Food, Fasting and Itinerant Nuns

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Food, Fasting, and Itinerant NunsSarah E. Owens aa Department of Hispanic Studies, College of Charleston, Charleston,South Carolina, USA

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Food and Foodways, 19:274–293, 2011Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0740-9710 print / 1542-3484 onlineDOI: 10.1080/07409710.2011.630619

Food, Fasting, and Itinerant Nuns

SARAH E. OWENSAssociate Professor of Spanish, Department of Hispanic Studies, College of Charleston,

Charleston, South Carolina, USA

Spanish nuns who traveled to Mexico and Peru during the 17thand 18th centuries brought with them their pre-conceived notionson food and fasting. They firmly believed that they could keep uptheir prescribed regimen of fasting according to the strict CapuchinRule. Their own descriptions of their travels, however, prove thecontrary. Journeys that took them across the arid plains of theIberian Peninsula, the high seas of the Atlantic Ocean and thetowering peaks of the Andes, proved much more challenging thanthey had ever imagined. Little by little, itinerant nuns had to em-brace the difficult rules of the road and accept the different foodsplaced in front of them. They also had to modify some of their spir-itual regimes such as their devotion to Eucharistic piety. Based onarchival research and first person narratives, this study will use thelens of liminality to explore food and fasting in the writings of theseSpanish Capuchin nuns.

FOOD, FASTING, AND ITINERANT NUNS

In 1710 when five Capuchin nuns from Madrid stepped out of their cloisteredconvent to embark on a remarkable journey to South America, they firmlybelieved that they would be able to keep up their strict regimen of fasting andpenance. They would limit their diet to mostly fruits, vegetables, legumes,and fish. They assumed that they would continue to eat one main mealin the early afternoon and a small supper in the evening. In their Madridconvent, that could mean a hearty potaje (stew) consisting of garbanzos andcodfish. Later in the evening, they might nibble on bread and cheese orperhaps an egg. Yet all their preconceived notions regarding diet and fasting

Address correspondence to Sarah E. Owens, Associate Professor of Spanish, Departmentof Hispanic Studies, College of Charleston, 66 George St., Charleston, SC 29424. E-mail:[email protected]

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Food, Fasting, and Itinerant Nuns 275

would soon be broken. In essence, a long journey, with many nights spentin posadas (rustic inns), convents of different orders, palaces, sailing vessels,and camping under the open sky, just did not permit the nuns to maintainany type of strict food regimen. Similar circumstances applied to anothersmall group of Capuchin nuns who traveled approximately fifty years earlierfrom Toledo, Spain to Mexico City by way of the Caribbean. In 1665, sixnuns left behind their beloved nunnery and its familiar foods and smellsto establish a new convent in Mexico City. After making their own perilousship voyage, they soon found themselves trading their homey stews for spicydishes flavored with unfamiliar tomatoes and chili peppers.

These two trips share many parallels—most notably, their goal to founda new convent—but each had their own unique set of circumstances. Thisstudy will focus on the references to food and fasting in the first-person travelaccounts penned by these itinerant nuns. When the religious women left theircloistered enclaves, they could not follow the strict regulations imposed onthem by their home convent and the Capuchin Rule. An analysis of theirwritten record shows that the nuns faced many obstacles when they triedto continue their professed fasting, but at the same time each group reactedin a different manner. The reason that the two separate written accounts ofthese journeys complement each other is that they show that food practices(at least in these two cases) were of central concern to religious women ofearly modern Europe.1 Moreover, these two groups of women tried theirbest to bring this tradition with them to their new foundations in Lima andMexico. Both groups of women set out with the best of intentions; theywanted to bring the Capuchin regimen of fasting routines, Eucharistic piety(much more apparent in the Madrid account as discussed later in this essay),and everyday food items with them to their new communities. However, thedifficult nature of their journey, and their far-off destinations, forced them tomodify their original intentions. Ultimately, as this study will demonstrate,food continued to be an important element of their spiritual and everydayroutine, but their transatlantic journeys forced these religious women toaccept the new conditions and cuisines of the New World.

A LENS OF LIMINALITY

Although the written accounts left by these two groups of nuns are quitedifferent—on the one hand, we have a polished foundation narrative care-fully crafted for the Peruvian novices, and on the other, we have personalletters penned to the nuns left back in Toledo—these two accounts sharesome basic themes. One way to view their voyages and food is throughthe lens of liminality. Victor Turner, in his landmark study, The Ritual Pro-cess (1969), explains that “Liminal entities are neither here nor there; theyare betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, cus-tom, convention, and ceremonial.”2 Turner goes on to examine medieval

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Franciscan orders as an example of liminal communities. He also cites SaintTeresa of Avila as preaching a lifestyle of liminality. These orders, like theCapuchins, were separated by choice from the secular world and consideredoutsiders to society. By living apart from the world, they believed that theyhad embarked on the path to salvation. I contend that cloistered nuns shouldbe considered liminal communities because they lived outside the norm andaccepted strict rules regarding enclosure, poverty, chastity, and food. Accus-tomed to the sheltered routine of their Capuchin order, at first, these nunstried to maintain their liminal lifestyle on route to the Atlantic. Initially, bothgroups thought they could insulate themselves from the outside world byhiding behind their veils, closing the curtains of their carriages, limiting con-tact with secular people, taking communion on a daily basis, and maintainingtheir strict food regime. They strived to keep their liminal way of life on thejourney, and in many aspects, they succeeded. However, it was their dailycontact with food that obliged them to face a new reality and modify theirstrict regime. Food literally forced them to taste and touch the outside earthlyworld. It traversed the borders of their liminality, and ultimately, made themadapt their food regimes from Spain to those of Mexico and Peru.

To complicate matters, it must also be noted that the journey itselfcould be analyzed as a liminal state—a type of pilgrimage to found a newcommunity. The women traveled from one fixed place to another; theymoved from inside their convent to the outside world and back to the cloisterat their final destination. They became “betwixt and between” and at themercy of others. Their life on the road represents their transition through “theworld” and is marked by “worldly” food, often times, but not exclusively, bymeat. The unique interplay of liminality in these travel documents providesa staging ground for my analysis of food and fasting.

SOURCE MATERIAL

The information gathered for this study comes from firsthand accountspenned by the nuns. The Toledo convent was the first to send nuns acrossthe Atlantic. They founded the Convent of San Felipe de Jesus in Mexico City(1666): the first Capuchin Convent in the Americas. Five of the six nuns (oneof the women was probably illiterate) wrote hundreds of letters back to theirconfessor, Don Francisco de Villarreal, and their sisters in Toledo, Spain. Theprimary source is the doctoral dissertation written by Emilia Alba Gonzalez,who rediscovered the original manuscripts of these letters in 1987.3 Prior toits discovery the correspondence had been stashed away in a small chestin a corner of the convent’s attic, long lost and forgotten even to the nunscurrently in Toledo.4 The six navegantas (navigators), a nickname that thereligious women used at times to refer to themselves, put quill to parchmentfor a total of 488 folios during a 38-year time span between 1655 and 1693.

