Return to the index of "Other Women's Voices."

Updated 06-04-09

Maria de San Jose Salazar (1548-1603)

=======================================================================
"BECAUSE A WOMAN HAD BEGUN AND CONTINUED THIS WORK...."
=======================================================================

Maria Salazar gave her parents' names when she entered the monastery, but we know nothing else about them or about her place of birth. She was raised and well educated in Toledo by the wealthy aristocrat Luisa de la Cerda, perhaps a relative. When Maria was 14, Teresa of Avila (in the midst of planning her first reformed Carmelite foundation at Avila) stayed at Cerda's palace for six months; the young girls there were fascinated by her, but after she left, Maria continued with what she describes as her great loves, "music, conversation, and finery" (Powell, 2002, p.44).

Four years later, Teresa came again for a month's visit; this time conversations with her led Maria to think about religious life. Two years after that, Teresa founded a monastery in the small town of Malagon, for which Cerda had provided both land and an income. In 1570, the 22-year-old Maria entered Malagon as Maria de San Jose. Within two years she was elected to the monastery's top position, that of prioress.

In 1575 Teresa decided to make a foundation at Seville, the chief city of Andalusia, and she chose Maria to go with her and to become the first prioress there. Teresa stayed with Maria in Seville for a year; when the monastery's church was dedicated, Teresa left, and Maria never saw her again. They kept up a regular correspondence, however, and the closeness begun during their year together continued to grow. Although Maria's letters are lost, Teresa's 64 extant letters to her reveal frequent disagreement but also affection and respect. In the year of her death Teresa wrote, "You say everything so well that if my opinion were followed, they would elect you foundress after my death" (Kavanaugh, vol. 2, p.522).

1575 was not a good year to begin to lead a reformed monastery in an important city like Seville. Those Carmelite friars who had not joined Teresa's reform had earlier treated the "Discalced" ("barefoot") nuns and friars as a nuisance, but as the reformers increased in numbers and in influence, some of the leaders of the "calced" friars, who still had authority over the reformed houses, decided to take action. At the end of 1575, Maria was denounced to the Inquisition over what should have been an internal matter, but nothing came of it. Three years later, both Maria and the 63-year-old Teresa were accused of sexual impropriety with one of the leaders of the Discalced friars, Jeronimo de la Madre de Dios Gratian. The Calced superiors deprived Maria of her office and had her imprisoned in her own convent. Maria was by no means the only one in trouble: Teresa had been confined to her monastery in Avila; Gratian had been physically attacked; another leader, John of the Cross, had been abducted and imprisoned.

In 1579, Maria must have thought the worst was over: the Discalced houses were removed from the jurisdiction of the Calced superiors, she was released and restored to office (and soon unanimously re-elected as prioress). 1581 saw the Discalced made into a new province, totally separated from the Calced, with Gratian elected as the first Provincial Superior, and a Constitution for the nuns (designed by Teresa and Gratian) that gave individual nuns considerable freedom in their spiritual lives and that gave prioresses a major role in the spiritual guidance of their sisters.

In 1582, however, Teresa died, and although Gratian remained as Provincial until 1585, one group among the Discalced friars began to argue for less individual freedom and a consolidation of power; their leader was Nicolas de Jesus Maria Doria. It may have been at this time that Maria began her first major work, Libro de recreaciones (Book of recreations), which would defend Teresa's teachings and the right of nuns to determine their own spirituality.

In 1584 Gratian sent Maria to Lisbon to found the first Discalced house in Portugal, where she continued work on Recreaciones; she would be re-elected prioress for 14 of her 20 years there. But in the following year Gratian's term was up, and he was followed as Provincial by Doria, who soon began to attack Gratian for being too soft. When Maria wrote letters defending him, Doria forbade her to speak to or write to Gratian. More seriously, Doria proposed changes in the nuns' Constitutions, eliminating their right to choose a confessor and their times of communal recreation, regimenting their prayer life, and severely restricting the role of prioresses in giving spiritual guidance.

In 1590, at the request of Maria and a prioress at Madrid, Ana de Jesus, the pope confirmed the right of the nuns to use the 1581 Constitution; however, he died the same year and his successor rescinded the approval. Doria removed both Maria and Ana de Jesus from office. When others pointed out to Doria that Teresa had been quite competent as a spiritual advisor, he replied in a 1591 letter, "For although God on occasion permits a woman to teach and be of assistance to the Church, that is one thing... but the universal doctrine of the Church is that the woman wait in silence and in full submission" (Weber, p.146). Meanwhile, Maria used her time out of office to continue to write, both poetry (including an elegia on Teresa) and a handbook for prioresses (Consejos que da una priora).

