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Spirituality and Devotional Music in the Royal Convent of the Descalzas, Madrid

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 30; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01411896.2011.588166

1547-7304

Janet Hathaway,

Libraries, Manuscripts, and Books

Abstract Musicological interest in the convent of the Descalzas, Madrid, has focused almost exclusively on the salaried male musicians (notably Tomás Luis de Victoria) who provided music for the institution and the nuns and royal daughters who resided there. Yet contemporary chronicles and spiritual biographies offer insight into nuns' music as well; these documents suggest the careful crafting of an image of the women's piety and the deliberate projection of Habsburg spiritual authority through musical means, from private devotional singing in the cloister to a Habsburg nun's public musical patronage. Notes 1 The institution's official name is the Monasterio de la Madre de Dios de Consolación (Our Lady of Solace), but contemporary records generally refer to the convent as Las Descalzas Reales: “Descalzas” (discalced) was one designation for a community that followed a reformed, or austere, Rule; “reales” refers to the convent's royal status. The institution continues to function as a convent; the complex and its holdings have been designated a national museum, and parts of the building are accessible to visitors accompanied by a tour guide. I am grateful to the staff of the archives and libraries in Madrid who facilitated my research, especially at the Archivo General de Palacio. The following archives and libraries, all located in Madrid, were consulted for this study: the Archivo General de Palacio (AGP); the Archivo del Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales (AMDR), now housed at the Archivo General de Palacio; the Real Biblioteca (RB); and the Biblioteca Nacional (BN). The archivists and staff at the Archivo General de Palacio and Real Biblioteca have recently reassembled the surviving archival materials belonging to the Descalzas and, in the case of the Real Biblioteca, published catalogues of materials pertaining to the Descalzas. Regrettably, very few musical sources from the Habsburg period survive in the convent's holdings. 2 Ana García Sanz, the present curator of the Descalzas, has contributed art historical studies on the institution. An early and essential study of the convent, in particular its art, is Elías Tormo y Monzo, En Las Descalzas Reales: estudios históricos, iconográficos y artísticos, 3 vols. (Madrid: Blass, 1917–1947). Maria Leticia Sánchez Hernández's indispensible Patronato regio y órdenes religiosas femeninas en el Madrid de los Austrias: Descalzas Reales, Encarnación, y Santa Isabel (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 1997) brings together a wealth of detail on the Descalzas and two other royal convents in Madrid. Eleanor Goodman's study illuminates the convent's intertwined spiritual and political dimensions through the lens of selected artworks and contemporary records: see Royal Piety: Faith, Religious Politics, and the Experience of Art at the Convent of the Descalzas Reales in Madrid (Ph.D. Diss., New York University, 2001). Rosa Helena Chinchilla's article on the founder of the Descalzas, Doña Juana of Austria, considers the princess's founding of the convent in light of individuals who influenced her, especially Francisco de Borja: see “Juana of Austria: Courtly Spain and Devotional Expression,” Renaissance and Reformation 27/1 (2004), 21–33. Maria Leticia Ruiz Gómez provides an excellent overview of the relationships and roles of the Habsburg women who made the Descalzas their retreat; she describes the Habsburg nuns as the “spiritual custodians of the royal dynasty” in “Princesses and Nuns: The Convent of the Descalzas Reales,” Journal of the Institute of Romance Studies 8 (2000), 29–46. 