Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was a poet, playwright and writer on music born in San Miguel de Nepantla, near Mexico City, on a date probably falling between 1648 and 1651, and she died in the same area in April 1695. Her figure is fundamental to understanding the intellectual life of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, where her talent earned a reputation that crossed the Atlantic, to the point that she became known as the «Tenth Muse».

The daughter of a Basque captain and a Creole woman, she showed exceptional intelligence from childhood: according to some accounts, at the age of eight she asked to enter the University of Mexico and, after barely twenty lessons, she had mastered Latin. Between 1664 and 1669 she served as lady-in-waiting to the Marchioness of Mancera, wife of a viceroy. After a brief three-month stay as a novice in a Discalced Carmelite convent in 1667, she found her true place in 1669 in the convent of San Jerónimo in the capital, where she spent the remaining twenty-six years of her life. She enjoyed the protection of Archbishop Payo Enríquez de Rivera and of the Countesses of Paredes and of Galve, wives of viceroys.

Her output includes three volumes of poetry published between 1689 and 1700, two plays and three autos sacramentales full of musical allusions, as well as villancicos, of which twelve printed sets survive and another ten are attributed to her. Her texts were reprinted in Spain as late as 1715. As a writer on music, she declared herself a disciple of Cerone, annotated his treatise El melopeo y maestro and prepared a summary for her fellow nuns, now lost, entitled El caracol. In her last work, the Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz of 1691, she argued that interpreting the Scriptures requires musical knowledge, suggesting that Abraham's figures in Genesis allude to musical intervals.

Her legacy combines Baroque poetry with a theoretical reflection on music, which was unusual among women of her time, and her villancicos form part of the repertoire of the cathedrals of New Spain.