations and placed a stole around my neck. He spent a long time trying to force the devil to depart from my body, but nothing worked. Through it all, I experienced no interior turmoil, because I had faith that Our Lord would do what was fitting for his glory. While this was going on, Your Grace came up to help him, responding to the prayers and verses he recited until he had done everything that he knew how to do and say. As he was amazed that there had not been the slightest alteration in my condition, he thereupon turned things over to you. Then, with faith in Our Lord and for his glory, and while that father was still present, Your Grace decided to order the devil, as was your habit, to depart from me. And thus, in virtue of Christ Crucified, you ordered him to return to hell to suffer the infernal pains to which God, in his just judgment, had condemned him. You ordered the devil to depart and leave me free to speak, and you ordered me to comply with whatever was ordered of me. At that very instant, to the amazement of that religious, my jaws became unclamped and I found myself able to respond to whatever they asked of me. May the Lord be forever blessed. The mercy that Our Lord granted us on that particular occasion served to encourage and reassure Your Grace. And so, a few days later, you placed me under obedience to you, renewing the written communication you had given me sometime 172. October 4. 173. Isabel de Vivero was elected to her first term as abbess in 1595 and elected again in 1612 and 1617. González Hernández, introduction to Doña María Vela y Cueto, Autobiografía, 25, n. 36.

122 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO previously that permitted me to take communion successfully, with no interference from the devil, even when you were not present. The Lord approved of this arrangement, and for some time thereafter I was able to take communion in this way. Nonetheless, Our Lord sometimes still allows the devil to prevent me from taking the sacred communion, whether through seizures or falls or some other trial even more difficult to bear. This is because His Majesty does not always want me bound so fast to him. He prefers that I resign myself to his will and have faith that he will do what is best for me. And so, over the past two years (in November it will be two years), there have been many times when I have been unable to take communion for two weeks or even once in a month. Sometimes five or six weeks pass before I can communicate successfully, even though I try every day, as ordered by others, until the time arrives in which the Lord has determined to grant me this favor. Concerning confession, twice it has happened that Your Grace has been absent or ill and I have been ordered to make my confession to someone else. When I attempt to do it, the trial arrives that shuts the door. Your Grace has ordered me not to confess to anyone else when this happens to me, so that no one will realize what is happening. Thus, it seems to be Our Lord’s will that I not do anything that is not in accordance with Your Grace.174 Well, Your Grace has ordered me to move on and to write about the subject of favors. Although there have been many that the Lord, through his goodness alone, has granted my soul, I will set down here only a few of those that I received from His Majesty, who has thus deigned to communicate with such a low and miserable creature as myself, to my confusion and his glory. The greatest [favor] has been to illuminate me with respect to my soul’s predestination.175 This has happened to me three times over the years. The first occurred while I was deeply recollected in prayer, when my soul was told: In caritate perpetua dilexi te; ideo atraxi te miserans tibi.176 Such great light was shed on my soul that it seemed that it had been transported, with enjoyment and delight, and inflamed by the love it felt for the one to whom it was so obliged. The second time occurred when I was at the lectern, singing those words of Saint Paul: Verbum crucis pereuntibus stultitia est; iis autem qui salvi fiunt id est 174. Vela’s comment that she should do nothing without Vaquero’s approval was deleted (probably by Vaquero) from the original manuscript, but restored in an early copy. 175. The subject of predestination (the preordained salvation or damnation of a soul) emerged as a hotly debated topic among Protestant Reformers. Catholic theologians as far back as Saint Augustine in the fifth century had discussed and ultimately defined predestination as the “antecedent” decision of God to will all persons to salvation, not forgetting the freedom of each person to choose to accept or reject the offer. The Council of Trent declared predestination, accompanied by free will, to be part of God’s plan. 176. Jer. 31:3: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.”

Vida 123 nobis, virtus et sapientia est.177 At these words, I once again received illumination of my soul’s predestination. I was grateful for this and marveled at it and could not refrain from repeating the phrase that fell from my lips and was so dear to my heart: Id est nobis.178 The third time occurred around five months ago. I was reciting matins for All Saints’ Day,179 while contemplating an image and a verse underneath it that read: Hi sunt filii Dei dilecti.180 I was made to see that I was one of the happy ones, whose good fortune was to be one of God’s children. My soul became so deeply recollected that I had to make a great effort to be able to get through matins. On the Day of the Annunciation,181 the thought occurred to me that there might come a time when I could lose God’s grace and friendship. The notion so overwhelmed me that I could not contain my tears. I begged the Lord instead to permit me to die a thousand deaths and to suffer even hell itself. About a quarter of an hour must have passed in this way, when I understood: Do not cry any longer, because what you fear will not happen. A little while later, I felt my heart inflamed by love. And when I asked, What do you want of me, my Lord?, I was told: Fire will remain on the altar of your heart. I interpreted this to mean that this would occur as long as I did not fall into mortal sin. Then I was told: If you believe, you will witness wonders. I took this to mean that I had been granted the gift of perseverance. I was so consoled and encouraged by this favor that I became transported and could take no notice of what I was doing. All I could repeat was: How is it possible, My Lord, that this is true? How can such a lowly creature be the recipient of such great goodness? This marvelous experience itself lasted only three hours, but the extraordinary delight that it occasioned within me remained for days afterward, during which time I meditated upon the following verse: Dicant qui redempti sunt a Domino, Alleluia.182 One day, after communion, Our Lord granted me a profound knowledge of the way in which communication of the highest order takes place among the divine persons of the Trinity. It was revealed to me how the eternal Father, in understanding himself and his own infinite being, engendered the eternal Word through his understanding and communicated to it the same divine nature. Accordingly, when the eternal Father contemplated his eternal Son, and the Son the Father, they aspired through their love to communicate to the Holy Spirit the 177. 1 Cor. 1:18: “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” 178. “It is for us.” “It” refers to Christ’s sacrifice. 179. November 1. 180. 2 Pet. 1:17: “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” 181. December 18. 182. Derived from Ps. 107.2 (in the Catholic Bible, Ps. 106.2) and used in the divine office: “Thus let the redeemed of the Lord say so, [Alleluia].”

124 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO same nature, which is the same in the three distinct persons. And thus, if the eternal Father understands something concerning his own infinite perfection, then the eternal Word will also understand the same thing. And if between the Father and the Son there should remain something in their infinite being that is not embraced by love, then that would also be communicated to the Holy Spirit. But this would mean that there is some imperfection, which cannot be found in God. With this knowledge, my love increased and I became convinced of the importance of aspirations, because they are what most immediately serve to join us to God. While in a suspension, with my will greatly inflamed, I was told: Believe that I am he who works within you. I replied that I could not stop believing this truth, because of the effects that I saw within my soul. At this, I was granted an illumination concerning the mystery of the Incarnation, which was as follows: God decided that the concept of divine understanding, which is the eternal Word, should be inscribed in the purest womb of Our Lady, so that men could read God’s heart. Et Verbum caro factum est.183 In terms of the tears, blood, and death experienced by humanity, this might be considered a weakness. But in divine terms, this means strength, because with such weak arms, death and hell were defeated. I was shown how the divinity of Christ Our Lord, which is God in himself and God for us, shone forth in all his works. And I understood other things that I cannot now recall. I heard in a sermon that God loves everything that he has created with an infinite love and that he cannot love anything outside of himself, but only all creation as a whole. Later, in prayer, Our Lord granted me the mercy of explaining the proposition to me in this way: God, Our Lord, contains all created things within himself, and in him is his own life and all created life: Quod factum est, in ipso vita erat.184 Everything remains in him, having been created. For this reason, God cannot love anything outside of himself. In order for the creation of all things to take place, all the knowledge and power and goodness of God were necessary. These are the very attributes of the three divine persons. Thus, it should be understood that God loves his creation with an infinite love, because he loves himself through it. This is like a painter who paints a first-rate image and esteems it greatly, because he has put all his artistry into it. But what he loves in the image is not primarily its size or style, but rather the genius or ability of its creator that it demonstrates. So it can be said that the painter loves himself through the image he creates. And if this image were a portrait of the painter himself, he would love it even better, and if he could breathe true life into it and make it really come alive, then his pleasure would be even greater for having created such a praiseworthy work. 183. John 1:14: “And the Word became flesh.” 184. John 1:3–4: “What has come into being in him was life.”

Vida 125 Well, this would seem to explain the difference in the degree of delight and pleasure that Our Lord receives from the angelic and human natures that he has created in his image. In giving an image the life of grace, corresponding to the life of God, it grows in his grace to become more like him and to share in his divine properties. What pleasure the Lord must take in having created such perfection with his divine hands! But God’s love cannot increase, because it is already infinite and equal to the love he has for himself. Thus, when it is said that some souls are more beloved by God than others, it should be understood to mean that God grants more favors and particular mercies to some souls than others, but not that God loves some souls less. I also was given to understand that humanity’s love must correspond to God’s infinite love, and that it must be supernatural. For what else would Christ Our Lord have wanted us to understand when he ordered us to love him with all our heart, soul, and strength? Anything that is natural does not have the strength to wound God’s heart. It seemed to me, then, that His Majesty wants us to be so disposed that we remove our love for the creatures in order to love the creator himself; and then, with a breath of his divine spirit, the Lord ignites our hearts with the same fire that burns in his own. I also understood that the value of grace is infinite, and that it is communicated to us through the merits of God incarnated, and it is right that Christ Our Lord in his divinity and form participates in God’s grace. One day, following communion, I began to reflect upon how God is a fountain of living water. I had a most ardent wish that all thirsting souls might find their way to this fountain, because it seemed to me that it always remains full, no matter how much we drink from it. With this verse from Saint John in mind, Hic Deum adora,185 it occurred to me that even though God constantly and freely enriches his creation, his immense wealth is nonetheless never depleted or diminished in any way. Then my thoughts turned to the following verse from Isaiah: Omnes sitientes venite ad aquas.186 While reflecting upon the soul as a drop of water and God as a sea of immensity, it struck me that just as a drop of water commingled with the sea loses its individuality to become part of the greater sea, the same thing happens to our souls when we surrender them to become one with God. Now, although the soul itself does not lose its natural being when it conjoins itself with God, it does, however, take on a new form to become godlike, in accordance with the verse Consortes fieri divinae naturae.187 I was given to understand that we accompany God Our Lord by looking to his divinity [as a model], just as we accompany Our Redeemer when we imitate his suffering. 185. “Here, worship God,” derived from Rev. 22:9, and used in the divine office along with verse 1 of the same chapter, which speaks of the river of the water of life. 186. Isa. 55:1: “All who are thirsty come for water.” 187. 2 Pet. 1:4: “You may become participants of the divine nature.”

126 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO At this point, a great many other things were made known to me, but I do not have the knowledge with which to describe them. But it occurred to me that the soul, through divine participation, becomes able to operate like God when he communicates his strength to it: Induit fortitudinem brachii Domini.188 The arm mentioned in this verse belongs to Christ Our Lord made man, but its power and strength come from his divinity: Fecit potentiam.189 Despite his pain and suffering, he resisted the proud and mighty, thereby defeating death and hell. Thus the soul, clothed with this strength and in virtue of the many merits of Christ Our Lord, will resist its enemies, if it controls its disordered appetites. In addition, God communicates wisdom to the soul. Through the gift of the fire of the Holy Spirit, the soul recalls God and becomes illuminated in its understanding and acquires a high esteem for God’s incomprehensible and divine wisdom. Through the holy and divine flame of the Holy Spirit, the will becomes illuminated and inspired to love and the soul becomes a living image of not only the one but the triune. God also communicates his love and mercy to the soul in such a way that it may be said that he forfeited or sacrificed himself for our good, in accordance with that verse from Saint Paul: qui cum in forma Dei esset semetipsum exinanivit formam servi accipiens.190 Although Christ Our Lord was equal to God, he humbled himself and annihilated himself in order to become a servant. Thus, the soul must imitate God’s love whenever the opportunity arises for it to be of benefit to another soul. Although the soul is transformed through contemplation—qui cum in forma Dei esset191—it must humble itself and annihilate itself to become a servant, small like its neighbors, even if that means that its heart must be wounded by their criticism or indifference. This it must do. I received illumination regarding these and many other things that served to always inflame my will. When God offers such favors to the soul, its affection is further inflamed rather than cooled down, as long as the soul’s understanding does not waste its time investigating them. After this, it occurred to me that I had been granted these favors so that I would realize into whose hands I should place myself, which are those of he who directs my soul.192 For it is through prayer that high mysteries and admirable concepts are discovered, and truths with a different sauce from those found in books 188. Vela is paraphrasing Isa. 51:9: “Clothe yourself with splendor, O arm of the Lord!” 189. Luke 1:51: “He has shown strength with his arm.” 190. Phil. 2:6–7: “who, though he was in the form of God … emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.” 191. Ibid: “who, though he was in the form of God.” 192. The “he” to whom Vela refers is almost certainly God, not Vaquero (her spiritual director). Vela followed the Spanish custom of not capitalizing pronouns for deities, thus the question of identity sometimes arises.

Vida 127 are digested. Accordingly, the soul should immerse itself in prayer and place its trust in God, not in its own operations. Thus, our Father Saint Bernard said that his teachers of Holy Scripture had been oak and beech trees. One day, in prayer, I asked the Virgin Our Lady to become my teacher so that I could spend my hours in the manner that best pleased the Lord. It seemed to me, then, that she appeared to the left side of my heart, to pray with me, while my guardian angel appeared to my right, and she told me to begin prayer with these words, which are the cause of our health: Ecce ancilla Domini, fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum.193 She began with these because humility and resignation were the two virtues [of hers] that most pleased the Lord. So that is what I did, while shedding many tears. Through this, I received much illumination—I realized that the slave was obliged to serve her master with no expectation of repayment for her services. Rejoicing at the possibility of my own submission, I declared: Lord, I would rather be your slave than receive the loftiest title I could be granted in this world. Thereafter, I was given to understand that I must also serve the Lord like a daughter, for a daughter serves and pleases her father in a spirit of love, not simply in submission. Thus, although the Lord owed me nothing for my services, for I was his slave, I could still hope, like a daughter, that I might someday receive the inheritance that his children merit. Later, it came to me that the Lord has dealt with me like Moses with the Ethiopian woman, for though I was an ugly and abominable slave, he had betrothed himself to me, and what beauty I possessed had been procured for me at the cost of the blood that he had shed.194 These things that I understood served to reignite my soul, as sparks serve to rekindle a fire. That day during prayer, I had a vision in which I found myself seated between the Mother and her Son. I understood that the Lord had placed me before him and that he would from now on treat me as his spouse. The Virgin removed a precious jewel from around her neck and placed it around mine; she did this so that I might better please my spouse.195 And the jewel that she placed around my

193. Vela is paraphrasing the Virgin Mary’s words in Luke 1:38: “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” 194. Medieval and early modern Christians typically envisioned Moses’s wife, Zipporah, as a darkskinned woman. In Ex. 2:16–21, Zipporah is said to be a daughter of the priest of Midian, although in Num. 12:1, she (or a second wife of Moses) hails from Cush. Tradition located Midian/Cush in the Arabian Peninsula, but many biblical commentators believed Cush to be in Africa (Ethiopia), and thus Moses’s wife is often called an Ethiopian. Christians interpreted the marriage between Moses and Zipporah as evidence of the redemption of the lowly, as represented by a foreign—and dark-skinned—woman. 195. In her Vida, Teresa of Ávila also recalls an occasion when she received jewelry from the Virgin, who “seemed to hang round my neck a very beautiful gold collar, from which hung a cross of great value … the gold and stones were so different from those of this world.” Teresa of Ávila, Life, chap. 33.

128 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO neck was the very verse that she had previously taught me: Ecce ancilla Domini.196 At this favor of esteem, I became very recollected and grateful. Filled with great desire, I asked the Lord in prayer to allow me to see him and to love him, through the intercession of the Virgin, Our Lady and my Mother, and I was told: No one who sees me will live.197 I replied: Reveal yourself to me, My Lord, as you have done with your friends. Immediately regretting this, I said to him: Forgive me, Lord, for my presumption, for my love for you was to blame. Later, I remembered that the bride had done the same as I, saying: Osculetur me osculo oris sui.198 And her wish was granted, for another verse says: Meliora sunt ubera tua vino.199 Thus, it seemed to me that the Lord was dealing with me in the same manner. I felt as if not only the milk from his breasts was nourishing me, but also that I was receiving sustenance from his very entrails and heart. And that verse from Job came to me: Quid est homo quod memor est eius, aut quid aponis erga eum cor tuum, visitas eum diluculo et subito probas illum.200 Becoming disheartened, I sought the Virgin’s advice. And I understood that I was not to fatigue myself, but to remember that my soul will never be whole as long as it lives in this body. At this, I once again became recollected and I recalled the jewel that the Virgin had given me, which I now presented to the Lord, saying: Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum.201 Then it was revealed to me that Our Lord so esteemed this jewel that he wore it pinned over his heart until his death on the cross: et legem tuam in medio cordis mei.202 When the time to take communion arrived, I asked the Lord and his Holy Mother for their blessing to allow me to receive him, and I understood: Veni electa mea, ponam in te thronum meum.203 I took communion with great emotion, and although I felt myself entirely in his grip, I requested permission to go to choir. Then I was told: Tenui eam et non dimittam204—the light of my face will illuminate her, and her delight in my gentleness will make her forget all earthly attachments. At this favor, I became so moved that even though it was necessary for me to go play the organ, I could not lose sight of the joy transporting me and I did not know what I was doing. Afterward, I was able to recollect myself, once again. 196. Luke 1:38: “Here I am, the servant of the Lord.” 197. The caution comes from Ex. 33:20, where God tells Moses that “you cannot see my face, for man may not see me and live.” 198. Song of Sol. 1:2: “Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth!” 199. A paraphrase of Song of Sol. 7:8: “May your breasts be like clusters of the vine.” 200. Job 7:17: “What are human beings, that you make so much of them, that you set your mind on them, visit them every morning, test them every moment?” 201. Luke 1:38: “Let it be with me according to your word.” 202. A reference to Ps. 37:31: “The law of their God is in their hearts.” 203. “Come, my chosen one. I will enthrone myself in you.” 204. Song of Sol. 3:4: “I held him fast, I would not let him go.”

