"Soy del uso de la hermana Mariana": testimonio bibliográficos de los conventos femeninos novohispanos

Abstract

Scholarly knowledge of private and institutional libraries in New Spain is still vague or even mythified; collections are thought to contain exclusively devout subject matter, but they also have little known testimonies that have been little studied. The holdings include books that could be found in all religious communities, for both men and women in New Spain. However, nuns’ libraries and their colonial patrimony have received little attention in academic research to date. Consequently, written culture in convents is little understood, despite evidence of its existence. The aim of this article is to document the dispersed testimonies of this often overlooked legacy of convent libraries.