Juana Ins de la Cruz and the Theology of Beauty: The First Mexican Theolog [Hardcover]

WithJuana In?s de la Cruz and the Theology of Beauty, George H. Tavard presents the first thorough investigation of the theology of the greatest Latin American poet before our own time. HIs program is all the more important because she was the first woman of this continent to assert the right of women to study to the full extent of their capacities. An intelligent and intellectual woman, Juana In?s was eager to live a life of scholarship and felt a great aversion to matrimony, which directed her to enter the convent in 1667. Tavard provides a thought-provoking analysis both of the theological ideas that Juana In?s expressed in poetry and prose and of the conclusions, provisional or definitive, she may have reached about herself and about humanity.

Through a close study of many of her clearly authenticated worksher didactic poem,Primero Sue?o (First Dream); her poems in honor of the saints; her religious drama; her poems in honor of Christ and the Virgin; her lyric verse on devotional themes; and her prose writings on religious topics--Tavard draws out Sor Juanas conception of the world and the soul, her ideas about the saints, her understanding of the Virgin, and her Christology. He offers a coherent theological and spiritual argument for Juanas renunciation of further writing in 1692. In discussing the shape of her theological imagination, Tavard concludes that for Juana, the physical and spiritual beauty of creatures, a gift of Gods love, acts as a theopany through which divine glory is perceived.

George H. Tavard (19222007) was visiting professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, the Josephinum School of Theology, Marquette University, Hekima School of Theology in Nairobi, Kenya, Regis College at the University of Toronto, and the Catholic University of America. He attended Vatican Council II as a peritus conciliaris, named by Pope John XXIII, and consultant to the Pontifical Secretariat for the Unity of Christians.