Vida 129 One day, when thinking about what the Holy Mother Teresa of Jesus says— that spiritual people must not forget to meditate on the sacred humanity of Christ Our Lord, because if they do, the divine visitation will be impeded—this came to me: Who else can better extend his hand to you, to guide your steps along the way? Ego sum ostium, nemo venit ad Patrem nisi per me.205 Then the wound in Christ’s side was shown to me, and I was given to understand that this wound represented [the way] to the divinity. The door was narrow and blood had to be shed in order to enter through it and enjoy the divinity’s embrace.206 From then on, I became even more devoted to the Lord and more grateful and disposed to suffer. Another day, after having taken communion and while in a state of suspension, it seemed to me that I found myself in God’s arms. He clasped me to him with the most profound love that he had ever shown me, and I was given to understand that from now on I would be entirely his and that he would be entirely mine, for nothing would ever separate us. I should not worry about myself or anything concerning me, because His Majesty would take care of me; rather, I should try to do everything for his honor and glory. It seemed to me that Our Lady was seated to the right, and that she was most pleased at the favor that her son was granting me. Prostrating myself at the feet of Our Lady, I asked for her blessing, and she gave it to me, saying: May you have my blessing and that of my son, daughter of mine. When this happened, my will became very much inflamed and I felt indescribable joy. But I greatly regretted my lowness and unworthiness and this feeling lasted for some days. Throughout that time, I would say to the Lord in prayer, with great affection: My beloved, your little slave of a wife commends herself to you. I was greatly consoled by the knowledge that such a low and vile thing as I could be raised to such a high and dignified position. Another day, while kneeling in prayer, I was shown an imaginary vision (the one I have just related was intellectual). In this one, I saw Our Lady with the Son in her arms, and the Blessed Virgin was inviting me to join him in suckling from her breast. I felt a great timidity and reverence, together with a burning desire to take my share of delight in the favor being offered me. Then I saw the child turn away from the Virgin’s breast to gaze upon me in love and he moved aside from her breast to permit me to suckle from it. This I dared not do. As I trembled, the child extended his arm toward me, and gestured to me that I should come to them. And he told me: Understand that this is what I want. While climbing quickly onto the Virgin’s lap, I fell bodily to the floor—I was that overwhelmed by the experience—and I felt a great consolation and tenderness in my spirit. I was 205. Vela has combined two similar quotations of Jesus: John 10:9, “I am the gate,” and John 14:6, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” 206. Saint Catherine of Siena, whom Vela strove to emulate, also had a vision of the open wound in Christ’s side. This narrow, bloody passage, through which one must be “born again,” suggests the birth canal.

130 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO given to understand that, with the sustenance that I had received, the faints that I had been suffering would cease, and this was the case for four or five days. During this time, I was filled with God’s presence and was able to recall with much tenderness how the child had allowed me to suckle at the Virgin’s breast.207 It was also shown to me how the Lord had embraced my trials and how he had deprived himself of such rights as pertained to his Sacred Body for my sake. Another day, as I stood during compline, I underwent a great suspension in which I was raised in spirit up to heaven.208 A throne of majesty was shown to me and I was given to understand that seated on it was Our Lord, unigenitus qui est in sinu Patris.209 Prostrate before the throne were the twenty-four elders who, according to Saint John, revere in silence the majesty and glory of the Lord.210 Like them, my only wish was to adore him. I felt a profound reverence and respect for their humility and I wished that these feelings would remain engraved upon my soul. It then seemed to me that I beheld a host of beatific spirits: cantabant te decet laus et honor Domine.211 Then, wanting to be embraced by Christ Crucified, I felt myself entirely embraced by him. And I understood that in this life my only desire must be for he who had allowed himself to be scorned and to suffer, so that in the next life I might be allowed to delight in him for all eternity. This I wanted to do, and thus I offered to accompany him in his suffering. I was grateful and felt much interior peace. One day, as I was reciting prime,212 it came to me how, at that hour, Our Redeemer had made his way through the streets of Jerusalem with bound hands, to appear before one judge after another. While contemplating this further in prayer, I saw Our Lord’s blessed and most beautiful hands with the eyes of my soul, but I could not perceive anything else of his sacred body. I wished fervently to place my heart in those hands and it seemed to me that the Lord was pleased to grant my wish. Afterward, I saw his hands made very bloody. Then His Majesty asked me: Are you prepared to accept the blood that will cling to you from my hands? I replied that I would be greatly satisfied if this were to happen to me. From this vision I understood that I must prepare myself well, for more suffering was to come, and this has proven true. I was overcome with emotion by what had taken place. For

207. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153), the great Cistercian mystic, also suckled at the Virgin’s breast. 208. Compline is the office offered after sundown, before retiring for the night. 209. John 1:18: “the only [begotten] Son, who is in the Father’s bosom.” 210. Rev. 4:4. 211. “Praise and honor become you, Lord” is a passage from the breviary, the book of prayers, hymns, and devotions for use during the divine offices. This particular phrase is spoken during vespers on the Feast of Saint Michael, September 29. 212. Prime is the office before daybreak.

Vida 131 some days afterward, those beautiful and divine hands remained impressed upon my soul. Another day, while preparing to take communion, I could not recollect myself. I pleaded with the Lord to prepare my heart, because I could do nothing without him. Then I was made to understand that His Majesty was leaving me alone at present, but that he would return later to operate within my soul. With this understanding, I took communion and went to terce.213 I felt then the same anxiety that I used to experience when the Lord wanted to grant me the favor of a suspension. I asked for and received permission to return to my cell, which I did. I began to pray and my desire increased. I begged the Lord to reveal his will to me, because I was prepared to comply with it in every way. Then I saw, clearly, the face of a friar wearing a black hood, who was looking at me with a happy semblance. I was given to understand that he was my father, Saint Benedict. But Saint Benedict did not say anything to me; at the time, I did not understand what this meant. Later, it seemed that the Lord was complaining to me of the ingratitude of sinners, saying: Those who love me well should lament that there is no one who remembers what I suffered for them, nor anyone who wants to hear of my death and passion. Instead, they take my name, which is worthy of the highest reverence, in vain. And my people, the Christians, reborn from my body through baptism, are the ones who most scorn my body and my blood, treading upon them: Me dereliquerunt fontem aquae vivae.214 This is what my soul went through at the hour of my passion. Yet few avail themselves of such a copious redemption. And yet, I have so great a love for these souls that in order for even just one to be saved I would suffer again what I suffered. Reflect upon the great dignity of the soul—and that I am infinite wisdom—for I gave my life to redeem it. Yet none of you know how to appreciate or esteem this gift. It should pain you that there is no one who loves me for myself; you are all so twisted and self-involved that only self-interest drives you. I understood these and other things and I was very grieved by them. But shortly after this, I began to feel the flame within my heart subsiding. The Lord reprimanded me for this, and through the humiliation he made me suffer, he returned me to his presence, treating me with as much familiarity as before. He also explained to me what I had not understood concerning the vision of Saint Benedict. He told me that just when he had tired of the world’s ingratitude, the saint had said to him: Lord, this daughter will help you lament men’s ingratitude, for you have made her heart conform to yours. It was Saint Benedict who had prompted Our Lord to complain to me and pronounce the words that I had understood previously. These revelations came to me during a very great suspension, throughout which I wept uncontrollably, for I was transfixed by my grief. I remained like this all day, thinking of nothing else. All I could do was to keep repeating these words: 213. The office of terce occurs around 9:00 a.m. 214. Jer. 2:13: “They have forsaken me, the fount of living water.”

132 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO Oh, My Lord, your love is not returned by those whom you love, for there is no one, My Lord, who remembers what they owe you. Let me burn in the divine fire, so that I might somehow compensate for their error. One day, when my jaws became rigid and fixed just as I was about to take communion, I understood: You will not miss anything. By this, I understood that Our Lord would communicate the virtue of his blood to me in another manner. Afterward, while contemplating an image of Christ tied to the column, I prostrated myself in spirit before his divine feet.215 I saw a copious pool of blood covering the ground, and I understood: Drink, drink, and quench your thirst. Immersing my face in this pool, I drank as much as I could, and I was filled with reverence, great delight, and regalement by the divinity that shone from within it.216 Another day, while I was preparing to take communion, I tried to bring to mind the image of the Lord crowned with thorns. This time, I was granted the favor of seeing his holy hands bound together. When I begged the Lord for permission to receive him (for such was my desire), I was told: Well, why should you not suffer something for me, when you behold me thus afflicted and wounded? I was also told that His Majesty wanted to visit my soul more than I wanted to receive him. As I looked upon his divine hands bound together, I understood that mine, too, must be bound together and that I must submit myself to the divine will. After the Host was elevated, my jaws and hands became so rigid that I could not move them. But I welcomed this, saying that I had no other pleasure than that of His Majesty. Then I was told: Now you will behold his face. As I repeated “Ecce Homo,”217 his image slowly appeared to me. His face was wounded, denigrated, made ugly, and streaming with blood from the thorns in his crown.218 Whenever I

215. The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John tell of Christ’s scourging by Roman soldiers, although no gospel writer mentions a column or pillar to which he was tied. In the Middle Ages, a column in Pilate’s palace became an essential part of the tradition of the flagellation. In Vela’s lifetime, a section of the reputed authentic column resided in the Church of Santa Prassede in Rome, where it had been placed no later than 1223 and remains to this day. 216. Vela evokes the memory of earlier saints and mystics, for whom Christ poured blood from the wound in his side into a chalice, so that they, as laity, might partake of the cup reserved for priests. She infers that in God’s eyes she is as worthy as any member of the sacred male hierarchy to consume Christ’s blood. I am grateful to Laura Smoller for her observation that in this vision Vela appropriates the prerogative of a priest, who alone partook of the cup of Holy Communion during Mass. 217. “Behold the man,” a phrase used by early modern Christians to bring to mind the humanity of the incarnate deity. For the theological significance of Christ’s genitalia, see Leo Steinberg, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and Modern Oblivion, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). 218. According to Vaquero, Vela’s mother saw Christ’s shoulders while still married to Vela’s father, and Christ’s entire face after she became a widow. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 3v. The viewing of Christ in increments is also reminiscent of Teresa of Ávila’s experience of seeing first the hands, then the face, then the entire body of Christ. Teresa of Ávila, Life, chap. 28.

Vida 133 found myself alone that day, I could see him beside me and I was able to converse with him as the spouse of my soul. Another day, I had wanted to forgo taking communion because of another occupation, for which I had therefore requested permission. But while in the upper choir, listening to Mass as it was drawing to a close, I was overcome by a vehement desire to take communion. I could feel an interior force within, telling me to go down and take it and not to let anything stop me. Anyway, the force I felt to communicate was so great that, bathed in tears, I went down to find that they had consecrated a Host for me. I took communion, and having given thanks for this favor I was told: You have given me more delight than if you had washed and anointed all my wounds. One day, after sweeping in the choir, I began to clean an image of Ecce Homo. As I was thus occupied, I was told [in a locution] that if I wanted to heal Christ’s wounds and alleviate his pain, I should strive for the welfare and spiritual growth of the souls of others, because their faults and lack of attention were preventing this from happening. One day, while reciting the Hours, it seemed to me that I beheld with the eyes of my soul Christ’s hand pierced through by a nail. And it was said to me: Do not fear that I have forgotten you, because you are inscribed upon my hands; behold me here, revealed as your redeemer. I began to wish that my heart was affixed to the Lord’s hand with that very nail. Later it seemed to me that I saw his hand denigrated and bloodied and my heart also nailed to it, so that the blood pouring forth from my heart commingled with that of his sacred hand. Then I was given to understand that the trials and despair that I had suffered had served to join Christ Our Lord with the souls of others, so that these souls were pleasing to their eternal Father. At this, I became recollected and grateful and encouraged to suffer more. During another suspension, I was told that my past trials had not been wasted, because now that I was nailed to Christ Our Lord, I could no longer let go of him, nor he of me. Nemo rapiet de manu mea.219 The nail has made this impossible. When I reflect upon this, I am always reminded of how much one can suffer from others’ scorn and contradictions. I have also come to understand that when the eternal Father looks upon Christ’s face, he also looks at his hands and he is pleased to see my heart within them. In another suspension, I saw with great illumination the abyss of my own vileness. Believing all other creatures preferable to me, I was overcome and ashamed that anyone could consider me more than the rotten dung heap that I was. Then I saw clearly that from the lack of this knowledge is born all sorts of insults and scorn. But the truth is that the soul who deserves to be scorned cannot be insulted, because it receives justly what it deserves. This truth became inscribed upon my soul. I am far from attributing to myself anything that is good, although 219. John 10:28: “No one will snatch them out of my hand.”

134 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO I see clearly that everything in the natural state of my soul is conceded through grace. I rejoice in being extremely poor, and I cling to God, hoping for all the good things that I might receive from his hand. It seems impossible to me that there can be any vanity in my soul, considering the degree of illumination that it receives. If the soul rejoices, then it must also rejoice in God, for he is the good in which the soul sees itself reflected. Regarding the death of the self and that which is the poverty of spirit, I have come to understand some things; among them, that the poverty professed by the soul is an entire renunciation of its liberty, in accordance with the divine will. The soul cannot consider or even desire a thing, even if that thing is good, unless Our Lord wants us to want it. We must consider ourselves as God’s property and allow him to dispose of it as he wishes, according to his will. I do not know what I am saying here. What one can say is often at very different odds with what one feels. I was given to understand these things with great illumination. It seemed to me that I had never received such a profound knowledge concerning them, as this verse came to me: Who could teach you in such a short time what you have learned here? May the Lord be blessed, forever. When Our Lord wants to grant me the favor of suspensions, he prepares me by illuminating me, letting me know that I am nothing and that I neither know how to do anything nor can do anything but sin, which is the greatest pity. On All Saints’ Day, during another suspension, I received illumination concerning what happens in heaven. I saw blessed souls immersed in a sea of heavenly delight that is the divinity. Entering the sea to join them, I found myself carried along the current of the plentiful river that flows from the throne of God and the Lamb. I was given to understand how all who enjoy this blessed state have followed in Our Lord’s footsteps and have washed their robes in his blood.220 Even though I understood that these souls had forgotten their trials, I am sure that they would have wished to endure many more if they could. And it seemed that I was told: If you, having experienced only a morsel of what we enjoy in heaven, are able to forget your earthly suffering, what do you think happens to us in the presence of the Supreme Good? At this, the highest esteem for that incomprehensible being came over me: qui sedes super cherubim,221 for he surpasses all human science and knowledge. How great must be the Lord, if the greatness and dignity of his throne is neither understood nor comprehended by even the most enlightened souls? All these things reignited the flame of divine love within me, affording me joy and peace. One day, during sext,222 after having taken communion along with other nuns, a great desire to receive the Lord a second time came over me. When I 220. A reference to Rev. 7:14: “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” 221. Ps. 80:2: “you who are enthroned on the cherubim.” 222. The office of sext occurs at noontime.

Vida 135 asked this of the Lord, tenderly and with much affection, it seemed to me that the Lord gave me communion, invisibly by his own hand: Ispe hostia et sacerdos.223 I was given to understand that, in a most secret and highest manner, I was being communicated the virtue of his precious blood. I felt great delight and tenderness, but could not believe what I was feeling, since I had not partaken in the sacrament. Then, I was given to understand that nothing is impossible for God. Later, I felt the sign of the corporeal presence of Christ Our Lord accompanying me. It seemed to me to last all day. I am now going to reveal a favor that was granted to me by Our Lord four years ago.224 It has been one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of the favors that I have received and its effects lasted for days within my soul. Even now it seems to me that my soul retains some trace of it. One day, while I was engaged in prayer, it occurred to me that the [spiritual] exercise of contemplating the pleasure and glory of God might be comparable to experiencing a vestige of what happens in heaven. While reflecting upon this and giving thanks, this verse came to me: Qui perfecit pedes meos tanquam cervorum et super excelsa statuens me.225 It seemed to me, then, that Our Lord had finally turned my desires to the ultimate perfection, while decreeing and establishing my spirit above the highest peak. In this state, not only did my soul feel superior to all spiritual things, it felt somehow that it had become greater than itself. During this kind of exercise, the soul does not look to itself or remember itself, but places all desires in perfect accord with God, thus forming a union with the Omnipotent that only he fully understands. On the occasion of a nun’s death, I told the Lord that since I was not worthy of a martyr’s death upon a pyre, might he not at least permit me to die consumed by the fire of his love. Immediately, I felt within my soul that fire that I desired, inflaming the will. Along with it, I came to understand that the fire that I felt in my soul, the longing that I had for God, the sorrow that I had at not being able to enjoy him, the desire that I had for solitude and to receive him through the Holy Sacrament, the desire to do great things and to suffer a thousand deaths, was indeed possible through the love of the Lord and through a love for the creatures. Above all, one’s soul must be true to itself, to all the affections and desires that are born within it from the love of God. Everything else is very inferior in comparison to what the soul experiences in renouncing itself and shedding all its desires, affections, and wants. Within its state of nothingness, the soul expands, stretching to experience pleasure and desire in God and a love for all creatures, in whatever way that His Majesty wishes, in accordance with the verse Dilata os 223. “He is host and priest.” 224. In the original manuscript, most of the next sentence has been crossed out. We continue with the next legible sentence. 225. Hab. 3:19: “He makes my feet like the deer’s and lets me stride upon the heights.”

