Journey of Five Capuchin Nuns (review)

Sarah E. Owens’s edited translation of the Journey of Five Capuchin Nuns provides an enlightening glimpse into the experiences of early-modern religious women. This lively narrative gives voice to a group of adventurous nuns who were far from passive and cloistered. From the pen of María Rosa, a Capuchin nun of the early-eighteenth century, comes a candid and fascinating account of her and her sisters’ efforts to found a Capuchin convent in Peru. Among other adventures, the women traveled from Madrid to southern Spain, were captured by the Dutch (one of Spain’s enemies at the time), and made a harrowing journey across the Andes. Battling sickness and the elements, and supported by a network of ecclesiastical patronage, the nuns succeeded in transporting their model of female monasticism to the far reaches of Spain’s empire. Owens has provided an engaging translation and helpful introductory notes. This translation will be of interest to a broad range of scholars including those interested in early-modern nuns and the participation of women in the Atlantic world of trade and travel.

Several features make this text distinctive. The first, as Owens notes, is that it was not written at the urging of a male ecclesiastic. Rather, María Rosa wrote for her fellow nuns in Madrid, who desired an account of their sisters’ efforts. Although composed, then, as a travel narrative, the text is nonetheless infused with María Rosa’s particular objectives: to defend her monastic endeavor and the superiority of Spanish Catholicism and empire. She consistently upholds the Capuchin model of devout austerity. She is critical, for example, of convents in which they lodged where the nuns wore elaborate habits and lived in luxurious buildings. In recounting their capture at the hands of the Dutch, she highlights the religious barbarity of their captors (they profaned an image of St. Joseph), while suggesting that they were impressed by the nuns’ vow of poverty.

The account is also significant because it provides a distinct perspective on the world of Spain’s imperial expansion. Writing both as a woman and a professed religious, María Rosa has added an important voice to our understanding of the Atlantic world. In the introduction, for example, Owens makes a compelling argument for her familiarity with other accounts of the “new” world, especially José de Acosta’s Natural and Moral History of the Indies (1590). Yet as a nun, she also saw this world through a distinctive lens. Along the route in South America to their final destination in Lima, Peru, for example, the nuns encountered curious crowds wanting to meet them. Far from typical circumstances where visiting parlors with partitions would separate the nuns from secular society, the women instead had to cover their faces when engaging in conversation.

The translation would be an excellent text to use with undergraduates. The nuns who emerge from these pages—devout, brave, and willing to enjoy a good laugh—will defy stereotypes and prompt a reconsideration of the role of religious women beyond the cloister.