The Souls of Purgatory: The Spiritual Diary of a Seventeenth-Century Afro-Peruvian Mystic, Ursula de Jesus

by Nancy E. van Deusen (Translator)

The life of the black religious servant Ursula de Jesús (1604-1666) has remained one of the best-kept historical secrets of the New World. This English language translation of the diary she began in 1650 allows us to hear the voice of the former slave turned spiritualist. Born into slavery in Lima, Peru, Ursula entered a convent at the age of thirteen to serve a nun, and spent the next twenty-eight years as one of hundreds of slaves whose exhausting daily work afforded little time to contemplate religious matters. After surviving a potentially fatal accident, she chose a spiritual path, though remained a slave until one of the nuns purchased her freedom. Ursula began to see visions and communicate more frequently with God. Dead souls eager to diminish their stay in Purgatory approached her, and it was then that she assumed the role of intercessor on their behalf. Ursula's diary conveys the innuendos of convent life, but above all it offers a direct experience of baroque Catholic spirituality from the perspective of a woman of color. Nancy E. van Deusen selected approximately fifty pages from Ursula's diary to appear here as Ursula wrote them, in Spanish. Van Deusen's introduction situates Ursula's text within the milieu of medieval and early modern female spirituality, addresses the complexities of racial inequality, and explores the power of the written word.

Genres: Religion, History, Nonfiction

231 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2004

About the author

Nancy E. van Deusen is Professor of History at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. She is the author of Between the Sacred and the Worldly: The Institutional and Cultural Practice of Recogimiento in Colonial Lima and The Souls of Purgatory: The Spiritual Diary of a Seventeenth-Century Afro-Peruvian Mystic, Ursula de Jesús.

Reviews

[Eve Tushnet · Rating 5 out of 5]

The frank, haunting spiritual diary of a mystic who began having visions while enslaved in a Franciscan convent. It's an extraordinary chance to see convent life from the bottom of the worldly hierarchy; Ursula is startlingly blunt given that her words passed through at least two layers of censorship (her confessor and the nuns who recorded her visions). She also explores one of the spiritual questions closest to my own heart: How can someone live out a spirituality of humiliation, of self-abasement and choosing the lowest place, without capitulating to oppression experienced at the hands of one's fellow Catholics? Is it possible to say, "I am the lowest of all," without saying, "I am lower than white people"? (or straight people, or anybody above you in any worldly hierarchy, especially one entangled with the workings of the Church.) Ursula's own visions of Jesus, and of the souls of other enslaved women, guided her to the beginnings of an answer.

I loved this book and will be returning to it often. Nancy van Deusen adds a helpful and vivid essay on Ursula's life and social context, although she occasionally reads Ursula as more liberatory than the text as translated seems to me. Ursula was genuinely struggling to acknowledge the worth of her own soul in the eyes of God--it was an open question for her. She can't forgive her enslavers, as St Josephine Bakhita did over two centuries later, because she can't yet name what they did to her as evil. That makes her visions' insistence on the equality of the souls of black women all the more powerful.

PS I found this book because of Shannen Dee Williams, @BlkNunHistorian on twitter. Many many thanks!

[Jessie · Rating 5 out of 5]

*Spoilers... maybe?*
This book should not be rated less than five stars. Full stop. Just finished writing a paper on it, and the theological w0rk which Ursula does is astounding. Enslaved from birth until the age of 44, Ursula de Jesus should join on equal ranks with Phyllis Wheatly, Jarena Lee, and Sojourner Truth as amazing intellectuals in the school of Black feminist (or womanist, depending on whom is doing the interpretation) theology. Her attention to the details of the phenomenology of her experience, the ease with which she blends Christian mystical traditions and African indigenous religions into a cohesive enterprise, and the rich, raw, and honest language of her experience easily makes this a classic.