Models of Female Spirituality in Sixteenth-century SpainWomen Accused of Luthernism

Abstract

Jimena Gamba Corradine’s study shows how, in parallel with the growing presence of women in written culture in Reformation countries, reading became the main channel for the construction of a new female spirituality in sixteenth-century Spain. In contrast to immediately preceding models of female mysticism such as Juana de la Cruz and María de Santo Domingo or women pertaining to the early alumbrado movement (Francisca Hernández, Isabel Ortiz), who were illiterate, the new female religiosity, strongly associated with heterodox currents outside the control of the Catholic Church, is characterized by Gamba as “intellectual”; it arose in literate circles where cultivated women shared texts and ideas. Cases exhumed from Inquisitorial archives reveal how the urge to experience new forms of spirituality and the appetite for intellectual activity went hand in hand.