3 The principal studies are José Subirá, “La música en la Capilla y Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales de Madrid,” Anuario Musical 12 (1957), 147–66; Rafael Mota Murillo, ed., Sebastián López de Velasco: Libro de missas, motetes, salmos, magnificas y otras cosas tocantes al culto divino I (Madrid: Sociedad Española de Musicologia, 1980); Alfonso de Vicente Delgado, “Las Descalzas Reales,” Scherzo 103 (1996), 128–30; and Paulino Capdepón, La música en el monasterio de las Descalzas Reales (siglo XVIII) (Madrid: Fundación Caja Madrid, 1999). For a broadly conceived examination of the musical activity of the convent, see Janet Hathaway, Cloister, Court, and City: Musical Activity of the Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales (Madrid), ca. 1620–1700 (Ph.D. Diss., New York University, 2005). An earlier version of this article was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Quebec City, Québec, Canada, November 2007. I would like to express my thanks to those individuals who commented on and improved earlier drafts of this article: Stanley Boorman, Brian Hart, and Suzanne J. Walker. I also wish to thank the anonymous reader for many helpful suggestions and queries. 4 Scholars who have investigated music in Italian convents are well known: Craig Monson, Robert Kendrick, Colleen Reardon, Patrick Macey, Kimberlyn Montford, and Jonathan Glixon. To date, Colleen Baade is the only researcher to have carried out a study of music of a cross-section of Spanish convents, including the Descalzas: see Musical and Liturgical Practice in Women's Convents in Madrid and Castilla La Vieja for a Century after the Council of Trent (Ph.D. Diss., Duke University, 2001). The circumstances of the Descalzas differed considerably from the Italian and Spanish convents that serve as subjects for these earlier studies, especially in the convent's royal affiliation and Madrid's status as a very recent royal center. On this point, see Delgado, “Las Descalzas Reales.” 5 Jonathan Glixon's proposed taxonomy of music in Venetian convents underscores the broad range of musical activity that female monastic houses could support. Although a very different institution, the Descalzas Reales and its remarkably wide variety of public and private sacred music present an intriguing case: “Images of Paradise or Worldly Theaters? Toward a Taxonomy of Musical Performances at Venetian Nunneries,” in Essays on Music and Culture in Honor of Herbert Kellman, ed. Barbara Haggh (Paris: Minerve, 2001), 423–51. 6 The first Habsburg monarch, Charles V (I of Spain), took the throne in 1516; the last was Charles II, who died in 1700. In Spain, members of the dynasty were designated by “de Austria” to signal their ties to the Austrian Habsburgs and, indirectly, their foreign status. For a full account of music in El Escorial, see Michael Noone's study Music and Musicians in the Escorial Liturgy under the Habsburgs, 1563–1700 (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1998). Philip's father, Charles V, set the royal precedent of establishing a monastic retreat when he retired to Yuste in 1556. 7 Discrepancies obscure the origins of the convent, with scholars citing 1554, 1557, or 1559. The nuns took possession of the convent in 1559, and the Holy Sacrament was translated to the church in 1564. The founding charter itself is dated 1572. 8 Madrid's status as capital was interrupted on occasion, most notably between 1601 and 1606 when the court transferred to Valladolid; the return to Madrid in 1606 was permanent. 9 The convent was joined in 1611 by its closest counterpart, the Augustinian royal convent La Encarnación, founded by Philip III and his wife, Margaret of Austria. The Encarnación remained somewhat in the shadow of the Descalzas during the seventeenth century but flourished under the Bourbon dynasty. The Encarnación, which has received relatively little scholarly attention to date, also enjoyed the privilege of its own royal musical chapel. 10 They married in 1552; she gave birth to her only son, don Sebastian, in 1554, shortly after João died. 11 Her vida appears in Carrillo's Relación histórica de la real fvndacion del Monasterio de las Descalças de S. Clara de la villa de Madrid. Con los frvtos de santidad que ha dado y da al cielo cada día […] (Madrid, 1616). For an insightful and nuanced consideration of Juana's religious and political concerns and influences, see Chinchilla, “Juana of Austria.” 