The Cultural Impact of Catholic Nuns in the Spanish Philippines during the 17th-Century Expansion of the Iberian Empire

FAIN: FB-56894-13

Sarah Elizabeth Owens
College of Charleston (Charleston, SC 29424-0001)

This project will shed light on a small group of Franciscan nuns who travelled from Spain to the Philippines in the 1620s. The main source material for this study comes from an unpublished manuscript written by Sor Ana de Cristo about the journey and the life of Sor Jerónima de la Asunción, the founder of the first convent in Asia. Sor Ana’s narration offers the reader a fascinating glimpse of multiple places within the Iberian empire. Part of her work describes their 15-month journey to Manila, a travel saga that also included an overland trek across Mexico. The goal of this project, a book-length work, will be of great importance to the humanities since very little has been written about gender, travel, and religious women’s literary production in the Spanish Pacific. This project will show the important cultural impact of Catholic nuns in the Spanish Pacific, an area of study that has not received the recognition it deserves.

Associated Products

Crossing Mexico (1620-1621): Franciscan Nuns and Their Journey to the Philippines (Article)
Title: Crossing Mexico (1620-1621): Franciscan Nuns and Their Journey to the Philippines
Author: Sarah E. Owens
Abstract: In 1620, almost a hundred years after the Virgin of Guadalupe is said to have appeared to Juan Diego on the Hill of Tepeyac, a small group of Spanish nuns paid a visit to the chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Like many others before and after them they stopped at the shrine on their way to Mexico City. The Franciscan nuns were traveling from Toledo to Manila and were about to cross Mexico to board the yearly Manila Galleon at the port of Acapulco.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/192
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: The Americas

El legado del rosario milagroso en los escritos de viaje de sor Ana de Cristo hacia Filipinas (Article)
Title: El legado del rosario milagroso en los escritos de viaje de sor Ana de Cristo hacia Filipinas
Author: Sarah E. Owens
Abstract: This article analyzes the belief in the miraculous powers of rosary beads that a group of Spanish nuns brought with them on their long journey from Spain-via Mexico-to the Philippines in 1620-1621.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://boletin-cnmh.inah.gob.mx/web/boletin.php
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Boletín de Monumentos Históricos

The First Nunnery in Manila: The Role of Hernando de los Ríos Coronel (Article)
Title: The First Nunnery in Manila: The Role of Hernando de los Ríos Coronel
Author: John N. Crossley
Author: Sarah E. Owens
Abstract: Sor Jerónima de la Asunción is renowned for establishing the first Franciscan nunnery in the Philippines. Despite her relative fame, there is still much to be written about Sor Jerónima and the small group of founding nuns that journeyed from Toledo to Manila in 1620–21. This essay sheds light on the cast of characters that helped the nuns receive the necessary licenses to travel to Asia. Key is the role of the relatively unknown Hernando de los Ríos Coronel, procurator general of the Philippines. In a saga that lasted twenty years, de los Ríos became the linchpin in helping the nuns finally travel to Manila. This essay draws on an unpublished manuscript written by Sor Ana de Cristo, a nun who accompanied Sor Jerónima, and other sources from Spanish, Philippine, and Vatican archives.
Year: 2016
Primary URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/28
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: The Catholic Historical Review

Transoceanic Nuns: A Pathway to Sainthood in Seventeenth-Century Philippines (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Transoceanic Nuns: A Pathway to Sainthood in Seventeenth-Century Philippines
Abstract: In the early seventeenth century a small group of Spanish nuns embarked on an incredible journey that would take them from Toledo, Spain to Manila, Philippines. Based on a forgotten manuscript penned by one of the nuns, this lecture explores the founding of the first convent in the Far East and the making of a possible saint.
Author: Sarah E. Owens
Date: 2/13/14
Location: College of Wooster
Primary URL: http://www.wooster.edu/news/releases/2014/february/nun-lecture/index.php

Traveling Nuns in Colonial Mexico: Tracing their Path from Veracruz to Acapulco (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Traveling Nuns in Colonial Mexico: Tracing their Path from Veracruz to Acapulco
Abstract: College of Charleston professor Sarah Owens will give a talk based on her forthcoming book, tentatively titled “Nuns Navigating the Spanish Empire,” September 28th at Coastal Carolina University. In her talk, “Traveling Nuns in Colonial Mexico: Tracing Their Path from Veracruz to Acapulco,” Owens will follow the early 17th-century Mexican adventures of Franciscan nuns during their extraordinary trip from Spain to the Philippines on their way to establish the first convent in the Far East.
Author: Sarah E. Owens
Date: 9/29/2015
Location: Coastal Carolina University
Primary URL: http://www.coastal.edu/

Nuns Navigating the Spanish Empire (Book)
Title: Nuns Navigating the Spanish Empire
Author: Sarah E. Owens
Abstract: Nuns Navigating the Spanish Empire tells the remarkable story of a group of nuns who traveled halfway around the globe in the seventeenth century to establish the first female Franciscan convent in the Far East. In 1620 Sor Jerónima de la Asunción (1556–1630) and her cofounders left their cloistered convent in Toledo, Spain, journeying to Mexico to board a Manila galleon on their way to the Philippines. Sor Jerónima is familiar to art historians for her portrait by Velázquez that hangs in the Prado Museum in Madrid. What most people do not know is that one of her travel companions, Sor Ana de Cristo (1565–1636), wrote a long biographical account of Sor Jerónima and their fifteen-month odyssey. Drawing from Sor Ana’s manuscript, other archival sources, and rare books, Owens’s study offers a fascinating view of travel, evangelization, and empire.
Year: 2017
Primary URL: http://unmpress.com/books.php?ID=20000000007097
Primary URL Description: University of New Mexico Press website
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 0826358942
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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