The Discovery of Anxiousness

Front matter

Joana Serrado TRE DISCOVERY OF ANXIOUSNESS

Philosophy and Mysticism in Baroque Portugal

S)TUDIES OF THE K)ULTURWISSENSCHAFTLICHE

Contents

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Chapter 2 - Recollections In Joana De Jesus

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Chapter 4 - Anxious Subject

4.2. Her Presence: Negotiating Anxiousness in de Beauvoir's Search

Prologue

The cultural heartbeat of Anxiousness

In the first volume of this series, Agatha Frischmuth explored the concept of Inertia/Nichtstun as an expression of Modernity's underlying vocation. Drawing on theoretical work of Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin, while seeking empirical evidence in the literary characters created by European canonic authors, Frischmuth's study is a case in point of the significant role played by Cultural Studies and its German counterpart Kulturwissenschaften in reaffirming the close relationship, fascination (or need) that European culture has had with privative language. Whether manifested through inertia, darkness, ignorance, apathy, melancholy, fear, void, vacuum, angst, terror, infection, illness, absence or death, the discourse of negation has inspired generations of scholars and provided methodological approches to the study of culture, as recently Lars Koch traced in epistemological dimension of Angst.

A similar engagement with negative discourse allows the present volume to be read as a sequel to Nichtstun. The Discovery of Anxiousness is an empirical and theoretical study to the seemingly privative character of Anxiousness. Anxiousness is here chosen as a translation of the Portuguese word ánsias ( also spelled ancias thoughout the baroque period). Empirically, this research is grounded in a historical and hermeneutic analysis of early modern sources, many of them in manuscript form and understudied by historians of ideas. One factor of this academic neglect may relay on its seemingly pious genre. The formulaic nature of many of the life-writings and the assumed hagiographic nature of the accounts of virtuous or extrardinary women, contributed to academic scholarship focused on their textual and literary apparatus, oftentimes at expense of a critical engagement with a wider body of Christian philosophy. The Discovery of Anxiousness aims, therefore, to embed the empirical findings derived from these historical research, in the wider questions arising from contemporary debates on subjectivity.

This approach is not unfamiliar to Cultural Studies. Michel de Certeau’s theoretical project culminated on the La Fable Mystique (transl. The Mystic Fable) serve as a source of inspiration and reference throughout this study. His analysis of eary modern mystical experiences in a plethora of registers, expanded his scholarly impact beyond history of Christianity into historiography, philosophy of culture and historical ethnology. Simultanously, several feminist Caroline Walker Bynum, with Jesus as a Mother and Holy Feast and Holy Fast brought devotional texts to the forefront of academic history of Christianity. A decade later, Alison Weber's analyses of Teresa of Avila rhetoric strategies is as important as Grace Jantzen's philosophical reappraisal of the same gendered experienced. Recently, the cultural investigation on mystical discourse breakes through Eurocentric traditions, as Nancy van Deusen has shown with her work on recollection and embodiment practices in the Colonial America or Saba Mahmood methodological engagement with contemporary feminist Islamic devotional practices. Their restorative and inclusive project, claiming a sexualised, gendered, intersectional and diverse commitment within the specific canons, serve both as models and interlocutors in this book.

The Discovery of Anxiousness acknowledges and builds upon these academic genealogies, while also adding to that equation a still unexplored vector — the Portuguese and Lusophone sources, through the voices of Joana de Jesus and her religious communities. This intelectual legacy renders possible a discovery of Anxiousness, a category distinct from Anxiety, Angst, Lack or Need, which are embedded in a purely negative tradition. In a visionary and cataphatic narrative of her life, Joana de Jesus develops a conceptual vocabulary affirmatively different from her predecessors and direct sources." Anxiousness persistently and qualitatively permeates the public narrative, manifesting as both the cause and product of the mystical connection with God. As the argument of this book unfolds, Anxiousness emerges as an embodied concept, intricately woven in the broader discourses of presence and Sehnsucht, while reclaiming the profound sense of a ‘discovery’: an entity waiting to be that is there to be unveiled, revealed, and thrown into the world.

1 Cfr McGinn, Bernard, Mysticism in the Golden Age of Spain (1500-1650), Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism, (vol. 6, Herder & Herder 2017) pp. 391-393.