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The journey itself began on May 10, 1665 and ended on October 8, 1665,when “the navigators” arrived in Mexico City. Although any transatlanticvoyage from the mid-17th century standards could be described as slowand arduous; in reality, they made relatively good time, and this included amonth’s stop in Cadiz. From Cadiz, they set sail to Puerto Rico via the CanaryIslands, and then went on to Mexico City by way of Veracruz.

In contrast to the nuns from Toledo, the Madrid founders encountered amyriad of difficulties before reaching South America. This group of five nunsembarked on their travel odyssey in 1710 but did not arrive in Lima until1713. They faced many hardships along the route, including the ongoingSpanish War of Succession, a stint as prisoners of Dutch corsairs, the deathof one of their sisters, and a trek across the Andes on mules. The firsthandsource from the nuns who traveled to Lima are not letters but an officialfoundation narrative written by the witty and practical mother abbess, MadreMarıa Rosa.5 This is a type of history book that the abbess wrote for thefuture nuns in Lima and also for her sisters back in Madrid.6 It offers a livelynarrative of the journey written mostly in first person, but at times, one of hertraveling companions, Madre Josepha Victoria, acts as an editor, interjectingsmall tidbits of information that she added after the death of the abbess.7

EUCHARISTIC PIETY AND THE LEGACY OF MEDIEVALHOLY WOMEN

Foremost, Madre Marıa Rosa’s account appears to be a didactic tool to instructthe future novices in Peru. One of the main elements interlaced throughoutthe document is the Capuchin devotion to Eucharistic piety.8 The abbessmakes multiple references to the monstrance and their commitment to re-ceiving communion throughout their travels, regardless of sea crossings ormountain treks. Furthermore, she often refers to their spiritual foremotherClare of Assisi, who embraced the cult of the Eucharistic host by using themonstrance as her iconic motif.9 Madre Marıa Rosa mentions Saint Clare 26times throughout the document. Half the time she references Clare whiledescribing a type of convent—for example, “the Convent of Mother SaintClaire” (108)—and the other half, as “daughters of our Mother Saint Clare”(84). Although the temporal and historical context differs (medieval versusearly modern), this study builds on some of these same ideas concerningmedieval piety and food examined by Caroline Walker Bynum in Holy Feastand Holy Fast. The fact that Madre Marıa Rosa pays respect to Saint Claireand also makes repeated references to the Eucharist and monstrance speaksto a similar continuation of spiritual food practices from the late medievalperiod. In essence, these women saw God as food and the eating of the hostwas equivalent to an ecstatic union with Christ.10 As a brief aside, I would

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like to make clear that my study did not have the quantitive data available toBynum in reference to medieval women. These two travel stories are only asample example of food and female piety in the early modern period. Thisis an avenue ripe for further research.

The Toledo nuns do not espouse their Eucharistic piety with the sametype of urgency as in the Peru account. Instead, they fill their letters withvivid illustrations of daily life and ultimate survival. Different from MadreMarıa Rosa’s account, “the navigators” never intended their letters for any-one else other than their confessor and sisters back in Castile. They werenot fashioning a foundation account for future nuns. They did not need toinclude a rhetoric that promoted fasting or food restrictions. It is not thatthey completely omitted references to communion and Mass in their letters.Similar to their Madrid sisters, they also tried to keep up their daily ritualof Eucharistic piety. For example, Sor Lorenza Bernarda,11 when describingtheir departure from Veracruz, writes: “After hearing Mass and taking com-munion, as we did on a daily basis, we left around ten in the morning” (69).For the most part, their letters look back with nostalgia at their life left be-hind. Their sisters in Castile already knew how to live like good Capuchinsand how to follow the teachings of Saint Clare. They did not need instructionin the ways of the Capuchin order.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND THE CAPUCHIN ORDER

To better understand the desire of these religious women to maintain theliminal boundaries between them and the outside world during their travels,it is important to remember that all Catholic nunneries were cloistered duringthe early modern period. Yet each monastic order dictated its own rules,and some were much stricter than others. In 1538, Marıa Lorenza Longo,a Catalonian woman, founded the female branch of the Capuchin order inItaly. She modeled it after the austere lifestyle required by Saint Clare’s Ruleand upon taking the veil, the nuns took a strict vow of poverty. Theoretically,the order prohibited novices from bringing any riches with them from theoutside world. Capuchin novices did not have to pay a dowry, and they wereexpected to embrace all aspects of an austere lifestyle, including fasting.12

This order, similar to the Carmelites13 in Spain, fell under the category ofdiscalced (barefoot) nuns—as opposed to calced, or much less strict, ordersof nuns. Calced nuns, such as the famous Mexican poet Sor Juana Ines de laCruz (1648/1651?–1695) of the Order of Saint Jerome, were allowed to haveservants and slaves, own a cell-like apartment, and even have a cook whowould provide daily meals.14 Discalced nuns followed the “common rule,”which meant that they slept together in one main dormitory, performedtheir own menial labor, shared a common kitchen, and ate together in therefectory.15

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The Capuchins spread from Italy to Spain in the late 1500s. The conventof Santa Margarita founded in Barcelona in 1599 by Madre Angela MargaritaSerafina Prat became the primary foundation from which many others ex-panded all over Spain and not long thereafter into the New World.16 Inorder to start a new convent, a well-established foundation, such as the onein Barcelona, would select a seed group of nuns as role models and teachersto instruct novices in the new location. Despite their enclosure, the Councilof Trent had given special dispensation for founding mothers to break thewalls of their seclusion to travel to new destinations.17

Furthermore, bishops and other ecclesiastical authorities commonlyworried about the women’s health on such a long journeys and often lifteddietary restrictions imposed on them by the Capuchin order. This was stan-dard procedure for nuns who left the cloister to form a new nunnery, but attimes, especially when a trip was a short one, new founders would chose notto break their strict rules.18 In the case of the Peru foundation, at the begin-ning of their journey, Madre Marıa Rosa tells how she and her sisters toiledwith the reality that they would have to eat meat. Before leaving Madrid, theBishop of Toledo admonished the women to follow their confessor’s wishes;specifically, he ordered them to break their traditional fasting.

