We present here all the Inquisitional records concerning the trial for heresy in 1661 of the
Convent of San José in Mexico city. The documents contained in the folder are varied – from
letters to depositions, to transcriptions of hearings and cross examinations. The trial of an
institution for heresy is an exceptional event and makes these documents an extremely
valuable historical source. The female Carmelite Order of course had a history of unpleasant
encounters with the Inquisition – initiated by the Holy Office’s investigation of the founding
mother Teresa of Avila. After her death however, the Order had become one of the spearheads
of the Counter Reformation and was considered a bulwark of orthodoxy – so much so that
Teresa of Avila was eventually canonized in 1622. In the New World, the Carmelite convents
were elite institutions that symbolized the successful evangelisation of the Indies. This convent
of Mexican Carmelite nuns stood accused of having incurred in heresy because of the mistaken
religious beliefs revealed to be held by many of its nuns during its battle with a succession of
Bishops of the city to have exclusively male Carmelite confessors tend to the nuns. The lay and
regular clergy in the Viceroyalty were at the time at loggerheads over many different kinds of
institutional and administrative privileges and the high profile clergymen – most famously
Archbishop Palafox – involved make it apparent that the stakes were high. Clearly, this quarrel
in the convent had direct links to the larger quarrel outside its walls. Even within the convent
however, opinion was divided over the issue of confessors, with some nuns preferring
Carmelites and others lay clergymen, and it is clear from the sources that the nuns themselves
were responsible for the involvement of the Holy Office: they had informed against each other.
The power and significance of the text made available in digital transcript here is unique. As
Carlo Ginzburg and many other scholars of Inquisition sources have eloquently pointed out, the
documents contained in the archives of the Holy Office afford an unparalleled insight into the
past. Often, they give a literal ‘voice’ (through the transcription of cross examinations and
depositions) to historical actors who would normally not have been heard. This is precisely the
case in relation the convent of San José whose inhabitants, as women and as nuns, would not
have normally had their opinions documented in this form. Moreover, precisely because
Inquisition sources have as a subject what was considered marginal, deviant, criminal or
heterodox, they simultaneously reveal what was most central and most valued in a society.
Thus, in the documents connected to this particular trial we read accounts of failed convent
communities and individual nuns and simultaneously learn what was considered an ideal
community and an exemplary nun. What is extraordinary is the way such representations are
constructed: the documents offer an arresting wealth of detail about quotidian life in New
World convents – this is a practical ideal, far from the hagiographic and model literature on
nuns and convents which is so common in this period. This detail – from food to clothing, from
furnishings to pets - would be welcome enough but moreover these sources also seem to reveal
the character of each historical figure giving evidence – an effect of reading the voices of the
dead (the transcripts of cross examination) of which so much of Inquisitional documentation
consists. These voices tell us of a convent riven by rivalries – spiritual, political and above all,
personal. All these rivalries are about power and hierarchy and about who or which group
should exercise it or dominate it. The sources also reveal a fascinating manipulation of racial
categories by the nuns who label each other variously criollas (born in the Americas),
gachupinas (of Peninsular birth), indias and negras in a powerful demonstration of how racial
and spiritual purity were conceived as related. Moreover, the kinds of associations made
between character and race (criollas are lazy, gachupinas are honest, indias are sensuous,
negras are frivolous) show how commonplace the various intellectual discourses of climatic and
other determinisms had become. Once again however, the value of this source is demonstrated
as they supply arrestingly detailed information of how such a link between discourse and
practice was enacted in the convent. In this particular case, the nuns document how the
associations between race and spirituality are linked intimately to a politics of food in the
convent with more orthodox (Peninsular) nuns eating Spanish food and the spiritually suspect
nuns (criollas )feasting on the New World fare of chiles and chocolate.
We present here the first fifty pages of the documents contained in the trail folder. At the
moment only obvious errors of transcription have been corrected and any oddities of grammar
or spelling noted in the text. In the second stage of this project, this work will be extended to
the whole of the documentation and in the final stage a detailed check will be made against the
original manuscripts to ensure the soundness and accuracy of the digital version.
In conjunction with this transcript we also reproduce, with the kind permission of Texas
University Press, a chapter from the book Colonial Angels: Narratives of Gender and Spirituality
in Mexico 1580-1750 (Austin: Texas UP, 2000) [www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/samcol.html)
which provides a cultural and historical interpretation of the source in the broader context of
female spirituality in the New World.