136 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO tuum et implebo illud.226 When the soul places its pleasure and desire in God, it receives a delight and satisfaction and depth and breadth that cannot be compared with anything, except with that which the saints enjoy. The greatest way in which a creature can honor God is to forget itself entirely, taking pleasure in the pleasure of the Lord, which is what the saints do in heaven. Your Grace told me in a written communication that this exercise God has given me is the purest, truest, and the best way in which a soul on earth can please him, and that it is the one that most conforms with Holy Scripture. As Your Grace told me on another occasion, what the soul experiences through this exercise represents only the beginning of what it will experience in heaven. Your Grace also told me that you yourself had been given the very same exercise (in which you did neither more nor less than I). During this exercise, you understood: Dilata os tuum et implebo illud.227 You told me that you had seen all the high and mysterious things that exist in God and that you had arrived at an understanding of God as their fountain and origin, even though in their nothingness they seem so far removed from him. And you said that you had been told: Prepare your soul, for I will now fill it. Your Grace esteemed this as such a great favor that you wished that we would never have to be deprived of it. For with each passing day, the soul continues to feel great effects and a great superiority to everything else, and it feels such an expansion of heart that could contain a thousand worlds. In this state, the soul has such a yearning for the pleasure of God and is in such conformity with him, that things that once mattered to it—such as heaven, hell, death, trials, or prosperity—no longer do. The soul fears nothing and has no will of its own, but feels only peace in its union and conformity with the divine will. But not even the smallest part of what it feels can be explained.

Three Years Ago On the Feast of the Incarnation, I was told: From this day forward you will be my spouse, bound with me in an indissoluble union and intimately embraced by me, because this is what my mother wants. From that day forward, I have been able to understand many things and have been granted great favors. But all I have written down concerning them are these words: This must be your particular exercise: devote yourself to prayer, because I want to share my delights with you. You are mine, and I am yours: rest in me. I would grant you greater favors, if you forgot your troubles and placed all your trust in me. 226. Ps. 81:11: “Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.” 227. A repeat of Ps. 81:11.

Vida 137 I will take your hand and never leave you. Arise, run, and do not slacken your pace: grandis tibi restat via;228 you must yet overcome great hurdles. When I asked Our Lord to teach me to do his will, I was told: My María, this is my will: you will be mine, for I am yours; surrender everything to me, for I will give everything to you. After undergoing an interior trial, I was told: Your tribulation has in no way separated you from me. Instead, you have drawn even closer to me and become even more purified. Blame has not touched you, for I am shielding your heart in mine. You have not experienced the wrath of an angry God, only the jealousy of a spouse in love. The greater your tribulation, the more you are loved. If I pledged my word to you that I would make you my spouse and embrace you tightly, I have already kept it. But the embrace you have received up until now has come from a bloody cross. Soon I will enfold you in my divinity. If purity captivates my eyes, then humility captivates my eyes and my heart. I love the nothingness that you recognize as yourself. My María, my dove, dwell in the nest that is my heart; in it, you will find the fire with which you may renew your plumage.229 Seek understanding through loving. Seek understanding through coming to me after having shed your affections and desires. Do not desire anything, except that which you know pleases me. When you rejoice, rejoice in me. My María, through the blood that you shed for my blood, you will be the instrument of my glory. I grant you these favors for my mother’s sake, and she gives thanks to me for it. From this nothingness, you will fly ever higher. Laus Deo230 After my body and spirit had suffered some trials, the Lord wanted to console me through a great recollection of my soul, in which I was shown their worth. It happened in such a way that I retained the sweet delicacy of the fruit of the cross. I was shown great beauty, and an infinite and incomprehensible good. As I burned with desire for that greatest good, my soul offered itself to Christ Crucified. Then, with my soul inflamed alongside him, I was given to understand that the Lord was that good which my soul desired, because he was consubstantial with the Father. But to enjoy him, my soul had to enter through the blood emanating from 228. 1 Kings 19:7: “[or] the journey will be too much for you.” 229. The phoenix, the mythological bird, rises anew from the ashes of its immolation. 230. “Praise to God.”

138 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO the wound in his sacred side. That is, it must suffer along with him. Then I was shown the many trials that Our Lord had suffered, and I understood how my trials required that I imitate him and become crucified with him. I was given to understand that although his enemies had wanted to bury his name, the Father had exalted it above everything else, and I was given to understand that he would do the same for me. Although to the world’s eyes I might seem abandoned and humiliated, in eternity I would bear the name of the blessed one and I would hear: Venite benedicti, etc.231 Then it seemed to me that the crucified one who had inflamed me was raised on high, and that I, with great longing, made myself follow after him. By this, I understood that the soul must forsake all that is of the earth, and deny itself, and suffer with resignation its abandonment by heaven, in order to share in the way of the cross. This and other things caused my soul to enter into an even deeper state of recollection that lasted throughout the remainder of the day. The Lord granted me this great favor after I had taken communion and had collapsed to the floor, as has happened to me on many other occasions. Later, on another day, I was able to take communion without collapsing. I believe that this was because of the intercession of the Most Holy Virgin, Mother and my Lady. It seemed to me that the Lord had embraced me in order to free me from the devil’s power, and that he said to me: I will receive you. Why will you not give yourself to me completely? I do more in receiving you than you in giving yourself to me. I replied that I was nothing and could do nothing, and I asked His Majesty to tell me what he wanted of me. While meditating on the following verse, Leva eius sub capite meo et dextera illius amplexabitur me,232 it seemed to me that through the wound in his side my heart was drinking all the virtue and strength it needed to defeat my enemies. May the Lord be forever blessed, because he mercifully dries the tears of the one he has justly made sad.

231. “Come, blessed” from Matt. 25:34: “Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world.’ ” 232. From Song of Sol. 2:6: “O, that his left hand were under my head and that his right hand embraced me!”

Letters of María Vela y Cueto Eighty-seven letters composed by María Vela y Cueto have been preserved. Of those letters, only one in Vela’s own hand is extant in the archive of the convent of Santa Ana; the rest are copies made from the originals. Vela wrote a date of composition on the extant letter, but the copies are undated and generally lack a salutation other than the occasional “my brother.” This salutation, in combination with the subject matter and Miguel González Vaquero’s reference to a stack of letters given to him by Lorenzo de Cueto, confirms the long-held opinion of the nuns of Santa Ana that the letters were written by Vela to her brother Lorenzo, who resided in the Cistercian monastery of the Holy Thorn (Santa Espina), in Valladolid, seventy miles north of Ávila. One of Vela’s letters is addressed to her oldest brother, Diego Álvarez de Cueto, who may have passed the letter on to Lorenzo. Frequent mention of Diego in Vela’s correspondence to Lorenzo indicates regular communication between the three siblings. Vaquero, who was acquainted with both of Vela’s brothers, makes it clear in La muger fuerte that Diego and Lorenzo continually acted on their sister’s behalf, writing to theologians, clergymen, friars, and bishops, and sometimes intervening in person. Two letters from Father Fray Juan de Alarcón, the prior of the Dominican monastery of Santo Tomás, also appear below—one to the abbess of Santa Ana, and another to Vela. Alarcón’s letter to Vela and Vela’s response to it appear in Vaquero’s La muger fuerte.1 The following correspondence is presented in the most logical chronological order, as determined by content.

1. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 136r, 138r.

140

Letters 141

María Vela to Lorenzo Cueto, 1596–1597 I have had no response to a letter that I wrote to Your Grace.2 I hope that it did not get lost or that you have been ill. Let me know how you are, brother, and how you are feeling. As concerns me, I am doing somewhat better and believe that Our Lord God wants me to carry on without anyone’s help. Ask him not to let my sins prevent me, for much is required for his glorification. Around here, penance, silence, and prayer have been defamed because I have devoted myself to them. Anyone willing to do the same must overcome a thousand fears; this does not surprise me, for they have heard me condemned from the pulpit.3 Yet it seems that reform is the only solution. May the Lord be forever blessed. I do not know how the Rule can be esteemed when it is followed in such a lax manner. This is all for now. I will write more if what has begun is allowed to go forward. Good-bye, my brother. My God grant you his divine spirit.

María Vela to Lorenzo Cueto, 1599 My brother,4 I wish very much to have news of Your Grace and I believe you also wish for news of me. I have delayed writing to you because I have been hoping every day that my affairs would be resolved. Also, my poor health has prevented me. It has suffered greatly from the change that has taken place with respect to all my things. Along with new fainting spells have come seizures and tremors, but none of this compares to what [my soul] has suffered interiorly. You should know that the Father Rector has decided to abandon me because things have been more stirred up than ever around here—hence, the arrival of Master Fray Domingo Bañez and others who have condemned [what I have told them] without much examination. It seemed to the Father Rector that it was best for the glory of God Our Lord and for the sake of quietude and satisfaction 2. The recipient of the letter was most likely Lorenzo Cueto. In her letters, Vela often addresses her brothers formally, but also converses quite frankly as one sibling to another. Her use of “Your Grace” would have been an appropriate address for either brother—Lorenzo, who had taken monastic vows and was at that time studying for the priesthood, or Diego, her eldest brother and head of the family. MSA, Cartas por el Discurso de su Vida escribio la sierva de Dios Doña María Vela al Pe. Fr. Lorenzo de Cueto su herm [hereafter Cartas de Vela] (31 fols.), carta 14. 3. Vaquero confirms in his biography of Vela that “a preacher came and rebuked her from the pulpit” for having performed the public penance of kissing the feet of every nun in choir. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 58v. 4. The letter’s content suggests a composition date of 1599, when Vela was forced to take Julián de Ávila as her confessor. MSA, Cartas de Vela, 53.

142 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO that others come and put everything to the test from beginning to end and with as many methods as they wished, because he was tired of making me suffer.  Thus, by the order of the Lady Abbess and the archdeacon of Ávila, I am under the power of Father Julián de Ávila, the greatest adversary I have had, the man who, if he says something, sticks to it and does not dare to venture beyond what his reason approves and permits. With such help, you see what one will likely suffer. May the Lord be blessed, because he has so ordained it. Despite everything, I cannot lose hope that the time has to come in which His Majesty returns to his cause and fills the void of my wishes. You should know that we have been talking of a Recollect monastery.5 If this happens, let your beard grow, take up your coracha,6 and come be my chaplain; meanwhile, your turn is coming. Let me know how your affairs are going. Your messages have arrived in two parts. I am not sending them back to you until you write to tell me by what manner. If you have not burned my papers, do not burn them; send them back to me when you have someone to deliver them. Commend me to the Lord so that he will not permit my sins to conceal his will. Doña María is well and commends you to God in her prayers. Good-bye, my brother, for I cannot write more. May His Majesty grant Your Grace his divine spirit, so that you succeed in bringing him happiness. My brother and sister7 are well and Don Diego very changed—I believe the Lord will do him much favor.

María Vela to Lorenzo Cueto, 1599 So much silence makes me suspect that there has been some new happening of great import, for were that not the case it seems impossible to me that you would have refrained so long from writing me, having left me in such a tight spot.8 But God must be arranging everything thusly, so that I place my only hope in him. I did not want you to send the letter to the Father Rector, because it was written 5. Vela speaks here of founding a new convent of reformed nuns—Recollects—who would return to a strict observance of their rule, as the Carmelites had done under the direction of Teresa of Ávila. Her advice to Lorenzo to pack his traveling bag and come be chaplain to her reformed convent recalls the role played by Julián de Ávila for Teresa. 6. According to Diccionario de Autoridades, tomo 2 (1729), the coracha was an ox-hide bag, generally used to transport tobacco and other goods from the Americas—a sturdy piece of luggage for a traveling friar. 7. Vela uses the word hermanos, which almost certainly means, here, her brother, Diego, and her sisterin-law, Diego’s wife, Ana María de Zuniga. 8. That Lorenzo was the recipient is confirmed by Vela’s concerns for his studies; Lorenzo Cueto, a Cistercian friar, was studying to become a priest. Contents indicate a composition date of 1598–99, after Salcedo resigned as her confessor and the convent chaplain attempted to exorcise her. MSA, Cartas de Vela, 15.

Letters 143 [only in the event] that Your Grace might wish to meet him and speak to him.9 Thus I am not astonished that you might not have responded, if you were not very inclined. You hold in your hand my apology. My brother, I do not lack any exercise that the Lord does not want me to lack. Since Your Grace went away, seven weeks ago, I have been unable to receive communion, because of my jaw impediment. It so happened that on one day I was prevented from receiving it at two masses, when my jaws became rigid and fixed. In view of this, the Lady Abbess and convent chaplain decided it was fine to conjure from within me the demon they believed responsible, using exorcisms and readings from scripture. They did this for nine days straight and very openly, so that the whole house knew about it and everything else that concerns me. Seeing what little good came of it, the priest took to pronouncing that the demon must be of the sort that will not depart without prayer and fasting. And so I was ordered to fast and recite a particular prayer. I did everything ordered of me, but my condition remained unchanged, with no sign of improvement, whatsoever. Yet, through it all I felt interiorly so much at ease that I wondered what kind of demon it was that could depart so peacefully. I do not feel sorrowful regarding anything touching upon me; rather, the Lord has so disposed me that I would like to die now, [no matter] the opinion others have of me. May the Lord be blessed. After being unable to take communion for so long, Our Lord has again granted me the favor of suspensions. These have been, and continue to be, frequent and public and I cannot resist them as I used to, nor is there a place where I can go to recollect myself. Wherever they overcome me, there I remain. Sometimes, during the recitation of the Hours, it happens when I am standing and sometimes when I am kneeling. During prayers, the suspensions usually last for two hours, although on some days they last longer. So far, everyone thinks that I have been suffering from spasms associated with my heart condition. But I understand that Our Lord wants to defend me in this way and make it understood that he has not forgotten me. This is what he has indicated to me in these suspensions, while giving me many tokens of his love, and with particular feeling. May the angels praise him, for he converses with his creatures who are so underserving. Brother, ask His Majesty to let me be grateful to him for these many mercies and that he not permit any obstacle to deprive me of his grace. I should tell you that following the unsuccessful exorcisms and all the publicity that surrounded them, everyone has now become quite sympathetic toward me. I am also trying another remedy that might make them become even more so—I have asked the Lady Abbess to discipline me in front of the sisters during chapter meetings, and she is not indisposed toward the idea. May God keep her, 9. The Father Rector may be Father Francisco Salcedo, Vela’s confessor from 1596 to 1598, who also served as the rector of the Jesuit College of San Gil in Ávila until his transfer to Valladolid in 1600. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 122r.

144 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO for truly I am deeply indebted to her, insomuch that she is favorably disposed toward everything that helps me to succeed. Oh, my brother, what treasure is hidden within this mine! May God help us to discover it. Amen. As regards my health, brother, I am better than when you went away. And since Our Lord has come up with this other invention, I no longer suffer from seizures or the shakes. I have even been given permission to fast during Advent, now that everyone thinks that I am in conformity with the rest of the house.10 See what God can do when he wants. I wrote to my brother, because I wanted him to tease out the bishop’s possible response to the favorable turn of events, here, and also because in Your Grace’s absence I did not know who else might do this for me.11 He has replied that it will be difficult to get the bishop to give his consent to anything, at present, but that he will write to him. Think about the matter, brother, for in my opinion, necessity forces us to look for a remedy. May the Lord grant you what he can and may he give Your Grace patience in your studies. May God grant Your Grace, brother, his holy spirit, so that you may praise him in everything.