FASTING AND ITS MULTIPLE CONNOTATIONS

Madre Marıa Rosa addresses these instructions during the first part of heraccount. The abbess explains how she and her sisters still harbored illusionsof continuing their professed fasting. This did not mean that they would gofor days at a time without taking a bite but instead, on average, followed arestricted and mainly vegetarian diet. According to the Capuchin Rule, theyeliminated meat altogether (unless ordered to do so by a doctor or confessor)and refrained from eating fish on Fridays and liturgical holidays. On somefeasts and vigils of saint’s days, they would only partake in bread and wateror just liquids.19 The mentality that hunger for God took precedence overearthly cravings loomed large in the mindset of religious women beginningin medieval times. Fasting, a type of penance, helped a religious womancleanse her sins and imitate Christ’s suffering. Just as she could get closeto Christ by taking communion, Christ could also fill her with a spiritualsustenance left void by fasting. Bynum’s study informs us that “This sense ofGod as food permeated spirituality outside as well as within the Eucharisticcontext.”20 During their first days on the road, the five nuns easily followedtheir regime because they stayed in convents between Madrid and Toledo.They maintained the liminal aspect of their strict observances without prob-lems, although this soon changed with the challenges of finding a suitableplace to stay along the road.

Once they left the comfort of the Capuchin convent in Toledo, thewomen did not always have the luxury of a nunnery for their nightly lodging.

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In one poignant example, Madre Marıa Rosa illustrates how her sisters shedmany a tear when forced to eat poultry for the first time: “We thoughtthat we were going to have fish for dinner, as we were inspired to fastthe whole journey, but the exact opposite occurred. When they brought ushens for dinner, at first we thought it was cabbage because they lookedso white. But when my sisters realized that it was chicken, they felt awful”(77). Yet, as abbess, Marıa Rosa felt it her duty to encourage the nuns toeat the chicken: “I tried to cheer them up so as not to embarrass our fatherconfessor. I told them that there was a lot of merit in their obedience”(77). This was a decisive moment for the abbess; she had done her dutyto portray their sincere intentions to fast. On a didactic level, the aspirantnuns in Lima would see the Spanish women as role models—she had lacedthe first part of the account with the rhetoric of fasting—but from a practicalstandpoint, the abbess had to accept the rules of the road. Furthermore, as themother abbess, she needed to assume a nurturing and mothering role if thewomen were going to survive the journey. Monstserrat Cabre’s recent workon women, healing, and the household speaks to the vital role of medievalmothers as healers and caretakers. She points out: “Ensuring food intake wasa primary concern of household health care. . .”21 In the case of the Capuchinnuns, when we examine these travels as liminal states, forcing the womento come in contact with the outside world, especially through food, the roleof abbess as mother becomes even more important. She must look after herspiritual daughters and provide a caring relationship that not only gives thememotional support, but obligates them to eat the proper nourishment so thatthey will not become ill. Thus, although on occasion Madre Marıa Rosa stillmentions their desire to continue their fasting, she emphasizes this aspectof their Rule less and less. Most likely, she felt obligated to her Capuchinreaders to demonstrate their desire to fast, at least in the beginning, but theharsh circumstances of the long pilgrimage just did not permit them to restricttheir diet. She does, however, in most instances, emphasize their continueddevotion to Eucharistic piety. In this case, for example, she writes: “Wegot up early the next morning and processed to the local church; this wasour practice wherever we went. Our father confessor heard our confession,gave us communion, and then said Mass for us (77).” Due to the luxury ofhaving their confessor, Joseph Gallegos, at their side throughout their travel(he accompanies them all the way from Madrid to Lima), the Madrid sistersare always able to keep up this tradition of Eucharist piety—only with rareexception do the nuns miss their daily communion.22

The Mexican founders did not emphasize their desire to fast on theirvoyage in the same way as their Lima counterparts. In passing, they mentionthat their confessor had made them promise to break their fast, but on severaloccasions, it was impossible to do so (43). They complain that some conventsprovide them such meager fare that they are left hungry. In this aspect,their letters are much more candid than Madre Marıa Rosa’s polished prose.Perhaps this is because they were not writing an official history narrative

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of the new foundation. But, as Bynum has also pointed out, in addition tofasting, food held multiple meanings for religious women. They also sawthemselves as food providers, especially in distributing sustenance to thepoor. The charitable act of giving food to the less fortunate became partof the multiple meanings associated with food.23 This mentality of charitycan help us understand the Toledo’s nuns’ frustration during the time theyspent at a Conceptionist convent in Santa Marıa, Spain (close to Cadiz).“The navigators” suffered during their last days in Spain as it marked aturning point in their travels. They had to bid farewell to their confessorfrom Toledo, the last person that connected them back to their life at theirhome convent. From this moment onward, they were on their own. He wastheir last firm connection to the liminal lifestyle of their Toledo convent, andnow they were at the mercy of the whims of others—in this case, a groupof inhospitable and austere nuns. One of the “navigators” sums up theirfeelings: “One withdraws when you stay in a land where you don’t knowanyone” (41). They are offered so little food in the Conceptionist conventthat another nun, Sor Teresa Marıa, is surprised that none of them has fallenill. The nuns feel very much alone and cannot even take solace in a home-cooked meal. Their letters make clear their surprise at the lack of charityshown to them by the Conceptionist sisters. According to Electa Arenal andStacey Schlau in Untold Sisters, “Food, one of the few sensual pleasurespermitted in some small degree to the nuns (for instance, particular sweetswere associated with specific holidays), relieved the tedium and monotonyof convent life.”24

Sor Teresa Marıa continues her critique of the Conceptionist conventwhen she states that their only solace came from a black servant woman: “Ablack woman who is very devoted to us has come to our aid, bringing usrolls in her skirt pocket” (41). Thus, she implies that they can rely only on theservant class for their daily bread. She fills her letter with acerbic criticismsof their deplorable accommodations. Again, perhaps insofar as these weresincere letters written back to their sisters in Toledo, the author does nottry to sugarcoat her experience in Santa Marıa. First, she complains aboutthe abundance of mice in the convent, but then she insinuates that they arebetter company than the Andalusian nuns: “Our only pleasure is the timethat we are left alone in the room that they have assigned us, where weare accompanied by a large crowd of mice” (41). She then bemoans the factthat they are permitted to drink water only before bedtime at 11:00 o’clockat night, and never during meals. Evidently, the Conceptionist abbess, DonaMarıa de Rojas, only made matters worse since the nuns felt as thoughthey had to treat her like royalty. Writing tongue-in-cheek, Sor Teresa Marıaexplains: “We give much thanks to God because in the abbess’s cell, whichis like a palace, one has to eat as if in front of a King: with caution” (41).