12 Carrillo, Relación histórica, fol. 35v. “Capítulo XIIII. De la gran devoción que la santa princesa tenía al Santíssimo Sacramento y como quería que se celebrasen las fiestas en esta santa casa.” 13 Another relative, the Archduchess Isabel Clara Eugenia, spent time at the institution when she was young and regularly visited the convent later in life. She bequeathed a remarkable set of tapestries based on cartoons by Rubens; the Eucharistic program of the works reflected and promoted the Habsburg dynasty and the Descalzas nuns' shared devotion to the Eucharist. 14 “Documentación relativa al proceso de beatificación de la infanta Sor Margarita de la Cruz, fallecida y enterrada en la clausura de the Descalzas, iniciado por la comunidad y abadesa del citado monasterio, sor Juana del Espiritu Santo (1689),” AMDR, Caja 27, Exp. 1. 15 The remaining three Habsburg women who professed at the Descalzas include two daughters born outside their respective fathers' marital unions: Sor Ana Dorotea de la Concepción (1612–1694; daughter of Emperor Rudolph II and Catherine Strada) and the second Sor Margarita de la Cruz (1650–1686; daughter of Juan José de Austria and Rosa Ribera). Both Ana Dorotea and the second Margarita de la Cruz left notable legacies. Ana Dorotea funded the convent's magnificently restored stairwell with its depiction of Philip IV and the royal family; an inscription testifies to her gift. Margarita de la Cruz was honored by her father in the form of an elegantly decorated new chapel dedicated to an important Marian image in the convent, the Nuestra Señora del Milagro, another gesture that underscored the ties between the Habsburgs and the convent. The fourth daughter was Mariana de la Cruz, daughter of the Infante don Fernando. 16 Francisco de Borja, fourth duke of Gandía until his abdication, later became Padre General of the Jesuit order. Borja was beatified in 1624 and canonized in 1671. 17 Ana García Sanz and Ma Leticia Sánchez Hernández, The Convents of the Descalzas Reales and La Encarnación: Two Cloistered Convents in Madrid (Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional, 1999), 18. Juana was herself rumored to have taken secret vows as a Jesuit. See Chinchilla, “Juana of Austria,” for the implications of Juana's Jesuit sympathies, which her Descalzas biographer Carrillo appears to submerge completely in his vida of the Princess. 18 Pope Innocent IV approved the First Rule in 1253, and Pope Urban IV ratified the Second Rule in 1263. Baade discusses the Clarist Rules in her dissertation on conventual music in Castilla y León: Musical and Liturgical Practice, see esp. 30–42. 19 Constituciones generales para todas las monjas, y religiosas, sujetas a la obediencia de la orden de nuestro Padre San Francisco […] (Rome, 1639; Madrid, 1642), 9. The Constitutions prohibited villancicos in specified observances as well as certain types of nuns' music: “Item, we prohibit the nuns from playing harps, guitars or other instruments, singing secular songs, and any manner of dancing in the parlors, even if they are in their habits, because to do so is contrary to religious modesty. If some time with the license of the prelate they have just cause to sing some religious song, the texts will be a lo divino [i.e., sung with sacred, not secular, texts],” fol. 74v. (“Item, prohibimos que las religiosas en los locutorios no toquen arpas, guitarras, o otros instrumentos, cantando cantares profanos; ni bailen, ni dancen, aunque sea con sus habitos, por ser esto contra la modestia religiosa. Y si alguna vez con licencia de la prelada, por causa justa cantare alguna religiosa, sean letras a lo divino, y esto delante tales personas.”) For more on spirituality and governance in Clarist institutions and the interpretation of the Constitutions of 1639, see Fermín Barriguete Marín and Maria Carmen García de la Herrán Muñóz, “Espiritualidad regulada y vida cotidiana de las clarisas en las Constituciones de 1639: la clausura,” in Política, religión e inquisición en la España moderna: homenaje a Joaquín Pérez Villanueva, ed. Pablo Fernández Albaladejo (Madrid: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 1996), 445–59. 20 Baade, Musical and Liturgical Practice, 37–38. 