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6 “The Lord walks among the pots and pans” Religious Servants of Colonial Lima nancy e. van deusen In his sermon given in 1681 at the profession of a donada, José de Aguilar emphasized that each nun was the señora of her own cross but that each servant, whether a criada (servant) or a donada (religious servant who took informal vows), carried the cross of the señora “upon which they could not recline”: To profess as a Nun and remain a Nun among the Señoras . . . is to carry the Cross of Christ, each with the honor of being the Señora of her Cross. But to profess as a Nun and not remain among the Señoras, but rather among the Servants of this Monastery [as a donada] is to carry the Cross of the Servants of this Monastery and to carry the Cross of Christ without it being her own. Those who profess as Servants carry everyone’s Crosses because they have to serve them all, and help carry those who are not as able. . . . The Nuns carry the Cross hoping to be chosen to do the honorable tasks of the Convent. The Servants [donadas] carry the cross without such expectations. Those are the Wives who hold the title of Señoras. These are the Wives who hold the title of Servants.1 By virtue of having taken informal religious vows, donadas were more distinguished than the criadas; still, they could not rest, because the cross they carried was not their own. For free Afro-Peruvians and parda, mulata, and morena women of African descent, becoming a donada was their best option , because all religious orders prohibited them from professing as nuns of either the highest-ranked black veil or the lower-status white veil.2 The term “donada” literally meant that the candidate had been donated by someone to a monastery or that she had donated herself perpetually to “engage in service to God and the community.”3 Generally, when adolescent girls entered the novitiate with the ultimate goal of becoming a donada, they agreed to perform certain tasks in exchange for a home (the convent), living quarters, and food. During the seventeenth century, some 500 free or freed women of African or Indian descent chose to spend their lives in a cloistered setting. Most of these women were less than twenty years old when they made their choice. In an attempt to explain the discriminatory barriers these aspirants faced and the differences between them and the nuns and the criadas, historians have often viewed the vocation of the donada as an “attractive alternative” to an insecure life in secular society.4 Both skilled and unskilled Afro-Peruvian women, they argue, could find gainful employment, food, and shelter as religious domestics. Some, perhaps, might avoid rape or sexual torment by lascivious masters. Yet because conventual life was difficult and racial and occupational hierarchies were more rigidly enforced in the convent than in the secular world, nuns and ecclesiastical authorities considered donadas to be only one notch above criadas and slaves.5 While they were meant to serve the community first and then the individual nuns, in fact, according to historian Luis Martín, donadas were viewed as nothing more than “exalted maids.”6 We only have to think of the words the black donada Ursula de Jesús (1604–1666) wrote in her diary—“They say the profession of the donada has no value”—to understand that some nuns did not even see them as “exalted.”7 Studies based upon sources generated by nuns and ecclesiastical authorities iterate the position that donadas were laborers first and spiritual beings second. The documents imply that young women voluntarily submitted themselves to the conditions and calidad (prestige, ranking) associated with this position because of inequality and poverty. In fact, a review of the extant 237 rather formulaic autos de ingreso (entrance petitions) and expedientes de profesión (profession documents) for the largest convents of La Encarnación, La Concepción, and Santa Clara, all located in Lima, Peru, do not always reveal the motivations of the aspirants. Indeed, most of what we know about donadas comes from sources generated by individuals talking about them, not to or with them. When donadas do appear in the documents, they often speak as litigants in the ecclesiastical court to complain about the physical and emotional abuse of previous owners or nuns, to assert their hope that a testamentary legacy would be...

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