Nuns Navigating the Spanish Empire

by Sarah E Owens

Nuns Navigating the Spanish Empire tells the remarkable story of a group of nuns who traveled halfway around the globe in the seventeenth century to establish the first female Franciscan convent in the Far East. In 1620 Sor Jerónima de la Asunción (1556â€"1630) and her cofounders left their cloistered convent in Toledo, Spain, journeying to Mexico to board a Manila galleon on their way to the Philippines. Sor Jerónima is familiar to art historians for her portrait by Velázquez that hangs in the Prado Museum in Madrid. What most people do not know is that one of her travel companions, Sor Ana de Cristo (1565â€"1636), wrote a long biographical account of Sor Jerónima and their fifteen-month odyssey. Drawing from Sor Ana’s manuscript, other archival sources, and rare books, Owens’s study offers a fascinating view of travel, evangelization, and empire.

208 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2017

Reviews

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

An account of a group of Franciscan nuns who travelled from Toledo, across the Atlantic and through Mexico, then across the Pacific to found a convent in Manila in the 1620s. Fascinating details about the conditions on board the galleons, the nuns' attitudes toward indigenous populations, and ... rosary beads with miraculous healing powers! Excellent bibliography. Would make a good text for a course on early modern colonialism or early modern women.