10 - Far from the Margins: Non-elite Single Women and Spiritual Networking in Colonial Guatemala

Summary

Abstract: This chapter examines the case of Anna Guerra de Jesus, a poor rural migrant and abandoned wife and mother, who became a celebrated local holy woman in early eighteenth-century Santiago de Guatemala, the colonial capital of Central America. Through an analysis of Anna's spiritual biography alongside wills and other archival sources, this chapter considers how non-elite single women in colonial Santiago actively cultivated devotional networks with women, priests, and lay religious brotherhoods. Through these networks, laboring single women positioned themselves at the forefront of a vibrant spiritual renaissance in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Santiago de Guatemala and actively participated in the global circulation of female mysticism, affective piety, and missionary movements.

Keywords: Non-elite women, devotional networks, Catholic Church, Guatemala, hagiography

On May 17, 1713, at age seventy-five, Anna Guerra de Jesús died in Santiago de Guatemala, the colonial capital of Central America. Within three years of Anna's death, Santiago's local printing press published a lengthy spiritual biography of her life, penned by her former confessor, Jesuit Padre Antonio Siria, and titled, Vida admirable y prodigiosas virtudes de la v. sierva de Dios D. Anna Guerra de Jesús (Admirable Life and Extraordinary Virtues of the Servant of God, Dona Anna Guerra de Jesus). Anna stands out as an unusual hagiographical subject. While the early modern Catholic ideal of feminine piety prized enclosure, obedience, and virginity, Anna was neither nun nor virgin, but rather a poor rural migrant and abandoned wife and mother who lived and died in the world rather than a cloistered community. How did Anna Guerra de Jesus become a celebrated holy woman and model of female piety in a context of official anxiety, ambivalence, and even outright hostility towards non-elite women living outside patriarchal authority? And what does her story reveal about the broader gendered religious context of Santiago de Guatemala? Through an analysis of Anna's spiritual biography alongside wills and other archival sources, this chapter examines how non-elite single women in colonial Santiago actively cultivated devotional networks with other lay women, mixed-sex religious brotherhoods, and priests. Through these networks, laboring single women positioned themselves at the forefront of a vibrant spiritual renaissance in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Santiago de Guatemala and actively participated in the global circulation of female mysticism, affective piety, and missionary movements.