María of Ágreda

Mystical Lady in Blue

Marilyn H. Fedewa

• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780826346452
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Biographies

News of María of Ágreda's exceptional attributes spread from her cloistered convent in seventeenth-century Ågreda (Spain) to the court in Madrid and beyond. Without leaving her village, the abbess impacted the kingdom, her church, and the New World; Spanish Hapsburg king Felipe IV sought her spiritual and political counsel for over twenty-two years. Based upon her transcendent visionary experiences, Sor María chronicled the life of Mary, mother of Jesus of Nazareth, in Mystical City of God, a work the Spanish Inquisition temporarily condemned. In America, reports emerged that she had miraculously appeared to Jumano Native Americans - a feat corroborated by witnesses in Spain, Texas, and New Mexico, where she is honored today as the legendary "Lady in Blue." Lauded in Spain as one of the most influential women in its history, and in the United States as an inspiring pioneer, Sor María's story will appeal to cultural historians and to women who have struggled for equanimity against all odds.

Marilyn Fedewa's biography of this fascinating woman integrates voluminous autobiographical, historical, and literary sources published by and about María of Ágreda. With liberal access to Sor María's papal delegate in Spain and convent archives in Ágreda, Fedewa skillfully reconstructs a historical and spiritual backdrop against which Sor María's voice may be heard.

"Marilyn Fedewa has written a stirring portrait of María of Ágreda, a brilliant... remarkable player in major spiritual and secular events of [her] age." - Kenneth A. Briggs, former religion editor for the New York Times

"A fascinating biography of an extraordinary woman told from the perspective of her 17th-century Spanish religious culture." - Clark A. Colahan, author of Visions of Sor María de Ágreda: Writing Knowledge and Power

CHAPTER 1

Who Is María of Ágreda?

AT FIRST GLANCE, MARÍA OF ÁGREDA’S LIFE EVOKES THE heights and depths of a spiritual rollercoaster ride, plummeting down and scaling the landscape of her soul during her sixty-three years on earth. The abbess’s writing, however, documents her hard-won spiritual lessons with examples akin to breaking the barrier of running the “four-minute mile” in spiritual terms. In the process, she marks precious milestones across the centuries for seekers the world over who long for peace and enlightenment.

This prominent seventeenth-century religious and political figure lived in—and never left—northeast Spain. Yet María of Ágreda is paradoxically regarded today in pockets of the American Southwest as a key historical phenomenon. Her writings, reverently packed in ornate travel boxes, accompanied noted colonial missionaries such as Junípero Serra and Antonio Margil as they evangelized California and Texas, founding missions and city centers, some in her memory.

More challenging to the imagination, however, is the fact that Jumano Native Americans in Texas and New Mexico called María of Ágreda the “Lady in Blue” who personally taught them Christianity, while nuns in her charge vowed their abbess had never left the convent. For this, and her many accomplishments, she is now feted in perpetuity in art collections across the globe, as exemplified in a grand eighteenth-century portrait of her in Mexico’s National Museum of Viceroyalty, one emblazoned with a scroll citing her missionary work in New Mexico at age twenty-one.

FIGURE 1. Map of Spain and Portugal. Map by author.

While many religious traditions describe the mystical phenomenon of bilocation, or appearing in two places at the same time, few have such elaborate documentation of the events. Fewer still provide a tangible human context for such unusual spiritual experiences. In María of Ágreda’s case, historical records abound because the Jumanos’ detailed testimony is recounted in seminal histories of the Southwest. Too, mission officials located and interviewed her in Spain, whereupon she shared with them her struggle to interpret the phenomenon.

Official reports, quoted by colonial historians through the centuries, cited the “blessed sister” as “handsome of face, very fair in color, with a slight rosy tinge and large black eyes,” whereas the twenty-nine-year-old nun described herself as “under the command of obedience” and “beside myself with anxiety” at the unwanted attention.¹ Despite the sensationalism that resulted, in the interstices of a rigorous prayer schedule and her responsibilities as abbess, she embarked on the signature work of her life, an eight-volume series entitled Mystical City of God.

Rumors of the work-in-progress spread through the monks who copied and therefore read early versions in preparation for scrutiny by ecclesiastical censors. Soon María of Ágreda surged in popular esteem as a saintly woman sought out by commoners and nobility alike. She earned the attention and respect of her peers as well as that of then ruler of Spain, King Felipe IV, so much so that he sought her out on his way to battle at the Spanish frontier.