In 1592, Doria's new Constitution was approved and Gratian was expelled from the order. In the following year the Discalced Carmelites were made a separate order, with Doria as the first Vicar General. Maria was sentenced to imprisonment in her cell for one year. There she wrote Carta de una pobre y presa descalza (Letter from a poor, imprisoned discalced nun) and began an account of her 1578 imprisonment. This time, she was in prison only nine months, for Doria died and was replaced by a more lenient leader.

From 1594 to 1600, Maria's life appears to have been peaceful; she recorded testimony for Teresa's beatification, and later wrote in the form of a dialogue between two nuns directions for the formation of both male and female Discalced Carmelite novices, La instruccion de las novicias (1602). However, by then a new Vicar General had been elected, a follower of Doria. We don't know what her final offense was, but in 1603, the new General sent Maria to an isolated house in Castile, where the 55-year-old was apparently to be treated as a prisoner, not as a community member. She died shortly after her arrival.

Maria always saw her writings as defenses of Teresa's teachings against those who would ignore them. What Doria and his party saw as unacceptable laxity among the nuns, Maria and those who agreed with her saw as a specifically feminine spirituality, one that focused on the individual as well as on the group.

On this page you'll find:

Links to helpful sites online.

Excerpts from translations in print:
Libro de recreaciones (1580s)
Elegia (early 1590s)
Carta de una pobre y presa descalza  (1593)

Information about secondary sources.

=======================================================================

Online

1. In S.C. O'Mahony's translation of Ildefonso Moriones' 1978 Teresian Carmel: Pages of History, all of Chapters 8, 10-12, 14, and the start of Chapter 18 are valuable for historical background, but for quotes from and references to Maria de San Jose, you can go directly to these sections:

(a) In Chapter 10, use your browser's search engine to go to "poem" for seven stanzas of a 1586 poem by Maria on resisting the "new perfections" of Doria and his party, "Be not deceived by their talk."
(b) Near the start of Chapter 12, Maria's 1594 expression of joy on the election of Doria's successor, "His election fills us with hope."
(c) About three-fourths of the way down the page of Chapter 14, a 1700s Carmelite historian's view of the earlier "character assassination" of Teresa, Maria and others.

2. In Spanish:

(a) Go to the second use of "Maria" for a passage from Recreaciones which describes Teresa of Avila's physical appearance.
(b) In this volume of an 1851 edition of Teresa's works, links to the eleven letters from Teresa to Maria (Cartas LIV-LXIV); Maria's own letters have been lost.
(c) At this site you can download PDF files of two Spanish-language essays by Maria del Pilar Manero Sorolla: "Exilios y destierros en la vida y en la obra de Maria de Salazar" (1988), and "Un diálogo de carmelitas primitivo traducido al frances : Pour l'instruction de novices de María de San Jose (Salazar)" (1991). For information on a 2004 English-language essay by Manero Sorolla, see below, under "Secondary sources."

3. The portrait of Teresa painted by Juan de la Miseria at the Seville monastery in 1576, at Maria's request. Maria said of it, "I hope to make a record of it... so that the Sisters who are still to come may know the clothing... that their Mother wore, and that are worn in all our convents" (Powell, p.134).

4. Reviews (For excerpts from the translations, see below, under "In print"; for information on the other books' treatment of Maria, see "Secondary sources"):

(a) Barbara Dale May on the 1989 anthology of translations, Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in Their Own Works.
(b) Ellen Moody on the 2005 essay collection, Women's Letters Across Europe, 1400-1700: Form and Persuasion.
(c) Bethany Aram Worzella on the 2004 collection, Power and Gender in Renaissance Spain: Eight Women of the Mendoza Family, 1450-1650; elsewhere, another review, this by Theresa Earenfight.

5. For historical background, a 1550-1600 chronology of Carmelite history; note near the bottom of the page the activities of the years after 1582 for the changes that followed Teresa's death and which affected Maria.

