DISPLAYING EMBLEMS IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY PHILIPPINES

In his introduction to the eighteenth volume of the Glasgow Emblem Studies series, the editor Pedro Germano Leal called into question the extent to which Andrea Alciato’s conceptualisation of emblemata was relevant in the context of colonial America:

The “colonial emblems” were a dynamic entity: they travelled overseas, served as intermediaries between different cultures in “text and image dispute”, wavered between media and, in this process, suffered transformations in their own composition: at times, emblems lost or changed their inscriptiones; other times, their subscriptiones; occasionally, the picturae vanished; and even the “picture of signification” was subverted or syncretised. Amid so many twists, one may wonder -when does something stop being an emblem? After meditating upon this question and avoiding the creation of structural principles that study cases would easily contradict, I found myself in the “Paradox of Theseus”.¹

Leal hints at a philosophical dilemma on the permanence of beings throughout constant change: if each component of the ship of Theseus had been replaced in the course of time, as reported by Plutarch in his biography of the Greek hero, would that artefact still be the same ship or would it amount to something else?² This question is raised very appropriately by Germano Leal in an edited volume focusing on the viceroyalties of Mexico and Peru, as well as on Brazil. However, if emblems could differ widely across the Atlantic, what sort of modifications took place from one extreme to the other of the Pacific, an ocean often considered as a “Spanish Lake”?³ Would the American “colonial emblems”, often non derivative of European models and deeply embedded in local identities, be a model to understand the emblems produced in the Philippines, the only Spanish colony in Asia, subject to New Spain but de facto acting rather independently, thanks to its isolation from both the New and the Old Worlds?⁴

Not surprisingly, the ship of Theseus of Iberian emblematics has not yet anchored in Philippine studies. Until now, Philippine emblematics have remained a neglected field.⁵ In fact, neither the Philippines nor other Asian territories under Iberian influence witnessed a boom of emblematic culture comparable to that recorded in Iberian America, where emblems were also a major visual tool for evangelization.⁶ So far nothing is known about the circulation in the Philippines of emblem books such as Filippo Picinelli’s Mundus Symbolicus (1653) and its expanded editions.⁷

The lack of attention paid so far to emblems in the Philippines becomes more intriguing when we consider those other types of artworks, often with a sacred function or carrying at least Christian motifs, that dominate the catalogues of oriental museums in the Philippines, Spain, and Mexico: ivory carvings, folded screens (biombos), wood sculptures, furniture, and porcelains.⁸ As the emblems displayed on special occasions are a form of ephemeral art, they hardly survived the passage of time; nevertheless, their traces remain in works of literatura de sucesos, in fête books, and in hagiographies.⁹ This last literary genre was a particularly favourable venue for recording descriptive emblems that produced an ekphrasis effect. In fact, the largest number of Philippine emblems, among all those that are known to us today, is found in the hagiographies on Mother Jerónima de la Asunción, OSC (1555-1630), founder of the first female convent in Manila (see figures 1 and 2).¹⁰

Up to 42 emblems were known to be displayed at the funeral rites (honras) dedicated to Mother Jerónima in 1630. Each consisted of an image (pictura), an inscription (moto), and in subscriptions (letra) (see figure 3).

Courtesy of John Carter Brown Library

Figures 1 and 2.  Cover pages of ^{Bartholomé de Letona, Perfecta Religiosa… (Puebla: por la viuda de Juan de Borja, 1662)} [left] and ^{Ginés de Quesada, Exemplo de todas las virtudes… (Mexico: por la viuda de Miguel de Ribera, 1713)} [right]. 

Courtesy of John Carter Brown Library

Figure 3 Chapters that contain emblems dedicated to Mother Jerónima’s funeral, ^{Ginés de Quesada, Exemplo de todas las virtudes… (Mexico: por la viuda de Miguel de Ribera, 1713)}, 618, 622, 625. 

