Inés de Guerrico Eguses, better known as Sor María Jacinta (Sister Maria Jacinta) (1793–1840), was a Capuchin

nun A nun is a woman who vows to dedicate her life to religious service, typically living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the enclosure of a monastery or convent.''The Oxford English Dictionary'', vol. X, page 599. The term is o ...

and writer from the nascent republican Argentina attached to the confessional discourse of nuns present in the

cloister A cloister (from Latin ''claustrum'', "enclosure") is a covered walk, open gallery, or open arcade running along the walls of buildings and forming a quadrangle or garth. The attachment of a cloister to a cathedral or church, commonly against a ...

s of South America between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Sister Maria Jacinta's literary output was based on a series of epistolary letters, which, when combined with that of the Chilean Sister

Josefa de los Dolores Peña y Lillo Barbosa Sister ( es, link=no, Sor) Josefa de los Dolores Peña y Lillo Barbosa, OP (also known as sor Josefa de los Dolores or sor Dolores Peña y Lillo, 12 March 1739 – 29 August 1823) was a Dominican nun and a self-taught writer of the Chilean Colo ...

, are the best known of their kind in South America.

Biography

Inés de Guerrico Eguses was born in

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata The Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata ( es, Virreinato del Río de la Plata or es, Virreinato de las Provincias del Río de la Plata) meaning "River of the Silver", also called "Viceroyalty of the River Plate" in some scholarly writings, in ...

, 1793. There are few biographical antecedents of Sister María Jacinta, most of which are available in chronicles of the

monastery A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone (hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer which ...

where she lived and the handwritten letters that she wrote at the beginning of the 19th century. Her parents were Don José de Guerrico and Doña María Micaela Eguses. She belonged to the Order of

Capuchin Poor Clares The Capuchin Poor Clares ( la, Ordo Sanctae Clarae Capuccinarum) is a Catholic religious order of Pontifical Right for women founded in Naples, Italy, in 1538, by Ven. Maria Lorenza Longo. The order still exists and it now has communities in the ...

of the cloister of Nuestra Señora del Pilar in Buenos Aires, which she entered on April 14, 1818. In 1819, she was ordained a nun with a black veil.

Literary work

The writing by nuns in the convents of the colonial period and until the 19th century was a common practice in the South American continent, not only because it allowed to reinforce the faith or because it was given a sacramental logic, but also because it allowed "expression of some concern or some dissatisfaction with the reality experienced". In this context is framed the literary work carried out by the nuns in the lodgings and convents of the continent between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, who mainly wrote spiritual letters, diaries, autobiographies, and epistolary genre. In this way, the writings of Sister María Jacinta stood out, which, together with those of the Chilean Sister

, would be the best known of their kind in South America. Sister Maria Jacinta's writings are based on a series of five epistolary letters sent to José Miguel de Tagle -for which there is no consensus as to whether there was a relationship or not- that probably date back to the 1820s, although their date is not certain. She died in 1840 in Buenos Aires,

Argentine Confederation The Argentine Confederation (Spanish: ''Confederación Argentina'') was the last predecessor state of modern Argentina; its name is still one of the official names of the country according to the Argentine Constitution, Article 35. It was the name ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Guerrico Eguses, Ines de 1793 births 1840 deaths People from Buenos Aires Capuchin Poor Clares 19th-century Argentine writers 19th-century Argentine women writers Roman Catholic writers 19th-century Argentine Roman Catholic nuns Argentine non-fiction writers