Madre María Rosa

Maria Rosa was a Capuchin nun from Madrid, Spain. She left Spain in 1712 with four other founding nuns to Lima, Peru to establish a new Capuchin convent. She was an example of the early modern women who were a part of the expansion of the Atlantic world. Her documentation of her journey is the oldest known travel document written by a woman. It was very atypical for a woman to be literate much less travel to the New World. During the Council of Trent, nuns were strictly enclosed within the walls of their convents. The only exception to this being for the founding of new convents. Her account of her journey is a valuable insight to a pious woman's interpretation of the world outside of the cloistered walls of a covenant and proof that a woman, particularly one tied down by a strict Catholic council, had a burning spirit of mission with “equal flame” to those of so many men in Catholic Europe.