This article aims at a preliminary discussion on the emblems dedicated to Mother Jerónima, to understand the role played by emblematic culture as a visual tool for the promotion of sanctity. Emblems are considered here as part of social practices and community-binding events. Before discussing the emblems for Mother Jerónima, it is useful to look at all the Philippine emblems that, thanks to descriptions in early printed books, are currently known to us. In this respect, a first research aid was offered by the philippinologist and bibliographer Wenceslao E. Retana, whose systematic study on the Philippine theatre from the seventeenth to the late nineteenth centuries, is an access point to one of the realms in which emblems were produced.¹¹ Furthermore, we need to refer to the scholarship by the cultural historian Doreen G. Fernández and the studies on the Fiesta filipina, exemplified in particular by Reinhard Wendt’s social-anthropological overview on festivities in colonial Philippines.¹² Retana, Fernández and Wendt’s works highlighted the visual and textual dimensions of the festival culture. It was, however, particularly thanks to the recent contribution from literary historians based at the Universidad de Navarra, that emblematics was fruitfully distilled from the various literary expressions originating in the Philippines, with special reference to festival books published in Manila during the seventeenth century.¹³

During the first half of the seventeenth century, emblems were profusely seen at festivals held on the occasion of beatifications and canonizations. In particular, the proclamation of five new saints in 1622 gave momentum to the social cultivation of sanctity across Catholic Asia, by the means of ceremonial installations, literary compositions, and newly printed publications, devoted especially to the first two Jesuit saints, Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier. A typical example of the literatura de sucesos produced on such occasions is the Traça da Pompa Triumfal… (Account of the triumphal pomp), published in Goa in 1624.¹⁴ This booklet described the allegorical figures that were paraded on seven triumphal chariots in the capital of Portuguese India to celebrate the canonization of Loyola and Xavier, hence giving permanence to an otherwise evanescent festival. Quite interestingly, as observed by María Gabriela Torres Olleta, the Traça… qualifies systematically the allegories represented on the chariots as “hieroglyphs”, hinting at the symbolic richness that could be perceived in them.¹⁵

Emblems were used also in the ceremonies in honour of Loyola and Xavier, held in Manila in 1623. If Xavier, who had been an apostle of Goa and other parts of South India, had not evangelized the Philippines, nonetheless apocryphal accounts were produced on an alleged passage of his through Mindanao and other islands of the archipelago.¹⁶ The ceremony held in Manila coincided with the ongoing campaign for the beatification of the 26 Nagasaki martyrs of 1597. Hence, in the Jesuit Church in Intramuros, icons of Xavier were paired with vivid depictions of the martyrs of Japan. A combination of words and images could be observed throughout the celebration, featuring a poetic competition (certamen poético), theatrical performances of praise (alabanzas) staged by the students of the Jesuit and the Dominican colleges in Manila, as well as flags made of colourful taffeta, presented by the Dominicans to the Jesuit church, with emblems and poems in honour of Xavier.¹⁷ Such emblems employed a variety of languages, such as Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Basque (lengua viscaína), Japanese, Tagalog, and Visayan, the last three of which suggest a local audience and readership, both of immigrants and natives.¹⁸

The dialectic between Jesuit and Dominican initiatives, already visible in the celebration of Loyola and Xavier in 1623, contributed to the growth of an emblematic culture in the Philippines. During the second half of the seventeenth century, the two most prominent educational institutions of Manila -namely the Jesuit college of San José and the Dominican one of Santo Tomás- competed in exercises of ingenuity and wit (ingenio y agudeza) on the occasion of canonizations. Like playing on a “chessboard” (tablero de ajedrez), as the historian José Javier Azanza López nicely put it, the two orders engaged in producing the best poetry, literary games, and theatrical works in honour of the newly proclaimed saints of their respective order.¹⁹