NOTES AND LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Throughout the book I will use the current Portuguese version of the names instead of the early modern spelling of the names, e.g., Joana instead of Joanna; Inês rather than Ignes. Likewise, I will only translate the names into English if they are already in use, for example, King John IV, Catherine of Braganza. Some words are in single quotation marks when they refer to foreign concepts. When certain concepts are crucial or have double meaning, they are described in italics. Words in Portuguese and other languages besides English are presented in single quotation marks in order to preserve the distinction between key concepts and foreign words. Please check the Glossary for other possible translations of key terms. I will use four abbreviations:

Notebook: Livro de Seus Apontamentos (Lisbon, Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo, 1661)

Copy: Vida da Venerável Joanna Freyre de Albuquerque (Lisbon, BNL Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, post-1745)

ANTT: Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo

BNL: Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa

CHRONOLOGY

1616 — death of the last perpetual Abbess of the Benedictine Monastery Ferreira dAves, D. Filipa de Albuquerque, Joanna's aunt. She and the two other Albuquerques who professed there were considered saints.

1617 — birth of Joana Freire de Albuquerque, in Mioma, Sátão.

1632 — Mateus de Albuquerque, Joana's father, gives her a Spanish translation of De Deligendo Deo and other Cistercians texts.

1 December 1640 — The Portuguese Restoration. End of Spanish rule (Filipe IIT). King Joao IV, House of Braganga, takes over ruling the country (This is not mentioned by Joana).

1652 — As ordered by one of her visions, Joana gathers a procession to control the rain and storms.

6 January 1654 — Vivardo de Vasconcellos founds the Recollect of St. Bernard in Lisbon, the Discalced Bernardins, profiting from the movement organized by Maria da Cruz, a non-ordered ‘beata.

1657 — Vivardo de Vasconcellos is elected General of the Cistercian Order. Joana has a vision of writing the Rule for female Cistercians. Joana Freire de Albuquerque becomes known as Joana de Jesus.

27 September 1659 — Joana departs with Vivardo de Vasconcellos to Lisbon and stays at the Monastery of Cós while Vivardo goes to the Monastery of Alcobaça.

Day of Holy Spirit, May 1659 — Begins writing her Rule.

8 October 1659 - Arrives at the Recollect of St. Bernard, in Lisbon.

1661 — Starts writing her autobiography.

19 August 1662 — Receives a letter from Vivardo de Vasconcelos accusing her of being a fake mystic.

21 September 1663 — Suffers from apoplectic incidents twice a day, for five hours each.

15 September 1664 — Begins the clean version of her Rule. 15 October 1664 - Completes the writing of the Rule (with titles and chapters). 17 March 1668 — Returns from Lisbon to Lorvão.

1678 — Begins writing the second part of her autobiography, about her life in Lorvao.

20 August 1681- Dies on St. Bernard’s Day.

Joana de Jesus, the Portuguese Nun

The subject of my book is a Portuguese Cistercian nun, Joana de Jesus (1617-1681), who wrote an autobiographical mystical text. However, the most famous Portuguese nun is still Mariana Alcoforado (1640-1723), probably the fictional author of the Lettres Portugaises." This book — an ardent correspondence between a cloistered nun and a French aristocrat — had wide appeal in the European literary scene of its time. Madame de Sevigné, a seventeenth-century French author, even identified the noun 'Portugaise with a particular literary genre: the writing of passionate love letters.” The Lettres Portugaises also had a peculiar effect as far as Portuguese feminist theory was concerned. In the 1970s, just before the Carnation Revolution, Novas Cartas Portuguesas (New Portuguese Letters) appeared. In this book, three Portuguese women writers discuss the dictatorship, the colonial war, and the intellectual minority’ - almost a certain minor age or the Kantian Unmiindigkeit - Portuguese women were still experiencing.* These ‘Portuguese Letters'- both old and new - marked the surge of both a Portuguese feminine character and feminist production.

Feminist scholars, however, neglected to study real seventeenth-century Portuguese nuns (who wrote theological ‘love letters’ to Christ) and their communities, despite the intellectual fame of their fictional counterparts. Joana de Jesus is one of the still-unstudied female authors in Portugal whose theological work, albeit in

1 Eugene Asse, ed., Lettres de Mlle Aisse : prec. de deux notices biographiques et litteraires (Paris : Charpentier, 1873). See also Anna Klobucka, The Portuguese Nun: The Formation of a National Myth (Lewisberg, PA: Bucknell UP 2000).

2 Jean DeJan, “Lettres Portugaises,” in The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French, ed. Peter France (Oxford/ New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 457.

