An Indian Mughal princess in 1600’s Mexico

medievalpoc:

glaurung-quena submitted to medievalpoc:

Thanks to a mention in Charles Mann’s 1493, I learned about Catarina de San Juan (1606-1688), an early Mexican mystic.  She was born Mirra, of a noble Muslim family in India. Around age 10, she was taken captive by pirates who eventually took her to Spain’s trading post at Manila (where about half of the silver mined in Peru ended up, traded for silk, porcelain, etc), and sold her into slavery to the Spanish. Somewhere along the way she was baptized and converted to Christianity. By 1621, at age 15, she found herself in Acapulco.  Her visions and piety probably helped raise her from slavery, and she lived out the rest of her long life in Puebla as a holy woman of some renown. After her death, there was a concerted but unsuccessful effort to canonize her. 

The fullest writeup of her life seems to be in “A Mughal Princess in Baroque New Spain” by Gauvin Alexander Bailey (full PDF available online), which spends a few pages on her life story before delving into a detailed art-historical look at her visions.

Now largely forgotten, Catarina de San Juan (1606-1688) was renowned in her day as an anchorite and visionary, and was consulted by nobles, promoted by great churchmen, and venerated by the people. Born into an aristocratic Muslim family in Mughal India, she made the perilous journey to New Spain at an early age and transformed herself into a Counter-Reformation mystic. Her funeral, which culminated in an elabórate catafalque adorned with paintings and poetry, was attended by some of the most important people in New Spain, including Antonio Núñez de Miranda (1618-1695), the Jesuit confessor to her contemporary Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651-1695). Like so many holy figures of her day, Catarina became a heroine for a criollo class, desperate for a local
saint—even though she was a foreigner herself. She also became a special favorite of the Jesuits, who proclaimed her as hija or even hermana of the Society. Engravings of la chinita ranked among the most venerated images in the viceroyalty, and three sepárate versions of her story were published, one of which—at 928 pages—was the longest work ever to come out of New Spain. She might have been as celebrated today as her Peruvian counterpart Rose of Lima (1586-1619) had the Inquisition not forcibly eradicated her memory within ten years of her death.

The legend of Catarina de San Juan makes compelling reading on its own, but her ecstasies have special relevance to art. Experienced by an intensely visual woman immersed in Counter-Reformation culture, Catarinas apparitions belong as much to the history of viceregal painting as to the literature of mysticism. They are quintessentially Baroque.