Revista Korpus 21 - Volumen 4, número 10

KORPUS 21, VOL. 4, NÚM. 10, 2024, 67-78
dation in 1754) to “death” (the excloistering in
1863). 4 That story would include the rebellion, of
course, but it would aim for a more expansive
explanation of how the convent turned out the
way it did, one that did not assume at the outset
that the rebellion was the defining feature
of the convent’s troubled history. In the end the
book had six chapters, only two of which were
squarely centered on the rebellion. 5
Biography of a convent
Thinking of a convent as the subject of a biography
meant, inevitably, being open to granting
an inanimate institution a degree of agency, independent
of the agency of the individual actors
that appear in the story. Much of the scholarship
on “things” as agents had yet to be written at
the time I was working on my book, but I was
aware of Alfred Gell’s recent book arguing that
point (Gell, 1998). 6 And indeed, my research was
compatible with the idea that nonhuman features
of a convent (its constitution, its buildings)
actively shaped its history.
La Purísima was constitutionally structured
as a reformed, strict observance convent. This
meant there would be no servants, no separate
cells for the nuns to live in, no “niñas” (protégés/
companions who were part of the nuns’ households),
no individual kitchens (or as it was put,
the nuns would eat “from a common pot”). The
nuns would awaken in the middle of the night to
sing the lesser hours of the Divine Office. Theirs
would be a convent of descalzas (as were most
new convents authorized after 1750, a response
to the influence of an “enlightened” Catholicism
that emphasized more stripped down and quiet
religious practices). 7
4 The convent “died” in that unlike the other convents in
the archbishopric, the nuns made no attempt of which I am
aware to live together or reconstitute their community for
the next 45 years. But, as is detailed in the book, there was
an ultimately-successful effort to recruit new nuns and revive
the convent beginning in 1912.
5 Though it is true that one other chapter largely revolved
around the efforts made by abbesses, bishops, and vicars to
ameliorate the conditions in the convent that had given rise
to the rebellions.
6 Later work includes “The Tribune Tower: Spolia as
Despoliation.” (Wharton, 2011); Onto-Cartography: An
Ontology of Machines and Media (Bryant, 2014).
7 See also: Alone Before God: The Religious Origins of
Modernity in Mexico (Voekel, 2002); For God and Liberty:
Catholicism and Revolution in the Atlantic World (Voekel,
2023); The Very Nature of God: Baroque Catholicism and
Religious Reform in Bourbon Mexico City (Larkin, 2010).
But La Purísima was also a Conceptionist
convent. All the other Conceptionist convents in
New Spain were unreformed. So while the Capuchins
or the Carmelites or the Poor Clares had
long-standing reputations as strict observance
convents and/or austere convents, and any entrant
into these convents knew what to expect,
in the case of La Purísima there was a clash between
the Conceptionists’ reputation as a relaxed
order, and the reality of its constitutional
provisions for poverty and strict observance.
This misperception was a key factor in generating
resistance on the part of one faction of nuns
to the zealousness of the “obedient” faction.
The divide along lines of observance created
by the constitution of the convent was exacerbated
by the unfortunate combination of nuns
brought to San Miguel as founding nuns. The
first abbess (whom we have already met) was
utterly committed to the idea of building a reformed
convent, after her experience in what she
described as the shockingly relaxed convent of
Regina Coeli in Mexico City. The second abbess,
who took over after the bishop had to remove
the first one because of her intransigence, was
also in favor of reform, but she was weak and
incompetent. The third founding nun, Phelipa de
San Antonio, like the other two, had volunteered
to go to San Miguel because she was unhappy
at Regina Coeli. But her unhappiness there —the
source of which she never detailed— clearly derived
from different reasons. 8 She was never fully
committed to the idea of a strict observance
convent, and though she told the abbess that
she wanted to join such a convent, it appears
that she did so only to escape Regina Coeli.
She began pushing back against the first abbess
and then the second almost from the start.
Thus none of the three was interested in bringing
the culture of Regina Coeli to San Miguel;
they were interested in leaving it behind. They
would have to build a new convent culture from
scratch. And with only three experienced nuns
the chances that they would be able to build this
new culture and stabilize the new convent were
not great. All of the comparable convents in the
bishopric had more founding nuns, and none of
them was charged with putting into place a con-
8 There was a fourth founding nun, but she returned to
Mexico City, ostensibly, for health reasons, shortly after
arriving in San Miguel. It is likely that she too chafed under
the demands of the first abbess.
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