In another missive written by five of the nuns, and addressed to theirconfessor, they make clear the irony of his order for them to limit their fasting,

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since they had not even seen a drop of potaje (fish and garbanzo stew). Tothe contrary, the abbess of the Cadiz convent tells a different version of thestory. In a short letter to don Francisco de Villareal (their confessor fromToledo), she laments their departure and sorely misses “these angels.” Shementions that as her wards for 35 days, she has tried to take care of them bothspiritually and physically. She explains that she even followed the doctor’sorders: “ . . . five days before their departure, they all ate meat following thedoctor’s orders and thus they left rejuvenated, plump, and with a healthycolor” (46). From her own words and from the missives to their confessor,it appears that the Cadiz abbess did not take on the role of a motheringcaretaker as in the situation of Madre Marıa Rosa; instead, she waits for thedoctor’s orders before she feeds the women meat, returning them to betterhealth.

The real treatment of the Capuchin nuns in this port city remains largelyunknown to the modern-day reader. It is also unclear why they did not turnto their own mother abbess, Marıa Felipe, for support. If she did not havethe power to provide food, why not spiritual sustenance as Madre MarıaRosa had done for her sisters? What is clear is that the women felt extremelyhomesick. They had lost the solid support of their confessor and felt verymuch alone (Marıa Rosa always had the guidance of their confessor). “Thenavigators” were still in Spain, but they experienced culture shock in thiscoastal city convent that seemed very foreign to them. Up until this point,their worldview was extremely limited. Nevertheless, little by little, theirtravels forced them to view the social milieu that made up convent life inSpain and Mexico. Through their own words, they offer an insightful glimpseinto the differences between these convents on the Iberian peninsula. Insome places, their Franciscan sisters treated them kindly and generously, butin others, as in Cadiz, the abbess and other nuns regarded them as outcasts.Their missives expose the nuns back in Toledo to the realities of everydaylife in different nunneries. They are also a testament to the fact that not allreligious communities viewed food in the same way.

The varied interpretations on food and fasting by different orders, suchas the Capuchins from Toledo and the Conceptionists in Santa Marıa, seems aconstant throughout the Iberian peninsula. This becomes even more evidentwhen the nuns from Madrid find themselves serving a stint as “prisoners”25

for six weeks in two separate Portuguese convents in Lisbon: half the groupin a Convent of Saint Claire and the other in the Convent of Santa Monica.The Portuguese nuns obviously came from the upper echelons of Lisbonsociety and they brought their principal modus operandi of living to thecloister. Their opulent lifestyle shocked Madre Marıa Rosa and her sisters.These convents seemed a far cry from the professed poverty of the Capuchinorder. The Portuguese nuns dressed in fine clothing, wore jewelry, brushedon makeup, and engaged in musical performances and plays. Moreover,they had many servants at their beck and call, and they ate decadent sweets

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and other delicacies. Unlike the experience of the Toledo nuns in Cadiz, thePortuguese women delighted in having the Spaniards as their guests. MadreMarıa Rosa writes, “. . . the Portuguese nuns showered us with gifts of all dif-ferent sorts, especially a copious amount of sweets. They also gave us manylarge Portuguese oranges, a type that is referred to in Madrid as Chineseoranges” (115).26 The abbess’s account vacillates from vitriolic criticisms oftheir extravagant wardrobe to lavish praise of their extreme generosity. Someof these comments are quite humorous, especially when she comments: “Al-though we appreciated their attention, this extreme kindness never stoppedbothering us, to such an extent that to this very day the Madre Josepha saysthat she overdosed on sweets and little girls in Portugal” (114). No mentionis made, however, of their professed fasting or angst at having to partakein so many rich foods. Overall, Madre Marıa Rosa admits that they are ex-tremely indebted to the Portuguese nuns. This was their first experience ina foreign land, albeit still on the Iberian peninsula, and these noble womentreated them like royalty. They still prided themselves on their Capuchinorder and austere lifestyle, but slowly the liminal aspects of travel outsideMadrid challenged their interpretation of the Capuchin Rule.

THE CHALLENGE OF SHIP VOYAGES

These difficulties intensified on their ship voyages to the New World. Lifeon the high seas in the mid 1600s and early 1700s proved wearisome evenfor the most seasoned mariner. In addition to all the normal circumstancesthat plagued any transatlantic crossing, such as gale force winds and violentstorms, the six Toledo nuns had to sleep literally cheek to jowl. It is hard toimagine, but they were assigned half a cabin at the stern, which measuredapproximately 5 by 4 feet. According to Emilia Alba Gonzalez, this waseven smaller than the standard accommodations for the time period. In mostinstances, five to six friars would be assigned to a whole cabin twice thatsize (50).

“The navigators” did not want to leave the protected space of the cabin,so two servant women brought them their daily meals. In lieu of havingto cook for themselves, their passage included meals provided to them bythe captain. For the first few weeks, the nuns and the crew partook ofrelatively fresh meats, fruits, and vegetables. They ate a simple breakfastconsisting of biscuits, garlic cloves, cheese, and dried fruits. Most likely, theyate only one hot meal a day, but as the weeks passed, so did the freshmeat and vegetables, until they were left with only cured meats, salted fish,honey, cheese, and olives (53). Yet it is difficult to imagine the nuns eatingmuch of anything. Their major complaint during the sea voyage is theiruncontrollable seasickness. Sor Teresa Marıa sums up their situation on theship: “We were vomiting for more than a month and we did not even have

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one little cloth to clean ourselves up” (67). Considering the fact that “thenavigators” spent over two months at sea (they left Cadiz, Spain on July 5,1665 and arrived in Veracruz, Mexico on September 8, 1665), and on mostdays, they suffered from extreme seasickness, they must have all arrived inthe capital of New Spain quite weak and malnourished. Their delicate healthperhaps contributed to the untimely death of the mother abbess, Sor MarıaFelipe, who died approximately one year later on September 21, 1666.

On a related note, the Madrid nuns also mourned the death of one oftheir own. During their long ship voyage, they discovered that Madre Este-fanıa had developed a very large breast tumor.27 Everyone tried to comforther: “Madre Estefanıa was given every possible remedy because the shipswere very well stocked. None of us was ever in want of anything, and theytreated the sick nun with many special touches and great care” (56). How-ever, the narrator never details any specific remedy or special diet providedto the patient. Unlike the Toledo letters, we learn very little about what thenuns ate and drank during the transatlantic voyage, other than that the cap-tain and chaplains attended to all their needs. Later, upon arrival in BuenosAires, Madre Estefanıa sipped a medicinal cordial to ease the pain of herfinal moments. She died shortly thereafter in an unfamiliar place, far fromher native Spain.

