Ventriloquial Acts in Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda’s <i>Mística Ciudad de Dios</i>

Abstract

Sor María de Ágreda (1602–1665), a Franciscan nun and Abbess of the Conceptionist monastery at Ágreda, was a prolific writer whose theological works are yet to be extensively studied. In this article, I examine the practice of divine ventriloquism in Sor María’s mystical (auto)biography of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, Mística ciudad de Dios (1670). I aim to examine the complexity inherent in Sor María’s ‘unmediated’ ventriloquizing of sacred voices and the positionality and power appropriated through this act. The argument focuses on the use of the ventriloquial mechanism, its relationship to Sor María’s authorial position, and how readers may conceptualize the production and reception of the sacred voice. The textual perforance with which readers are presented in Mística ciudad de Dios provides a rich example of how women religious writers appropriated divine authority, resulting in a complex position of agency and self-fashioned individuality.

Keywords

• Sor María de Ágreda
• divine ventriloquism
• mystical revelation
• <i>Vitae Mariae</i>
• <i>Mística ciudad de Dios</i>
• early modern religious women’s writing