Jessica Delgado's new book opens a window upon a little understood yet central aspect of life in colonial Mexico -- the experiences of laywomen within the Catholic Church and the roles that such women have played in shaping Catholic tradition and practice. Delgado's research forms an essential counterpoint to the recent flourishing of studies on colonial nuns within Latin American historiography. Works by Asunción Lavrin, Kathryn Burns and other scholars have demonstrated that Roman Catholic nuns and sisters held a central place in the colonial world, profoundly influencing the spiritual, literary, economic and festive culture of urban centres like Mexico City and Lima. Yet the attention paid to female religious, who formed a tiny percentage of women in colonial Latin America, and who usually came from relatively elite circles, has overshadowed the contributions made by laywomen to colonial Catholicism. Delgado's important new work analyses laywomen's interactions with clergy, ecclesiastical courts, sacraments and cloisters, demonstrating that women were vital to the gradual process of creating colonial religious culture in New Spain. While acknowledging that laywomen lived within patriarchal ecclesiastical structures in which they had unequal access to power, Delgado convincingly shows that women's participation in church affairs helped to determine the very nature of Christian traditions in colonial Mexico. Her thesis is bold, exciting and backed up with archival evidence from a range of sources.

The first part of the book examines laywomen's interactions with the sacraments, confessors and ecclesiastical courts. Most of this section is devoted to analysing women's testimony in Inquisition court cases. Delgado studies cases dealing with clerical derelictions in the confessional, ranging from improper questions (such as asking a confessant to describe her genitals) to forcible rape. Additionally, she considers situations where women were examined by the Inquisition for possible heresy, and where the defendants' confessors were called upon to testify. Her purpose is to focus on what the Inquisition testimony unwittingly reveals about what was considered normative for laywomen with regard to confession and the eucharist. How often did women go to confession? What was the association between confession and communion for most women? What kinds of relationships did laywomen have with confessors, especially with those priests never accused of abuse, who often appear in a positive light? Delgado mines this challenging testimony for insights into how the sacraments affected female experience; she is careful to consider how race and geography, especially the urban/rural divide, combined with gender and class to structure religious experience. This section also includes a chapter on how laywomen were often able to use ecclesiastical courts to their own advantage, bringing cases against men accused of rape, seduction and/or broken marriage promises.

The second section of the book explores the varying kinds of seclusion available for women in colonial Mexico City. This part of Delgado's study is absolutely fascinating. Recogimiento, or enclosure, was not just for nuns; many laywomen either desired or were sentenced to years or even life in a quasi-religious seclusion. Delgado first studies the cloisters intended for poor and virtuous young women who lacked a good dowry. These charitable institutions provided unwed girls with spiritual instruction, education and dowries that they could use either to marry or to enter a convent. The second kind of recogimiento that Delgado treats was for ‘the unruly and the unhappy’ -- women who were ‘fallen’, or divorced, or put away by their husbands, or even criminals. She is adept at describing the ambiguities inherent in the different kinds of recogimiento, and the diverse ways in which women responded to these institutions; some women found them a welcome refuge, while others resented being cut off from the outside world and tried to escape. Delgado also illuminates the power held by the laywomen who ran the recogimientos, who defined spaces of female power and authority within the heart of colonial New Spain.

Finally Delgado looks at the role of laywomen in female convents in colonial Mexico City. Nuns depended on laywomen -- servants, the enslaved and students -- for the daily functioning of their religious communities. Laywomen within convents had to adhere to a religious routine, although one that was not as strenuous as that of the nuns. Delgado explores the often-liminal nature of laywomen within the religious enclosures, where nuns of Spanish descent lived side by side with laywomen of native and African descent, often developing bonds of intense affection within the hierarchical strictures of race and class.

This deeply researched book is of lasting importance, and will soon become a classic work of colonial Mexican historiography. Delgado's writing is rich in memorable stories of individual women; while never losing sight of the experiences of real people, she presents a masterly exposition of how women's actions helped to shape the moral underpinnings of an entire society.