A NEW DIET: THE CUISINE OF LATIN AMERICA

Both sets of women experienced many hardships in these foreign lands, butthey could not turn back. They also had to quickly adapt to the many newfoods and drink in Latin America. This is not to say that their diets transformedcompletely, but the change of climate and new environs inevitably forcedthem to conform to each new situation. As Robert Launay points out inhis article “Tasting the World: Food in Early European Travel Narratives,”“Narratives of travel to distant places can tell us at least as much aboutthe people who wrote them as about the far-flung lands they describe.”28

For example, we learn a lot about how the Madrid nuns look more towardsurvival than their professed fasting when they cross the Pampas. Their largecaravan had to carry enough supplies of livestock and provisions to last themduring the 41 days it took to reach Mendoza at the foothills of the Andes.29

Madre Marıa Rosa describes the situation: “That stretch of land is so desertedof inhabitants that one cannot find any drinking water. In some areas thesituation becomes so extreme that many oxen and horses die of thirst, andfor this reason it is necessary to travel with a large number of livestock” (165).Their diet consisted mostly of meat (Madre Marıa Rosa also mentions cartsfull of chickens, bread, and hardtack), but at this point in her narrative, theabbess does not make any reference to their carnivorous diet. Regardless,she and her sisters seem to accept the reality of their new surroundings.

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Their main concern is to make it to the other side of the ominous mountainrange. At midday, the entourage would stop so that the hired help couldmake a rustic lunch. She explains: “During this time the workers would rusharound to prepare lunch and there never seemed like enough time to eat it.Within two or three hours they would kill the cows and chickens and thencook them” (166). Marıa Rosa does not actually state that they ate the meat,but she does not negate it either.

This section of Madre Marıa Rosa’s account differs greatly from herfirst descriptions of their desire to fast while still on the Iberian peninsula.Earlier, she writes that her companions had shed many a tear when forcedto eat chicken for the first time. It appears that she had carefully chosen herwords, surrounding them in a rhetoric of remorse so that she could teachthe Peruvian novices about their food customs and fasting. Yet, now onthe Pampas, she makes no attempt to hide their diet consisting primarilyof beef and poultry. At this point in her narrative, Madre Marıa Rosa hasadjusted to the extreme circumstances of their journey. They had recentlylost their beloved Madre Estefanıa in Buenos Aires: a harsh blow that seemsto have affected the worldview of the abbess. Now she does not appearso concerned with the strict regime of the Capuchin lifestyle. Their maingoal was to make it to the new convent in Peru, and if the nuns had toeat meat to survive the final months of the pilgrimage, then so be it. Theyfelt exposed and vulnerable on the open plains of the Pampas. It was evendifficult for them to pray, since they spent the better portion of the day ina jarring oxcart, although their confessor did manage to say Mass and givethem communion every morning. Despite the grueling trip, the women atequite well and perhaps had even gained a few pounds. Later in her narrative,in reference to their trek across the Andes, Madre Marıa Rosa pokes fun ather rotund figure. After explaining that she had never ridden a horse ormule, let alone seen another woman attempt to do so, she writes: “I had theadditional problem of being quite fat, causing the mules to tire easily” (163).

Once the Madrid founders cross the high peaks, she rarely alludes tofood or fasting. Instead, she focuses the last part of her narrative on detailingall the final preparations for the new foundation. Madre Marıa Rosa’s accountomits vibrant details regarding their encounters with new foods in Peru.Three hundred years later, anyone who has lived in, or traveled to, this SouthAmerican country knows that the indigenous cultures have left their mark onPeruvian cuisine. Regardless, not once does the abbess mention ubiquitousitems such as chili peppers, quinoa, tropical fruits, or even the common cui(guinea pig). Even if the upper-class Lima society tried to preserve a Spanishculinary tradition in the Viceregal capital, surely the nuns would have comein contact with some of these items.30 Only in rare instances does MadreMarıa Rosa make references to the local indigenous population, showingvery little interest in their culture, and never their food customs. We learnabsolutely nothing about their diet, only that their confessor gave them bread

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and biscuits “which was the most coveted item for them” (160). At the sametime, maybe this is another teaching moment for the future novices. She hasno qualms about the Spaniards’ superiority over the indigenous peoples, andmost of all, she prioritizes Spanish cuisine: bread, as the staple of life for allEuropean and native populations.

Like the Peruvian account, the Toledo nuns seldom touch upon theAmerindian populations of the New World. For example, in one letter, SorLorenza Bernarda only briefly mentions three or four natives who shareda canoe with them in Veracruz (69).31 In contrast, they do provide theirconfessor and sisters back in Spain a vivid illustration of the exotic food theyencounter in Mexico. One of the best sources comes from Sor Marıa, whowrote periodical chronicles about their life in the New Spain. In regard tofruits and vegetables, she explains:

The fruits are similar in name and taste. There are prickly pears whichare similar to pears and they are filled with seeds like hempseeds. Thereare others called chirimoyas, comparable to small squash with pips; andothers, that are called capotes [sic]32 which are like quinces with eightpits on the inside and the rest are purgatives. There are beautiful lettucesand endives, which are the best. The weather is like May because of itstemperature and bountifulness . . . (82).

Sor Marıa’s depiction of these foods echoes the rhetoric of the earlychronicles of Indies. As in those documents, she uses Spain as her mainpoint of reference, comparing each item back to one that is familiar to bothher and her readers. In general, the Spanish nuns struggle with the differentand unusual foods in Mexico. On the one hand, they are astounded by thelarge quantities and availability of sweets and sugar, but on the other, theirgreatest problems arise from the ubiquitous tomato and chili pepper—bothautochthonous to Mexico. In Sor Marıa’s brief chronicle from November 1665,she complains how the spicy food had given her a horrible rash: “. . .theyquickly bled me because I was covered in blotches so large that they lookedlike shingles (tetter). It went away later, and I said that it was because ofthe stews; they put lots of pepper and tomato in everything” (82). Althoughfoods such as the tomato are now an integral part of the Spanish diet, itwas a slow process for early modern Spaniards to accept this member ofthe nightshade family. According to Ken Albala, it was not until the end ofthe 17th century that a European cookbook even incorporated a recipe withtomatoes.33 The liminal nature of their travels, however, forced the Toledonuns to leave the comfort zone of their accustomed foods. It probably alsoled them to believe that their ailments derived from the exotic Mexican fare.

Sor Marıa’s skin problems, however, are minor in comparison to thefailing health of her mother abbess. The arduous ship voyage and subsequenttrials of the new foundation slowly started to take their toll on Sor Marıa

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Felipe. In December of 1665, Sor Marıa illustrates the abbess’s condition:“She is worn out and tired from the traveling and now there is little time forrest” (82). Six months later, the abbess pens a farewell letter to her belovedsisters in Toledo. She senses her imminent death and says her goodbyes tothe women left behind. One by one, she mentions the names of many ofher Spanish sisters, including the Toledo cook. She also takes a momentto update her on the culinary scene in Mexico: “. . . Sor Polonia, there arealways eggs and sugar, but never enough almonds and spices, nor oil orvinegar” (103). No mention is made of penance or fasting, just allusions toSor Polonia’s home-style cuisine and ingredients. At the end of her life, SorMarıa Felipe reminisces about the basic pleasure of her favorite foods. Herwords remind us that monastic communities were not always about aestheticpractices that promoted food abstinence, but that nuns such as the abbessfrom Toledo also enjoyed a good home-cooked meal. She died three monthslater, on September 21, 1666.