3 “Minority” is the approximated English equivalent of the French “minorité” or the Portuguese “menoridade”.

4 Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta, and Maria Velho da Costa, Novas Cartas Portuguesas, ed. Ana Luísa Amaral. (Lisbon: Dom Quixote, 2010). See also Darlene Sadlier, The Question of How: Women Writers and New Portuguese Literature (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989), 7.

manuscript form, has circulated in at least two religious convents in central and southern Portugal. Her work bears a philosophical witness to the mystical experience, insofar as Joana tries to reflect upon the nature and configurations of her relation to the God-Man whilst paying attention to the Catholic renewal movements and, more indirectly, to the social changes that Portugal experienced in the Early Modern period.

The goal of this book is, therefore, to provide the first historical and philosophical reflection upon the life and work of Joana de Jesus. The Portuguese nun merely describes her relation to the God-Man; however, a systematization of some of the notions she mentions but fails to theorize further is lacking. From my reading, one central term emerges — the notion of ‘anxiousness’ (ancias). This notion is very important because it is reiterated more than 70 times throughout the whole manuscript, as the cause, sensation, and product of the mystical contact with God. It collides with and complements notions such as desire and love, lack and mourning, but it distinguishes itself from these insofar as anxiousness (as I will later show) is a more embodied concept. Likewise, anxiousness can be seen as a distinct theme in Joana's mystical tradition, taking into consideration that Teresa of Avila, Joana’s main intellectual point of reference, uses this notion very parsimoniously. That being said, my aim in studying the notion of anxiousness in Joana de Jesus is to show how this Portuguese nun erected a foundational concept of mystical experience that can be read from a historical, philosophical, theological, and feminist perspective. Unfortunately there are few sources of Joana's life and work remaining. The data gathered concerning the historical figure of the Portuguese nun is mainly based on her writings, which include some letters she receives from her family. I am indeed reflecting upon the fictional (literary, auto/biographical) constructed Joana and the notion of anxiousness related to her written mystical experience. I shall argue that anxiousness may provide a useful insight into the wider discussion of religious and philosophical subjectivity from a feminist perspective.

5 Joana de Jesus writes ‘ancias’ and ‘ancias amorozas’ The current Portuguese orthography would write 'ânsias' and 'ânsias amorosas.” In these key notions | maintain Joana's orthography.

6 For a critical of subjectivity in the field of religious studies in the past decennia see Constance M. Furey, “Body, Society and Subjectivity in Religious Studies,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 80, no. 1 (2012): 7-33., Maren Lorenz und Antja Flüchter within the 26. Tagung des Arbeitskreises Geschlechtergeschichte der Frühen Neuzeit (28—30.10.2021) apud Diemer and Graab, Tagungsbericht: Kórper, In: H-Soz-Kult, 05.01.2022, www.hsozkult .de/conferencereport/id/fdkn-127798. (Accessed on 29.09.2023) and Lise Paulsen Galal "Between Representation and Subjectivity", Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society 6, 2 (2020): 449—472, doi: https://doi.org/10.30965/23642807-00 602011

Firstly, in this introductory chapter I am going to briefly introduce Joana de Jesus and her work. Secondly, I shall demonstrate what the focus of my analysis will be. Thirdly, I will conduct a state-of-the-art of early modern female authors in Portugal, with a discussion of the impact of Northern mysticism on Portugal and its nationalistic polemic. Before I conclude by outlining the following chapters, I will discuss the theoretical framework, sources, and methods that underlie my own approaches.

Joana Freire de Albuquerque and Joana de Jesus

Joana was born Freire de Albuquerque in Mioma, a village next to Satao, in inland Portugal in 1617. According to her autobiographical account, Joana moved to Lorvao in order to be a nun of the Cistercian Convent of Lorvão, situated close to Coimbra, in central Portugal. Unfortunately the exact date of her move is unknown. There she lived and started corresponding with Vivardo de Vasconcelos, who would become her confessor in Lisbon. In 1659, at his invitation, she moved to Lisbon to live ina Recollect of Discalced Bernardins’. It was in 1661 that she started writing her Life, a work that was interrupted in 1668 when she returned to Lorvao. Later, under the protection of her sisters who lived at this Cistercian convent and the protection of a new confessor, António da Conceição, Joana continued writing descriptions of her visions of Christ and of her sickness that provided such an encounter. She died in 1681 on the 2oth of August, Saint Bernard’s Day, according to the obituary.?