His treasury was depleted, the king told the mystic. The country was at war with France. The nation’s human resources had been siphoned off in the colonization of the New World. The Spanish fleet of ships perilously sailed through hostile seas off the coast of Africa, trying to return to Spain with precious cargoes of silver to replenish his coffers.²

Before long, King Felipe IV of Spain considered María of Ágreda both his spiritual and political adviser, documented in six hundred confidential letters during their twenty-two-year-long correspondence. The cloistered abbess advised him in detail on his prayer life and on matters of governance. Many times her advice reflected the simple common sense offered from one friend to another. Other times, she dove straight to the spiritual heart of her mystical life: “Dilate all your heart and soul to receive divine love,” she frequently exhorted him over the years in various iterations of the central theme of her life.³

When Felipe IV struggled with the decadence and ineffectiveness of his court officials, and the manipulations of his prime minister, María of Ágreda advised him in detail on how to sort out the chaff, while at the same time applying principles of fairness. And she didn’t take just the easy assignments.

Like many advisers to those in high positions, María of Ágreda dreaded the consequences of advising the king about his love life. Yet she courageously set aside her fear and told him to be faithful in marriage despite the common knowledge of his frequent infidelities. When she couldn’t appeal to him spiritually, she switched to pragmatism. He would increase his chances of having an heir, she wrote to him curtly, if he was faithful to his wife.⁴

In seventeenth-century Spain, this self-educated cloistered mystic— a Catholic nun likely of Jewish descent—faced challenges most people never have to worry about: the Spanish Inquisition, the demands of advising a beleaguered king, and the laborious task of writing and rewriting her books by hand. She also manifested unusual spiritual gifts that baffle the understanding of many.

Accounts of her early life quote witnesses who said they saw her levitate, like Saint Teresa of Avila, while in prayerful ecstasy.⁵ Community members testified that she saw into their hearts and futures, and cured their illnesses. They also described the fervent missionary zeal she had harbored since girlhood, although she never physically left Ágreda.⁶ As a result of this unfulfilled desire, her spirit seemed to her to reach out beyond the confines of her body, while she was reported by others as being seen in two places at once—like Saint Padre Pio, who also “bilocated.”⁷

When castigated by superiors for what they considered her showy ecstasies, she clung to her passionate spirituality and relentlessly applied her intellect to understand the nature of her ecstatic visions. “A spiritualized condition can conquer the resistance of gravity . . . and penetrate matter,” she wrote in later life, describing Mary’s mystical gifts and no doubt thinking of her own experience of being in another country across the sea.⁸ She also described in detail the Jumano Native Americans of Texas and New Mexico, including the weather and landmarks of their territory, their customs and lifestyle, and the Franciscan missionaries who worked among them. Thus, an unusual American legacy spread, as the story of the Lady in Blue was recorded in many historical treatises on both sides of the ocean.

At the same time, these phenomena ignited the suspicion of the Spanish Inquisition, which posited demonic possession as their cause and secretly surveilled her activities for years. When María of Ágreda was mistakenly implicated in a plot against the king, the Inquisition made a surprise appearance in Ágreda and interrogated her for eleven grueling days, under threat of excommunication. She was ultimately exonerated of any wrongdoing, heresy, or demonic possession, although sensationalism proved a periodic millstone throughout her life.

Over the years, María of Ágreda wrote fourteen books, the most prominent of which is Mystical City of God, a biography of Mary, mother of Jesus. In it, she threads references from the Bible’s canonical Gospels, as well as insights from classical Christian and Jewish narratives and apocryphal texts about Mary that were popular at the time.

Mystical City of God also engages its readers in rich accounts of María of Ágreda’s own visions—deemed by the Catholic Church as inspiring private revelations that are not required matters of faith—and her mystical immersion in the world of the spirit and deep prayer. In her writing, she shares many enlightening passages on the nature of her visions and supernatural phenomena. Miraculously, the book survived the decades-long scrutiny of the Spanish Inquisition and inexplicable orders to burn it. Through this printing, it has appeared in hundreds of editions and dozens of languages worldwide.

While María of Ágreda’s legacy has yet to equal that of her countrywoman, Teresa of Avila, many modern-day Spaniards have come to value her contributions more in recent years.