After the Spanish nuns had settled into their new convent in Mexico City,inevitably the unfamiliar tastes of New Spain began to flavor their nutritionalregime. According to Ignacio de la Pena’s chronicle of the nuns from 1728,overall, the Capuchin women ate a simple diet. A typical main meal wouldconsist of a cup of beans (or other legume), followed by what they calledpitanza (daily ration), which could contain nopales (prickly pear cactus) orsquash and a piece of fish.34 Although Alba Gonzalez also cites this samepassage in her dissertation, we should be careful with much of the informa-tion provided by Ignacio de la Pena and other early texts. He is much moreinterested in painting a hagiographical version of the events—comparingthe nuns to saints—than in portraying the harsh reality of the journey.35 Forexample, he writes that the women rejoiced in every aspect of the trip andat no time felt bothered by any inconveniences from living on the road orat sea (26). This is in sharp contrast to the women’s graphic complaints ofviolent seasickness and lack of basic commodities. Asuncion Lavrin’s care-ful study of Mexican nuns better illuminates the realities of their requiredfasting. She explains: “In New Spain, conventual hagiography has recordedsome cases of extreme fasting, but, in general, neither confessors nor con-ventual orders approved unsupervised and extreme fasting because conventsdid not want sick nuns who caused extraordinary expenses in medicines andphysicians.”36 We learn much more about the nuns’ diet through their ownwords than through Pena’s account. In her November chronicle, for exam-ple, Sor Marıa lists the variety of fish and other seafood that the womenencountered: “There is always fish, frogs, oysters, and some other types offish that I don’t know the names, but are always the best” (82).

In regard to their liquid intake, the women would wash down theirmeals with one pitcher of water for every two nuns. The strict Capuchinorder allowed them to drink water only during mealtime; otherwise, theyhad to ask permission of the abbess to quench their thirst.37 Surprisingly the

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Toledo nuns only briefly talk about chocolate: a beverage that was common-place in many Mexican convents. Their perspective on chocolate appears tovacillate between high regard and scorn (at least in one instance). The formerbecause when they first arrived in the Viceregal capital, they sent a box ofchocolate to their dear confessor don Francisco de Villareal in Toledo, andthe latter because in one of her missives, Sor Marıa de Toledo described thecriollas (Spanish women born in the New World) as “very lazy and whenat home always drinking chocolate and atoles” (440).38 From Madre MarıaRosa’s account, we learn a bit more about the nuanced views of chocolatewithin the fabric of early modern religious communities. It is obvious thatshe views chocolate as an esteemed delicacy. For example, they drink a cel-ebratory “crock of chocolate” on the morning of their departure from theirMadrid convent. However, when they stopped for a few days in the Toledoconvent (the same one in this study) they had to receive special permis-sion to partake in this frothy beverage; a treat normally prohibited in thatcommunity.39 The Madrid nuns also sampled chocolate at least once whileon the road in South America. Madre Rosa describes how they had receiveda small box of chocolates sent to them while in Mendoza from the Peruviannovices.

Once established in their cloistered halls of Peru and Mexico, the twogroups of religious women had much more control of their routine and dietthan during their liminal life on the road. Every monastic community had acertain amount of leeway over the particular rules that would govern theirconvent. Inevitably, these women brought with them their strict regimen,such as the limitation on when and how much water the women coulddrink—during and after lunch and supper—but at the same time, the found-ing nuns were not islands in the New World, nor can it be said that theywere the same women who left their cloistered convents in Spain. As itiner-ant nuns, their travels shaped and modified their views on food and fasting.At first, both groups believed they could maintain the liminal nature of theircloistered communities on their journeys. They thought they could continuetheir professed fasting, abstain from meat, and partake in the same types offood prepared for them back in Castile. In some ways, the Madrid nuns hadbetter luck keeping to some of their strict customs. Their confessor, JosephGallegos, helped them with this endeavor, especially because he was ableto say Mass and give them communion on a daily basis—thus enabling themto maintain their Eucharistic piety throughout their travels.

The Toledo nuns, in contrast, bid their farewells to their confessor atthe port of Cadiz and were left to fend for themselves. Not only had theylost the emotional support of their spiritual advisor, but it appears that theirmother abbess could not provide the same solid mothering and nurturingrole as Madre Marıa Rosa did for her spiritual daughters. In this sense, theToledo nuns left behind the liminal protection of their cloistered life. Theyfelt very much exposed to the impulses of those in charge of their care

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while they finished the second part of their voyage to Mexico. Their travelbecame a liminal experience, a type of pilgrimage that inevitably affectedtheir worldview, especially in regard to food. This is not to say the liminalnature of the long journey did not affect the Madrid nuns. Although they hadthe support of their confessor, their passage to South America literally tookthree years. Additionally, they had to deal with the death of their belovedMadre Estefanıa—-a factor that deeply affected the nuns. In fact, her deathovershadowed the narrator’s references to fasting. For the most part, insteadof reiterating their desire to continue their aesthetic lifestyle, Madre MarıaRosa concentrates more on the group’s survival, and if that meant eatingmeat on the Pampas, then so be it. She had saved her rhetoric of fastingfor the first part of the account. She did her didactic duty of teaching thefuture Peruvian novices the basic tenets of their Capuchin rule but towardthe second half of the journey the liminal nature of their pilgrimage takesprecedence over their cloistered lifestyle.

CONCLUSION

These two amazing journeys attest to the colorful fabric of early modernSpain and the Americas. The poignant stories told from the perspective ofthe Castilian women shed light on food practices and exchanges betweendifferent religious communities on the Iberian peninsula and later in Peruand Mexico. Through their nuanced voices we learn about what it was liketo travel the roads and waterways of the Atlantic basin. They remind us that,just as food and its multifaceted connotations had been of primary concernto medieval religious women, aspects of this same tradition, especially thatof Eucharistic piety, continued well into early modern Spain and its colonies.However, this tradition was inevitably transformed, because along their sep-arate routes the women had to shed their own preconceived notions on foodand fasting.