María Vela to Lorenzo Cueto, 1599 My brother,12 In the last letter, I wrote you at length concerning everything that has happened to me since you went away. It was a summary of past events, to which I will now add. You should know that the Father Provincial of the Discalced has been here and that the Father Rector ordered me to give him an account of my things.13 Like everyone else, the provincial expressed his suspicion and doubts about me, and the Father Rector has taken it all quite badly. He has become fainthearted and timid, and seems to have lost any faith in his own judgment, for he informs me now that it is highly inappropriate for him to be the only one to approve my 10. Conformity to the rule and to the majority dictated life in a convent, thus Vela’s singularity provoked as much, or more, criticism than her claim of communicating directly with God. 11. The brother to whom Vela refers is her oldest sibling Diego, who, as elder brother and head of an elite local family, might get a prompt and more favorable response from the bishop of Ávila, who exercised direct authority over the nuns of Santa Ana, as specified by the convent’s charter. 12. Contents indicate a composition date of 1599, after Salcedo resigned as her director, but still retained authority over her as a result of the contract between them. The letter reveals Vela’s desire for a new spiritual director. MSA, Cartas de Vela, 16. 13. Interaction between members of different male religious orders (in this case, a Discalced Carmelite and a Jesuit) attest to the collaborative nature of Catholic oversight in Counter-Reformation Spain. When Vela’s condition became intolerable, Cistercians, Carmelites, Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans, and secular clergy came to Santa Ana with opinions and treatments. Vela and Vaquero make no mention, however, of correspondence between nuns in different convents.

Letters 145 requests. Truly, my brother, if God does not encourage his soul or give him cause to hope, his anxiety over me and my affairs will drive him mad. Apparently, while the provincial was here, he stayed at Julián de Ávila’s house. This explains why the provincial had it in his head that I was disobedient, because Julián de Ávila would have told him all about me. Nothing I said or did could convince him of my obedience, and anyone who believes that someone is disobedient will condemn everything else about her. I do not know what I can do to [convince others that I] obey, because everyone throws my attempts back in my face. The chaplain told me the other day that I should now forgo communion, entirely, whereas previously his only complaint was that I took communion too frequently. Cuevas (the one to whom I communicate my soul)14 advises me to write down everything that she orders of me, in order to see whether I obey or not. I deduce from this that when the Lady Abbess gives me permission to do something that she really does not favor (and this has happened more than once), it can be said that I do what I do without her real approval. Although that might be true, still she should realize what harm this is doing to me. May God enlighten her. If it seems to you, brother, that I should make a written record of what she wants me to do regarding penance and prayer, and even my conformity to the Order (such as the wearing of a stole and sleeping in the habit) or any other issue, I will do so, because I am not looking for anything other than the approval and contentment of God Our Lord. What I do now, I do with the approval of Your Grace and because I believe that it pleases Our Lord. These days, I find that I am in better bodily health and more spiritually peaceful. If you have any doubt about my propriety, I declare that I willingly renounce everything. If you are of the opinion that I should place myself entirely in the hands of my superior, the Lady Abbess, I will. Write to me with your opinion of what is the most spiritually perfect solution (or the most in conformance to the divine will) for the present state of things. My brother visited me, today, and despite our scheming we could not come up with any good solution.15 We think it may not be a bad idea to contact the bishop, but there is no one who is able to do it, so let us know if Your Grace, brother, can. In my view, the Father Abbott should be able to grant his permission for you to come here, even if it is only for a week or so.16 Let me know if you have 14. Pedro de las Cuevas served as confessor to some of the nuns of Santa Ana. 15. Vela says in the previous letter that she wrote to her brother about “teasing out” the bishop’s response. The brother whose visit she mentions in this letter is most probably the same—Diego, her blood sibling, and not a brother friar of her acquaintance. She had no biological brothers other than Lorenzo and Diego and she had no brothers-in-law. 16. Lorenzo, as a member of a monastic Order, had to receive permission from his abbot just as Vela needed permission from her abbess or other superior in order to deviate from the norm.

146 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO come down with tertian fever.17 If you have, then you would necessarily have to suspend your studies. But my need is so great, right now, that it is only a little thing to expect my brothers to come to my aid or for your superiors to give you their license to do so. The only thing that I want of the bishop is a confessor chosen by his own hand who is not a [Dominican] friar or of the Company [of Jesus], but is directly answerable to the bishop, if only for a few days. My brother thinks that the Canon Salamanca18 would be a good candidate and that perhaps we would not have to go through the bishop; he thinks that perhaps I myself could make the request of the Lady Abbess. But there are some real problems associated with this: one is that it will be very difficult to persuade her or to gain her consent; another is that, as she has done up until now, she will grant her permission only to later report that she was really against the idea. This pattern would come to an end if the bishop so ordered. I do not want to do any of this, brother, without your opinion, so please reply to me in detail. I would be much happier where I am if Our Lord would allow me to take communion when I am ordered and if he would put an end to these public suspensions. Along with these trials, there are so many others. I find myself without the support and protection of a confessor, and the Lady Abbess is just dying to put me back in the hands of the Dominicans. As soon as she finds one she likes, she will turn me over to him and I do not think that I will have the strength left to endure it. This is all I have to write about for now, but I would like to know what Your Grace thinks. May the Lord act upon this, if it serves to glorify him. May God grant his grace and love to Your Grace.

María Vela to Lorenzo Cueto, 1599 My brother,19 Your Grace’s letter greatly consoled me. Although I wanted to reply sooner (because I thought you would worry), I decided to wait until I had good news to send to you. You should know that through his goodness alone, Our Lord, who has already done so much for us, has now seen fit to make for smooth sailing in

17. “Tercian fever” refers to any malarial fever that peaks on every first and third day, thus making it an every-other-day cyclical fever. 18. Identity uncertain; Vela refers to a Master Salamanca, who is likely the same person, in the next letter. 19. Contents indicate Lorenzo as the recipient. The letter speaks of the chaplain’s attempts to exorcise her after Julián de Ávila resigned as her spiritual director in 1599. MSA, Cartas de Vela, 17.

Letters 147 these waters. If no contrary wind returns, I believe that a spiritual bonanza awaits us not far ahead. My jaw impediment that I previously wrote to you about lasted for eight weeks, during which time I was unable to take communion. Although I suffered greatly, this was not a punishment imposed by Our Lord, for if I had not experienced this continual impediment and if everyone had not been so scandalized by my condition, then what I had truly wanted—which was to be allowed to take communion every day—would still not have been permitted. I do not allow my personal feelings to distract me, nor do I dwell unduly on what has happened or on what might happen. But there can be no doubt that many of the things that I have wished for have already come to pass. Unless I am myself to blame, I do not doubt that those things that have not yet happened will take place at some point. After the cure of the exorcisms was attempted and it proved so ineffectual (for they saw that my impediment continued), it occurred to me that I could ask the Lady Abbess to permit me to try to take communion once a day for a week, to see if this might cure me, since I knew that I had been cured in this way once before. I took this up with Cuevas and he told me that I should discuss it with the Lady Abbess. I did this and she gave her consent, with the stipulation that I also inform the chaplain.20 He told me that if the Lady Abbess had given her consent, then I could go ahead. But he also made it known in the strongest of terms that he, for his part, did not approve, at all. He said that he had no doubt whatsoever that my condition would improve if I were permitted to do exactly what I wanted; that in his opinion a positive result would only go to show that the devil was not behind my jaw impediment, but that I was the real culprit, a trickster with a ready host of maladies up my sleeve to bring forth whenever it suited me. He went on like this about other weighty matters and in a very unpleasant way. But I let none of his comments bother me. Instead, I laughed at all of them, and promptly relayed what he had said to the Lady Abbess. Despite the chaplain’s misgivings, the Lady Abbess saw no reason to alter her decision and within the week I was cured. Shortly thereafter, Our Lord saw fit to bring Francisco Díaz around to our point of view. He and the Lady Abbess decided that I should stick to the present course. He also agreed to defend me before the bishop and anyone else, should it become necessary. The Lady Abbess is now so pleased with me that she told the sisters during a chapter meeting that they should stop their gossiping, because she had examined everything very carefully and she knew that I could do what I was doing. In addition to this, I have placed myself completely in her hands regarding penance and all aspects of the Rule. She permits me to wear a plain hair shirt, to 20. The only chaplain named by Vela or Vaquero is Francisco Díaz, but there would have been any number of chaplains in a convent. In La muger fuerte, Vaquero uses Francisco Díaz’s full title of Capellan Mayor, indicating that Díaz ranked highest in a hierarchy of chaplains.

148 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO discipline my body twice a day, and to forgo eating meat, but only if no one is looking (so that it will not cause a stir), and to do everything else in accordance with the Rule. And she has not only given me license for this, but she has ordered me as my prelate to take communion every day, even without her permission, if I have the need to do so, and not to deviate from this. See how good God is and how he does not abandon those who place their trust in him! Well, although this in itself has been no small miracle, another greater one has occurred. Ledesma came to our house and apologized to the abbess for what had happened in the past.21 That so satisfied her that she seemed willing to have me speak to him again. Francisco Díaz took it quite badly, however, because he thought that I should have only one spiritual director and that it should be him, even if Ledesma’s judgment was sound. At the same time, it seemed to me that such a situation would give rise to no small number of difficulties if the abbess had to choose daily between Ledesma and Díaz (or any other of the Dominicans) concerning my spiritual direction. I therefore mentioned to Francisco Díaz that I thought that the Master Salamanca might be a good choice as my director.22 He agreed with me and said that it was better for me to get out from under the power of either Order, so that the gossipy tales would then come to an end; this was what I really wanted, also. But, as Our Lord’s intentions do not always coincide with our own plans, the Lady Abbess refused to make a decision about this without first thinking at some length about it. Some days later the Lady Abbess called me to her and told me that although she wished to console me, she found some inconveniences in permitting Master Salamanca to take charge of me—for instance, she feared what new problems might arise. She told me that she had prayed to the Lord about it and that he had made her realize that the best thing, for now, was for me to remain under the direction of the chaplain and that if once in a while [the chaplain and I] did not see eye to eye about something, she could always ask the Father Rector to see me. But we know that the Father Rector is so tied up [in knots] that he does not dare to do it, since everyone here is on vigil and will contact the provincial [of the Company of Jesus] if something is not to their liking.23 And yet, even as things 21. When earlier urged by critics to take a Dominican as her director, Vela had asked her brother Diego to speak to his Dominican friend Pedro de Ledesma on her behalf. Ledesma came to Santa Ana, spent a few minutes conversing with Vela, and then announced in another convent that she was crazy, a remark that quickly spread all over the city of Ávila. The “very offended” Vela family rose to her defense, with Diego declaring that his sister was a saint and had been since the day she was born. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 104v. 22. The identity of Master Salamanca is uncertain, but the ensuing conversation between Francisco Díaz and Vela indicates that the man was neither a Dominican nor a Jesuit. 23. Francisco Salcedo was understandably nervous about dealing with Vela. He had earlier resigned as her spiritual director, convinced that his provincial would otherwise forcibly remove him from that position because of the uproar in Santa Ana over Vela’s locked jaws. In 1600, Salcedo received

Letters 149 seem to fall apart, I can see how Our Lord’s plans turn out as he wishes. I cling to the idea that he will not rest until he has placed me back in his hands and brings peace and tranquility to all concerned. Ask of the Lord, my brother, that for his glory and virtue you recover the strength you have lost, for your convenience. And thus, brother, with such a favor from Our Lord, may Your Grace be able to pursue your studies. I have regretted greatly that my affairs may have inconvenienced you inopportunely. May the Lord be blessed, for he provides us with all that we need. I do not want to write more now. I am fine and hope that the gifts associated with my spiritual exercises will last. May God grant Your Grace his divine spirit. If you wish to do me the favor of writing to Father Gonzalo Dávila to ask him to intervene with the provincial on my behalf so that the provincial decides to end my obedience to the Father Rector, it would not displease me.24 I have considered doing the same myself, but I am not sure how he would take my letter. Perhaps it is best to leave the matter up to God, for seeing how he has already begun his work, we should let him finish it.

María Vela to Lorenzo Cueto, 1599–1600 My brother,25 I quite believe that Your Grace would like to see a letter from me and I have indeed wanted to write to tell you what has been happening here. My only excuse is that Our Lord has kept my soul so spiritually occupied and my conventual obligations have kept my body so busy that I have not had time to do as I wish. May the Lord be blessed forever for the great generosity with which he communicates with this undeserving and most lowly creature. My brother, let us place our trust in God permission from his Jesuit superiors to secretly confess and counsel Vela. The abbess facilitated the clandestine meetings by guarding the door to the room where Vela and Salcedo met. La muger fuerte, 112r. 24. Father Gonzalo Dávila served as provincial of the Company of Jesus in New Castile. According to Vaquero, he came to Santa Ana to visit with his sister, the abbess. González Vaqeruo, La muger fuerte, 85r. Vela wanted Dávila to speak to his fellow administrator, the Jesuit provincial of Old Castile (wherein lay the city of Ávila), about releasing her from her obedience to Salcedo. When Vela took Salcedo as her director, she signed a contract of obedience to him, renewable each year. Ibid., 43v. Bound by a vow to Salcedo, a Jesuit, she was thus implicitly under obligation to the Company of Jesus. Any change in director required that the Company of Jesus release her from the contract she made with Salcedo. 25. Vela’s complaint that she is now under the direction of the convent chaplain indicates that she wrote the letter in 1599 or early 1600, before her former confessor Francisco Salcedo (the Father Rector mentioned here) received permission in 1600 to come secretly to Santa Ana to counsel and confess her. MSA, Cartas de Vela,18.

150 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO and not worry whether things go well or badly. In his hands our problems will be made easy, for he will give us a hundred times over what he promises. Around here, things are going well. With each day that passes, the Lady Abbess shows a greater desire to help me achieve my aspirations. I am now under the direction of the chaplain, who is no help in the least as regards the interior workings of my soul. He does not understand anything about them, nor does he want to hear me utter a word about them; rather, it seems that he is afraid of them. Thus he usually ends up by saying only a word or two on the subject or he gives opinions that are contrary to mine and designed to implant fear in me. But Our Lord prevents him from discouraging me during our visits, and God smooths over any tension concerning the difficulties. I have been given to understand that [the chaplain] is the one responsible for placating the Dominicans by removing me from obedience to the Jesuits.26 The Dominicans are extremely happy to see me under their control. They say that the current situation is quite sufficient for my needs and that the Lady Abbess can believe wholeheartedly and with no doubt whatsoever, everything that [the chaplain] tells her. She laughs at this, because she knows what I know: that God is behind not only this situation but also everything else. Lately, Our Lord has moved the Lady Abbess to reveal to me the interior aspects of her soul. Like me, her only confessor is the chaplain, and thus the two of us console each other. She wrote to Father Gonzalo Dávila27 to see if he could obtain permission for the Father Rector to see me, because it grieved her that [the Father Rector] has been under such pressure to stay away. It also seems that God the Lord wants him for himself; I never thought otherwise. If Your Grace has not written to [the provincial], do not disclose anything else to him, for this piece of business is enough. Let us leave the rest to the Lord. Regarding the death of the Father General and the loss this will mean to the Order, it grieves me no less.28 But God’s servants are highly disposed to secrecy; there is nothing for it but to surrender one’s things to God’s divine arrangement and ask him not to forget the wishes of those he claims as his own. May His Majesty fulfill the wishes of Your Grace, as I desire. I hope that you do not forget about me, because I am still in much need, albeit regarding other matters. Good-bye, brother. May God grant you his divine spirit. 26. Lorenzo may have honored her earlier request that he write to Gonzalo Dávila, provincial of the Jesuits in New Castile, but Vela says here that Francisco Díaz affected the dissolution of her contract with Salcedo. As senior chaplain at Santa Ana, Díaz could act as a sort of public relations manager for Santa Ana, helping to ensure that the convent stayed on good terms with the Jesuit college of San Gil and with the Dominican house of Santo Tomás, from whence came many of the nuns’ confessors. 27. Dávila was the Jesuit provincial in New Castile. 28. Elected general of the Discalced Carmelites in Spain in 1594, Fray Elías de San Martín died in 1599 and was succeeded by Francisco de la Madre de Dios (1600–1607).

Letters 151

María Vela to Lorenzo Cueto, 1600 I have received two of your letters, my brother, and with them the paper in which Your Grace responded to my questions.29 I was glad to hear that Your Grace is well and to know that you are happy in that desert of yours; it seems to me that the Lord is fulfilling your wishes.30 I hope that this will continue to be the case, His Majesty willing. I have delayed writing to you in order to be able to give you more good news—I have met a great servant of God, a Discalced Carmelite. I played no part in this, for I was far from wanting or desiring it; instead, he came to me by way of the Lady Abbess, who felt badly about seeing me so alone. She ordered me to speak to him, because the bishop had told her that he should assist this house. It all seems now that this was the Lord’s plan. I gave the father a long account of everything, although it was very difficult for me. He reviewed it very carefully, with much consideration and study, and approved its good spirit, maintaining that if he were sawn in two he would not say otherwise. He liberally defends the honor of God and virtue, defending these things when speaking with other people from outside [the convent]. He has promised to do as much as he can for my benefit. He will take charge of me, although he is so busy that he cannot do all that he would like. At any rate, I now have someone to go to when I find myself in need. Father Salcedo is fine with this and is pleased that I will be directed by him. Ask the Lord, brother, that this will result in a desire for greater perfection on my part. With regard to that promise that you ask me about, brother, I must tell you that I do not know whether my sentence has been lifted; I have understood nothing else concerning it for about the past two months. They have now made me the mistress of novices, despite the will of some of the nuns of the house. They are upset with me, not only for what I am teaching [the novices], but also because I took away their mirrors—thus, the house is in an uproar. We have a new abbess, who is Lady Doña María Mejía, the aunt of Doña María Dávila. Even if she were made of wax she could not be more pliable. It does not seem to me that I will have any arguments with her; rather, she will freely let me obey my confessors. Commend the souls of all us nuns to the Lord, for our house has a great need of someone who takes it upon himself to defend virtue and religion. Lady 29. Vela mentions her appointment as mistress of novices and María Mejía’s election to abbess, events that date the letter to 1600, as confirmed by Vaquero, who says that Vela was made mistress of novices in January of 1600 and María Mejía elected in the same year. La muger fuerte, 123v, 125r. MSA, Cartas de Vela, 21. 30. The “desert” refers to a physical place of solitude or a mental state of withdrawal from the world, and evokes the ascetic practices of early Christian anchorites. See the section “Asceticism,” in the introduction. Vela may have been alluding to a desire expressed by Lorenzo to devout himself to solitude and contemplation, or making a pun based on the name of his monastery: Convento de la Montaña (Monastery of the Mountain). La muger fuerte, 133v.