=======================================================================

In print

Libro de recreaciones

[Amanda Powell has translated the extant part of Maria's Libro de recreaciones (the work's ending is missing). Alison Weber's introduction is informative, discussing among other things Maria's re-writing of parts of Teresa's Libro de la vida in Chapter 8. The notes are generally helpful; the bibliography includes the few English-language studies available. (See the book's table of contents online.):]

Book for the hour of recreation / Maria de San Jose Salazar; introduction and notes by Alison Weber; translation by Amanda Powell (The other voice in early modern Europe). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. (xxx, 173 p.)
LC#: BX4700.T4 M313 2002;   ISBN: 0226734544, 0226734552
Includes bibliographical references (p. 165-168) and index

----------------------------------------------------------
"...to create some sort of living representation."
----------------------------------------------------------

[In the opening, addressed to "the nuns of the Discalced Carmelite Order," Maria explains why she has used the dialogue form, in which several speakers express various views:]

I have wished, my Sisters, that all persons might know of this angelic Life. I would not be so bold as to write these dialogues but to satisfy in some measure the great desire that is mine, and because I believe my writing may work to some good effect.

...[M]any things that I include here seem irrelevant and serve only to make the work long-winded, such as the quarrels between the nuns and other extraneous conversations that are mixed in beside the point. In this regard I declare that my chief intent is to portray the nuns' friendly conversation and way of life.... It did not seem to me that this could be indicated by words alone, however earnestly I might speak them, but rather that I would have to create some sort of living representation, though at the same time as if it were all painted.        [p.33]

--------------------------------------------
"...so that not one jot may be lost."
--------------------------------------------

[Maria calls on her sisters for action and for loyalty to the teachings of Teresa, "our Captain":]

Dearest Sisters, it now lies with you to make mighty efforts to follow our Captain, eschewing any womanish spirit. You must give a thousand lives so that not one jot may be lost of what was renewed by dint of such labor.        [p.34]

---------------------------------------------------------------
"...things... that are perforce hidden from the men."
---------------------------------------------------------------

[Recreaciones records nine conversations over a period of six days. In the first conversation, one of the nuns, Justa (whose role in the dialogues is always to be a bit nervous of going too far) asks Gracia (who speaks for Maria and who keeps admitting she shouldn't speak of certain topics --- and then does so) to write down what she knows of Teresa. Gracia replies:]

"...[W]hat daunts me most is being a woman, who by the law that custom has created seems to have been forbidden to write, and with good reason, for it is women's proper task to spin and to sew, since having no learning, they tread perilously close to error in what ever they might say."

"I admit," answered Justa, "that it would be a very great error to write about or meddle in Scripture, or in learned things, I mean, for those women who know no more than women, for there have been many who have been equal and even superior in learning to a great many men.

"But let us leave that aside; what harm can there be if women write of household things? For they also have the duty, as do men, of recording the virtues and good works of their mothers and teachers, concerning things that only those women who tell of them could know, that are perforce hidden from the men; besides which, it may be that such writings, though written in ignorance and without style, will be better suited to the women in days to come, than if they were written by men, because when it comes to writing and speaking of the courage and virtue of women, we usually consider them [men] to be somewhat doubtful, and at times they may do us harm, because it is impossible that the heroic virtues of so many weak women should not cause them embarrassment...."        [p.37]

----------------------------------------------------------
"...frightens away those frail men and women."
----------------------------------------------------------

[Gracia describes what she learned from meeting Teresa. Justa's nervous response suggests that Gracia is referring to those new men among the Discalced who believed that religious life must be "harsh and difficult":]

"In truth I believe that if those whose work it is to bring souls to God were to use the same schemes and skill that were used by this saint [Teresa], many more women would come to religious life than are coming now; for, since our nature is inclined to seek gladness and to flee travail, then to depict virtue and service to God as harsh and difficult frightens away those frail men and women who have not tasted how sweet it is to suffer for Christ."

"It seems to me, Sister Gracia, said Justa, "that you are meddling in what has not been asked of you, nor is it yours to do."          [p.45]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"...obliged to think according to a pattern... devised for them."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

[One of Teresa's prime teachings had been that each nun must be free to pray in whatever manner suited her. After her death, the stricter elements among the Discalced confessors were emphasizing uniform methods of prayer. On the fourth day, Atanisia (an older nun who had traveled with Teresa for years) says:]

"It may well be that those who teach such things know what they are talking about, but I think there are few who understand them. I myself have seen certain people who you would think had been ordered to enter purgatory when they have to do one hour of prayer all in the dark and are obliged to think according to a pattern they have devised or one that has been devised for them."       [p.88]

----------------------------------------
"...another woman gets it right."
----------------------------------------  

[And when Justa asks the holy Atanisia to tell her method of prayer, Atanisia answers:]

"...[W]hen there so many books of prayer written by such learned and holy men, it is temerity and boldness to look for a woman's rules for prayer, especially from a woman such as I."

