Brides of Christ Conventual Life in Colonial Mexico [Hardcover]

Brides of Christinvites the modern reader to follow the histories of colonial Mexican nuns inside the cloisters where they pursued a religious vocation or sought shelter from the world. Lavrin provides a complete overview of conventual life, including the early signs of vocation, the decision to enter a convent, profession, spiritual guidelines and devotional practices, governance, ceremonials, relations with male authorities and confessors, living arrangements, servants, sickness, and death rituals. Individual chapters deal with issues such as sexuality and the challenges to chastity in the cloisters and the little-known subject of the nuns' own writings as expressions of their spirituality. The foundation of convents for indigenous women receives special attention, because such religious communities existed nowhere else in the Spanish empire.

Brides of Christcontains a wonderful array of primary sources and extremely rich data. Lavrin's scholarship and research is exemplary, and her in-depth portrayal of colonial convent culture in Mexico is a welcome addition to the growing scholarship on the female religious in Latin America. The culmination of a half century of research, this masterful book is well worth the wait . . . Lavrin's book is a model of meticulous scholarship. She uses an extraordinary variety of primary sources, largely from Mexico City and Puebla. She has read widely in Latin American and European history and deftly situates her findings within debates in the larger literature. InBrides of ChristAsuncion Lavrin reconstructs daily life in the convent through a comprehensive documentation of the individual experience of women religious in Colonial Mexico. . . Meticulously documented with archival sources and the culmination of decades of research,Brides of Christis an invaluable contribution to gender studies and to the wider field of colonial Mexican history. A superlative work of mature scholarship that builds il“µ