On 12 April 1671, Pope Clement X proclaimed five new saints, among whom Francisco de Borja (1510-1572) was a former general of the Society of Jesus, while Rosa de Lima (1586-1617) and the Spanish missionary Luis Beltrán (1526-1581) belonged to the Dominican family. Furthermore, three beatifications had an echo in the seventeenth-century Philippines: the Jesuit novice Stanislaus Kostka (1550-1568) was beatified in 1605, whereas the great Dominican theologian Albertus Magnus (ca. 1200-1280) achieved that honour in 1622 and the Dominican nun Margherita di Savoia (1390-1464) in 1669. As an example of the way in which emblems were used in the celebrations held in Manila in honour of these new blessed and saints, we can consider the festivities for the canonization of Francisco de Borja. The Jesuits mounted an artificial façade in front of their church of Saint Ignatius, upon which they hung ingenious emblems and a variety of painted cards. The Jesuit authors of a festival book praised this spectacular installation, of such eloquence that, so to say, even the stones were made to speak.²⁰ It is for this reason that the historian Azanza López refers to this sort of ephemeral artwork as “speaking walls” (fachadas parlantes), as they were visual devices that solemnized the celebrations as if they were voices.²¹

The Dominican celebrations were also highly productive in terms of poetry, school theatre, and literary enigmas.²² Following the festivities held in 1672 in honour of Luis Beltrán and Rosa de Lima, the Convent of Santo Domingo in Manila celebrated in 1676 two other Dominicans beatified in 1672, namely Pope Pius V (1504-1572) and the Umbrian friar Giacomo Bianconi (1220-1301). Quite strangely, on that occasion the tertiary Dominican Margherita da Città di Castello (1287-1320) was also celebrated, who had been beatified already in 1609. The celebration held in 1676 was described by Felipe Pardo, commissioner of the Holy Office of New Spain in Manila and Dominican Provincial, in a book entitled Sagrada fiesta….²³ The activities covered a wide range, from liturgy to theatre, encompassing solemn masses, sermons, contests of poetry, polyphonic devotional songs (villancicos), theatrical preludes (loas) and intervals (entremés), courtly dances (saraos), and hagiographic comedies, often involving multiethnic participants.²⁴ Felipe Pardo recorded in his book also 14 emblems, or “enigmas”, fixed onto silk cloth and hung on walls, during the three-day festival in Manila. These emblems, containing an image and inscription (mote), were interactive, inasmuch as prizes were offered to those who would be able to decipher their enigmas.²⁵ These visual components of those emblems included relatively clear images such as skeletons, philosophers and sirens, but also puzzling symbols such as a pair of fish, a person hanging in gallows, or a single number like “156”.²⁶

Emblems were also employed in exequies in the Philippine islands, as much as in Spain and New Spain. An example were the commemorations of Baltasar Carlos, Prince of Asturias, who died in Zaragoza, in October 1646. Due to the distance from Spain and the Dutch occupation of Cavite (near Manila), the official news of the death of the prince reached the Philippines only in 1648. The son of King Felipe IV and Queen Isabel of Bourbon was then commemorated in Manila with a solemn celebration.²⁷ A festival book of that exequy, entitled Aparato funebre, y real pyra de honor, recorded the ceremonial apparatus, consisting of allegorical decorations, orations, sonnets (sonetos), epigrams, epitaphs, anagrams, and poems with eight-line or ten-line stanzas (octavas and décimas), that were hung throughout the royal chapel of the cathedral of Manila.²⁸ In particular, the late prince was commemorated with six allegorical emblems. One of them showed Death driving the sun chariot around the globe. Seated in the chariot, instead of sun rays, the prince spread the fragrance of his virtues as well as his advances in learning.²⁹ The representation corresponded to an anagram: the letters of In hoc curru solis dat balsama (“In this sun’s chariot [he] gives balms”) could be rearranged into the complete Latin name of the Prince, Baltasar, Carolus, Dominicus.

To summarise, the Philippine emblems studied above had three characteristic features.

First, they were drawn and written on paper and hung on a cloth. Even though we lack specific evidence, we cannot rule out a circulation or production of some sort of printed emblems in the Philippines. Such a possibility must be considered because already in the early seventeenth century, the Jesuit missionaries in China made use of printed emblems for doctrinal explanation. By then, copperplate engravings, including emblems, were widely circulated among the Jesuit missions. A diary published in 1631 by a Christian literatus called Stephanus Li Jiubiao (李九標), referred to two sets of images shown to him by the Lithuanian Jesuit missionary Andrzej Rudomina (1596-1632). According to Eugenio Menegon, they can be identified with two series of Flemish emblems.³⁰ Hence, we may wonder whether this is a clue to a much wider circulation of printed emblems in Asia, encompassing not only China but also the Philippines.