21 Craig Monson reminds us that, although efforts were made during the 25th session of the Council of Trent to limit nuns' music, no restrictions were ever approved at that level: “The Council of Trent Revisted,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 55/1 (Spring 2002), 1–37. Monson and others have shown how music in certain Italian convents was instead regulated at a local level. Attempts to regulate ' music sometimes prompted conflict among nuns, prelates, and patrician families. The Descalzas constitutes a very different case: First, the restrictions on music were inherent in the Rule and foundation. Second, as a royal convent housing Habsburg daughters, the Descalzas was hardly distinct from the Crown, so potential tensions might be minimized and, at the least, would likely have remained private. The Descalzas Reales fell under the direct jurisdiction of the Franciscan Order, while its closest counterparts (La Encarnación and Santa Isabel) were subject to the authority of the archbishop of Santiago de Compostela. See Sánchez Hernández's close study of foundational documents, Patronato regio, esp. 33. Chapter 9 of Juana's foundation begins “Y porque asimismo este convento y monjas de él son inmediatas al General de la Orden de San Francisco de la Observancia, y el dicho General es su inmediato Superior y prelado, y esto deseamos que así esté y permanezca y que [a]cerca de ello no se haga novedad ni mudanza alguna.” According to the Constituciones generales, the annual visita (inspection) was to be carried out by a member of the Franciscan order (chapters 12 and 15). 22 As Baade has shown, a number of Spanish convents provided dowry waivers for musical nuns, that is, if a nun possessed musical or other useful skills, the sum her family was to pay upon the girl's acceptance to the convent would be reduced or eliminated. (The Descalzas had no need to grant such exemptions because the women came from wealthy families.) Baade has shown that music-making was, at least in some instances, viewed as a task, the way any other sort of work necessary to the functioning of the convent might be, and that a nun might in fact wish to be released of her duties. Mindy Nancarrow Taggart shows that other creative endeavors in the convent could be regarded as practical and utilitarian: “Art and Alienation in Early Modern Spanish Convents,” South Atlantic Review 65/1 (Winter 2000), 24–40. 23 Juana's biographer Carrillo reported on her love of music in his history of the Descalzas. Roberta Freund Schwartz, citing Soriano Fuertes, asserts that Juana “left to [Borja] the creation of the convent's musical establishment, including the selection of repertoire, composition of the choir, and personnel recommendations.” While scholars approach Fuertes's work cautiously, both on historiographical grounds and because of his reliance on anecdotal evidence, Borja's active appreciation for music may well have strongly influenced Juana. Freund Schwartz, “From Criado to Canonization: Music in the Life of St. Francis of Borja,” in Essays on Music and Culture in Honor of Herbert Kellman, ed. Barbara Haggh (Paris: Minerve, 2001), 189–96. 24 See Hathaway, Cloister, Court, and City, chapter 3 and appendix A for lists of the chapelmasters, singer-chaplains, and instrumentalists who served the Descalzas during the seventeenth century. Tomás Luis de Victoria was the most distinguished composer to serve at the Descalzas; he served as organist and personal chaplain to the dowager Empress Maria, for whom he wrote the Requiem Mass in 1603. 26 Translation and emphasis mine. J. García Mercadal, Viajes de extranjeros por España y Portugal, t. 3 (siglo XVII) (Castille, Leon: Junta Castilla y Leon, 1999), 554. Letter dated December 28, 1666, from Jean Muret, a French priest, to his superior in France. “De allí fui a los conventos de religiosas, es decir, a las Descalzas y a los Ángeles, para oír la música. En el uno los castrados hicieron maravillas y hubiera sido de desear el que se hubiesen ocultado al cantar, porque sus feos se obtiene por los oídos. En el otro, las mismas religiosas cantaron una infinidad de canciones en su lengua con una ternura y una armonía admirable.” The location of the original French letter is unknown. 25 Antonio Paz y Meliá, Sales Españolas: Agudezas del ingenio nacional [1890], in Biblioteca de Autores Españoles 176 (Madrid: Atlas, 1964), x–xii and 175–78. Paz y Meliá provided transcriptions of several paragraphs of the document without commentary. Unfortunately, the callmarks he noted are long out of date. Paz y Meliá himself later produced a catalog of Inquisition documents in the Archivo Histórico Nacional that superseded the callmarks he cites in Sales. Yet even with these newer numbers, neither I nor the archivist could locate the original document. 