Joana's writings are gathered in two manuscripts: the Notebook — the original — and the Life — a Copy that was intended for publication. The Notebook claims to be authored by Joana de Jesus, while the Copy mentions Joana Freire de Albuquerque. As I will show, the two manuscripts are quite similar except for certain parts, which were deleted from the original text. In her account, Joana describes her visions of Christ together with daily events surrounding her illness and contact with her companions and family.. In the present research I will just transcribe and translate passages of both manuscripts. The Portuguese edition appears as the inaugural title ofthe series *Do women Care?" by The Institute of Philosophical Studies (IEF) at the University of Coimbra, and the English Translation is expected as the number 141 at the Series “Other Voices in European Early Modern History" by the Iter Press, distributed by U. Chicago Press.?

7 For more on the use of the term ‘recollect’, see the introduction to chapter 2 below.

8 “Memorial das Vidas e Obitos das Religiosas deste Mosteiro,” Torre do Tombo National Archives, Ordem de Cister, Mosteiro de Lorvão, book 310, Accessed February 27, 2012, PT/TT/ MSML/A/L310, http://digitarq.dgarq.gov.pt/details?id=4616414.

9 Cfr “Instituto de Estudos Filosóficos da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Coimbra, https://www.uc.pt/fluc/ief/publica/ and “Other Voices in European Early Modern History” “The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series” https: /othervoiceineme.co

Joana's Contribution: Anxiousness

In my reading, a main theme surfaces throughout Joana'slife and writing:the notion of ‘ancias’ (anxiousness).'º This theme of anxiousness is not so common in Teresa, whose influence and observant spirit permeates Joana's writing. However, it can be traced, for instance, to John of the Cross, whose work mentions 'ansias' associated with passing through one's soul's Dark Night. In the first stanza, John of the Cross writes:

On a dark night,

Kindled in love with yearnings —oh, happy chance!—

I went forth without being observed, My house being now at rest."

The theme of ‘love with yearnings’ is recurrent throughout John of the Cross6532 to meet God. Perhaps here lies the subtle difference between Portuguese and Spanish. Peers translates ‘ansia as ‘yearnings’. While in Spanish ‘ansias’ is only desire, in Portuguese there is an added sense of greediness, voraciousness, and, in the plural form, affliction.” Indeed it is these latter senses that Joana brings into her description of meeting the God-Man. Her ‘ancias’ is formulated in a less poetic and much more concrete way, as stated in this passage in the beginning of her account:

m/othervoice-toronto.html#Spanish_Portuguese%20Authors/Texts. (Accessed: 29 Septem ber 2023).

10 Cf. Jeannine Poitrey, Vocabulario de Santa Teresa (Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, Fundación Universitaria Espafiola, 1983).

11 John of the Cross, Dark night of the soul, third revised edition translated and edited, with an introduction, by E. Allison Peers (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, [1994]), 14. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/john_cross/dark_night.pdf Accessed on November 11 2012. En una noche oscura, | con ansias en amores inflamada, | (joh dichosa ventura!) | sali sin ser notada, | estando ya mi casa sosegada. San Juan de la Cruz, Subida del Monte Carmelo in Escritores del siglo XVI: San Juan de la Cruz, Fray Pedro Malon de Chaide, Fray Hernando de Zarate (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1948), 8: 1. On the Dark Night see, for example, the work of Jesás Martí Ballester, Una nueva lectura de 'Noche Oscura' de San Juan de la Cruz (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 2008).

12 “ânsia s.f? (1537G Leão 78) 1 manifestação física provocada pela contracção do epigástrio [...] 2. sensação de desconforto físico causada por uma pressão na região peitoral [...] 3. conjunto de fenónemos mórbidos que antecedem a morte; agonia, estertor [...] 4. p.ext. prfundo mal-estar provocado por cansaço, moléstia ou aborrecimesto; ansiedade [...] 5. ansiedade provocada pela dúvida [...] 6. fig. m.q. ANSEIO eETIM. lat. tar. anxia, ae 'angústia, inquietação” Antônio Houaiss, Mauro de Salles Villar, Francisco Manoel de Mello Franco, and Instituto Antônio Houaiss de Lexicografia, Dicionário Houaiss da Língua Portuguesa (Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, 2001), 1: 296.

