Josefa de la Provincia

Gender:Female

Ethnic origen: White

Events:

1790  -  Callao  -  Unknown  -  She wrote about her life in the Carmelite nunnery of Beaterio de Las Nazarenas of El Callao, where she was a nun.

Connections:

Nuns
Writers (women) others

Biography:
She was a nun at the austere Carmelite nunnery of Beaterio de Las Nazarenas of El Callao (founded around 1680, and recognised by the church in 1738). Inmates went barefoot, and wore coarse robes with a rope around their necks. Under their veils were crowns of thorns. When they appeared in public for some functions they carried wooden crosses. Fasting was encouraged, silence imposed. Inmates slept on wooden boards. The convent was small; spurned by the upper classes. In 1790 Josefa de la Providencia wrote of it: “In the beginning the Lord brought Las Nazarenas neither countesses nor marchionesses, only poor and humble women.” If small, the convent was respected and admired. It survived Independence and Martín wrote “it remains to this day a fine example of female monasticism in the heart of old Lima”. (Martín, 202-205)

References:

Martín, Luis (1983) Daughters of the Conquistadores: Women of the Viceroyalty of Peru