Although these two groups of nuns came from the same religious order,many elements of their journeys, and how they conveyed them on paper,reveal striking differences. Most notably, it is the intended audiences of thesenarratives that guide their treatment of food. As analyzed in this study, thePeruvian narrative is much more polished as a historical document for thefuture nuns in Lima. Marıa Rosa and, later, her editor Josepha Victoria, stressthe richness of food as a potent symbol of the “world,” one which they havevoluntarily renounced as a discalced order of Capuchin nuns. Yet, as soonas they step foot outside their Madrid convent, food becomes a marker ofthe challenges to their identity as barefoot sisters. The narrative emphasizesthe hearty cuisine served to them in Europe, especially the lavish dishes theysampled while in the Portuguese convents—a subtle criticism against thesenuns whose food and dress expose their opulent lifestyle. We learn less

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about the foods that the Madrid nuns ate in South America, but whateverrules they had to break (such as eating meat on the Pampas), the narratorattributes them to the inevitable experiences of life outside the cloister. Incontrast, the series of letters penned to the Toledo sisters reveal much moreof their emotions and feelings than the foundation narrative for the Peruvianconvent. Their audience is the beloved sisters that they left behind in Castile,and food marks for them nostalgia for their former lives. From the alimentaryprivations in Cadiz, to the exotic descriptions of Mexican cuisine, these lettersexpress, not how their journey challenged the strict rule of the Capuchinorder, but on the contrary, how the nuns felt the painful separation fromtheir former companions in Toledo.

The topics brought to the table by the crafted travel account of MadreMarıa Rosa and the more outspoken letters by the nuns from Toledo showthat the new environs forced the women to modify their old habits. Upondeparture, each group thought that they would be able to continue theiraccustomed fasting from their home convents. They soon realized that thiswas impossible. In essence, when they stepped foot out of their cloisteredenvironment, the stakes changed. Not only did they have to adjust to eachnew convent and their particular set of rules, but they had to adjust to theextreme conditions of long ship voyages and land crossing once in LatinAmerica. Although these Capuchin nuns might have missed the comfortfoods whipped up by the Sor Polonias of Castile, they now had to acceptthe new gastronomy of Mexico and Peru. Their corpus of writings offers atestament to the culinary patrimony of convent kitchens on both sides of theAtlantic.40

The travel accounts provided by these nuns show us the importance offood in the religious and missionary experiences of Iberian women. Foodcan be used to rethink how we approach foundation narratives, letters,autobiographies, biographies, and other texts produced by or about religiouswomen. We already have a solid base to build on, since much has beenwritten about holy women and fasting in the Middle Ages. It is my hopethat this study will spark the interest of scholars to pursue future researchon religious women’s travel and food during the early modern period.

NOTES

1. For food and medieval religious women, see Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and HolyFast (Berkeley, CA: University of Los Angeles Press, 1987).

2. Victor W. Turner, The Ritual Process. Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine PublishingCo., 1969), 95.

3. Emilia Alba Gonzalez. “Presencia de America en Toledo: Aportacion cultural y social,” diss.,Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1998, 1–105. All quotes come from this dissertation, and the trans-lations into English are mine. The same author later published this dissertation as a book, Fundaciondel Convento de San Felipe de Jesus de Clarisas Capuchinas en Nueva Espana (Mexico: Ediciones Dabar,2002).

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4. Up until Alba Gonzalez’s discovery of the letters, we knew very little about the nuns. JosefinaMuriel references them in Cultura femeninia novohispana (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autonomade Mexico, 1994) 97, 98, and there are two sources from the 17th and 18th centuries written about thewomen; the nuns’ confessor in Toledo wrote the former. See Francisco de Villarreal, La Thebayda enPoblado (Madrid: Antonio Roman, 1686); and Ignacio de la Pena, Trono Mexicano (Madrid: Francisco delHierro, 1728).

5. Marıa Rosa refers to herself and her traveling companions as “madre” instead of the typical“sor” as in the case of most nuns. In her case, it makes sense, since this is the official title for a motherabbess, but it is unclear why she calls her sisters “madre.” Perhaps she is trying to emphasize their statusas the founding mothers of the Peruvian convent. The other abbess discussed in this article does notadopt the title of madre and is referred to as Sor Marıa Felipe.

6. For more information on nuns writing the history of their convents, see Josefina Muriel, 43–120;Asuncion Lavrin, Brides of Christ. Conventual Life in Colonial Mexico (Stanford, CA: Stanford UniversityPress, 2008), 323–327; and Mariselle Melendez, “¡Si tal era el dedo. Cual serıa el cuerpo!: The ArchivalProject of Sor Marıa Josefa de la Santısima Trinidad (1783),” Hispanic Review 74.3 (2006): 251–277.

7. This essay relies on a copy of the original manuscript housed at the National Library in Madrid.I unearthed that manuscript on a research trip to Spain back in 2003, and, subsequently, I publishedan edited translation of her work. See Madre Marıa Rosa, “Fundacion del Monasterio de Capuchinas deJesus, Marıa y Jose de Lima,” ms. 9509, Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid; and Madre Marıa Rosa, Journey ofFive Capuchin Nuns, ed. Sarah E. Owens. “The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe Series” (Toronto:CRRS and ITER, 2009). All quotes in this article pertaining to the Madrid nuns come from this translatededition. For a published Spanish version of Marıa Rosa’s account, see Ruben Vargas Ugarte, Relacionesde viajes (Siglo XVI, XVII y XVIII) (Lima: Biblioteca Historica Peruana, 1947), 259–381.

8. Elsewhere, I have written about other didactic elements of this document, such as the topic ofdeath and dying. See “A Nun’s Account of Death and Dying in a Foreign Land,” Magistra 16.1 (Summer2010): 12–37.

9. Bynum, 101.10. For the cult of the eucharistic host in late medieval times, see Bynum, 48–69.11. Sor Lorenza Bernarda became the mother abbess in Mexico after Sor Marıa Felipa’s death on

September 21, 1666.12. A minority of religious women from different orders took fasting to an extreme. In addition to

Bynum’s work, see Rudolph Bell’s study on Saint Catherine of Siena, Holy Anorexia (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1985). For a broad overview, see Carole Counihan’s review essay “An AnthropologicalView of Western Women’s Prodigious Fasting” in The Anthropology of Food and Body (New York:Routledge, 1999), 93–112. For an example in colonial Mexico, see Kristine Ibsen, “The Hiding Places ofMy Power: Sebastiana Josefa de la Santısima Trinidad and the Hagiographic Representation of the Bodyin Colonial Spanish America,” Colonial Latin American Review 7.2 (1998): 259–261.

13. According to Cristina Mazzoni, the Carmelite Saint Teresa of Avila speaks very little of hereating habits. She goes on to explain that this does not stop her from using “. . .metaphors of food in herLife to describe the soul’s needs, wants and joys.” The Women in God’s Kitchen. Cooking, Eating, andSpiritual Writing (New York: Continuum, 2005), 122. For a study on Saint Teresa’s references to fastingand her rhetoric of moderation, see Marc Thompson, “Fasting and Fulfillment: A Language of Moderationin the Mysticism of St. Teresa,” Mystic Quarterly 23.1 (1997): 33–40.

