Cuban Convents in the Age of Enlightened Reform, 1761–1807 (review)

This book engages important themes in the historiography on convents in Spanish America: how convent reform fit within broader patterns of royal and ecclesiastical politics; how elites used convents to consolidate their social, political, and economic power; how the convent was experienced by nuns, servants, and other secular residents; and how local conditions and circumstances affected the ways the convents functioned. Cuba is a particularly interesting case, given the impact that international events such as the Haitian revolution and the acquisition and loss of Louisiana had on the island. The documentary base primarily consists of correspondence concerning the convent of Santa Clara—of the three convents in Havana until late in the period, the one with which the book is centrally concerned. As an unreformed, relaxed-observance convent, Santa Clara served as a nexus for the controversy over reforming such convents, as the correspondence among the convent officers, the Council of the Indies, the bishops, the royal governors, and the Franciscan provincials reveals.

This book contains much of interest. The typical reader could assume, for example, that virtually all female convents had at least a modest teaching function. This was not the case in Havana. Even more significantly, there was apparently no decline in interest among the creole wealthy of Havana in entering their daughters in convents in the late-eighteenth century, as there was in Mexico. This allows Clune to emphasize late-eighteenth-century convent reform as a challenge to creole power, a powerful point.

Despite the extremely interesting questions the author raises and the good research that he brings to bear on them, there are drawbacks. First, Clune is not as thorough in his use of the comparative material from Mexico and Peru as he might be. Short examples from other parts of the empire are faithfully offered as background or as support for a supposition, but given that this is the first study of Cuban convents, more meaningful and rigorous comparison is surely required. There are a number of earlier studies that appear in the bibliography but are not really mined for comparative insights. A key example is Rosalva Loreto López’s excellent study of convents in eighteenth-century Puebla, Mexico (Mexico City, 2000), in which convent reform is central.

Second, and perhaps related to Clune’s failure to use the comparative material as a way to probe his own findings, he is cautious to a fault. He consistently backs away from speculating about motives or implications. Rather than digging beneath the surface of the documents, he tends to takes motivations that are expressed in the documents at face value. Sometimes this failure to dig can give the book a tinge of the judgmental. For example, Clune sympathizes with the reformers who are trying to impose the common life on Santa Clara, apparently buying into their characterizations of the nuns as corrupt and mainly concerned with ensuring a luxurious and comfortable life. He is working with documents that are rich in judgments, intemperate language, and condemnatory conclusions. It is especially important in cases where the documentation is so inflammatory to try to get inside the heads of the person committing words to paper, lest his or her judgments become, unintentionally, the author’s.

Finally, there is a problem of editing, which appears to have been accomplished with a machete. The book is just under one-hundred pages of text, and it should have been longer, not only to better convey the experience and implications of convent reform and to clarify complex jurisdictional disputes but also to avoid the occasional puzzling assertion (for example, at one point the main difference between the private life and the common life appears, strangely, to have been the size of the nuns’ individual allowances).

In sum, this is a book that will certainly be of interest to students of convents, and it is recommended primarily for that audience, who will appreciate its...