Não foi por pouco o tempo em que de dia e de noite estava padecendo* esta suave aflicáo* que tenho dito com huma ancia tão crecida que me faltava o folguo* para respirar. E como sempre estava apetecendo a soledade e ritiro era largo o tempo que tomava para a oração, e parece que o Senhor compadecido do disvelo com que aquella alma o desejava me dava dipois de estar algum espaço com aquella ancia amororosa, huma suavidade” que me cercava toda, e a meu parecer [ANTT 11v] era como hum orvalho puro e dillicadissimo em que minha alma se hia pasando* e embebendo* toda, e loguo com grande força que me fasião a qual não podia riszistir me começava a recolher ao imtirior aonde ficavão metidas todas as potencias”, e alli por hum modo admiravel se me começava a discubrir* hum mundo tão dilatado” que me paricia não tinha limite, nem fim. [ANTT 11r-v]

It was not for a short time that, day and night, | was patiating*? this soft affliction* that | have described with an anxiousness so heightened that | lacked the air* to breathe. And, as | was always desiring solitude and withdrawal, long was the time that | took for prayer. It seems that the Lord, moved to compassion towards the caring that that soul aimed for, gave me after these [sic] some space with that loving anxiousness, a softness* that surrounded me wholly and it seemed to me [ANTT 11v] a most delicate and pure dew through which my soul passed* and absorbed* whole into and immediately with great strength that was exerted upon me, which it could not resist, | started to recollect myself within, where all the potencies were dwelt* into and there in an admirable way a world so dilated* that it seemed not limitless or endless started to discover* itself before me. [ANTT 11r-v]

From this statement it is possible to bring forward a tentative and provisory definition ofthis state. Anxiousness might be seen here as the psychosomatic cause, condition, and effect of her intellectual and emotional experience with the Divine, the basis for molding and writing her subjectivity. As I will discuss in the fourth chapter, anxiousness is the cause of Joana's contact with the Divine: she 'has' anxiousness; it is less a state and more a subject's possession, as the Romance languages allow. Nonetheless a question remains: Why translate 'ancias' into anxiousness and not into anxiety, anguish, or Angst? First of all, this is due to the fact that there are the abstract nouns 'ansiedade (anxiety) and “angústia (anguish) in the Portuguese language to describe such feelings, and Joana has chosen not to use them. Secondly,

‘ancias’ is a noun derived from the adjective ‘ansioso/a, lat. ‘anxius/a’."* As shown

13 Onthe question of ‘patiate’, see the glossary and section 3.2.

14 Antônio Houaiss, Mauro de Salles Villar, Francisco Manoel de Mello Franco, and Instituto Antônio Houaiss de Lexicografia, Dicionário Houaiss da Lingua Portuguesa (Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, 2001), 1: 296 by Saskia Murk-Jansen's thesis, the transition from affective to speculative mysticism is activated by the abstraction of nouns and verbs. ? Thus, using ‘anxiety’ would mean getting farther from Joana’s usage of language. Thirdly, the concepts ‘anxiety’ and ‘anguish are too easily connected with their modern use in psychology and philosophy, and using ‘anxiousness’ provides a new ground for opening the discussion. Linguistically speaking, the use of suffixes plays an important role here. According to Zandvoort and other grammaticians, the suffixes -ty and -ness are considered equivalent, but the latter differs from the former in its closer relationship to the adjective.”

Anxiousness does not relate merely to a cultural European history or its mystical tradition, as will be discussed in previous chapters of this book; it also conflates a theological and philosophical assessment of the anxious experience. In his multivolume history of mysticism, Bernard McGinn argues for the significance and distinctness constituted by religious women's voices, which foreshadowed the eruption of avernacular theology, a ‘concurrent knowledge’ to both scholasticism and monastic theology. " Likewise, in Joana's day, there was a connection between post-Triden-