27 Colleen Baade, “La ‘música sútil’ del Monsterio de la Madre de Dios de Constantinopla: Aportaciones para la historia de la música en los monasteries,” Revista de musicología 20/1 (1997), 221–30. 28 My research has not uncovered any definitive mention of public music-making by Descalzas nuns. 29 “Crónica y [sic] historia verdadera de las cosas memorables y particulares del sancto convento de la Madre de Dios de Consolación de Madrid, y de su fundación y principio” (Chronicle and true history of memorable and particular things in the Holy Convent of Our Mother of God of Consolation of Madrid, and its foundation and origins). AGP, Sec. Patr. (Descalzas), 7140/[1]. The inventory of the convent (Archivo del Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales de Madrid [Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional, 2003]) attributes this manuscript to Antonia de Jesús. The author or authors use first person: estoy (“I am”) and nosotras (“we”: feminine first-person plural). The manuscript is foliated in a contemporary hand to fol. 97, about two-thirds of the way through the manuscript. It is enclosed in a contemporary binding that bears the date 1597. A later copy is AMDR, Caja 16, Exp. 15, “Crónica e historia verdadera de las cosas memorables y particulares del Sto. Convento de la Madre de Dios de Consolacion de Madrid, y de su fundación y principio.” This copy bears the annotation “escrito por una de las primeras religiosas.” 30 Magdalena Sánchez notes that Carrillo, a well-connected cleric, was also a “representative of Archduke [of Austria and Flanders] Albert at the Spanish court. He also served as Empress Maria's secretary at the Descalzas.” The Empress, the Queen, and the Nun: Women and Power at the Court of Philip III of Spain (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 182. 31 “Crónica,” chapter 2, item 13. 32 One especially important Christological image in the Descalzas is the Cristo yacente, a figure of polychromed wood dating from the mid-sixteenth century and attributed to Gaspar Becerra. 33 In her iconographical study of Clarist and Franciscan images in the convent, Ana García Sanz singles out this atypical painting (which is not reproduced in her book): “Without a doubt, the most interesting representation, above all from an iconographical and spiritual point of view, is the fresco in which appears a crucified nun that one encounters above the access door to the Sala Capitular. The work possesses a pronounced doctrinal significance in relation to what must have been the life of the nuns: their existence is the imitation of Christ translated into a communion of death and life with Him. The nun forms part of body of Christ and therefore is a participant in his death… . [T]he death of sin must be a daily event that the nuns who make their life in these rooms of the convent have to remember.” (“Sin duda, la representación más interesante, sobre todo desde el punto de vista iconográfico y espiritual, es el fresco en el que aparece una religiosa crucificada que se encuentra sobre la puerta de acceso a la Sala [Capitular]. La obra posee un marcado sentido doctrinal en relación con lo que debe ser la vida de las religiosas: su existencia es la imitación de Cristo traducida en una comunión de muerte y vida con Él. La religiosa forma parte del cuerpo de Cristo y por lo tanto es partícipe de su muerte … la muerte del pecado debe ser un acontecimiento diario, que ha de ser recordado a las religiosas que hacen su vida en estas salas del convento.”) Ana García Sanz and Maria Victoria Triviño, Iconografía de Santa Clara en el Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales (Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional, 1993), 148. García Sanz believes the cycle was completed by the end of the sixteenth century, when the palace was converted into the convent. 34 “Crónica,” chapter 2, item 13. See Robert Kendrick, Celestial Sirens: Nuns and Their Music in Early Modern Milan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 171–76, regarding personalized Christological devotion in ' music in the seventeenth century. 