Visionary Preaching of Juana de la Cruz (1481-1534)

Pablo Acosta-García is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). He was a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC project Soundspace at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (2023–2026), a María Zambrano Postdoctoral Fellow at the UAB’s Renaissance Studies Seminar (2021–2023), and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Institute of Medieval History, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany (2019–2021), where he led the project Late Medieval Visionary Women’s Impact in Early Modern Castilian Spiritual Tradition (WIMPACT) as Principal Investigator. He has published extensively on medieval and early modern women’s writing, materiality and gender, and mystical and devotional literature. He produced the first Spanish translation and annotated edition of the Memoriale by the Franciscan tertiary Angela of Foligno (Siruela, 2014) and co-edited Touching, Devotional Practices, and Visionary Experiences in the Late Middle Ages (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). He is currently co-editing, with Michael Hahn, A Companion to Angela of Foligno (Brill, forthcoming). His most recent monograph is The Visionary Preaching of Juana de la Cruz (1481–1534): Ritual, Revelation, and Collective Writing (Brill, 2025).

• FundingForewordAcknowledgmentsList of FiguresAbbreviationsNote on citing the manuscripts of the sermons of the ConorteTranscription principles for Conorte (and other manuscripts and printed matter cited)Introduction1 Pathways to Preaching2 Pathways to Rapture3 Conceptual Reflections1 Material. The Conorte as a Textual Artefact1 Introduction2 The Codices of the Conorte and Juana de la Cruz’s Canonization Process3 The El Escorial Manuscript4 The Vatican Manuscript5 Juana’s Preaching and the Date of Production of the Manuscripts6 Conclusions2 Textual. The Architecture of the Sermon Book1 Performance, Memory, Text2 Textualization Processes3 Difference, Amplification, and Recreation4 Cyclicity and Amalgam5 Conclusions3 Intertextual. Towards a Genealogy of the Visionary Sermon1 Introduction2 Hildegard von Bingen and the Degrees of the Open Word3 Elisabeth von Schönau and the Liturgical Vision4 Mechthild von Hackeborn and Communal Writing5 Domenica da Paradiso and the New Prophetic Preaching6 Conclusions4 Hermeneutical. Liturgical Vision in the Conorte1 Introduction: Liturgy and exegesis2 Liturgical Anchoring and Exegetic Commentary3 Sermon Form4 Case Analyses4.1 Septuagesima Sunday4.2 In festo S. Laurentii Martyris4.3 In Dominica Quadragesimae5 ConclusionsConclusionsBibliographyIndex

"The Visionary Preaching of Juana de la Cruz (1481–1534) [...] represents a pioneering contribution to the broader study of female preaching in premodern Europe. By illuminating the performative, creative, and theological dimensions of Juana’s sermons and their manuscript history, Acosta-García challenges long-standing assumptions about women’s roles in religious leadership." – Carolyn Muessig, University of Calgary, Department of Classics and Religion, 15 December 2024"The Visionary Preaching of Juana de la Cruz can now be considered the most comprehensive and methodologically rigorous study devoted to the work of the Franciscan tertiary. Its combination of codicological analysis, a comparative European perspective, liturgical interpretation, and reflection on collective authorship makes this volume an essential reference for scholarship on female mysticism, the history of preaching, and medieval and early modern sermon literature." – Blanca Garí, Universidad de Barcelona, in: Edad Media. Revista de Historia 27 (2026), 591-593 [DOI: 10.24197/q4jvtk29]"The volume’s philological rigour and meticulous comparison of the manuscript evidence are among its particular strengths. It makes a compelling case for situating Juana within this tradition [of female prophetic preaching], establishing her as an essential point of reference for future scholarship." – Lola Peña-Fernández, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, in: Anuario de estudios medievales 56/1 (2026), 1617 [DOI: 10.3989/aem.2026.56.1.1617]