152 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO Doña Isabel de Vivero has done things of great exemplarity, withdrawing from her right to reelection, even though she would have had the majority of the votes on her side. She is extremely glad to see herself free, but those of us who wish to see an increase in religion are not so happy to see her on the sidelines. This is what is happening around here. Well, when you are alone, brother, remember carefully all our needs. May His Majesty grant you his divine spirit, so that you do all that is right and pleasing to him.

Father Juan de Alarcón to the Abbess of Santa Ana, 1601 Father Juan de Alarcón to the Abbess of Santa Ana,31 Father Segundo López has been in communication with me, asking for my opinion regarding a matter that Your Grace had discussed with him, for he believes that my knowledge of letters and experience with a range of views held by various religious orders concerning what is good or bad in such a case will allow me to render an accurate judgment. I told him that although I was already somewhat familiar with the case, I had not previously commented on it, because I did not deem it appropriate when Your Grace had not yet yourself related it to me. Now, at his behest, I will comply, certain that my learned colleagues in this kingdom and elsewhere would fully support the conclusions that I draw. It is the case, in this particular house of Santa Ana of the Cistercian Order, that some nuns (induced, it is said, by their confessors), with holy fervor and a desire for perfection have undertaken to perform certain extraordinary acts of penance in public that are not in conformity with the Rule, or according to the usage or custom of this house, or done with the approval of the male superiors of the Order, and thus, for the aforesaid reasons, have given cause for controversy. Questions have been raised as to whether it is right for the abbess to consent to these and to grant license for them, whether it is good and of spiritual benefit to the Order that they are performed, or whether it is better that they are entirely prohibited and proscribed. To this I respond that in order to serve God and for the benefit of souls, for the peace of the community, for the good of the Order and for all the nuns of the house, for those who have performed the aforementioned mortifications and for those who have not, for those who approve of them and for those to whom they cause offence, that such practices be rigorously and zealously extirpated and prohibited once and for all, for they are contrary to both the common practice and the statutes of the Order. To consent otherwise to such acts of penance is a 31. The influential Juan de Alarcón was prior of the Dominican monastery and college of Santo Tomás in Ávila. Events that precipitated the composition of this letter occurred during Lent of 1601. MSA, Cartas de Vela, 56.

Letters 153 sin; to perform them is a singularity, the daughter of pride, and the fraudulent enemy of spiritual profit. Such has always been and is the judgment of holy and prudent religious men of every religious Order and this is what they have always written and taught and it is in conformity with the Church itself. Therefore, it follows that those who recommend such mortifications know very little, although their intentions may be good, for they do not see that with respect to any kind of external manifestations, practices, ceremonies, and exercises, it is always the case that the authority of a particular religious Rule and the customary practices of each religious community must take precedence when it comes to approving or reproving all such things. Any spiritual benefit that is afforded by mortifications must be founded on the tenets of obedience and humility. When mortifications are not approved by a religious Rule or do not reflect the community’s common practices, they go against these tenets. If mortifications inspire devotion in simple people, it is only because of ignorance and lack of experience. This is not the way of spiritual perfection but of vanity. Thus, and with good reason, all prudent people are not only wary [of what has taken place] but are also scandalized [by it]. I want only to emphasize here the example set by your father, Saint Bernard, who for some period of time, unbeknownst to his brethren, wore a hair shirt not permitted by his Order. Yet, as soon as it did come to the attention of his brothers, he quickly removed the offensive article from his body, saying, “He who undertakes singularities will be noted.” Consider therefore, Your Grace, how Saint Bernard understood the effects of the public spectacles. Saint Augustine, in the first chapter of On Christian Doctrine, says that the person who dresses, eats, or acts in some way differently than what is the common practice of their community, is either superstitious, or believes [erroneously] that they have received some mysterious revelation from God, or is a bad or disruptive presence. Do not believe, Your Grace, that God is favoring your house once again with these impertinences. Order all nuns to conform to one common standard of perfection. Enforce this order rigorously and to the letter and keep your entire house free from such novelties. This is want God wants and anything to the contrary will offend him. Given that the Lord Bishop will likely be made aware of my judgment in this matter, Your Grace would be wise to keep this, my written counsel, and to let all the fathers of your house see it. May Our Lord keep Your Grace. Fray Juan de Alarcón

154 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO

María Vela to Lorenzo Cueto, 1601 JHS32 My brother,33 I have received a letter from Your Grace, dated on the Feast of the Holy Trinity, to which I owe a response.34 It seems that you did not receive my letter from Easter, in which I replied to your discussion of the eighth stage of humility. In the same letter, I asked about some things concerning the Rule that are badly misunderstood here. Now I beg of you, in the event that the letter was lost, that in your next communication you address my principal concerns. I would like to know if, aside from the three vows made at profession, there is any harm in breaking with what others have ordered of us as pertaining to silence and common acts. Do dressing, eating, and sleeping as ordered by the unmitigated Rule constitute a mortal sin, when other sisters do not follow the same practice, if the abbess has granted her permission? Can the abbess, in good conscience, prevent a nun, moved by God’s spirit and who is in good health, to dress according to the unmitigated Rule, in a habit of rough cloth, with shorter sleeves and skirt length than is now the custom, and to wear low-heeled shoes, if this is necessary for her spiritual development? You should know that I want to dress in this fashion and to remove my platform shoes and to be in conformance with the unmitigated Rule in everything else. This in no way represents any innovation in this house, because it is the way all the nuns once dressed and some elderly sisters in the convent can even still recall the habit. But neither the Lady Abbess nor the bishop will grant me permission, because they say that where the Rule is concerned, everyone must do the same as everyone else. I truly need to speak to you about the current situation here, for I know how it will turn out. I believe that it will turn out as in the past, and that I will be made to suffer so that the Lord’s designs can be known. Already the situation has taken a toll on my health and I have become weaker and my jaws have become locked, preventing me from taking communion. This way seems disproportionate to its end. But it is not, if one considers that my poor health and ruined state might give others fortitude to agree to what Our Lord wants. In this way, I am certain that Our Lord will fulfill the promises that he has made to me, and that in doing so some great good will come to this community. I also wanted to undertake some of the acts of penance that were allowed in the past, such as kissing the feet of others, declaring my sins in the refectory, wearing a gag across my mouth, and prostrating myself at the choir door before entering and leaving. Although these seem but small things, the soul reaps much 32. A monogram for the name Jesus; JHS (or IHS) is derived from the Greek spelling, ΙΗΣΟΥΣ, of the Latin name Iēsous (Jesus). 33. Contents indicate a composition date of mid- to late 1601. MSA, Cartas de Vela, 55. 34. The Feast of the Holy Trinity is celebrated on the eighth Sunday after Easter.

Letters 155 benefit from them, for they help to lead it along the path of perfection. I performed two of these acts, having secured the permission of the Lady Abbess and the favorable opinion of the Father Chaplain. I know the good that performing such exercises will do me and the good that it will do those who witness it, and thus I wish to introduce it into this house. But I do not know if this will come about, because a great commotion has ensued within and without [this house], and those who have always warred against me have once again raised their battle standard. Father Alarcón wrote a letter to the Lady Abbess that has scandalized even his friends and allies. She obliged Father Gerónimo to write a refutation of it, based on Holy Scripture and the examples of the saints.35 He proved how penance or mortifications, each according to their kind and effects, are good in and of themselves and in conformity with the religious state, and that they would be most beneficial to this convent of Santa Ana, for the following three reasons. First, they conform to the doctrine of our father, Saint Bernard. Second, they conform to the Rule of our father, Saint Benedict. Third, this convent is so lax in its observance concerning dress, food, and beds that the good example set by one member of the house can do much more for its perfection than any orders by superiors. Then he contradicts everything that Fray Juan said in his letter, and he says that the abbess will sin greatly by preventing these mortifications, because she will deprive her convent of the great spiritual gifts that would follow from them, and that those who gossip about these holy things are wrong. He proves how performing the mortifications is not a singularity and how it does not matter if the majority of the convent is scandalized, because it is a sufferable scandal and we are not obligated to stop. Father Gerónimo says, furthermore, that to label these kinds of mortifications and practices “spectacles and ceremonies,” as Fray Juan does, is not only incompatible with custom but also offensive and even more so in these times when heretics use precisely this same kind of terminology to refer to the holy practices that our religious Orders have preserved. He supports everything that he says with Holy Scripture. How I wish I could send you a copy of Father Gerónimo’s letter, but since it is doubtful that it will reach you, as far away as you are, I will not enclose one. What I do ask of you, brother, for the love of the Lord, is that you send me your own opinion on this case and that you consult learned, serious, and spiritual men on it, because it is a serious matter. As there have been already so many contradictory opinions about it, it would be very beneficial if religious brothers of our Order would sign a statement approving and supporting Father Gerónimo’s judgment. If this were to be done with due diligence, and promptly, then I think that this 35. During Lent of 1601, Vela performed a public mortification that provoked a written protest by Father Juan de Alarcón (see above), answered in kind by Vela’s confessor Fray Gerónimo de San Eliseo, which, according to Vaquero, “started dissention between confessors.” La muger fuerte, 127r.

156 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO would carry great weight against the Dominicans’ arguments.36 The Father Rector of the Jesuits is also against us.37 To both Fray Juan and him, the fact alone that I am involved is enough to confirm them in their opinions. My brother, pray to the Lord that all be resolved rightfully for his greater glory and for the spiritual good of this convent, and try to respond to me as quickly as you are able. What I would not give to see you now! But it goes without saying that this will not happen. Regarding what you say about yourself, my brother: it consoles me that you are now in better spiritual and physical health. I cannot persuade myself, however, that the desire you have to retreat to a quiet corner from which you can concentrate exclusively on your soul’s perfection is in keeping with Our Lord’s will. You must do what he tells you and be humble. In my judgment, you should place yourself in the Lord’s hands and in those of your Order and do what they ask of you. If you were to be burdened with the heavy cross that a superior of the Order must carry, then the Lord would give you every support necessary to bear its weight and to prevent you from slipping into the kind of vanity and excessive sense of honor that such an office frequently engenders in its holder, although many shine in an exemplary fashion in such an office and make doctrinal contributions while in it.38 Do not hide your talent, but rather employ it for the honor of God, and for your Order, because someone must sustain its everyday needs so that all does not tumble to the ground. Begin by coming out of your corner and by coming here, for it will be easier for you to achieve what you desire by doing this than by setting off to the desert to become a hermit. This is how it seems to me. Your holy brothers must have a better and more correct understanding than I, so it would be wise to consult them on this point. May the Lord illuminate you, my brother, so that you do what is correct and worthy of his divine blessing. 36. Vela hopes that Lorenzo will enlist the support of fellow Cistercians on the side of her Discalced Carmelite confessor against the complaints laid against her by Dominicans and, as she quickly notes, the Jesuit rector. Dissention and rivalry between the various monastic orders represented in Ávila frequently complicated Vela’s efforts to reform herself and her convent, but collaboration between orders or between clergy could be equally problematic for her. 37. Francisco Salcedo, Vela’s former spiritual director, had been rector of the Jesuit college in Ávila before being transferred to Valladolid in 1600, but he may have returned to Ávila by 1602, at least temporarily, for Vela speaks in her Vida about an incident that occurred that year, when some nuns wrote to Salcedo, informing him that she had replaced her customary nun’s habit with a primitive one, whereupon Salcedo wrote angrily back to Vela and came to the convent grille to see the offending habit for himself. Father Diego Villena, who confessed her for a short time, also served as rector of the Jesuit college; Vela speaks kindly of him in her Vida, although with some irritation in a later letter. Villena, however, was a great supporter of Vela, according to Vaquero. In sum, the identity of the Father Rector in this letter is uncertain. 38. Vela’s remarks to Lorenzo suggest that he has been offered a position of considerable authority in his Order, one that he is reluctant to take. Lorenzo became abbot of Santa Espina (Holy Thorn), in Valladolid.

Letters 157 Doña María Dávila would like to inform you of her desire to emulate the saints and to let you know that she is well on her way, because she is now able to fast along with the rest of the community and to sleep in her habit with no ill effects. She would very much like to be a Recollect.39 Juana is fine and is making great strides. I believe that she is sure to be as fortunate as I if she continues to merit it. My hermanos are well and my sister much consoled by Father Fray Gerónimo’s direction and diverse methods.40 Pray to God that this situation lasts, for if Father Gerónimo regrets or changes his mind about something, which often happens, then I do not know if she will persevere. Commend us to the Lord, my brother. May His Majesty grant his divine spirit to Your Grace so that you please him in everything.

María Vela to Lorenzo Cueto, 1602 JESUS May the soul of Your Grace be blessed.41 I do not want to miss the present opportunity to write you, brother, although I must be brief because I do not have much time. It is a puzzle to me why you have not received some of my previous letters when those of my hermanos have apparently reached you just fine.42 God must have wanted me to do without the relief that a reply from you would have afforded me. This year I have felt so alone and needy that my stomach would suffer no ill effects from any letters that you send to me. I did receive the papers regarding mortifications—it was very fortunate that whoever was carrying them lost them in the big market [and not elsewhere].43 I consoled myself with them, but no one here will consent to going ahead with what you suggest. We have been made to suffer greatly regarding the matter of the habit. But at last I have been permitted to wear a habit made from rough cloth, a thick wimple, and appropriate shoes. This is a miracle I ascribe to Our Lord, 39. Vela uses the word recoleta, a Recollect. See introduction, “The Counter-Reformation Convent.” 40. The “sister” is probably a nun in Santa Ana, although Vela also uses the word when referring to her sister-in-law, Diego’s wife. The hermanos that she says are doing well (brothers, or brothers and sisters) are likely members of her religious community. 41. Vela speaks of her attempt in October of 1602 to reintroduce primitive Cistercian dress to Santa Ana, suggesting a date of 1602–3 for the letter’s composition. MSA, Cartas de Vela, 23. 42. In this context, the identity of Vela’s hermanos is uncertain. She may be referring to her brother and sister-in-law, as in previous letters, but the possibility exists that the hermanos are members of her religious community (men, women, or both) who correspond with Lorenzo. 43. With no regular mail system, letters were carried by friends, acquaintances, or anyone willing to go to the effort. Such a system of delivery risked the delay or even disappearance of anxiously awaited responses. The big market that Vela mentions was the Mercado Grande, located outside the medieval wall of the old city, between the Alcázar Gate and the Church of San Pedro.

158 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO because permission was granted at a time when no one was willing to take my side or help me in any way. None of the other nuns have been allowed to adopt the reformed habit, because when some attempted to follow suit and dressed accordingly, such a great scandal erupted, within and without [the convent], that they were all ordered to take off the habit and put on the common one. At present, these nuns are so disheartened and timorous that they have even given up on the humility exercises that only a short time ago gave them so much cause for hope. They lack the spiritual strength to undertake anything beyond the standard communal practice, although Our Lord has at least given them the desire to do more. I believe that if it were not for the impediment of fear of what everyone else would say, they would be able to accomplish much. Let us place our trust in God, for if he ordains that one thing must happen first, the other may still go forward, but more slowly. I have already made an effort to do as you ordered. I do not know if it will have any effect. H. professed, but the habit that should make her content does not.44 She has taken everything so hard and apparently wants the whole convent to know it, because she goes around crying as though she were a little girl of two years old and is so unpleasant to everyone that it grieves me deeply. The remedy I use to avoid upsetting myself is to ignore the situation and pretend that I do not see it, for it is not my place to reprimand her until she achieves [some degree of] self-knowledge. Pray to the Lord that as she matures and gains experience of things, Our Majesty will correct what I view, regrettably, as these little faults of hers. My sisters are well. But H. displays the same old malady of not surrendering herself to the direction of confessors. She dances with them, tires them out, and then refuses them one by one. May the Lord who is able to correct her conduct, do so. Doña María Dávila kisses your hands. She would like you to know that she is attempting to carry on, despite a notable deterioration in her condition. She now finds that she is unable to fast or to do anything; her office is taking its toll on her. Our Lord wants to see us physically ground down and broken. May his name be blessed. Ask him, brother, to accept the small offerings of straw that we are able to make to him, for we have nothing more to give. May you remain in God. I must close now, for I feel weak and about to faint. Satiabor cum apparuerit gloria sua.45

44. The person referred to as “H.” is unknown. Names are frequently scribbled out and initials substituted in Vela’s original texts, most likely by Vaquero, who had her manuscripts as well as the letters that Lorenzo gave to him. 45. Ps. 16/17:15: “I shall be satisfied, beholding your likeness [glory]”; in the KJV, “I shall be satisfied when thy glory shall appear.”

