A Female-Dominated Religious Sphere

While the religious sphere may have been controlled by men, it certainly seems to be dominated by women. Both in Spanish and Spanish-American societies, spirituality, religious education, religious participation, and strict religious adherence seem to be rather gendered in terms of femininity. Why is that? There are various possible explanations:

- Women, as leaders of the domestic sphere, lead the education and upbringing of children and therefore help ensure their children’s religious foundations.

- Women, as considered from the foundational, Biblical teachings of the Catholic tradition, are morally weak and capricious (as discussed in the previous post). Therefore, their proximity to the Church through religious education and practice is socially stressed and reinforced.

For these reasons, it seems to logically follow that women entered the Church in great numbers (again, for various reasons) and that the Church perhaps targeted women in the Inquisition, as seen through Marina de San Miguel’s confession. Both women and their families had economic and social reasons to choose a life in the Church – greater independence, greater ability to pursue knowledge, less immediate financial strain on the family, etc. As time passed, the monastery was intended not just for elites but open and welcome to women of all classes; such helps explain how Sor Juana de Ines – the illegitimate daughter of a non-elite – became the most famous nun of Spanish America. With such opportunity to enter the Church, up to 77% of women in some areas preferred to do so to getting married.

The Church also similarly socially targeted women in the Inquisition due to the socio-religious perception of women. In reading Marina de San Miguel’s Inquisition interrogation, I was first intrigued by the secretive methods employed – secret charges, secret prison, secret abduction, etc. In analyzing her responses and the inquisitors responses to such, I wondered at the rationale for her incarceration: Marina admitted that she had consented to commit certain “evil” acts (and did commit them) but that she “did not believe that she offended God because she did not have the intention of offending him.” Clearly, the Inquisition’s presumption of guilt and manner of considering intent greatly influenced both Marina’s interrogation and her sentencing – she received 100 lashes after being paraded naked to the waist and gagged and was sentenced to a fine of 100 pesos and to ten years’ reclusion in a plague hospital (not prison but a plague hospital – what?!).