"Now drop all these expressions of humility," said Justa; "I know perfectly well what you are... But I am of the opinion that men miss the mark in the tiny and tangential little things to which, as it happens, we women are subject through our weak and imperfect nature. For having no experience of such things, men are not likely to come to them by study, just as we see that great physicians often err in prescribing a cure for women's ailments, while another woman gets it right."              [pp.90-91]

-----------------------------------------------------
"There is no reason for us to be excluded."
-----------------------------------------------------

[When on the fifth day, Gracia compares Teresa to the "worthy wife" of Proverbs, Justa again gets nervous about Gracia's speaking of Scripture. Gracia reminds her of Justa's own earlier statement that women may talk of women's things:]

"You gave me license then, and you may do so again now, for I would have you know that I am opposed to all extremes."

"And what do you call extremes?" asked Justa.

"I shall tell you," said Gracia. "I consider an extreme, Sister, what men so frequently use against poor women; for when they see women speaking of God, they are scandalized and put fear into the women. I consider certain women to be extreme who are falsely bookish and bold, meddling in what they know nothing about. And between these two extremes I see Our Lord and Treasure, who shows us the middle way as our true path..."

[Gracia points out that Jesus had "a long and lofty conversation" with the Samaritan woman and had Mary Magdalene report his resurrection to his male disciples:]

"So there is no reason for us to be excluded from speaking and communicating with God, nor should we be kept from telling of His greatness or from wanting to know of the teachings...."            [pp.101-102]

---------------------------------------------------------
"...abominations that they now want to revive."
---------------------------------------------------------

[After describing the foundation of the monastery at Seville, Maria speaks of the problems she faced there. The most serious came in 1578, when Maria was imprisoned because of accusations made by the Calced friars. Accusations were also made against Teresa of crimes she was supposed to have committed in Seville in 1575-76; Maria tells in more detail than anyone else what those accusations were (Teresa herself speaks only of "calumnies"):]

"...the lies that they themselves had invented... especially about our holy Mother, in a suit these fathers had brought against her with the most abominable and filthy words that can be imagined. of the best of them, all that can be said is that they are unmentionable.

"But so that you may see the Devil's malice, I shall mention one or two. They said: 'They had to put that old woman into the hands of white men and black men so that she could have her fill of wickedness; and she would carry young women from place to place, under the pretense of founding convents, so that they could be just as wicked.' They said these things and even worse in that suit, with each man declaring what he felt about our holy Mother.

[Maria then moves immediately to the present: in the mid-1580s some of the Discalced friars were accusing Maria and Gracian of equally immoral actions:]

"Let our own priests see now whether they ought to hold this opinion of our Mother, because these men said things like this about her --- since it seems to them that some of us should be considered vile, for such tongues once spoke infamy of us with abominations that they now want to revive."             [p.155]

----------------------------------------------------
"Many disdained it and spoke badly of it."
----------------------------------------------------

[When in 1580, the pope allowed the Discalced Carmelites to become a separate province, Teresa's name was not mentioned in the pope's order, nor apparently in the request for it:]

There is no mention made in it [the papal brief] of our Mother, or that she first founded the convents of nuns or began the friars, because this grace was requested in tumultuous times. And because a woman had begun and continued this work, many disdained it and spoke badly of it --- it was for this reason that our holy Mother did not want herself or her nuns to be recorded any more than had already been done.          [pp.158-59]

=======================================================================

Elegia; Carta de una pobre y presa descalza  

[The first chapter of this anthology includes Powell's translation of excerpts from Elegia (early 1590s), Carta de una pobre y presa descalza (1593), and Libro de recreaciones. For all the excerpts, a modernized Spanish is also given. The introduction by Electa Arenal and Stacey Schlau analyzes these works and La instruccion de las novicias (not translated here); they also give some verses from three other poems by Maria. The book's notes and index are helpful:]

Untold sisters: Hispanic nuns in their own works / [edited by] Electa Arenal & Stacey Schlau; translations by Amanda Powell. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, c1989. (xiv, 450 p.: ill.; 27 cm)
LC#: BX4220.S7 U58 1989;   ISBN: 0826311059, 0826311067
Bibliography: p. 429-437. Includes index

Elegia

----------------------------------------
"She did impose a law of love."
----------------------------------------

[Elegia mourns not Teresa's death but rather that "they," the men now leading the order, had abandoned her teachings and so removed her from the order she had founded:]

How then, Teresa---star most pure and bright
in all our firmament---did they pluck you hence,
and thus give rise to all our woe and strife?...

