ABSTRACT
Martín Carrillo’s Elogios de mujeres insignes del viejo testamento [In Praise of Illustrious Women of the Old Testament], published in 1627, describes and critically evaluates the lives and choices of 54 biblical women whose acts and deeds, both virtuous and aberrant, are explicitly meant to instruct the reader. 1 Dedicated to Margaret of the Cross, daughter of the Empress María of Austria and a professed nun at the Monasterio de la Consolación de Franciscanas Clarisas, known as the Convent of the Descalzas Reales [Royal Discalced] in Madrid, the text functions as an educational tool for a learned royal and noble female audience for whom these exemplary lives simultaneously reiterate and reconfigure acceptable social and imaginary boundaries for early modern female subjectivity. 2 The 47 chapters that make up the Elogios are framed by citations from the Vulgate bible and other references to church authorities on the margins, each ending with a poem composed by a secular poet, such as the well-known luminary Lope de Vega. Carrillo’s text functions as a conduit that provides its female audience mediated access to the bible in a post-Tridentine context. It also creates a space where the legitimate boundaries of female behavior are tested and the motivations that guide women’s actions are critiqued and evaluated in terms of their potential intention, underlying causes, and resulting effects, thus offering often unexpected lessons as to what is acceptable female moral and ethical behavior.