Letters 159

Juan de Alarcón to María Vela, 1603 Father Fray Juan de Alarcón to Doña María Vela in Santa Ana46 Blessed be the Lord (said David, after partaking of the pleasure of contemplation’s sweetness in the middle of his trials), Blessed be the Lord, for he made his mercy marvelous for me in his sanctified city. I had said, when overwrought from my profound reflection, that God has cast me from his sight. But despite this, Lord, you heard my voice and supplications when I cried out to you.47 From what I have gathered, Lady Doña Maria, all of this Your Grace has without a doubt experienced these days, in part because of my conversation with you the other day and in part because of Your Grace’s affliction, as related to me by the Lady Abbess. This I could easily believe, for Your Grace had more than enough reason to be afflicted—so much so that it would have seemed strange to me if Your Grace had not made some display of your feelings. Because I realized that you would be grieved by my words (albeit I was not to blame), I regretted making Your Grace sad. But afterward, [upon my return] here, my scruples have been so great for leaving you sad that although I had reason, and you had reason (albeit no one was to blame), I discover that I am unable to find any sort of solace until I take up David’s harp in my hands and make flee the melancholic spirit from your happy soul, which I respect as a living temple of the divine spirit. As Saint Paul said to those whom he had grieved for their profit: For if I cause you sorrow, who then makes me glad but the one whom I made sorrowful?48 The very same thing has happened to me in my dealings with Your Grace, because—and I say this as did Saint Paul to the servants of God—you are my delight and my crown. Thus Your Grace causes me to be sad when you are sad, and so I beseech you out of the love that you owe to your Spouse that you gladden me by gladdening yourself. For although I saddened you, I did not do so to make you sad, but rather so that with the happiest sadness and sweetest tears you would turn to Jesus, your Spouse, who tells you that he calls you a rose among the thorns, and also so that you learn humility from your own faults and take courage of heart from the divine gifts that God communicates to you, which, in the exterior, are comparable to the black tents of Arabia and, in the interior, to the embossed gold46. Alarcón wrote to Vela in June or July of 1603, immediately after interviewing her at the behest of the inquisitor for the purpose of determining if the complaints and accusations leveled against her by certain nuns in Santa Ana merited further attention from the Holy Office of the Inquisition. From González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 136r–38r. 47. Ps. 31:21–22, NRSV: “Blessed be the Lord, for he has wondrously shown his steadfast love to me when I was beset as a city under siege. I had said in my alarm, ‘I am driven far from your sight.’ But you heard my supplications when I cried out to you for help.” 48. 2 Cor. 2.2, NRSV: “For if I cause you pain, who is there to make me glad but the one whom I have pained?”

160 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO en leathers of Solomon. Say then with David, “May God be blessed! For his mercy toward me is not any ordinary thing, but is bestowed on me from his sovereign and miraculous greatness. For just at the moment when my consideration of the storm of these past days was causing me to drown, and just when I feared that God was casting me from his sight, he heard my prayer and the cry of my voice.”49 Therefore let both of us conclude along with David, and may we say to all the servants of God: Love God, all you saints, even when you see yourselves the most hounded and afflicted, for God will ascertain the truth of your simple hearts and he will repay in plenty the haughty who insolently dared to upset you. Do your customary work in a manly fashion; do not slack in any way. May your heart be comforted, those of you who trust in God, for he knows how tribulations of this kind can purge your defects and teach you, so that henceforth, with new fervor and with the highest discretion, you please him. For virtue not pursued is worth little and those who piously desire to live in Christ must experience many tribulations. One of his servants once said that pains are to love like shells to the sea: they are many and very dear. My Lady, a word to the wise is sufficient. In God’s service, may Your Grace give all and then say naught.50 For if heretofore you served God in something—and I know that you have served—now is the time for you to strike a higher chord.51 For quarrels around the Feast of Saint John bring peace year round,52 and your Spouse has sought to warn you, humble you, and awaken you to this. If something becomes difficult for you, I am your servant. Your Grace need only command me and I will attend you wholeheartedly, provided that today you begin to put what has happened behind you and that you pardon me for having angered you. Your Spouse is a good witness to your piety and zeal. Ask him to grant me his marvelous mercy. May he fill the heart of Your Grace with joy, with grace, and lastly, with his glory. Amen. Santo Tomás Fray Juan Alarcón

49. Alarcón converts the psalm into a prayer specifically for Vela. 50. Literally, “strike a good blow and then hide your hand.” 51. As one says in English, “take the higher road.” 52. Alarcón had interviewed Vela on behalf of the Inquisition in June, the month in which the Feast of Saint John the Baptist occurs. During the course of the interview he reversed his bad opinion of her and the two were reconciled. He uses the old proverb—Riñas de por San Juan, paz son de todo el año— to affirm that antagonism between them, which peaked around the time of the feast of Saint John the Baptist, June 24th, has ended.

Letters 161

María Vela to Juan de Alarcón, 1603 To the Padre Presentado53 Fray Juan de Alarcón at Santo Tomás,54 May Jesus and Mary be in the soul of Your Reverence, and may they repay you for the charity and consolation that I have received from your letter. Truly, it has been of importance in further confirming for me the belief that I should have in the faith, care, and providence that God Our Lord has for those who serve him, in particular for me, a miserable creature, who has nothing more than desire on the one hand and burdens on the other. May His Majesty be blessed. The truth is that I have been afflicted and disconsolate on account of the points Your Reverence had raised with me—without blame on your part—because I fear my weakness and ignorance. Perhaps His Majesty has permitted this as a punishment for the many sins that I have committed, for I may have displeased his divine eyes without realizing it. However, since Your Reverence orders me to rejoice and to thank the Lord for granting me his accustomed mercy, I want to do just that, although I still feel regret when considering my little worth, for if I had more, Our Lord would not so quickly loosen the cords [that bind me to him]. As far as virtue is concerned, he treats me like a little child. I am deeply ashamed, but not sad; rather, I am happy. Considering the many occasions in which the fault has been mine, I can do nothing but humble myself. Although this is the way to the humility I seek, I find myself still so very far from encountering it. Your Reverence, for the love of Our Lord, please be so charitable as to ask this of God on my behalf, so that I may have the spirit and the strength necessary to begin to serve him. For the one who receives new mercies daily must correspond with new service. I will do what Your Reverence orders of me with the attention that I owe you. May Our Lord grant you his divine spirit, as I desire. Santa Ana Doña María Vela

53. Padre Presentado, literally “Presented Father,” was a title used primarily by the Dominicans, indicating a man with university training in theology. 54. In accordance with her brother Lorenzo’s advice, Vela composed the letter in June or July of 1603, writing it on the back of the one she received from Alarcón. Vaquero says she had the letters when he became her spiritual director; they passed into his possession after her death. From González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 138rv.

162 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO

María Vela to Lorenzo Cueto, 1603 JHS My brother,55 Father Villena came here yesterday and called me in to see him.56 I thought that we were going to argue, but the Lord did not let him lodge any complaint against me; the only one he had was that Your Reverence had not stayed here to dine with him. He did not say a word about what had happened. All he said was that since my father superiors had now ordered me to continue alone without the help of a spiritual director, he had thus felt the greatest temptation to come see me. He said that he had previously not been at all interested in serving as my director, but that now, with a little patience, this might well come to pass. Let him be as patient as he wishes—he will not win me over, even if his voice goes hoarse from calling out for me. We spoke about the inquisitor and how there was nothing that could be made of it or said about it. I came away extremely gratified that this troublesome matter has come to an end. I could be wholly content, if only my sisters would permit it. Although I have not suffered a fall recently, I have been extremely sad and inconsolable, without knowing the cause. Commend me to the Lord, that he may let his divine will be made known to me. I am glad to hear that my sister is better now.57 I kiss my brother’s hand.58 May God make us his. Doña Maria and Juana and the other sisters ask that you remember them in your prayers.

María Vela to Diego Álvarez de Cueto, 1603 JHS My brother,59 May the Lord favor Your Grace. Father Fray Lorenzo writes me that he discussed his departure with Your Grace, and what he and I have experienced, and his fear that I, remaining alone, will end up again in the hands of the Company [of Jesus]. 55. In her letter, Vela addresses Lorenzo as “Your Reverence,” which indicates that Lorenzo is now a priest. 56. Diego Villena, rector of the Jesuit college of Ávila, confessed Vela for two weeks in 1602/03, when her usual confessor, Gerónimo de San Eliseo, was unavailable. 57. Vela refers to her sister-in-law, Ana María de Zuniga, as her sister. 58. Vela either offers this conventional valediction directly to Lorenzo or intends that it be relayed, via Lorenzo, to her brother, Diego. 59. This is the only surviving letter whose contents leave no doubt that it was intended for Vela’s oldest brother, Diego. Vela’s concerns indicate a composition date of 1603, when Lorenzo left Ávila. MSA, Cartas de Vela, 48.

Letters 163 I also fear being made subject to them and having this ordered of me, because my need is so well known and there is no one to whom I can turn. To avoid this inconvenience, it would please me if my brother remained here for as long as possible, even if just for this winter. But he has not yet made a decision regarding this, because it is still unclear to him what would best serve God. He wants me to tell him, firmly, whether he should stay or go. This I will not do, because I do not have sufficient illumination concerning the divine will. It seems to me that we should place the decision in the hands of Your Grace, because, given your impartiality and level-headedness, you will judge what is best. Still, I beg you to consider my petition. May Fray Lorenzo accept Your Grace’s judgment concerning the matter. Please let me know what you decide. Also, please do not let my brother go without seeing me again, even if it has to be as soon as he says. I kiss the hand of my sister.60 May God keep Your Grace and may he grant what I wish for you.

María Vela to Lorenzo Cueto, 1605 May Our Lord Jesus Christ and Mary be in our souls. My father, I am bedridden and thus I will be brief.61 About a year has passed since the Day of the Passage of our Father Saint Benedict, when a silver crosier struck me on the top of my head, gashing it and making much blood spill from it. Since then I have not had a day of health nor can I make the same effort as I used to without having to take immediately to bed afterward. I believe that this has happened to me some seven times this year. Three times, my life has been in great danger and at present I find that both my life and my soul are endangered. My only consolation is that I have a confessor who is so to my liking. When I am able to stand, I can see him as many times as I want; he can also attend me at my bedside, with permission. May the Lord be blessed for everything. Brother, please ask the Lord to do whatever he wishes with me and however he chooses. It comforts me that he allows Your Grace to bear part of the burden of his cross. May God teach us to do his will and may he keep Your Grace safe and make you as holy as I wish.

60. Diego’s wife, Ana María de Zuniga. 61. Vela says that she is writing this letter about a year after receiving a head wound on the Day of the Passage (death) of our Father Saint Benedict. Although medieval tradition placed Benedict’s death on March 21, the Martyrologium Romanum (Roman Martyrology) of 1583/84 declared that his feast day should be observed on July 11. Vaquero’s account has the head wound occurring after April of 1604 and before January of 1605, which supports July 11, 1604, as the day of Vela’s injury. Vela thus wrote this letter around July of 1605. MSA, Cartas de Vela, 52.

164 MARĺA VELA Y CUETO

María Vela to Lorenzo Cueto, 1606–1607 Jesus and Mary On the sixth of May I received a letter from Your Reverence, informing me that you have not seen a letter from me in a year.62 I did send a long reply to you around Easter, in which I told you how the Lord had granted me the favor of supplying me with someone to whom to turn with my troubles and concerns, to my great satisfaction. Doctor Vaquero is a very spiritual man and is held in great regard here. He replaced Julián de Ávila, at his death, as the chaplain of the Discalced.63 This turn of events has consoled me greatly, as I am able to consult with him on a daily basis without any repercussions either from within or without the convent; this is no small mercy of Our Lord’s. The controversy surrounding me has died down, because the exterior manifestations that I had been experiencing have ceased, although my fasting goes forward as before.64 My health is better than usual. Sometimes I still suffer faints, but if my father [Vaquero] so wishes, they disappear without a trace. Similarly, with respect to everything else, it seems that he holds the Lord’s will in his hands. I am experiencing great peace and consolation within my soul, so much so that it seems to me that all my past suffering was worth it, if this is the result. As such, my brother, may Your Reverence consider what is most beneficial to your peace of mind and what is most advantageous to your soul, because you no longer have to worry about me or feel sorry for me, for I no longer have need of anyone. We have received a letter from Fray Gerónimo, in which he says that he is going to try to come here, but, if he does, may I not be forced to give up Doctor Vaquero. In my judgment, not only do I need to hear a variety of opinions concerning me, but experience also shows that I have benefited from this in one way or another. Father Salcedo died about a year ago now. Since his death, it seems as if all ties between the Jesuits and me have been severed. It grieves me, brother, that you have been feeling so poorly. Try not to let this interfere with your exercises or with your pastoral responsibilities, since Your Reverence has so many souls dependent upon you. My hermanos are well, [but]

62. The contents of the letter suggest that Vela wrote at least a year after Julián de Ávila’s death in 1605 but before the death of her brother Diego in December of 1608. MSA, Cartas de Vela, 51. 63. Julián de Ávila died in 1605, whereupon Vaquero became chaplain to Teresa’s original foundation of Discalced Carmelite nuns: the convent of San José, in Ávila. 64. Vela’s relationship with Vaquero resulted in a cessation of the controversy and antagonism in Santa Ana that had plagued her efforts to express her spirituality and reform them all. Her Vida provides further testimony to the nuns’ eventual acceptance of her mysticism and ascetic regime. Upon Vela’s death, a decade after the composition of this letter, the nuns collaborated with Vaquero to present her as a woman worthy of sainthood.

Letters 165 my sister is melancholic and growing worse every day.65 Juana is very well and quite the daughter of the Jesuits. Doña Mária is, too, and very busy with her duties. Everyone here sends you greetings and asks you to remember them in your prayers, so that when their souls do get to heaven, your petitions will have preceded them—and this will probably happen before another letter of yours arrives here! May the Lord grant us his favor, so that we may arrive in that place where all enjoy it eternally and for his glory.

65. Here, Vela probably means her brother Diego and his wife; she elsewhere refers to her sister-in-law, Ana María de Zuniga, as her sister. Diego became mortally ill in the fall of 1608, a year or so after Vela wrote this letter. In spite of a locution informing her that her brother would die (as he did, in December of that year), Vela continued to pray, only to receive criticism from her sister-in-law for not praying enough. Still, cordial letters continued to be exchanged between Vela and her sister-inlaw and even between Vela and the dying Diego, none of which are extant. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 170–71. When Vela died nine years later, on September 24, 1617, Ana María de Zuniga received permission from the abbess to bring to Santa Ana for the novena mass not only a delegation of Carmelites but also a renowned Benedictine monk, who “preached well” to the crowds. González Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 196–97.

Appendices Appendix I: Chronology of the Life of María Vela y Cueto 1561

Vela’s birth in Cardeñosa, Spain

1562

Teresa of Ávila establishes her first convent of Discalced (Shoeless) Carmelites

1570

Death of Vela’s father, Diego Álvarez de Cueto

1576

Vela begins novitiate in Cistercian convent of Santa Ana in Ávila

1581

Death of Vela’s mother, Ana de Aguirre

1582

Vela and her younger sister, Jerónima, take their solemn vows Death of Teresa of Ávila

1583

Death of Vela’s youngest sister, Isabel

1585

Death of Vela’s sister, Jerónima de Aguirre

1591

Father Gaspar de Ávila, Vela’s confessor since 1576, suffers a stroke

1596

Father Francisco Salcedo of the Company of Jesus becomes Vela’s confessor

1598

Vela’s “impediment of the jaw” occurs for the first time Salcedo resigns as Vela’s confessor

1599

Father Julián de Ávila serves as Vela’s confessor for two months

1600

Vela is appointed mistress of novices Father Fray Gerónimo de San Eliseo becomes Vela’s confessor

1603

Father Fray Gerónimo de San Eliseo ceases to be Vela’s confessor Father Fray Juan de Alarcón interviews Vela on behalf of the Holy Office of the Inquisition Father Miguel González Vaquero begins to confess Vela

1605

Death of Julián de Ávila Vaquero succeeds Julián de Ávila as senior chaplain to Teresa of Ávila’s first foundation of Discalced Carmelites

1607

Vela begins writing her Vida

1608

Death of Vela’s eldest brother, Diego Álvarez de Cueto, on December 9 Vela completes first part of her Vida 167

168 Appendices 1610

Vela resumes writing her Vida

1614

Beatification of Teresa of Ávila

1617

Vela dies September 24, age 57

1618

Vaquero publishes La muger fuerte (The strong woman)

1619

Testimonies taken in Ávila for the beatification of María Vela y Cueto

1623

Reburial of Vela’s body in a new tomb in Santa Ana

Appendix II: Excerpt from La muger fuerte Vaquero’s “roll call” of distinguished men of the church who conversed with Vela immediately precedes the first chapter of La muger fuerte. The approval of such hombres graves lent support to Vaquero’s portrayal of Vela as a woman entirely in conformity with the church and endowed by God with spiritual gifts. The Grave Men Who Spoke with Doña Maria Vela, and Approved of Her Spirit, As Related in This Account From the Order of Saint Dominic Father Master Fray Domingo Bañez, Chair of Prime of Theology at the University of Salamanca.1 Father and Presented Master Fray Juan de Alarcón, Reader in Holy Scripture at the Royal Seminary of Santo Tomás, of this city of Ávila, now an approved university. From the Company of Jesus Father José de Acosta, Provincial of Peru and afterwards Chair at Salamanca. Although he did not speak with Doña María Vela, he saw and approved of the writings concerning her, and with his approval and advice Father Francisco de Salcedo continued in his role as her spiritual director. Father Cristóbal de Ribera, called “the Saint,” who was Provincial of Old Castile. Father Rodrigo Cabredo, his companion, who afterwards was Provincial of Peru and today lives in Spain. Father Luis de la Puente, Rector of Valladolid, a Reader of Theology (for many years), and whose authority is so well-known. Father Gonzalo de Ávila, Provincial of New Castile. Father Labata, Rector of many colleges, and Provincial of Old Castile. 1. The chair of prime had the most prestigious faculty position, in that he gave the first lecture of the day, at the hour of prime, between 7:30 and 9:00 a.m.

