The Devil, Women, and the Body in Seventeenth-Century Puebla Convents

The mystical and supernatural experiences that many nuns faced in seventeenth-century convents in Puebla shaped New Spain's spirituality. These experiences and the way they were recounted provided the elements for an archetype of conduct and for socially accepted virtues. Using their imagination, these nuns, servants of God, enlightened and morally exemplary, maintained a direct relationship between the convent, the supernatural world, and colonial society. Anthropological studies of popular religion have emphasized, almost exclusively, the collective and public aspects of religious expression but have ignored private, individual piety. Yet collective and private religious expressions have been linked throughout history. When individual manifestations of religious expression were socially endorsed, these private forms of piety influenced the creation of identity and models of behavior. Because these archetypes of religious conduct were so important within colonial culture as a whole, it is important to gain an understanding of the events that led to their formation and the way in which they travelled from the culture of the convent to that of the larger society.