Juana Inés de la Cruz

Timeline

1. 1664–1669Viceregal Palace, Mexico City · Mexico CityShe arrived in Mexico City around 1664 as a lady-in-waiting to the vicereine, the Marquess of Mancera. The viceroy assembled theologians, jurists, and poets to question her publicly, and her extemporaneous answers made her famous. She refused a marriage proposal, briefly entered the Discalced Carmelites in 1667, and left unable to endure the strict rule, preparing to enter a convent with looser discipline.
2. 1669–1690Convent of San Jerónimo · Mexico CityShe took vows in the Hieronymite order in 1669, taking the name Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz so as to keep the freedom to read and write. She amassed thousands of volumes in the convent, wrote sonnets, villancicos, the long poem Primero Sueño, and plays, and debated scholars such as Carlos de Sigüenza in the parlor; the viceregal couple were her publishing patrons.
3. 1690–1695Convent of San Jerónimo · Mexico CityIn 1690 the bishop of Puebla, under the pseudonym 'Sor Filotea', published without permission her Carta Atenagórica criticizing a sermon by Vieira and told her to abandon secular learning. In 1691 she wrote the Respuesta a Sor Filotea, defending women's right to education and authorship. She was thereafter forced to stop secular writing and to give away her books as penance. She died on 17 April 1695 after contracting the plague while nursing infected nuns.