39 “Crónica,” chapter 15, items 5 and 6. “Todos los sospiros y quexas queue en aquella tan grave enfermedad se le oyan eran oraciones jaculatorias, diciendo: Dios mio, Dios de mi alma, y otras semejantes. Y quando sentía levantar las monjas, a maytines, teniendo gran ternura de no podellas acompañar en las divinas alabanzas consolavase cantando como podía aquellas palabras del Sancto Job; Si, bona suscepimos de manu Domini. etz. “Aviale nuestro Señor dado muy linda voz natural, y tañía admirablemente harpa, y no se contentando y sirviendo su divina magestad q[ue] tuviese salud, bolviose la tercera vez tan recio el mal del pecho, que se le cáncero, y esto tan rigurosamente que padeció un año y más de martyrio, con tan gran paciencia, mortificación y conformidad con la voluntad del S[eñ]or.[…]” All translations mine. I am grateful to David Aijón for his assistance with translations; any errors or imprecisions are my own. I have retained original spellings, save for supplying accents and expanding abbreviations where necessary. 35 Sánchez Hernández gives Cecilia's dates as 1554–1598, citing E-Mn Mss 7.712 as her source (p. 366). I was unable to locate this manuscript; no item with that callmark or title currently appears in the Biblioteca Nacional catalogue, nor was the librarian able to find it. 36 In taking the appellation “de la Cruz,” Cecilia secured a place for herself in a line of illustrious nuns bearing that name, from the first abbess—Juana de la Cruz of the Borja family—to Habsburg daughters in the seventeenth century. 37 Carrillo, Relación histórica, fol. 109r. 38 Sánchez Hernández discusses in detail the illnesses described in the vidas of Cecilia and her sisters (Patronato regio, 258). Baade also mentions Cecilia's vida. 40 Carrillo, Relación histórica, fol. 109r. “Los suspiros y quejas que en aquella grave enfermedad se le oían, no eran otros sino oraciones jaculatorias, y amorosas razones que a Dios decía. Cantaba algunas veces dulcemente aquellas palabras del santo Job, Si bona suscepimus de manu Domini, mala quare non sustineamus? [in margin: Iob 2.n.I.] Tenía muy linda voz natural, y tañía admirablemente una harpa, con el cual instrumento, algunas veces cuando le daba lugar su enfermedad, alababa al Señor, y cantaba sus divinas alabanzas. Fuele [sic] perseverando la enfermedad de manera que se le canceró el pecho; con lo cual padecía un martirio tan terrible, con tan singular paciencia que era cosa admirable.” 41 The Inquisition in Spain sometimes investigated reports of women who experienced altered states such as religious ecstasy. For a discussion of the phenomena of ecstasy, rapture, and related states, see Kendrick, Celestial Sirens, 156–57. 42 The miracle is recounted in the conclusion to her vida in the “Crónica”: “Tanbien succedió otra cosa bien notable y fue, que todo el tiempo que soror Cecilia estuvo mala, venía una pobre muger por limosna al torno, la qual tenía la misma enfermedad, a esta dávanle de la comida que le que dava y tanbien de sus paños para curarse, y estando aquella pobre tan mala que decían que se le parecían las entrañas, son enpero tales las de la misericordia de Dios que fue servido que curase de su mal de manera que después de muerta Soror Cecilia vino la mujer buena y sana a dar gracias a las religiosas y decía que los pañitos de aquella Sancta la avían curado, ut in oibus honorificetar Deus per Ihum Christum Dominum Nruz.” “Crónica,” chapter 15, item 10. Carrillo's version, which also concludes his account, reads: “También sucedió otra cosa bien notable, y fue, que todo el tiempo que Soror Cecilia estuvo enferma, venía una pobre mujer a pedir limosna al torno cada día, la cual tenía la misma enfermedad que ella. Dábanle de la comida que le sobraba, y también de sus paños para curarse: y con estar tan mala, que también se le parecían las entrañas; las de la misericordia de Dios fueron tales con ella, que luego después de muerta Sor Cecilia, vino la pobre mujer buena y sana, dando mil gracias a Dios y a las religiosas, diciendo, que la habían curado los pañitos de aquella santa.” Pañitos refers to small pieces of cloth, probably decorative and perhaps handmade. 43 Carlos Eire, From Madrid to Purgatory: The Art and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 44 See Baade, Musical and Liturgical Practice, 222. 