14. For more details on cooking and different orders of nuns, see Rosalva Loreto Lopez and AnaBenıtez Muro, Un bocado para los angeles. La cocina conventual novhispana (Clıo: Mexico City, 2000),15–39.

15. Not all discalced orders adhered to these strict requirements. See Kathryn Burns for a discussionon colonial nuns in Cuzco, Peru (in some cases, Franciscan nuns had “cells” with up to eight rooms).Colonial Habits. Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,1999), 107.

16. For the origins of the female Capuchin order, see Lazaro Iriarte, Las capuchinas: Pasado ypresente (Seville: El Adalid Serafico, 1996), 17–24. On the Iberian peninsula, Madrid was founded in 1618and Toledo in 1632—the latter being an offshoot of the Madrid convent.

17. The Council of Trent issued this decree in 1563.18. For example, see Capuchin foundation in Plasencia, Spain. Those founding mothers, originally

from Madrid, spent only one night on the road in order to travel to Extremadura, and it was easy forthem to continue their strict regime of fasting and penance. Juan Joseph Saenz de Lezcano, Monte de la

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Myrra, y collado del incienso, trasladados, por la imitacion al serafico Monasterio de Senora Santa Anade las Madres Capuchinas de la Nobilısima Ciudad de Plasencia (Madrid: Miguel Gomez, 1718), 9–10.

19. For specific examples of nuns’ observance of liturgical holidays, see Rosalva Loreto Lopez,“Practicas alimenticias en los conventos de mujeres en la Puebla del Siglo XVIII,” Conquista y Co-mida. Consecuencias del Encuentro de Dos Mundos, ed. Janet Long. (Mexico City: Universidad NacionalAutonoma de Mexico, 1996), 496.

20. Bynum, 67.21. Montserrat Cabre, “Women or Healers? Household Practices and the Categories of Heath Care

in Late Medieval Iberia,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82.1 (2008): 29, 30.22. For example, on their transatlantic ship voyage, Madre Marıa Rosa describes a violent storm

that wrecks the ship: “Throughout that whole day it was impossible to cook or do anything” (145).23. Bynum, 114–122. In addition to food distribution as a charitable act, Bynum’s study explores

in depth other aspects of food associated with medieval women, such as using their own bodies as foodfor others: “They exuded oil, milk, or sweet saliva that had the power to cure others” (122).

24. Electa Arenal and Stacey Schlau, eds., Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in Their Own Works(Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1989), 244.

25. In essence, the nuns were “prisoners,” since Spain and Portugal were enemies during theSpanish War of Succession (1701–1714), but the Spanish nuns jokingly employ this term since thePortuguese nuns lavished them with gifts and royal treatment.

26. According to Ken Albala, the most common type of orange in early modern Europe was thebitter type from Seville, but in 1529, a sweet variety appeared on the continent from Asia—obviously,this is the Chinese orange that the nuns tried in Portugal. Food in Early Modern Europe (Westport, CT:Greenwood Press, 2003), 52.

27. For a history of breast cancer and nuns, see James S. Olson, Bathsheba’s Breast: Women,Cancer, and History (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 22.

28. Robert Launay, “Tasting the World: Food in Early European Travel Narratives,” Food andFoodways 11.1 (2003): 27.

29. Their confessor brought 11 people with him from Spain and had 12 carts full of supplies. Theywere also joined by the general of the South Sea, the viscount of Miraflores and all their men (165).Marıa Rosa comments on the size of their group: “There were also many oxen so that the drivers wouldalways have fresh ones on hand, numerous cows to use as food and a whole herd of horses. It tookmany people to tend to all these animals, so much so that when we all gathered together it was like asmall city” (166).

30. In the 17th and 18th centuries, several Peruvian indigenous painters depicted the last supperwith the cui as the centerpiece of the meal. One such painting by Marcos Zapata (1710–1773) is stillhanging in the Cathedral of Cuzco.

31. Once established in New Spain, “the navigators” do write about the local indigenouspopulation—especially the Indian uprising of 1692. I have preferred not to analyze these letters sincethis essay deals with travel and first impressions of the New World, not their later years in Mexico City.This would be an excellent topic for a future study. See Alba Gonzalez, 408–413.

32. It is not clear if she is referring to zapotes (although they commonly have only one large pit).33. Antonio Latini included a recipe for a tomato casserole in his Napolitano cookbook Lo scalco

alla moderna (1692). Albala 31, 32.34. De la Pena, 65.35. For a discussion on hagiographies, in particular those relating to Saint Rose of Lima, see

Kathleen Ann Myers, Neither Saints Nor Sinners. Writing the Lives of Women in Spanish America (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2003), 31–43.

36. Brides of Christ. Conventual Life in Colonial Mexico (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,2008), 190–191.

37. Alba Gonzalez, 98. Rosalva Loreto Lopez in “Practicas alimenticias en los conventos de mujeresen la Puebla del Siglo XVIII” points out that in Colonial Puebla, Mexico, sick and weak nuns were alsogiven wine to drink, 492.

38. Atole is a corn-based drink very common in Mexico.39. A fierce debate erupted among Catholic theologians in the 16th and 17th centuries regarding

religious women and their consumption of chocolate. The controversy revolved around whether nunsshould be allowed to drink chocolate on a regular basis or if it broke the ecclesiastical fast and should bebanned. According to Manuel Ramos Medina, the Carmelites were the only order in New Spain to outright

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ban chocolate, Manuel Ramos Medina, Mısticas y descalzas. Fundaciones femeninas carmelitas en laNueva Espana (Mexico City: Condumex, 1997), 215–216. See also Beth Marie Forrest and April L. Najjaj, “IsSipping Sin Breaking Fast? The Catholic Chocolate Controversy and the Changing World of Early ModernSpain,” Food and Foodways 15 (2007): 31–52; Electa Arenal, “Monjas chocolateras: contextualizacionesagridulces,” Nictimene . . . sacrılega: Estudios coloniales en homenaje a Georgina Sabat-Rivers, eds. MabelMorana and Yolanda Martınez San-Miguel (Mexico: Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana, 2003), 135–155;and Lavrin, 189–190.

40. Still today, the cloistered nuns from the Convent of Jesus, Marıa and Jose in Lima, Peru sellconfectionary treats to the general public. I was able to sample some cookies on a trip to Lima in October2009. It is said that 16th century nuns from the Convent of Santa Rosa in Puebla were the first to developmole, a spicy chocolate sauce.

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Food, Fasting and Itinerant Nuns

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