Laywomen and the Making of Colonial Catholicism in New Spain, 1630-1790

Jessica L. Delgado is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion Princeton University, New Jersey.

• Part I. Introduction. Troubling Devotion: Laywomen and Religious Culture in New Spain: 1. Sacramental learning; 2. Public and scandalous sin; 3. Ambivalent witnesses and local inquisitions; Part II. Introduction. Places and Practices of Cloister: 4. Cloister for the poor and virtuous; 5. Cloister for the unruly and unhappy; 6. In the convent but not of it; Epilogue: laywomen making colonial Catholicism.

'Jessica L. Delgado's ingenious exploration of many different women's experiences and engagements with the authority, mechanisms and practices of the Catholic Church illuminates what these women came to shape: the moral grammar and spiritual underpinnings of an entire society. Informed by wide, cross-disciplinary learning, Delgado's 'troubling' of devotion, and of all that constituted spiritual virtue and contagion in mid-colonial Mexico, is a breakthrough.' Kenneth Mills, University of Michigan