In 1995 Spain’s Radio Televisión Española (RTVE) named María of Ágreda as one of the nine most influential women in Spanish history. In 2002 twelve thousand people flocked to Ágreda to view the glass-encased crypt housing her incorrupt body, in honor of the four hundredth anniversary of her birth. The following year, US film director Mel Gibson read Mystical City of God, among other works, in advance of making his 2004 blockbuster film, The Passion of the Christ.⁹

In 2006 María of Ágreda was included in Grolier Scholastic’s new biography series on one thousand influential Hispanic Americans past and present, alongside political activist Cesar Chavez and father of California missions Junípero Serra. Scholarly treatises continue to emerge in the twenty-first century, exploring the nature of her life and its place in history. The iconography on her alone comprises hundreds of images exhibited worldwide—in oil paintings, woodcuts, engravings, statuary, and architectural insets.

In honor of the “heroic exercise of virtue” throughout her life, María of Ágreda was designated a “venerable” of the Catholic Church seven years after her death. Theologians in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries described Mystical City of God as unparalleled, guided by a supernatural hand, a work with “a knowledge of the most sublime truths [that] inflame the heart with divine love.”¹⁰ Yet beatification— the next step toward sainthood—has yet to become a reality for her, in part because a faulty translation of her book relegated it to the church’s dreaded Index of Forbidden Books. For centuries, it bounced on and off this blacklist, depending on each pope’s disposition and the skill of her backers. Mystified connoisseurs of her work labor to understand this seeming contradiction.

The “wow” factor alone is certainly reason enough to read the extraordinary story of María of Ágreda’s life. Yet if the reader considers her experiences to be out of reach, full of unattainable spiritual heights, it is a mistake. As in the lives of many great seers, writers, and statesmen, each pinnacle likely harbors its own precipice and nearby abyss. Indeed, because many of these achievers did not have mentors of greater wisdom or experience than they, often they endured many more cycles of trial and error than most people. That is one reason why they provide us with so many opportunities to learn from them.

Such is certainly the case with María of Ágreda. Despite her long, glittering résumé, she struggled throughout her life with anxiety, depression, and inertia. She fought her inner demons, failed sometimes, and picked herself up again, as we all can do.

Although María of Ágreda’s tradition was Catholic, and she lived in the paternalistic church-state of Inquisition-era Spain, her experience was universal. Many of her insights call to mind the timeless truths offered by highly evolved seers of many religious and wisdom traditions. Her portrayal of Mary as the Divine Mother evokes touching images of Mary as the spiritual mother of all of creation.¹¹ Her description of Mary’s spiritual prowess, and of Mary’s invitation to María and all of humankind to follow in her footsteps, calls us to claim the birthright of our unlimited potential.

This is her journey.

PART ONE

A LITTLE GIRL WITH BIG EYES

1602

CHAPTER 2

“Suddenly my perception expanded”

AS A CHILD, MARÍA CORONEL AWOKE MANY MORNINGS before dawn to the sound of her father in prayer, dragging a one-hundred-pound cross along the floor. She saw her mother draped in a dark Franciscan robe, holding a human skull before her face, and heard Señora Coronel’s intoned contemplation of death and the everlasting life of the soul.¹ With such a stark introduction to the life of the spirit, María Coronel nevertheless made her own way through the wondrous mystical realms about which she so prolifically wrote later in life.

At the time of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Who Is María of Ágreda?
• Part One: A Little Girl with Big Eyes: 1602
• Part Two: America’s Mystical Lady in Blue: 1620
• Part Three: Biographer of the Heavenly Queen: 1635
• Part Four: Adviser to the Spanish King: 1643
• Part Five: the Spanish Inquisition Interrogates the Lady in Blue: 1650
• Part Six: Fruits of a Mystic’s Labor: 1650
• Part Seven: The After-Story: 1665 Through the Present
• Afterword: The Quest to Explain Mystical Phenomena in a Scientifc Age
• Appendix A: Reference Chronology for the Lifetime of María of Ágreda
• Appendix B: Ancestors of María Coronel of Ágreda
• Appendix C: María of Ágreda’s Major Writings
• Appendix D: María of Ágreda’s Daily Schedule
• Appendix E: Sor María’s Southwest American Presence after Her Death
• Appendix F: Popes and Their Terms during and after Sor María’s Lifetime
• Appendix G: Fourteen Inspections of Sor María’s Incorrupt Corpse (1667–1989)
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author