What field or pasture ever has grown greener;
what flock was better shepherded and tended
than her own flock was tended by Teresa?

Better than any shepherdess, she did
impose a law of love, for love prevails
upon the almighty, great, and supreme King....       [p.114]

--------------------------------------------------------------------
"The dogs...now turn ferocious, and attack like wolves."
--------------------------------------------------------------------

[Now addressing Teresa, Maria tells her that the nuns had lost all of their rights and that those who resisted were being attacked:]

See how our verdant field is dry and parched,
and if in rapturous dreaming sleep you lie,
let our desolate moaning call you back.

See how your little flock is scattered wide,
how all the mountain's summit is laid waste,
and here and there your sheep go, terrified.

The dogs, ordained to guard us against thieves,
instead, against the simple, trusting herd
now turn ferocious, and attack like wolves.

Alack, for the mournful flock that has been sundered!
No little huts remain, no shepherdess,
for everyone is banished from the herd,

considered a stranger and a traitoress.          [p.115]

------------------------------------------------------------
"Though they make me mute, I have not moved."
------------------------------------------------------------

[Maria, however, will continue to resist:]

But though I be least of all, I am resolved
to suffer all I must, in every way,
for though they make me mute, I have not moved,

nor shall they move me in little things or great,
however much their trials intend to chasten,
reviling and trampling me like lowly clay....        [p.115]

-------------------------------------------------------
"...and rising, falls, just like a miller's wheel."
-------------------------------------------------------

[If some hoped that time would make bring about a change of fortune, Maria will rely only on Mary, the patron of Carmel:]

Evil is prized, set high upon the hill,
while good is persecuted and belittled,
and rising, falls, just like a miller's wheel.

But as all things must change, wait just a little,
you who do steadily lose all your hopes,
for in its frenzied changes, time is fickle.

But oh! if change consoles you, you should know
not to expect it to the good; we see
setting hand to fortune's wheel cannot be so,

as it holds within itself all vanity.
But in my Virgin shall I put my faith,
for from her hand all good things we do receive

and soon she will dismiss these fleeting trials,
turning again to tend to all her flock
which on her shelter and her help relies,
and which I know she never will forsake.         [pp.116-17]

Carta de una pobre y presa descalza  

-----------------------------------------------------------
"They bind my tongue,... they close my eyes...."
-----------------------------------------------------------

[Imprisoned in her cell in 1593, unable to speak to her sisters, Maria tries to console them --- and herself --- by assuring them that God is bringing good out of evil:]

They bind my tongue, thinking it has moved to speak vain things, and the Lord unties it from its dullness and punishes the sloth it has shown toward his praises;

they close my eyes, believing them to see what they should not, and Lord opens them with new light and understanding...;

they shut up my ears, and Christ purifies them and permits them to hear His divine inspirations to which so many times they have been deaf;

they hobble my steps, thinking that all those I take are founded in evil, and Christ guides them straight to Himself, thus purging those I took in days past when I sought my own whims;

they close the door that others may not be seen or spoken to, and at this the Creator opens His heart to us that there we may communicate with those Sisters whom we love in Him.            [pp.110-11]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"...whom we have helped to raise up to the position they hold."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

[She urges the nuns to resist the bitterness she herself is all too obviously feeling:]

Do not be dismayed, dearest Sisters, now should your faith grow weak to see that it seems the Lord has left us so long in the hands of those who persecute us and afflict us....

Nor should it become bitter for you to see that those who keep us thus, are the very same, whom not only have we not offended, but whom indeed we have served and loved in the Lord, and who have most sold themselves to us as friends, and whom we have helped to raise up to the position they hold; and, what might hurt most sore, that they are, in sum, those whom God has obliged to help and defend us.            [p.111]

----------------------------------------------------
"...what is always my intent in all I write."
----------------------------------------------------

[Although she has no way of getting this letter to the nuns, Maria knows that they will pray and that God will let them know how she feels:]

....[F]or I have faith in your help and such trust in your spiritual ears that I believe they attend to what I say here. And therefore I do not consider what I write to be in vain, though I know that you cannot read it; but it shall also serve what is always my intent in all I write, which is to have a witness, before God and man, which may accuse me if I should act contrary to what I write here with my hand; and also to show that I hold you ever present, and you shall never leave my memory, although they have sequestered me in such a narrow prison.         [p.111]

-------------------------------------
"It is not right that we resist."
-------------------------------------

[She tries to summon up love for those who have imprisoned her, and resignation (but she would continue to resist until her death):]

I humbly beg you all, so that our merit may increase before our King, that we all agree to this: to love those who afflict us, not as enemies but as true friends and benefactors, and for the sake of our great friend Christ.