45 Buenaventura's father was a high-ranking member (the caballerizo mayor) of Juana's court; she entered the convent at the age of seven, as did many of the sixteenth-century noblewomen who later took vows at the Descalzas. Girls as young as seven were not supposed to enter the convent—at least not with the intention of professing—at such an early age, but this rule was not always heeded in the Descalzas. A dispensation dated 1648 was issued by Fray Joseph Maldonado, the Comisario General of the Franciscans, allowing Mariana de Austria to enter the convent (and wear the habit) at the age of seven, despite the Constitution's stipulation that postulants be at least twelve years of age (“Por las presentes concedemos licencia a la Madre Soror Maria Clara abadesa de nuestro convento de las Descalzas Reales de Madrid para que pueda dar al hábito a la [Infanta] Excma. Señora Doña Mariana de Austria de edad de siete años no obstante no tenga los doce que manda la constitución general,” AMDR, Caja 16, Exp. 8, f. 313). The second Margarita de la Cruz (daughter of Juan José de Austria) received an indulgence from the nuncio to enter the Descalzas in 1657 at age six (she professed in 1666; see AMDR, Carpeta 1/15). This document was not available for examination but was cataloged under the description “Indulgencia otorgada por Camilo Máximo, Nuncio de Su Santidad en España a Sor Margarita de la Cruz, hija de [Don Juan José de Austria] Conde de Eril, para que pueda tomar el habito y profesar en el Monsterio de Las Descalzas Reales. 18/2/1657.” 46 “Crónica,” chapter 12, item 8 (fol. 89v [The foliation in the “Crónica” is incomplete, leaving off at fol. 97.]). “Aquella Navidad antes que muriese, deseando subir al coro a cantar en los maitines que tenía muy linda voz.” Carrillo used the verb “cantar” only once in his description of the same event: “Finalmente viendo su grande deseo, dieron licencia para que la llevasen al coro, así como estaba acostada sobre la cama … llevandola al coro, comenzó a cantar lo que se suele en los entierros, Subvenite sancti dei &c.” Carrillo, Relación histórica, fol. 100r. Buenaventura requested that after her death a Marian Mass be held in place of a Requiem Mass. 47 “Crónica,” chapter 12, item 10 (fol. 90r). 48 Kendrick notes that the prelate Federigo Borromeo (1595–1631), an ardent supporter of ' music-making, “clearly felt that certain music was an aid to the preparation of a happy Christian death (‘volare in alto’) for nuns” (Celestial Sirens, 80), an attitude that merits further exploration in Spanish monastic studies. 49 Caroline Walker Bynum notes that incorruptibility “seems a virtual requirement for female sanctity by the early modern period.” Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1992), 187. 50 See chapter 5 in Holy Concord within Sacred Walls: Nuns and Music in Siena, 1575–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 98–122. 51 “Infiamma il mio cor: Savonarolan Laude by and for Dominican Nuns in Tuscany,” in The Crannied Wall: Women, Religion, and the Arts in Early Modern Europe, ed. Craig Monson (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 174–75. 52 Pilar Ramos López, “Music and Women in Early Modern Spain,” in Musical Voices of Early Modern Women, ed. Thomasin K. LaMay (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 114. López examined vidas in a nineteenth-century anthology of writings, primarily excerpts, by and about women edited by Manuel Serrano y Sanz, Apuntes para una biblioteca de escritoras españoles desde el año 1401 al 1833 in biblioteca de autores españoles, vols. 268–269 (Madrid: Establecimiento Tipolitograáfico, 1903–1905). Colleen Baade has also delved into ' vidas in Spain. 55 Bilinkoff, Related Lives, 5–6. 53 Jodi Bilinkoff, Related Lives: Confessors and Their Female Penitents, 1450–1750 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005); and Darcy Donahue, “Writing Lives: Nuns and Confessors as Auto-Biographers in Early Modern Spain,” Journal of Hispanic Philology 13 (1989), 230–39. 54 In Bilinkoff's words: “I follow in the paths of scholars such as André Vauchez, who suggests a broader definition of a literary genre that remained extraordinarily popular throughout the Christian centuries. This would include biographical accounts of persons regarded as holy or exemplary in their own time, even if they were not formally cano