Secondly, the available evidence suggests that emblems were primarily displayed in the Philippines in festivities celebrating beatifications and canonizations, as well as on funeral rites. Contrary to what is attested in Spanish America, the Philippine emblems were neither catechetical tools for the conversion of the natives, nor devotional images for the private devotions of the Christians, nor were they deemed to possess miraculous powers.

Thirdly, the images drawn on those emblems were in general of allegorical character. In the case of the sunchariot emblem produced for the exequy of prince Baltasar Carlos, there was a combination of allegory with the depiction of a concrete individual.

On such a general background, the 42 emblems displayed at the funeral rites of Mother Jerónima in 1631 provide new insights into Philippine emblematics. Being an unproclaimed saint, Mother Jerónima was not entitled to receive any of the triumphant pomps used for celebrating successful saints or commemorating the death of members of the royal family. According to the rules de non cultu imposed by Urban VIII in the undertaking of canonization causes, it was not allowed either to place images of Jerónima on altars, or to address any act of worship towards them. With these restrictions, the figures drawn on the emblems in her likeness were among the very first images of Mother Jerónima through which the people of Manila could see her in a public and sacred space, in addition to the effigies, made at her sick bed immediately after her death, that were rather destined for private devotion, as we will see soon.

“HONOURS” FOR JERÓNIMA

On the night of 21 October 1630 Mother Jerónima de la Asunción, abbess of Saint Clare’s convent of Manila, made her last confession and received the Extreme Unction. While other friars left the sisters’ convent, Friar Ginés de Quesada (d. 1634, Osaka), lecturer of Theology at the Convent of Saint Francis of Manila, remained with the moribund nun.³¹ Even though Friar Ginés came to know Mother Jerónima only one month and a half before, as spiritual director he assisted her in the final passage of her life.³² The seventy-five year old nun had survived the fiercest storms in her voyage from Toledo to Manila in 1620-1621, and underwent years of mortifications and ascetic practices. Yet now she realised that her chronic diseases, like lethal “spears”, were about to pierce her body to death. Mother Jerónima requested the nuns, who had all gathered at her bedside, to spread ashes on the floor in the shape of a cross, and then to place her body upon it. Even in the very last hours of her life, the Toledan nun refused to let her body be rested on anything that could provide some comfort, be it even a mat of woven palm leaves. Once laid on the ground, Jerónima adjusted her torso and arms to the shape of the ashmade cross, while the nuns recited the last Seven Words of Jesus. The nuns chanted the Creed and continued their prayers until the words veni electa mea (Come, my chosen one) from the liturgical antiphon of the Common of the Virgins. At that point, at 4 am on 22 October 1630, the abbess completed her terrestrial transit.³³

The night-long chanting from Saint Clare’s convent, located in the walled city (Intramuros) of Manila, reached the ears of clerics and citizens living in that neighbourhood, informing them about the death of Mother Jerónima, whose reputation as a living saint had long been acknowledged by the locals.³⁴ The Franciscan order had anticipated the coming of a large number of visitors to the convent for the veneration of her body. To avoid potential damage and chaos that uncontrollable crowds might cause to the body and to the religious house, the friars and the Chapter of the Cathedral (cabildo ecclesiástico) made an extraordinary decision, recalling one of the narrative scenes depicted by an anonymous master of the early fourteenth century in the Basilica of Santa Chiara, in Assisi. It shows how Saint Clare’s body was transported from the convent of San Damiano to that of San Giorgio in that same city during the feast of her canonization.³⁵ Following that model, the Franciscans in Manila celebrated the funeral mass in the church and then held a solemn procession, carrying Mother Jerónima’s body publicly across the main streets of the city. Devotees came to kiss her hands and habit, and also tried to touch her rosary, loudly acclaiming “Holy Mother” (Santa Madre). To prevent the exceedingly fervent relic-seekers from taking anything further from her body, more guards came to secure the procession. The procession lasted from early morning until afternoon, when the coffin was returned and placed under the altar of the church of the Holy Conception, attached to the convent.

