ABSTRACT
Interest in Mother Juana de la Cruz (1481–1534) has increased since the publication of her sermons in 1999 by Inocente García de Andrés and the re-opening of her cause for canonization by the Vatican in 2015. As a woman preaching sermons during the Inquisition, Mother Juana is a highly unusual figure, all the more so given that gender liminality pervades her thought. Gender fluidity is also a theme in her personal biography. This chapter examines gender liminality in her Vida and in her sermon on the Annunciation. Where gender liminality might seem novel and untraditional, Juana’s use of this theme is contextualized and shown to be contiguous both with earlier hagiographic sources and with her professed Franciscan heritage.