Appendices 169 Father Diego de Villena, Rector of Ávila, Medina del Campo, and Pamplona. Father Francisco de Salcedo, Rector of Ávila and Soria. Father Alonso de Ávila, a distinguished preacher of the same society and Rector of the College of Palencia. From the Order of the Discalced Carmelites Father Fray Tomás de Jesús, a former Provincial of Old Castile and now Provincial of Flanders and Germany. Father Fray Eutropio del Carmelo, a Prior of Ávila and elsewhere. Father Fray Gerónimo de San Eliseo, a distinguished preacher. From the Order of Saint Bernard Father Fray Lorenzo de Cueto, a preacher and person of great spirit, who is brother to the servant of God, and Abbot of the [Monastery of the Holy] Thorn, where he was a son [of the Order]. Clerics Father Julián de Ávila, theologian, who for twenty-two years was the confessor of the blessed Mother Teresa de Jesús and accompanied her on her foundations. Licentiate Francisco Díaz, theologian and Head Chaplain of the Convent of Santa Ana.

Appendix III: Excerpt from La muger fuerte The following sonnet, written by an anonymous nun and admirer of Vela and included in the opening pages of La muger fuerte, serves as a reminder of Vela’s posthumous reputation. The author may have been a nun of the convent of Cistercian Recollects in Madrid, founded in 1615 by the king’s favorite, the duke of Uceda, and called El Sacramento (the sacrament). Vaquero served as chaplain to El Sacramento, by request of the duke and of the bishop of Madrid. To the Saintly Doña Maria Vela, from a Nun in Madrid Who is Much Devoted to Her Immortal goddess, from virginal Heaven you illustrate the happy hierarchy. Fragrant stalk, the world has sent you there, laden with stems of gold. Strong woman, you found the treasure hidden by the cold night, and in keeping silent,

170 Appendices you conquered the persistence of the infernal and aggressive bull. Beautiful candle,2 whose divine light silence and obedience kept shrouded for so many years. Shine, shine with works and teaching, For he who wanted you crucified on earth has now opened up to you the treasures of his essence.

2. The Spanish word for “candle” is vela.

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Index Ávila on, 30–31; of Vela, 29, 55, 59–60, 62, 65, 154–55. See also clothing; fasting; food and drink; mortification Audi, filia (Listen, daughter), 7 Augustine of Hippo, Saint, 31, 46, 122n175, 153 auto de fe, 17, 17n49 autohagiography, 46, 46n143 Ávila: history, 4–5; population of, 5, 5n13; religious houses and clergy in, 5, 5n12; Vela’s family in, 7 Ávila, Gaspar de (secular priest; confessor of Vela), 53, 53n4, 58n20, 58n21, 62 Ávila, Julián de (secular priest; confessor of Teresa and of Vela), 82–84, 82n69

abbesses, 79n59; enclosure and, 23, 23n67; of las Huelgas, 22, 27; record of in Santa Ana, 10n31, 61n30. See also Lady Abbess abbot, 22, 145, 145n16, 156n38 Acosta, José de (Jesuit), 60, 60n28, 71 Advent, 89, 92n98, 93, 97, 144 Aguirre, Ana de (mother of Vela), 7–8, 54, 54n5, 54n6 Alarcón, Juan de (Dominican; prior of Santo Tomás), 11, 16, 32, 49, 61, 61n32, 69, 69n44, 70, 85, 92, 156; appointed by inquisitor, 97, 97n114, 98; letter from Vela to, 161–62; letter to the abbess, 152–53; 155, 155n35; letter to Vela, 159–60, 159n46, 160n52 aljuba, 93, 93n104, 94. See also clothing All Saints’ Day, 59, 123, 134, alumbrados, 37–38, 37n111, 41; edict against, 37, 37n113 Álvarez, Baltasar (Jesuit; confessor of Teresa), 58n22, 66n40 Álvarez de Cueto, Diego (brother of Vela), 3, 9, 9n28, 54n5, 84, 84n75, 85n76, 140, 142, 144, 144n11, 145, 145n15, 148n21, 165n65; letter from Vela to, 162–63, 162n59 Álvarez de Cueto, Diego (father of Vela), 7 angels, 83, 143; and Elijah, 63n37; guardian angel, 127; natures, 125; virgins as angels, 24, 24n69; war of angels, 43n134 Anne, Saint (mother of Virgin Mary), 7, 7n19; feast day of, 107, 108 aristocracy, 5n13, 7, 9; in convents, 26–27, 27n78. See also las Huelgas asceticism, 28–32, 33; Alarcón on, 32, 152–53; Loyola on, 31; in Santa Ana, 23, 29, 29n86, 32; Teresa of

Báñez, Domingo (Dominican; confessor of Teresa), 59n25, 85, 85n77, 141 beatification, of Vela, 12–13, 13n37, 44 Benedict of Nursia, Saint, 21; feast day of, 103, 111, 163n61; vision of, 131 Benedict XII, Pope, 23 Benedictine rule, 21–22; Cistercian adherence to, 22, 27, 58n23; on food, 58n23; mitigated by pope, 23; Recollects and, 27; in Santa Ana, 21, 29, 29n86, 30n90, 58n23, 155 Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint, 32, 35, 36, 94, 127, 130n207, 153, 155; feast day of, 96, 96n110 Bilinkoff, Jodi, 45 birth canal, 129n206 bishop, of Ávila, 49, 61n30, 71, 84n75, 147, 151, 153, 154; correspondence with Vela, 92; founder of Santa Ana, 8; petitioned by Vela’s 183

184 Index brothers, 9, 144, 144n11, 145–46; as promoter of Vela’s sanctity, 1, 1n2, 12–13, 13n37, 44; Santa Ana constitution and, 29n86 bishop, of Burgos (uncle of Vela), 7, 9 blood: asceticism and, 31, 137, 79n62; of Christ, 65, 127, 131, 134, 134n220, 137; as cup of holy communion, 132, 132n216; of Vaquero, 43n131, 106, 106n136; visions of, 129, 129n206, 130, 133. See also Christ: passion of; Christ: wounds of Cabredo, Rodrigo (Jesuit), 69n43, 168 canonization, 30, 33, 44; of Vela, 1, 12–13, 13n37, 44n136 Capellan Mayor. See Díaz, Francisco Carlos I, king of Spain, 15, 19; as Charles V, 19 Carmelites. See Discalced Carmelites Catherine of Siena, Saint, 2n4, 3n6, 32, 36, 39n120, 62n35; feast day of, 61, 72; as inspiration to Vela, 2, 61, 61n33, 62, 62n34, 63, 66, 70, 71n46, 129n206 celibacy, 24, 24n69; Protestant opinion of, 28; of Vela’s mother, 7. See also Council of Trent; virginity chalice (of communion), 132n216 chaplain, 88, 97, 120, 145, 147, 147n20, 148, 150, 150n26, 155; as exorcist, 42, 87, 96, 143; Francisco Díaz as, 87n83, 89, 89n89, 96, 169; Gaspar de Ávila as, 53n4; Julián de Ávila as, 82n69; Lorenzo Cueto as, 142, 142n5; Pedro de las Cuevas as, 78n58; Vaquero as, 164, 164n63, 169 Charles V. See Carlos I, king of Spain choir, 1, 74, 79, 82, 84, 89, 90, 93, 101, 102, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 110, 112, 116, 117, 119, 133; devil’s attack in, 103; penance performed in, 141n3, 154; physical

impairment in, 72, 90, 110, 119; suspension (ecstasy) in, 87; Vela’s musical contribution to, 11, 54n6, 82n66, 104, 128 Christ: blind man and, 76; as child, 34, 129–30; exchange of hearts with, 62, 62n34; hyssop for, 76n54; as nursing mother, 35, 128; passion of, 34, 34n102, 34n103; as spouse (bridegroom), 34, 35, 56, 63, 127, 133, 136, 137, 159, 160; tied to column, 83, 115, 132, 132n215; wounds of, 6n16, 129, 129n206, 132, 133, 138 Christmas, 67, 110 Cisneros, Francisco Jiménez (cardinal; grand inquisitor), 36 Cistercians: and Benedictine rule, 23, 29, 58n23; establishment of women’s houses, 22–23, 27; as mystics, 35, 56n13; origin, 22; spiritual autobiographies of women, 47n145. See also Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint; las Huelgas; Santa Ana clausura. See enclosure cloister, 23, 25, 27, 39, 90 clothing, 21, 27, 32, 59, 157; controversy over reformed habit (aljuba), 92–94, 93n104, 154, 156n37, 157–58; as relics, 1, 12; sleeping in habit, 59, 157; of those condemned by Inquisition, 17n50 communion: from Christ’s hand, 135; daily schedule of, 53, 64, 70, 83, 85, 86, 148; devil’s interference with, 108–9, 110, 113, 122; fainting and seizures during, 81, 91, 95–96, 101, 105, 107, 108, 119, 121; flavor of, 62; frequent communion, 17–18, 18n52, 18n53; prevented by jaw impediment, 69, 79, 84, 86, 91, 119, 132, 143; recollection (suspension) during, 63, 82, 129; as sole sustenance, 63, 65, 75; testing

Index 185 of daily communion, 71–72, 75, 88–89; vision during, 132. See also Eucharist Company of Jesus. See Jesuits compline (divine office), 21, 55n10, 110, 130, 130n208 confession, 95, 96, 100, 104, 105, 108, 109, 110, 113, 118, 122; for alumbrados, 37; and auto de fe, 17; confessional box, 87; confessional window, 87, 88; devil’s interference with, 108, 110, 113, 117; general confession, 53, 53n3, 102, 108 confessors: as authors of biographies, 45; dissension between, 155n35, 156n36; duties of, 18n53, 80n64; as influence on writings of nuns, 1n3, 4, 4n9, 47; as targets of criticism, 72, 80, 83, 96, 152; Vela’s lack of, 82, 86, 94, 96–97, 146. See also Ávila, Gaspar de; Ávila, Julián de; confession; Cuevas, Pedro de las; Gerónimo de San Eliseo; González Vaquero, Miguel; Salcedo, Francisco de; spiritual director convents, 21–28; in Ávila, 5–6; conformity in, 144n10, 155; the devil in, 38, 38n117, 39, 40, 40n124; emotional health of nuns in, 41; finances of, 8, 8n25, 9, 9n28; in Reformation controversy, 26, 26n75; self-governance of, 79n59; social hierarchy in, 9, 26–27, 27n78; Tridentine reforms in, 20, 24. See also choir; la Encarnación; enclosure; las Huelgas; Recollects; Santa Ana conversos, 15 coracha (traveling bag), 142, 142n6 Corpus Christi. See Holy (or Blessed) Sacrament Council of Trent, 18–20, 19n56, 24, 25, 26, 28, 30, 32, 41, 122n175 crown, 159; Christ’s crown of thorns, 132; of jewels, 12; like Catherine’s,

66; of sainthood, 10; of thorns of tribulation, 66 Cruz, Magdalena de la, 36 Cueto, Isabel de (aunt of Vela), 9, 10, 53, 54n5, 55, 55n11, 56, 57, 57n15, 57n17, 58 Cueto, Lorenzo (brother of Vela), 3, 9, 13, 44, 89, 97, 140, 151n30, 161n54, 162n55; as abbot, 140, 156, 156n38; as advocate for Vela’s sainthood, 13, 44; departure from Ávila, 162–63; engaged in studies, 141n2, 144, 146, 149; letters from Vela to, 3, 141–58, 162–65; as potential Recollect chaplain, 27, 142, 142n5; as Vela’s confessor, 9, 89, 97 Cuevas, Pedro de las (confessor), 78, 78n58, 145, 147 David (Hebrew king), 159, 160 Dávila, Alonso (Jesuit), 71, 74 Dávila, Gonzalo (Jesuit), 74, 74n50, 149, 149n24, 150 Dávila, María (Doña María), 59, 59n24, 65, 68, 78, 84, 91n97, 99, 108, 142, 151, 157, 158, 162, 165 Dávila, Sancho (bishop of Ávila), 8 dejamiento, 37 devil (demon), 7,11, 38, 55, 66, 67, 69, 71, 71n47, 78, 83, 85, 87, 88, 89, 98, 102–13, 116–17, 119, 121–22, 138, 147; anger of, 105, 117; as cause of illness, 79n61, 82; in convents, 38, 38n117, 39, 40–41, 40n124; at death bed, 12; meridian devil, 83, 83n72; mystics and, 33, 43; physical attacks of, 42–43, 102–3, 105, 106–7, 108, 109, 111, 113, 117; saints and, 43, 43n132, 43n133; seven demons, 106, 106n134; susceptibility of women to, 39–40; war in heaven, 43n134; and witches, 40. See also exorcism

186 Index Díaz, Francisco (senior chaplain), 87n83, 89, 89n89, 90, 95, 99, 102, 147, 147n20, 148, 148n22, 150n26 Discalced Carmelites, 73, 91n96, 92, 92n100, 94, 144, 144n13, 151, 164, 169; first houses of, 6, 20, 28, 35; monastic rule, 31; prohibition regarding convents, 95, 95n109; provincial of, 92n100, 144–45, 150n28. See also Eutropio del Carmelo; Gerónimo de San Eliseo; San José; Tomás de Jesús divine office, 21, 25, 55n10, 60, 90, 107, 112; scriptures used in, 123n182, 125n185, 130n211. See also compline; matins; prime; sext; terce; vespers doctors (medical), 76, 79n61, 80, 80n63, 104 Dominicans (Order of Saint Dominic), 70, 71, 84, 94, 97n114, 146, 148, 150, 156, 161n53, 168. See also Alarcón, Juan de; Báñez, Domingo; Ledesma, Pedro de; Martínez, Pedro; Santo Tomás Doña María. See Dávila, María dowry (of a nun), 9, 9n28 Easter, 54, 71, 79, 89, 96, 118, 154, 164, Ecce Homo (Behold the Man), 132, 132n217, 133 eggs. See under food and drink Eleven Thousand Virgins, feast day of, 116 Elijah (prophet), 63, 63n37 la Encarnación (Carmelite convent), 5, 6, 53n4 enclosure (clausura), 23–25, 23n67, 28, 41; in Cistercian convents, 23; in compliance with Council of Trent, 20, 24, 25, 28, 41; Periculoso and, 24 Enrique, king of Castile, 5 epilepsy, 9, 42, 88 Epiphany, 90, 91, 91n95, 94, 103

Ethiopian woman (Zipporah, wife of Moses), 127, 127n194 Eucharist, 42, 113; daily reception of, 17–18, 18n53; as only food, 10, 29, 62, 64, 75; taste of, 62–63. See also communion Eutropio del Carmelo (Discalced Carmelite), 94, 94n106, 95, 169 exorcism, 39–43, 42n129; manuals on, 41n127, 42; performed by a woman, 39, 39n120; as a sacrament, 41; of Vela, 42, 87, 121, 143, 147. See also devil fasting, 10, 23, 28, 29n86, 31. See also asceticism; Lent: fasting during; Vela y Cueto, María: fasting of Father Rector. See rector feast day: of Eleven Thousand Virgins, 116; of Holy Trinity, 82, 154; of the Incarnation, 136; of Saint Anne, 107, 108; of Saint Benedict of Nursia, 103, 111, 163n61; of Saint Catherine of Siena, 61, 72; of Saint Francis, 93, 120–21; of Saint James, 107, 108; of Saint John the Apostle, 110, 111; of Saint John the Baptist, 97, 160, 160n52; of Saint Joseph, 79; of Saint Matthew, 109; of Saint Michael, 109, 130; of Saint Philip and Saint James, 105; of Saint Theodore Martyr, 117; of Saint Vincent, 118, 118n169. See also Advent; Christmas; Easter; Epiphany; Holy (or Blessed) Sacrament: feast of Blessed Sacrament; Holy Week; Lent; Mary, Virgin: feast days; Pentecost; Vela y Cueto, María: effect of holy days on Felipe II, king of Spain, 7, 13, 14, 20, 24; and convent of Santa Ana, 8–9 Felipe III, king of Spain, 9 Fernando, king of Aragon, 5, 13, 15, 20, 36, 69n44