The closest companions of Mother Jerónima carefully observed the unusual physiological changes occurring in her dead body.³⁶ Not only it did not show any signs of corruption, but even her facial muscles remained as soft as in life. The latter observation was made around 7 am, three hours after her transit, when two painters came to the convent. They were commissioned by the governor of Manila, don Juan Niño de Tavera, and by a certain householder or homeowner (vecino) to make portraits of Mother Jerónima.³⁷ Sor Leonor de San Francisco (1583-1651) regretted that the two artists could not paint the intimate joy that had enlightened the eyes of the abbess, as her eyelids were closed. However, all of a sudden and in a miraculous way, the eyes opened up and the mouth, which had been slightly open until then, closed itself, so that the painters were amazed and filled with a sense of humbleness.³⁸

Unfortunately, none of these first paintings have survived, nor has any reference to the existence of her death mask been found yet. How these early drawings influenced the production of effigies, or true images of Jerónima, for instance the ones made in the early eighteenth century, in the form of engravings, still requires more research.³⁹

Let us observe the “true portrait” (verdadero retrato) engraved by the Mexican painter Joseph Mota in 1712 (see figure 4), which appeared in Exemplo de todas las virtudes…, whose first edition was published in Mexico the following year.⁴⁰ It captured Mother Jerónima in a moment of praying towards a crucifix placed amid a skull, a hourglass, whips, a crown of thorns, and cilices, indicating the physical mortifications she had observed during life. The nun’s face is proportionally large comparing to her leaning and hence shortened torso. The dark etchings on both cheeks, both edges of her mouth, and her philtrum heightened an atrophied and even moribund countenance, further adorned by an uplifting gaze. Such a distinctive and personalised face might call in question whether it had been modelled after images lively painted, or soon after the death. As this engraving of a true portrait was commissioned by Friar Augustín de Madrid, the procurator of Jerónima’s beatification cause, who had travelled from Manila to Rome via Mexico in 1711, it is possible that certain images of Jerónima were brought with him.⁴¹ Nevertheless, those early efforts to portray Jerónima, as if she were alive, could at least satisfy an immediate need for commemorating a potential saint in her funeral rites, especially one who had never been seen in public outside her cloistered convent in Manila during the last decade of her life.

Courtesy of John Carter Brown Library

Figure 4 Joseph Mota, Verdadero retrato de la Venerable Madre Geronima de la Asumzion, engraved in Mexico, 1712, printed in ^{Quesada, Exemplo de todas las virtudes… (Mexico, 1713)}. 

The intensity of the funeral rites commissioned in her honour, and the pompous decorations that were set up at Saint Clare’s church and at her tomb, reveal the emergence of a public veneration so dynamic that it hardly limited itself in accordance with Roman regulations on beatification processes that were by then in vigour. A sequence of funeral rites started with a major ceremony celebrated on 31 October by the bishop of Cebú, the Augustinian friar Pedro de Arce, who was then also administrator of the Archbishopric of Manila, as this was sede vacante. The ceremony took place in front of a large audience, with the governor don Juan Niño Tavera, civil judges (oidores), as well as all the religious orders in attendance. The guardian (i. e. superior) of the Convent of Saint Francis proclaimed the virtues of Mother Jerónima in his sermon.⁴² No references were made to uses of Jerónima’s portraits on those specific occasions, but a few people reported on her portraits being seen in the city.⁴³ More funeral rites followed, sponsored by noble women in Manila. For instance, on 8 November, doña Magdalena de Zaldívar y Mendoza, wife of the governor, commissioned a sumptuous funeral rite in the church of the Saint Clare’s convent. Those ceremonies displayed features of funeral apparati, namely spectacular ephemeral decorations within church interiors on the occasion of festive requiem masses, normally dedicated only to royalty and the nobility.⁴⁴

