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  • Between the Sacred and the Worldly: The Institutional and Cultural Practice of Recogimiento in Colonial Lima
  • S.J. Jeffrey Klaiber
Between the Sacred and the Worldly: The Institutional and Cultural Practice of Recogimiento in Colonial Lima. By Nancy E. van Deusen . ( Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. 2001. Pp. xxi, 319. $60.00.)

Recently Latin American historians have begun to pay more attention to feminine religious life. Yet, as far as studies of women are concerned, a large vacuum still needed to be filled: women who were neither religious nor married in normal stable households. This intermediate group included a significant portion of the population: beatas and members of third orders (like Rose of Lima), single unmarried women, widows, married women who did not want to live with their spouses, and divorced women. In one way or another these women fell into the category of "recogidas," that is, women who had retired from the world but did not strictly belong to a religious order. In colonial Latin America, a single unmarried woman had to belong to something (a religious order or a house of recollection) or to someone: a single, unattached woman was not socially acceptable.

In this fascinating social history of colonial Lima, Nancy van Deusen studies the situation of these women, and the houses and institutions (recogimientos) where they lived. She shows that the concept of being "recollected" had various connotations and underwent several changes throughout time. A proper Spanish lady, married or not, should practice the virtue of being "recollected": retiring, unassuming, and discrete. But the term could also refer to "fallen" women who needed a place to stay. The church and state founded houses of recollection for former prostitutes: those recollected women were looked upon as "tainted." In that case, they needed to be protected from society, and society needed to be protected from them. But there were other houses of recollection—for pious widows or married women who had been "deposited" there for safekeeping. In that case the house of recollection was sort of a home away from home.

Van Deusen analyzes the impact of race, class, and social status on these institutions, which mirrored prevailing social attitudes and prejudices. Especially interesting is her study of divorced women, a little-known subject. To study individual cases, the author had recourse to the archives of many convents in Lima, the archdiocesan archive, as well archives and libraries in Spain and the United States. Many of the documents consist of litigation or civil suits. In addition, the author refers to the spiritual writings of Teresa de Avila, Luis de Granada, and the founders of the houses of recollection in order to understand what they meant by "recollection."

The greatest merit of van Deusen's work is that it highlights the importance of the intermediate world between religious life and the married state. Some authors have swept that third category under the general and limited heading of "beatas" or the third orders. But as Nancy van Deusen shows, this category is much wider because, like an overlapping circle, it touched upon both the religious [End Page 395] and the married state, yet was a separate and distinct reality in itself. The recogidas ranged from pious widows to divorced women and to former prostitutes. The term "recogidas" borrowed heavily from Catholic contemplative and mystical history, but it extended to all of secular society. This work greatly enriches Latin American social history and opens the door to many new studies on the place of women in colonial society.

S.J. Jeffrey Klaiber
The Catholic University of Peru Lima
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