La Purísima

This is the chapter of San Miguel’s history that I have found the most enchanting and intriguing. Let me tell you just the beginning to see if I can entice you into reading Rebellious Nuns: The Troubled History of a Mexican Convent by Margaret Chowning. The cast of characters is fascinating. Let’s begin with Manuel Tomas de la Canal who came to San Miguel from Mexico City in about 1730. He was the son of a wealthy Spanish merchant and became an even wealthier sheep rancher and wool merchant. Manuel de la Canal and his wife Maria Josepha Hervas’ first child was born in 1736 and they named her Maria Josepha Lina de la Canal y Hervas for her mother, as is traditional. Over the next dozen years they had nine children. Manuel spent lavishly on both private and civic buildings, including the family’s summer palace which is the Instituto Allende today.

Within days of each other Manuel de la Canal and Maria Josepha Hervas both died. The eldest of their nine orphans was Maria Josepha Lina who was twelve. She immediately let it be known that she intended to found a convent. This was no sudden whim or romantic notion. She had been preparing all her life. She was well educated and independent. In her parent’s house she had insisted upon living apart as in a cell. She tried to work like the servants and when she could, pretended to drop something on the floor so she could surreptitiously kiss their feet. By the time she was fifteen, with the help of her confessor, her plans were well under way.

Enter another colorful character: Father Luis Phelipe Neri de Alfaro, Maria Josepha Lina’s confessor. He was a trusted friend of the family, a mystic who devoted 25 years to building Atotonilco at the behest of Christ himself. He wore severe hair shirts on Fridays and slept in a coffin to keep his mortality in mind, although he wore out three coffins over his lifetime. Alfaro had experience in founding religious establishments, and had direct or indirect connections to seven religious institutions in or near San Miguel.

A convent in the city would be a crowning glory. A convent was an appealing alternative to marriage for upper class young ladies. It also brought advantages to the city by spurring growth, creating a lending institution for the moderate from the endowment built by dowries, and adding a certain air of culture or refinement to its reputation.

Maria Josepha Lina had quite definite ideas about how her convent should be run; and there’s where all the problems begin. She wanted to institute the rule of vida común or shared life. Her hand is obvious in the “constitution” that stipulated the exact structure and practices of the convent: the number and status of each nun, the amount of their dowries, what racial background they must have, and that there were to be no servants. This would prove to be the undoing of the convent over and over.

Most convents that required a dowry followed the rule of the vida particular or private life. The result was often a kind of private city where nuns had personal servants, habits made of fine cloth, jewels, pets, and singing, dancing and theatrics were all part of life behind the grille of the cloister. Every indication was that La Purísima should be the same.

When Maria Josepha Lina was twenty, in 1756, the convent was inaugurated. There were eight days of masses, fireworks, theatrical comedies, bullfights, and parades. And then all hell broke loose. Three times. I won’t give away any more of the story but I recommend it heartily.

The convent today houses the art institute, Bella Artes, where foreigners come to paint.
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Rebellious Nuns: The Troubled History of a Mexican Convent, 1752-1863. By Margaret Chowning. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.)