Laywomen and the Making of Colonial Catholicism in New Spain, 1630–1790: 110 (Cambridge Latin American Studies, Series Number 110)
Cambridge University Press, 8/16/2018
EAN 9781107199408, ISBN10: 1107199409
Hardcover, 294 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm
Language: English
In the first history of laywomen and the church in colonial Mexico, Jessica L. Delgado shows how laywomen participated in and shaped religious culture in significant ways by engaging creatively with gendered theology about women, sin, and guilt in their interactions with church sacraments, institutions, and authorities. Taking a thematic approach, using stories of individuals, institutions, and ideas, Delgado illuminates the diverse experiences of urban and rural women of Indigenous, Spanish, and African descent. By centering the choices these women made in their devotional lives and in their relationships to the aspects of the church they regularly encountered, this study expands and challenges our understandings of the church's role in colonial society, the role of religion in gendered and racialized power, and the role of ordinary women in the making of colonial religious culture.
Part I. Introduction. Troubling Devotion
Laywomen and Religious Culture in New Spain
1. Sacramental learning
2. Public and scandalous sin
3. Ambivalent witnesses and local inquisitions
Part II. Introduction. Places and Practices of Cloister
4. Cloister for the poor and virtuous
5. Cloister for the unruly and unhappy
6. In the convent but not of it
Epilogue
laywomen making colonial Catholicism.