In Quesada’s own words, those funeral rites were nothing sorrowful, because they were meant to demonstrate only the glory that Mother Jerónima had irradiated throughout her saintly life. Both the church and the tomb were decorated with colourful draperies (colgaduras), while many emblems and poems were disseminated all around (sembradas).⁴⁵ On 9 November, the Chapter of the Cathedral celebrated a funeral rite with the same decorations and in the same church, but with different poems and new emblems, made on golden cards (tarjetas doradas) and painted with fine colours.⁴⁶ Again on 18 November, the Third Order of Saint Francis celebrated their own rite at the tomb of Mother Jerónima, with artificial flowers that resembled “a happy and bright spring”.⁴⁷ Later on similar rites were commissioned by two major benefactors, doña Cathalina de Esquerra, wife of Captain Vasco Gutiérrez de Mendoza, and a beata close to the Dominican Order, called María de Jesús. Both had made generous donations to the establishment of Saint Clare’s convent.⁴⁸ In one of their funeral rites, the guardian of the Convent of Santa Ana, Friar Alonso de Ampudia, preached in Tagalog, to satisfy the non-Spanish speaking indio devotees, whose involvement and presence in all those public events were considered by Quesada as very edifying.⁴⁹

It is worth pointing out that all these noble devotees claimed to have received graces from Mother’s Jerónima’s intervention. Though many of them gave testimonies at the investigation for Mother Jerónima’s beatification, organised by the Bishop Arce in 1631-1632, none of them had mentioned any of these funeral rites, not to mention any of the images or poems being used on these occasions. Curiously, the two biographies of Jerónima kept not only a description of the use of those emblems, but also the content of each of them. In order to understand the “enigmas” depicted in the image and the verses, it is necessary to trace the emergence and development of the textual sources in this particular process of saint-making.

WRITING JERÓNIMA’S LIFE

Unlike the production of portraits, which took place shortly after Jerónima’s death, a project of writing down her life was initiated long before her final transit. Mother Jerónima’s companion Abbess Ana de Christo (1565-1636) was the first writer of the life of the former, but the text remained in manuscript form. Twentieth-century biographers of Jerónima such as Lorenzo Pérez,⁵⁰ Encarnación Heredero,⁵¹ and Pedro Ruano⁵² all acknowledged Mother Ana’s active role in the hagiography-writing, while Sarah Owens shed light on the concrete process of writing, as well as on the spiritual and intellectual formation of the writing nuns surrounding Mother Jerónima.⁵³ As early as the first Clarisan nuns embarked on their voyage in 1620, Sister Ana de Christo received orders from her confessor Friar José de Santa María to note down the details of their itinerary. Later, Mother Leonor San Francisco encouraged Sister Ana to prepare an account of the mother abbess’s life.⁵⁴ In 1626 Ana de Christo, now vicaress herself, accomplished the task with a manuscript of 450 folios, with an estimated length of 216 000 words.⁵⁵

The bulk of Jerónima’s life written by Mother Ana, never published, can be read again in the interrogation accompanying the petition to Rome for the beatification of Jerónima, organised by Bishop Pedro Arce between March 1631 and November 1632. As prime witness, Ana de Christo’s sessions took place respectively on 4, 6, 28 February and 3 March 1631.⁵⁶ The 28 questions in the investigation concerned the life, theological virtues, prophetic gifts, mortifications, miraculous healings, granted intercessions, incorrupt body, and Custody Angel of Jerónima.⁵⁷ The extensive length and clear order in the nun’s answer imply that these remarks were more likely given in written rather than in a free-spoken form. It is also possible that Ana’s testimonies served Quesada in his composition of Jerónima’s first biography, because both texts display great similarities in terms of content and structure. Hence, it is obvious that Ana de Christo contributed the main text for creating an official and public profile of Mother Jerónima. In a complementary way, the companions of Mother Ana de Christo at the Convent of Saint Clare all contributed information on the former abbess from different perspectives. In the later phase of the investigation taking place in 1632, Ana de Christo was also active in passing petitions to the Bishop Pedro Arce. The nuns’ voices were heard and scrutinised eventually at the Congregation of Rites in 1709, when the interrogations of 1631-1632 eventually reached Rome, after the original efforts had vanished with the untimely death of the procurator Pedro Gabriel Díaz de Mendoza in Goa, in 1633.⁵⁸ How the nuns’ narratives on the miraculous life of the potential saint were evaluated by the Roman theologians of almost one century later is a question that requires further research.

