Sor Juana and the Villancicos to San José: Finezas, Silence, and Jealousy

"Sor Juana sabía de teología;no modificada nada, porque no podía.Lo bueno es todo el jugo que sabe sacar."

(Tenorio, Los villancicos 134-36)

As a church writer, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1649/51-1695) prepares several sets of villancicos to be performed in Puebla, Oaxaca, and Mexico City from 1676 to 1691. Along with other letras sacras, they make up a quarter of her complete works, and in them, she touches on many different themes such as the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, Christmas, San Pedro Nolasco, San Pedro Apóstol and Santa Catarina. However, here I examine the set that describes San José, husband of the Virgin Mary, earthly father of Christ, and how Sor Juana presents him according to accepted religious traditions of her time. In order to review the villancico tradition and Sor Juana's role in it, the important research of Margo Glantz, Georgina Sabat de Rivers, and Martha Lilia Tenorio provides a starting point for appreciating how Sor Juana constructs her own villancicos and the characterizations of San José within this popular genre. While honoring set standards for villancicos and traditional interpretations of events surrounding San José's life, Sor Juana emphasizes less discussed areas. Specifically, I focus on the incorporation of finezas, or demonstrations of love, shared between San José and God, San José's virginity and assumption, his silent reaction upon learning about the Virgin Mary's pregnancy, and how Sor Juana treats the issue of jealousy. Additionally, the time frame in which Sor Juana writes these villancicos plays an important role because they reflect themes from her other works, such as the carta atenagórica and the Respuesta a sor Filotea, that appear shortly after these villancicos¹

Sung in the Cathedral of Puebla de los Ángeles for "los Maitines del gloriosísimo Patriarca Señor San José, año de 1690" (obras completas 2: 128),² these villancicos were not published until 1692 in the segundo volumen of her works in Sevilla.³ Tenorio writes that the series of villancicos to San Pedro and San José are perhaps "las más logradas" and states that these two saints "representan seres de carne y hueso, con debilidades y grandezas, por los que se puede sentir compasión y admiración, no forzosamente veneración. Sor Juana parece gozar conjeturando en torno a sus razones, sus emociones" (Los villancicos 114). The figure of San José has appeared in other writings that influence Sor Juana, and Sabat de Rivers relays that, "[e]l santo ha sido objeto de veneración por parte de la comunidad religiosa católica a través de los siglos" (183). Santa Teresa became his devotee when she claimed he cured her miraculously, and twelve of the convents she founded carry his name. Devotion to San José came to the Americas with the Jesuits, and many paintings depict him as a healthy young man similar to the New Spanish colony that was also recently established and youthful, unlike European images that show him in advanced age (Sabat de Rivers 183-84).

Perhaps the most prized quality of San José for Sor Juana and other nuns was his silence, which was required of many of them too. It is a silence and confidence that reaffirms and confirms the virtue of the Virgin Mary and the acceptance of her pregnancy as a mystery of faith. He becomes a role model who has attributes of the Holy Spirit and the ideal father. Marie-Cécile Bénassy-Berling has even called him "anti-macho": "hombre del que la Escritura no conservó ninguna palabra, que nunca trató de estar en primer plano, que siempre estuvo presente cuando se necesitó de él" (234). Nonetheless, Tenorio writes: "La inclinación por San José se debe, primero, al gusto por recrear una figura tan singular, pues se trataba nada menos que del padre terrenal de Cristo; segundo precisamente porque las Escrituras no le dan ninguna personalidad, Sor Juana se va a ocupar de construírsela" (Los...