Forging the Monja Perfecta: Emblematic Imagery and Gendered Space in Colonial Peru

Within the convent precinct, the cloister was one of the most spiritually charged spaces, second only to the church. It was both a symbolic space of retreat as well as host to important annual celebrations such as Passion plays or processions. This paper examines one of the three cloisters at the Dominican convent of Santa Catalina de Sena in Arequipa, Peru, which features imagery drawn from Herman Hugo’s Pia desideria (Antwerp, 1624) and its Spanish translation by Pedro Salas. The emblems in Hugo’s text were used to adorn several women’s spaces in 18^th-century Peru, including a Casa de Ejercicios in Lima. Together with smaller images taken from the Schola cordis (Antwerp, 1629), the series presents a narrow vision of idealized feminine spirituality following the mystical path (via mistica). This paper departs from previous scholarship to examine the ways that this mystical imagery – and the specific practices it sought to engender – both reified and diverged from traditional notions of femininity in both the colonial and pre-Hispanic eras.