While the nuns in Manila made their efforts in elaborating the texts, the Franciscan priests in both Mexico and Madrid brought these texts to a public and global readership, but only a few decades later. The first published biography was composed by Bartolomé de Letona, a Basque missionary in Mexico who had made his religious profession in Bilbao.⁵⁹ Letona came to Manila in 1644 aiming at undertaking a reform of the Observant branch in the Philippines. Unable to achieve this, he returned to Mexico in 1654.⁶⁰

Letona’s biography entitled Perfecta religiosa was published in 1662, eight years after he had left Manila. By then, Letona was known as a retired lecturer, calificator of the Holy Office of Mexico, synodal examiner of the Bishopric of Puebla de los Ángeles, guardian of the Convent of San Francisco, and provincial commissary of the Province of the Holy Gospel (Santo Evangelio). Most importantly, Letona was engaged in the promotion of several Franciscan exemplary figures in Mexico, including Clarisan nuns and the lay brother Sebastián de Aparicio (1502-1600), who was later beatified in 1789. ⁶¹ Acting as the procurator general of Aparicio’s cause, Letona potentially linked the cause of Jerónima with those in America, which implies some overlap in the way their biographies and images were respectively written and made.

The second published biography, entitled Exemplo de todas las virtudes y vida milagrosa de la venerable madre Geronyma de la Assumpcion, was edited and completed by Ginés de Quesada shortly before he embarked on the ship to Japan in 1632.⁶² This manuscript was published for the first time in Mexico in 1713, with a second edition appearing in Madrid in 1717 and falling under the censorship of the Inquisition.⁶³

No personal letters or spiritual writings by Mother Jerónima have been found yet. A Jesuit called Ignacio de Mojica remembered his conversations with Mother Jerónima about ecstasy and “rapture” (arrobamiento). According to him, Jerónima wrote a book that deserved to be printed.⁶⁴ The disappearance of autograph documents or books by Jerónima was likely deliberate and intended to prevent any possible investigation for heresy by the Holy Office. With hindsight this proved to be a very real risk, as was demonstrated by the case of a close companion of Jerónima at Saint Clare’s convent, the Abbess Juana de San Antonio (1588-1661). The mystical writings of this nun were charged by the Mexican Inquisition with spreading alumbradismo, a heretical instance that had never happened before in the Philippines.⁶⁵

DRAWING JERÓNIMA’S LIFE AND VIRTUES: A REPERTOIRE OF 42 EMBLEMS

VIRILE WOMAN AND ASCETIC HERO

In her insightful analysis of Velázquez’ portrait of Mother Jerónima, the art historian Tanya Tiffany stressed “the intense outward gaze as a means of communicating her status as a ‘virile woman’ (mujer varonil): a contemporary term for women of exceptional fortitude”.⁷⁵ Jerónima’s virility was also explicitly demonstrated in the first emblem, chronologically speaking, that was devoted to her. This emblem showed a woman lying in bed after having given birth to a baby girl, kept naked for some reason (niña desnuda), who had slipped on the floor. Meanwhile, Saint Francis of Assisi came to lift the baby. The Latin inscription introduced Adam’s remarks on the creation of Eve whom he named as a woman (virago), “this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken” (Genesis 2: 23).⁷⁶

This emblem corresponds to the narrative of Jerónima’s birth as a disappointment to her father, the licenciado don Pedro García Yáñez, who had expected her to be a male heir. To his dismay, the third child he fathered was once again a girl. No one in the house dared to clothe the newborn (hence the caption niña desnuda), until her grandmother came to pick her up.⁷⁷ The meticulous information and theatrical turn in the narrative, from an unwanted child to an extraordinary abbess, was likely told by Jerónima herself to Ana de Christo, who first recorded this story. To a certain extent, this narrative might reflect Jerónima’s own understanding of her life trajectory and aspiration to join the Asian missions, overcoming the underwhelming impression her father received initially and certainly projected also upon her.

