ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the early female education in Nueva Granada in order to reconstruct its educational history by means of the specific events that have recently come to light. As convents in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries began to serve broader educational purposes, one such convent in Nueva Granada, the monastery of Nuestra Seora de la Encarnacin of Popayn, founded in 1591, has recently had this role attributed to it. The various kinds of educational institutions in Nueva Granada reflect the tonalities of gray in a system that offered an education even prior to that of La Enseanza, the broadly recognized first school for women in Nueva Granada, however limited the examples and despite the provincialism of the colony. Yet despite the chiaroscuro depicted by the varying levels of education offered, women's writings in Nueva Granada demonstrate a depth of thought and formal quality equal to that of their peers in other colonial settings.
