This lengthy epistle, dated March 1, 1691, written by the nun Sor Juana (Sister Joan), considered the greatest poet and most important writer of New Spain (colonial Mexico) as a defense against being told by her superior (a bishop) that she must not engage in secular intellectual exercises (he was ticked off that she disagreed with his favorite religious writer on a particular sermon), is itself an intellectual exercise. The emergence of Sor Juana De La Cruz in the late seventeenth century was a cultural miracle and her whole life was a constant effort of stubborn personal and intellectual improvement. She died of a cholera epidemic at the age of forty-three, while helping her sick companions. Shortly before her death, she was forced by her confessor to get rid of her library and her collection of musical and scientific instruments so as not to have problems with the Holy Inquisition, very active at that time. She had several drawbacks to her activity as a writer, a fact that was frowned upon at the time and that Juana Inés de la Cruz always defended, claiming the right of women to learn. Jerome, remaining there for the rest of her life and being visited by the most illustrious personalities of the time. Two years later she entered the Order of St. In 1667, Juana Inés de la Cruz entered a convent of the Discalced Carmelites of Mexico but soon had to leave due to health problems. Sponsored by the Marquises of Mancera, she shone in the viceregal court of New Spain for her erudition and versifying ability. In 1665, admired for her talent and precocity, she was lady-in-waiting to Leonor Carreto, wife of Viceroy Antonio Sebastián de Toledo. Thanks to her grandfather's lush library, Juana Inés de la Cruz read the Greek and Roman classics and the theology of the time, she learned Latin in a self-taught way. As a child, she learned Nahuatl (Uto-Aztec language spoken in Mexico and Central America) and read and write Spanish in the middle of three years. Juana Inés de la Cruz was born in a town in the Valley of Mexico to a Creole mother Isabel Ramírez and a Spanish military father, Pedro Manuel de Asbaje.
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