15 Saskia Murk-Jansen, The Measure of Mystic Thought: A Study of Hadewijch's Mengeldichten (Góppingen: Kümmerle, 1991).

16 R.W.R. Zandvoort and Jan Ek, A Handbook of English Grammar, 7th ed. (London: Longman, 1975), 19. Most English adjectives can form nouns by adding the active (originally Old English) suffix -ness, and these nouns denote either a state or quality (cleverness, happiness) or an instance of a state or quality (a kindness). The suffix -ty (often in the form -ity) represents via Old French a Latin noun ending -tas or -itas, and is very common in English (e.g., honesty, notoriety, prosperity, sanity, stupidity); some forms also denote an instance of the quality in the way that some -ness nouns do (an ability, an ambiguity, a curiosity, a fatality, a subtlety, a variety). In most cases parallel nouns in -ness (ableness, curiousness, honestness, etc.) are not normally used, but in other cases a form in -ty has developed a special meaning or a sense of remoteness from the adjective that leaves room for an alternative in -ness, e.g., casualty / casualness, clarity / clearness, crudity | crudeness, enormity | enormousness, ingenuity (from ingenious) / ingenuousness (from ingenuous), nicety | niceness, purity (with sexual overtones) / pureness, preciosity (used of literary or artistic style) / preciousness, specialty / specialness. Some adjectives of Latinate origin that might have been expected to have forms in -ty in fact do not, and -ness forms are used instead, e.g., facetiousness, massiveness, naturalness, seriousness, tediousness. Conversely there are nouns in -ty for which no corresponding adjectives exist in English, e.g., celerity, fidelity, integrity, utility. See “ty and —ness; in Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage, ed. Robert Allen (Oxford/ New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Oxford University Press, “Oxford Reference Online” accessed July 1, 2010, http://ww w.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t30.e4403. See also D.C. Miller, Latin Suffixal Derivatives in English and their Indo-European Ancestry. Oxford Linguistics (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).

17 On vernacular theology as ‘concurrent knowledge’ see Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200—1350) (New York: Crossroad, 1998), 3: 19, and Bernard McGinn “Meister Eckhart and the Begines in the Context of Vernacular Theology," in Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics: Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of tine Portuguese vernacular theology and its concurrence with the Second Scholasticism that prevailed in the Portuguese intellectual panorama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, mainly through her confessors who had had university training, as I will demonstrate throughout this book. This being said, and taking into account that scholarship in the field of Portuguese women writers is still in the inventory phase, Joana de Jesus can be considered one of the first female voices in Baroque Portugal with theological and philosophical relevance.”

Embedding Joana de Jesus in Previous Scholarship

Little has been written on Joana de Jesus until now. It is Silvio Lima in his research on mystical love who acknowledges Joana de Jesus as a major figure in Portuguese theo-eroticism.” My present study is the first research carried out on Joana de Jesus and the concept of anxiousness.*° However, important research has been done, namely in the field of women writers and mysticism in early modern Portugal, which has proved to be crucial to my own reading of Joana de Jesus. Here I will proceed with a brief acknowledgment ofthe studies concerning Portuguese women religious writers - theongoing inventorying, historical, and literary studies related to the sources. Later I will sketch out the wider discussion on Portuguese mysticism. Here I am

Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete, ed. Bernard McGinn (New York: Continuum, 1994), 4-14. Joana Serrado, “Competing Church and Competing Knowledge in Hadewijch of Antwerp. The Critique of Scholastic Method in the Beguines Circle" (paper presented at the International Colloquium “LÉglise chez les mystiques rhénans et Nicolas de Cues, May 9 and 10, 2006). On the concept of vernacular theology see also N. Watson, “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel's Constitutions of 1409,” in Speculum 70, no. 4 (October 1995): 822-864, and Elizabeth Robertson et al., "Cluster 1: Vernacular Theologies and Medieval Studies” in “Literary History and the Religious Turn,” ed. Bruce Holsinger, English Language Notes 44, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 77-140.

18 For a recent overview of Baroque as a cultural category, see: John Lyons (ed), The Oxford Handbook of the Baroque, Oxford, O.U.P, 2018.

19 Sílvio Lima, “Amor Mistico,” in Obras Completas (Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2002), 1: 677—678, 697. On Sílvio Lima, see ‘Reception of Joana de Jesus's life and work’ in chap. 1.

20 In the course of my doctoral research | have published two articles on the Cistercian Nun: Joana Serrado, “Escreviver: a écriture féminine em Joana de Jesus, Mística do Lorvao,” in “Idade Média e Filosofia — | Colóquio da Sociedade Portuguesa de Filosofia Medieval, 21—22 de April de 2006’, in Mediaevalia. Textos e estudos (2007): 99—110, and Joana Serrado, “Joana de Jesus (1617-1681). Ânsias amorosas a partir de João 20:17” in In A Voz e os Silêncios. Religião e Textualidades Femininas, ed. by Maria Filomena Andrade, João Luís Fontes and Tiago Pires Marques, pp. 49-62. Lisboa, Centro de Estudos de História Religiosa. http://hdl.handle.ne t/10400.14/17991. ISBN 978-972-8361-61-7.

mainly interested in the old but necessary discussion of the national and geographical identity of mysticism. As we will see, two problematic questions are posed by the scholarship: the issues of gender and nation in the mystical experience.