...[I]t is not right that we resist those who wish to afflict us, but we should rather show ourselves to be well content and they shall be so too.       [p.111]

=======================================================================

Secondary sources

[Use the indices in the two volumes of Kieran Kavanaugh's translation of the collected letters to see Teresa's 64 extant letters to Maria. Teresa apparently wrote more often to Maria than to anyone except Gratian. Most of the letters written between June 1578 and June 1579 are lost, turned over by Maria to investigating authorities. The extant letters reveal one side of what appears to have been an interesting conversation between two strong women:]

The collected letters of St. Teresa of Avila / translated, with an introduction by Kieran Kavanaugh. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2001, 2007. (2 v.)
LC#: BX4700.T4 A31 2001;   ISBN: 0935216278,  9780935216431
Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents v. 1. 1546-1577; v.2. 1578-1582.
----------------------

[Alison Weber's essay in this collection, "'Dear Daughter': Reform and Persuasion in St. Teresa's Letters to Her Prioresses," discusses the structure and style of the letters sent to the women leading her monasteries, and the ones most often quoted are to Maria. Weber emphasizes the differences between the letters to the prioresses and Teresa's other letters, illustrating their informality and humor. All quoted passages are given in Weber's translation, with the original given in the notes. (See the book's table of contents online.):]

Women's letters across Europe, 1400-1700: form and persuasion / edited by Jane Couchman, Ann Crabb (Women and gender in the early modern world). Aldershot, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, c2005. (xv, 336 p.: ill.)
LC#: PN4400 .W66 2005;   ISBN: 075465107X
Includes bibliographical references (p. [315]-327) and index
-------------------

[This earlier article by Weber discusses the innovations Teresa made when she designed the "Constitutions" for her nun's monasteries --- and what happened to those innovations after her death. Telling of the later years, Weber gives her translation of brief passages from Maria's 1590 Consejos que da una priora and her 1602 La instruccion de novicias, neither of which has yet been fully translated. (See the issue's table of contents online.):]

Weber, Alison. Spiritual administration: Gender and discernment in the Carmelite reform. Sixteenth Century Journal, 31 (2000), 127-50.
LC#: D220 .S57; ISSN: 0361-0160
----------------------

[Maria Pilar Manero Sorolla's essay in this collection, "On the Margins of the Mendozas: Luisa de la Cerda and Maria de San Jose (Salazar)," describes the lives of two women distantly related to the powerful Spanish family of the Mendozas; it was Luisa de la Cerda who raised Maria and who endowed the foundation Maria would enter. Manero Sorolla discusses Maria's writing, including a good amount of poetry written between 1567 and 1600. Quoted passages are given in Manero Sorolla's translation. (See the book's table of contents online.):]

Power and gender in Renaissance Spain: eight women of the Mendoza family, 1450-1650 / edited by Helen Nader (Hispanisms). Urbana: University of Illinois Press, c2004. (x, 208 p.: ill.)
LC#: CT1357.M46 P68 2004;   ISBN: 0252028686, 025207145X
Includes bibliographical references and index
----------------------

[Lisa Vollendorf's study includes a brief (pp.178-79) but clear description of the content of the 1602 La instruccion de novicias, and its emphasis on the need for nuns' education. (See the book's table of contents online.):]

Vollendorf, Lisa. The lives of women: a new history of inquisitional Spain. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2005. (xiv, 266 p)
LC#: HQ1693 .V65;   ISBN: 0826514812
Includes bibliographical references (p. 201-256) and index
----------------------

[Stacey Schlau's 7-page entry on Maria in this reference work discusses Libro de recreaciones and gives a brief history of the critical response to her work. (See the book's table of contents online.):]

Spanish women writers: a bio-bibliographical source book / edited by Linda Gould Levine, Ellen Engelson Marson, and Gloria Feiman Waldman. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993. (xxxiv, 596 p.)
LC#: PQ6055 .S63 1993; ISBN: 0313268231
Includes bibliographical references and indexes

=======================================================================

Updated 06-04-09

Return to the index of "Other Women's Voices."