Index 187 fish. See under food and drink food and drink: aguardiente (liquor), 88, 88n87; eggs, 67, 74, 93, 96; fish, 67, 93; greens (herbs), 62, 62n35, 67, 70, 71, 71n46, 74, 91; meat, 29, 31, 58, 58n23, 63n37, 67, 74, 76, 78–79, 82, 83, 84, 88, 89, 91, 92, 103, 103n128, 104, 148; melon with sugar, 85; stew, 84. See also fasting; Vela y Cueto, María: fasting of Francis, Saint, feast day of, 93, 120–21 Franciscans (Order of Saint Francis), 47n145. See also Pedro de Alcántara, Saint friars. See Cistercians; Discalced Carmelites; Dominicans; Franciscans Frías, Father, 80, 81, 92 Gamarra, Francisco de (bishop of Ávila), 1n2, 12–13, 13n37, 44 Gerónimo de San Eliseo (Discalced Carmelite; confessor of Vela), 90–96, 91n96, 101, 102, 157, 164, 169; directives concerning Vela’s fasting, 91, 93, 96; on public penance, 92, 92n98; response to Alarcón, 155, 155n3; on Vela’s reformed clothing, 92, 93 González Hernández, Olegario, 45, 49 González Vaquero, Miguel (secular priest; confessor of Vela), 1n2, 7, 11, 12, 42, 49n148, 57n19, 97, 99–122, 136; attacked by devil, 43, 43n131, 106–7; as combatant against the devil, 41n127, 43n134, 108, 112–13, 117, 119, 119n171, 121; in letter to Lorenzo Cueto, 164; in Madrid, 27, 112, 113, 117, 169; La muger fuerte and, 7n17, 41, 41n127, 44, 45, 49, 60n29; as recipient of locutions, 113n151, 113–15; relationship with Julián de Ávila, 82n69, 102, 102n124,

164n63; rosary of, 103; suffering on behalf of Vela, 111; Vela’s dependence upon, 95–96, 101, 105, 108–9, 112, 113, 119, 122; Vela’s doubts about, 103–4, 107, 112–13; Vela’s writings and, 1, 44–45, 53n2, 98, 99, 118, 140, 161n54 greens (herbs). See under food and drink grille, 24, 94, 108,112 habit (of nuns). See clothing Holy Office. See Inquisition Holy Week, 70, 79, 96, 101, 104 Holy (or Blessed) Sacrament, 7, 57, 63, 78, 105, 113, 119, 120, 135; feast of Blessed Sacrament, 82, 82n68, 105, 105n133, 112, 119. See also communion las Huelgas (convent of Santa María la Real), 22, 22n66, 27 illumination, 66, 68, 73, 78, 82, 100, 106, 109, 113, 114, 123, 124, 126, 127, 133, 134, 163 illuminist heresy. See alumbrados imitatio Christi (imitation of Christ), 24, 28, 31, 43, 74n52, 125; Vela and, 56, 118, 138 imitation: of Saint Catherine of Siena, 61, 62, 66, 70; of Saint Martin of Tours, 77. See also imitatio Christi Incarnation, 24, 28, 124, 125, 132n217; feast of, 136 Index of Prohibited Books, 36–37, 36n110 Inquisition, 11, 13–14, 15–17, 15n44, 16n48, 36, 47; against alumbrados, 37; Alarcón as representative of, 11, 159n46; censorship of, 36–37, 36n110; Vela and, 57n19, 97–98, 162 Isabel (sister of Vela), 10 Isabel, queen of Castile, 13, 15, 19, 20, 36; in Ávila, 5; convent of Santa

188 Index Ana and, 8; monastery of Santo Tomás and, 69n44 James, Saint (Santiago), feast of, 107, 108; as Santiago del Compostela, 107n137 Jesuits (Company/Society of Jesus), 28, 28n83, 149n24, 150, 156, 164, 165, 168; and frequent communion, 17–18, 18n52; provincial of, 60n28, 69, 69n43, 70, 71, 80, 148, 149, 149n24, 150. See also Acosta, José de; Cabredo, Rodrigo; Dávila, Alonso; Dávila, Gonzalo; Labata, Father; Loyola, Saint Ignatius; Puente, Luis de la; rector; Ribera, Cristóbal de; Salcedo, Francisco de; Torres, Juan de; Villena, Diego de John of the Cross, Saint, 34, 35, 35n107 Juan de Ávila, Saint, 7, 50n149 Juana (nun in Santa Ana), 157, 162, 165 Jussie, Jeanne de, 26n75 Keyes, Francis Parkinson, 45, 45n139, 49 La muger fuerte. See González Vaquero, Miguel Labata, Father (Jesuit), 85, 168 Lady Abbess (of convent of Santa Ana): Alarcón’s letter to, 155, 159–60; anger and displeasure of, 74, 76, 77, 80; as authority over communion, 86, 88–89, 95, 98, 147; as intermediary between confessors and nuns, 82, 84–85, 89–90, 91, 120, 142, 148, 151; as recipient of illumination, 113; as supporter of Vela, 93, 147–48, 150; Vela’s complaints about, 145, 146; Vela’s controversial clothing and, 93–94, 154; Vela’s exorcism and, 96, 121, 143; Vela’s fasting and, 63–64, 69, 74–82, 89; Vela’s public penance and, 61, 91, 143, 155; Vela’s suspensions (ecstasies) and, 90. See

also Cueto, Isabel de; Mejía, María; Mercado, María; Toledo, Juana de; Vivero, Isabel de Laredo, Bernardino de (physician, mystic), 34n102 Latin: spoken by demon, 39n120; Vela’s proficiency in, 6, 36, 50, 51. See also literacy and reading Ledesma, Pedro de (Dominican), 84–85, 84n75, 85n76, 148, 148n21 Lent, 60, 67, 69, 79, 90, 111, 111n145, 118; fasting during, 93, 94, 96, 104, 117; penance during, 54, 91–92, 152n31, 155n35 literacy and reading, 6–7, 6n16, 7n19, 50. See also Audi, filia; Index of Prohibited Books; Latin Loyola, Saint Ignatius, 30, 31, 31n95, 37–38, 44, Lutherans. See Protestants Madrigal, Doctor (physician), 79n61, 80, 80n63. See also doctors Martínez, Pedro (Dominican), 69, 69n44 Mary, Virgin (mother of Christ; Our Lady), 7, 34, 77, 115, 115n159, 124, 127, 128, 129, 136, 137, 138 feast days of the Conception, 117 of the Presentation, 53, 87 of the Purification, 104, 104n132 of the Visitation, 64, 64n39; jewel of, 127, 127n195, 128 as nursing mother, 129–30, 130n207 as Our Lady of Sonsoles, 111, 111n147 rosary of, 103 Master (Canon) Salamanca, 146, 148, 148n22 matins (divine office), 21, 55, 55n10, 58, 59, 76, 79, 101, 103, 104, 107, 117, 123

Index 189 meat. See under food and drink Mejía, María (abbess of Santa Ana), 91, 91n97, 151, 151n29 Menghi, Girolamo (Franciscan demonologist): Flagellum daemonum, seu exorcismi terribiles, potentissimi, et efficacies (Scourge of the devil: terrible, mighty, and efficacious exorcisms), 42 Mercado, María (abbess of Santa Ana), 61, 61n30, 93 Mercado Grande (big market), 157, 157n43 Mercedes (Mercies). See Vela y Cueto, María: Mercedes Michael, Saint (archangel), 43n134; feast of, 109, 130 Moriscos, in Ávila, 5n13 mortification (as penance), 23, 29, 30–32, 68, 74, 80, 85, 157; Alarcón on, 32, 152–53, 155, 155n35; public mortification, 61, 61n31, 91, 92n98, 97, 141n3. See also asceticism music. See choir Muslims, in Spain, 4–5, 14–15. See also Moriscos, in Ávila mysticism, 33–38. See also alumbrados; Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint; Catherine of Siena, Saint; Cistercians; Cruz, Magdalena de la; Song of Songs; Teresa of Ávila, Saint mystics: bodies of, 33, 43; Christ’s heart and, 62n34; devotion to the Passion, 34, 34n102; forms of prayer, 54n8; frequent communion, 18n53; Song of Songs and, 35, 56n13; supporters of, 35–36, 35n108. See also Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint; Catherine of Siena, Saint; Teresa of Ávila, Saint; Vela y Cueto, María: locutions; Vela y Cueto, María: visions of

New Year’s Eve, 110 novices, in Santa Ana, 12, 26, 54n5, 151. See also Vela y Cueto, María: as novice; Vela y Cueto, María: convent offices held obedience (vow of), 21, 83, 95, 103, 108; to abbess, 74; in contract, 80, 97, 99, 100, 105, 110, 149, 149n24, 150, 150n26; owed by Vaquero to Julián, 102n124 office. See divine office Old Christians, 15 orgasm, 35 Oropesa, count of, 49n148, 58n22 Paul, Saint (apostle), 33, 39, 122, 126, 159 Pedro de Alcántara, Saint, 83, 83n73 Pentecost (Feast of the Holy Spirit), 59, 81, 82, 95, 102, 105 predestination, 122–23, 122n175 prime (divine office), 21, 55n10, 89, 89n91, 130 Protestants, 17, 20, 25, 30, 122n175; Inquisition and, 13–14, 14n40; nuns and, 26, 26n75, 28; similarity to alumbrados, 37, 37n114 Puente, Luis de la (Jesuit), 7, 66, 66n40, 67, 71, 78, 80, 168 purgatory. See under Vela y Cueto, María recollection, 54, 54n8, 61, 63, 64, 76, 88, 103, 109, 137, 138 Recollects (reformed Cistercians), 27, 28, 44, 142, 142n5, 157, 169 rector (of Jesuit college): of Ávila (College of San Gil), 90n93, 95n107, 156, 156n37; of Salamanca, 60, 60n28, 71. See also Acosta, José de; Dávila, Alonso; Labada, Father; Puente, Luis de la; Salcedo, Francisco de; Villena, Diego de

190 Index refectory, 25, 27n78, 29; Vela in, 55, 63, 64, 76, 90, 92, 104, 154 Ribera, Cristóbal de (Jesuit), 43 Rule (monastic). See Benedictine rule Sacramento, El (convent of Cistercian Recollects in Madrid), 27, 169 sacristan, 12 Salamanca, 1, 60, 60n28, 61, 71, 85n77, 93, 95, 146, 148, 148n22, 169 Salcedo, Francisco de (Jesuit; confessor of Vela): contract with Vela, 144n12, 149, 149n24, 150n26; death of, 164; family connections of, 58n22; named in locution, 84; nuns’ opinion of, 58n22; relations with abbesses, 74, 76, 77, 80–81, 89–90, 89n92; relationship with Vela after his resignation, 86, 89–90, 94, 148 (Father Rector), 148n23, 149 (Father Rector), 150 (Father Rector), 151; resignation as Vela’s director, 80–81; secret meetings with Vela, 89–90, 100–101, 102; transfer to Valladolid, 90n93; as Vela’s confessor and spiritual director, 10, 18, 58–61, 64, 66, 68–71, 74–77, 80–81, 82, 141 (Father Rector), 144 (Father Rector), 148–49 (Father Rector); Vela’s Mercedes and, 60, 60n29 San José (Discalced convent in Ávila), 6, 78n58, 82n69, 164, 164n63 Sánchez Ciruelo, Pedro: Reprobación de los supersticiones y hechicerías (Condemnation of superstitions and sorcery), 42 Santa Ana (Cistercian convent in Ávila), 1, 5, 7, 8–9, 11–12, 21, 23, 29, 29n86, 92n98, 144n11; accusations of inequality against, 26–27; record of abbesses, 10n31, 61n30; reform efforts in, 12, 12n34, 27, 142, 142n5, 156n36, 158; relationship with Dominican monastery of

Santo Tomás, 61n32, 150n26; writings of Teresa in, 50n149, 59n25 Santo Tomás (Cistercian monastery in Ávila), 45, 61n32, 69n44, 94, 168 sext (divine office), 21, 55n10, 134, 134n222 Society of Jesus. See Jesuits Solomon, 160 Song of Songs, 35, 35n107, 56n13 Sonsoles, Our Lady of, 111, 111n147 spiritual director, 86, 89, 94, 95n108, 102n124, 126n192, 146, 148, 162; contract with, 144n12, 149n24, 150n26; convent chaplain as, 150; Ledesma as, 84n75, 148, 148n21. See also Ávila, Julián de; confessors; Gerónimo de San Eliseo; González Vaquero, Miguel; Salcedo, Francisco de stew. See under food and drink stigmata, 33, 43n132 terce (divine office), 21, 55n10, 107, 131, 131n213, Teresa of Ávila, Saint (Teresa de Jesús), 6, 37–38, 40n124, 83, 101n122; asceticism and, 30–31; confessors of, 58n22, 59n25, 82n69, 101n122; as inspiration to Vela, 2, 6n16, 50n149, 55n9, 59, 59n25, 129; and Pedro Alcántara, 83n73; on prayer, 34n103, 54n8, 55n9; as reader, 34n102, 35, 36; as reformer, 6, 20, 20n60, 142n5; visions of, 127n195, 132n218; as writer, 1n3, 36–37, 46, 50, 59n25. See also la Encarnación; San José Toledo, Juana de (abbess of Santa Ana), 94, 94n105 Tomás de Jesús (Discalced Carmelite), 92–93, 92n100 Torres, Juan de (Jesuit), 71, 71n47 Uceda, duke of, 27, 169

Index 191 Vaquero. See González Vaquero, Miguel Vela y Cueto, María accused of deceit, 81, 82, 88, 147 asceticism of, 29, 55, 59–60, 62, 65, 79n62, 154–55 attempt to canonize, 12–13, 13n37, 44, 44n136 childhood, 7, 7n20 controversy over habit (aljuba), 92–94, 154, 156n37, 157–58 convent offices held (sacristan; mistress of novices), 12, 92n98, 151, 151n29 death and burial of, 1, 1n1, 7, 12, 45, 49n148, 165n65 devil’s attacks on, 103, 106, 106n134, 111, 117, 163 dissimulation of, 64, 67, 68, 72, 76, 88, 120 effect of holy days on, 54, 61, 69, 72, 79, 91, 94, 96, 103, 104, 106, 110, 111, 111n145, 112, 117, 134, 163 emulation of Catherine of Siena, 2, 61, 62, 63, 66, 70, 129n206 exorcism attempts on, 42, 87, 121, 143, 147 family of, 3, 7–8, 9–10, 11, 13, 44, 54n5, 84, 84n75, 85n76, 89, 97, 140 letters to siblings, 141–52, 154–58, 162–65 fasting of, 10, 29, 29n87, 62–72, 74–76, 78–79, 81–83, 89, 91, 93, 96 finances, 9, 9n28 illnesses, 9–10, 54, 57, 58, 76, 76n53, 76–77, 79, 84, 93, 96, 110, 111, 119, 120 injuries, 90, 103, 163 Inquisition and, 11, 97–98, 162 jaw impediment, 69–71, 76, 79–82, 84, 85–87, 91, 113, 119, 121, 132, 143, 147, 154, literacy of, 6–7, 6n16, 36, 50–51

locutions, 51, 55, 55n12, 60, 66, 70, 73, 75, 77, 79, 81–83, 86–88, 90–91, 93, 95–96, 103, 113n151, 113–17, 122–38 Mercedes, 2n5, 44–45, 60, 60n29 as novice, 53–54, 54n5 as organist, 11, 54n6, 128 public penance (mortification) of, 61, 61n31, 91–92, 92n98, 141n3 Alarcón’s rebuke of, 152–53, 155, 155n35 purgatory and, 57, 57n19, 116 as reformer, 12, 12n34, 141, 142, 142n5, 156, 158 as spouse (wife) of Christ, 56, 113, 127, 129, 136, 137, 159, 160 Vida of alterations in original manuscript, 77n56, 85n78, 85n79, 100n119, 100n120, 102n125, 103n131, 116n163, 122n174, 135n224, 158n44 genre, 46–47, 46n143, 77n54 history of, 1, 45–46, 49, 49n148, 58n22 motivation for writing, 1–2, 2n5, 3–4, 45, 47–48, 53, 53n2, 99, 118 stylistic features of, 50 visions of, 12, 127–28, 129, 130–35 doubts about visions, 60n28, 110, 110n144 See also communion; confessors; devil; Gerónimo de San Eliseo; González Vaquero, Miguel; Lady Abbess; Salcedo, Francisco de; spiritual director vespers (divine office), 21, 55n10, 107, 110, 130n211 vida por mandato (autobiography by mandate), 47, 47n146 Villena, Diego de (Jesuit), 95, 95n107, 96, 156n37, 162, 162n56, 168 virginity, 23, 24, 24n69, 28; and porta clausa 24n70. See also celibacy

192 Index Virgin Mary. See Mary, Virgin Vivero, Isabel de (abbess of Santa Ana), 69, 121, 121n173, 152 Zipporah (wife of Moses). See Ethiopian woman Zuniga, Ana María de (sister-in-law of Vela), 142, 162n57, 165n65