Religious Early Modern Women Writers in Portugal

In this subsection I will mention three major lines in the study of early modern women writers that have been achieved in Portuguese-speaking scholarship.

Inventorying

The canon of women writers, in particular prior to the twentieth century, is still under development, mainly by twenty-first century literary scholars and historians.” The Portuguese canon is no exception. The Portuguese members of this project, Teresa de Almeida and Vanda Anastacio, began working on the inventory

21 See the International Projects held by the Women Writers’ Networks, http://www.womenwriters.nl/, and The Brown University of Women Writers Project, http://www. wwp.brown.edu/, both accessed on October 30, 2013. An important outlet for Portuguese women writers has been Revista das Escritoras Ibericas, UNED, Since my doctoral research, important bibliography appeared on Baroque Portuguese women. Here is a selected version from 2016 to 2023. 2016: Hermann, Jacqueline and Martins, William de Souza (eds) Poderes do sagrado: Europa católica, América Ibérica, Africa e Oriente portugueses (séculos XVI — XVIII), R. J. Multifoco 2016 and José Fernandes. Soror Isabel do Menino Jesus: vida e obra de uma escritora mística, 1673-1752. Doctoral Thesis in History at the Universidade Clássica de Lisboa, 2016. 2018 : Dimitri Almeida, Anastácio, Vanda. and Perez, M.D.M. Mulheres em rede: convergências lusófonas = Mujeres en red. Berlin Münster: LIT and Zulmira Santos “Norma e «imitação»: existe um modelo de santidade feminina no brasil da época moderna”, in Zarri, Gabriela, Scattigno, Anna, and Concetta, Bianca (eds) Scritture carismi istituzioni. Percorsi di vita religiosa in età moderna. Studi per Gabriella Zarri: Biit: Libri. Edizine de Storia e Letteratura. (Accessed: 9 October 2022); 2019: Anabela Galhardo Couto ‘Centro e Margens no discurso amoroso de autoria feminina do periodo barroco: percursos e questões”, in Estudos sobre as Mulheres. Conhecimentos itinerantes, percursos partilhados.

Lisboa: Universidade Aberta Portuguesa, pp. 31-48; 2020: Helena Queirós, ‘Genre, agentivité et performance du corps: la construction d'une rhétorique de l'exceptionnalité féminine dans des biographies spirituelles portugaises du XVlle-XVllle siècles’, E-rea [Preprint]; 2021 : Bethencourt, Francisco, Gendering the Portuguese-Speaking World — From the Middle Ages to the Present, Leuven, Brill and Maria Luisa Jacquinet “Religiosidad femenina y discurso eclesiástico en Portugal durante el Siglo de las luces. Algunas notas— Dialnet’, in Las mujeres en el discurso eclesiástico: Espana, Francia, Portugal e Italia (siglos XVI-XVIII), 2021 pp. 201-224. 2023: Carla Avelino 2022. ,A difusão da produção textual de pendor espiritual nos tempos modernos”. POLISSEMA — Revista De Letras Do ISCAP1 (22):109-24. https://do iiorg/10.34630/polissema.v1iz2.4792. My own contributions: “Playing Cards with Christ: Mariana da Purificação”, Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 12(1), pp. 144-151 and “Three Willful Characters in Search of God: Political Identity and Visionary Action of modern and early modern writers; Isabel Morujão's work is dedicated to the writings of women from religious communities. Morujão's bibliographic catalogue of women writers and their published works shows that 39 written books by women were published in Portugal during the seventeenth century.” The majority of these were authored by Maria do Céu (1658-1753) and Violante do Céu (1601/07-1693). These two religious women from Lisbon were already known for their baroque poetry and dramaturgy.? An anthology published later in 2005 by the Gulbenkian Foundation mentions other names besides Clara do Santíssimo Sacramento, such as Madalena da Glória and the ‘fictional’ Sóror Mariana Alcoforado.^* In 2013 Paula Almeida presented a PhD thesis on vitae written in Portugal, in which the name of Joana Freire de Albuquerque appears.” In addition, and as the fruit of pioneering work on Portuguese women writers, texts by other female writers continue to be rediscovered and edited, and a new anthology of women writers has just been released.”