The study of Spanish mysticism has been largely confined to the commentary of the works of Sta. Teresa de Jesús and San Juan de la Cruz, and also to those of the quasi-mystic Fray Luis de León. In the last 20 years or so, however, the works of other mystics and devotional writers—notably women religious— have been discovered or rediscovered, published and commented, thereby adding new works and criticism to this dearth of literature. The research and publications of Electa Arenal and Stacey Schlau, Georgina Sabat, Ronald Surtz, Mary Giles, Anne Cruz, Elizabeth Rhodes, and Elizabeth Boyce and myself, among others, have given us new female pious writers, visionaries, and mystics to read and investigate. It is my purpose here to introduce Sor María de la Antigua, and briefly comment a small corpus of her poetry titled “Coloquios amorosos.”

Sor María de la Antigua, a Clarist nun, was born in 1566 in a field twelve leagues from Sevilla. Her parents, Baltasar Rodríguez—a Portuguese from Yelves—and Ana Rodríguez—from Badajoz—took refuge in a hermitage consecrated to the Virgin, and whose name the infant took. From there they went to Utrera where the nuns accepted her in the Convento de Nuestra Señora de la Antigua, whose name she was later to take. The nuns took in her parents as servants who, after a short while, left the child to the care of the nuns. María lived there until the age of six when, to treat her for a head injury (is this the cause of her visions?), she was taken to Sevilla by the brother of the prioress, under whose guardianship she lived for six years, and during which time she demonstrated a religious inclination and the desire to become a martyr. When her foster parent died, her father took her to his house, but she refused to live with her parents. The nuns of the Convento de Santa Clara in Marchena took her in as a donada, without a dowry. She was thus a “monja de velo blanco,” who served “las monjas de velo negro.” She mostly served in the kitchen, where she experienced many of her visions.