Truth in Stigma: Piety, Punishment, and the Crisis of Representation in Late Colonial Guatemala

Whether in Mexico, Madrid, or Manila, holy women in the Spanish world asserted affinity with the crucified Christ through simulated Passion scenes, the claim and visual display of their stigmata, and the propagation of their own crucifixion portraits. My paper specifically explores the controversial case of María Teresa de Aycinena (b. 1784), a Carmelite nun born to one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in late colonial Guatemala. Desiring to be one with Christ, María Teresa ardently engaged in penitential practices and eventually received the Christological wounds in 1812. The event garnered pious supporters and skeptic detractors. An official examination ensued; with handkerchiefs pressed against her lesions, the sanguinary impressions eventually morphed into figurative symbols of the Passion of Christ. The veracity of the wounds prompted further examination by the Holy Office of the Inquisition. The paper explores the nature of stigmata alongside the nature of stigmatic scrutiny: How do the supernatural wounds function as an evidentiary site, one that produces analytic proof? Although the depositions were centered on the histrionics of a holy woman in Guatemala, baroque piety, numinous matter, and truth in representation were also put on trial.