Two precious and well-travelled books containing works by the Mexican nun, writer, composer, poet and proto-feminist Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz have been saved from auction in New York and returned to Spain, where they were printed almost three-and-a-half centuries ago.
Sister Juana, who was born in mid-17th century Mexico to a Spanish father and a Mexican mother of Spanish descent, possessed a thirst for knowledge and a mind that would eventually mark her out as one of the greatest figures of the Golden Age of Spanish literature.
In 1667 she entered a convent to devote herself to study because, in her own words, “given my total disinclination towards marriage, it was the least disproportionate and most decent choice”. But her views and writing often brought her into conflict with the church authorities, and she gave up her literary endeavours and sold her library not long before her death during a plague in 1695.
Perhaps fittingly, the books recovered by Spanish police first aroused suspicions in September last year after it was noted that pictures in the auction catalogue showed their pages bore the stamps of a Carmelite convent in Seville.
After being alerted to the sale at Swann Auction galleries in New York – where a set of three volumes by Sister Juana had an estimate of €80,000 to €120,000 – Spain’s culture ministry got in touch with the auction house and asked it to suspend the sale while Guardia Civil officers investigated the books’ provenance.
In a statement, the Guardia Civil said the auction value of the works comfortably exceeded the €50,000 limit above which transactions involving items of national historical heritage become a smuggling offence under Spanish law.
Inquiries by the Spanish force, US Homeland Security and the New York district attorney determined that the convent stamps were proof that the books belonged to Spain and should be returned to the country.
Investigators discovered that the books, printed in Barcelona in 1693, had originally consisted of five volumes that had recently belonged to a private collection in Catalonia.
“After that person’s death, part of the collection, including the objects under investigation, were acquired in June 2011 by a well-known bookshop in Madrid,” said the Guardia Civil statement.
“From there, they were sold to a Mexican businessman with a passion for antique literature. When he in turn died, they were acquired by a US citizen who put them up for auction in the sale where they were discovered by investigators.”
At some point in the chain of sales, the statement added, the five volumes were rebound as three volumes. Police are currently trying to recover the third book.
As the Guardia Civil statement pointed out, Sister Juana was an important Golden Age author “both because of the depth and quality of her work and because a large part of the intellectual community considers her to be the first feminist author of the Spanish empire”.
Ana M Rodríguez-Rodríguez, who teaches early modern Spanish literature at the University of Iowa, described Sister Juana as “the voice of an early but already determined feminism”. She said the author’s decision to write about topics that were not considered appropriate for her as a nun and a woman – such as philosophy and theology – often “exposed her to the cruel scrutiny of a cultural universe that was not ready to embrace her as a new member”.
Her beliefs and experiences also led her to defend the need for a female community in which knowledge could be produced, accessed and spread, added Rodríguez-Rodríguez.
“In all her works, Sister Juana shows a deep command of language as well as an emotional strength that she uses as an ardent defence of her ideas,” she said. “Among her interests is a remarkable and tireless defence of the capacity of all women to be intellectuals and scholars.”
Although Sister Juana lived in a world that was not ready for her intelligence nor her eagerness to speak freely, said Rodríguez-Rodríguez, she is now seen as one of the main authors of the Hispanic Baroque and as a pioneering feminist writer.
The academic points to Sister Juana’s poem Hombres necios (You Foolish Men), which begins: “You foolish men who unjustly lay the blame on women/not seeing you’re the cause of the very thing you blame.”
“That famous poem openly expresses the frustration of someone who perceives the inequality between men and women and offers a brilliant critique of that situation,” says Rodríguez-Rodríguez.
“There’s no other text that defends women’s dignity in a stronger and more determined way in any other work of that time. The frustration at gender inequality and the resulting critique we find in her writings convey an activist tone that still moves readers in the 21st century.”