Expectations regarding the ideal abbess can be found in manuals on funeral rites composed in the seventeenth century. In Teatro funeral de la Iglesia Catholica (Madrid, 1637) written by Francisco de Rojas, calificator of the Spanish Inquisition and friar from the Franciscan Province of Castilla, the chapter on funeral orations for a late abbess starts with a discussion on the story of Jael in the Book of Judges (4: 17-22).⁷⁸ With a hammer, Jael killed Sisera, commander of the Canaanite army of King Jabin, after having given him milk and lulled him to sleep. According to Francisco de Rojas, there is no other bravery (valentía) for a religious woman than mortification of herself until death.⁷⁹ Heroic figures like Jael might have been cited in the various sermons preached in honour of Mother Jerónima at her funeral rites.

Again, related to asceticism, another emblem showed that the venerable Mother Jerónima not only wore a cilice, but that worms were entangled all around it. Among them, a bigger worm would lift its head from her chest. The Spanish quatrain praised her rigorous flesh for expelling the worm inside her body and chasing away those on her skin.⁸⁰ In another emblem, Mother Jerónima held in her hands a cloth stained with rotting blood, in addition to said worms. The Latin inscription quoted Job “if I say to corruption, you are my father, and to the worm, my mother or my sister” (Job 17: 14).⁸¹ Worms were common symbols for visual representations of death and corruption of the human body.⁸² However, these emblematic worms were created out of Jerónima’s own ascetic practices and reflections in relation to Job’s sufferings. She followed the afflictions (trabajos) that Job suffered, and she did so with the purpose of converting the heathen.⁸³ Mother Jerónima also imitated holy women by putting worms on the wounds inflicted on her flesh by the cilices.⁸⁴ Out of reasons still to be explored, those insects were depicted only on emblems and not in the engraving of Jerónima’s true portrait as discussed above.

CONCLUSION

Emblems were not alien to the early modern Philippines, and certainly the residents of seventeenth-century Manila were familiar with them. Such visual and literary symbols were used profusely in the Philippines on a variety of occasions, ranging from the celebration of canonizations and solemn exequies, to literary competitions and academic rituals. The few references that are currently available on the early modern Philippine emblems display features, functions, and artistic styles that are similar to the ones attested in the emblematic cultures of Spain and Spanish America. It is in this context that we have examined the production, the purpose and function of the 42 emblems displayed at the funeral rites of the first abbess of the Saint Clare’s convent of Manila in 1630. That repertoire is by far the largest set of funerary emblems recorded in the seventeenth century Philippines.

Closely drawing on the Poor Clare nun’s biography and following the model of heroic female saints of the early modern Hispanic world, almost certainly the 42 emblems and the Spanish captions inscribed on them were received by an audience of not exclusively Spanish speakers. Just as in the case of the conversations on Flemish emblems taking place between the Jesuit missionary Rudomina and the Chinese Christian literatus Stephanus Li Jiubiao, a similar transcultural dynamic could have occurred also in the reception of the funerary emblems of Mother Jerónima. In fact, emblems were not only objects of an individual fruition, but could also trigger social practices: missionaries or other educated actors of the colonial society could explain and translate drawings following a European iconography and verses in Spanish or Latin to the benefit of the native Christians, and even of non-Christians, to propagate the life and heroic virtues of the saint-to-be.

Once such a transcultural dynamic is recognised, then it appears also clear how the emblematic representations of Mother Jerónima as a virile woman would produce a particular impact in the Philippines, whose indigenous populations had associated women and femininity with shamanic powers. Hence, even if those emblems appear to us at first sight as purely European, we can sense a hidden line, connecting Mother Jerónima’s virile femininity to a model of religious femininity that would be embraced by native nuns decades later.⁸⁵