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Sebastiana Josefa de la Santísima Trinidad (1709-1757) Vida admirable, y penitente de la V. M. Sor Sebastiana Josepha.
Mexico: Imprenta de la Bibliotheca Mexicana, 1765.
First and only edition, quarto, biography by Joseph Eugenio Valdes, illustrated with full page engraving depicting Sebastiana in her habit and on her knees in prayer beside the infant Jesus; title page printed within border of typographical ornaments, bound in full contemporary limp parchment, worn, bio-predation to top edge front cover, and small portion top edge back cover, not affecting the leaves; textblock becoming detached; modern bookplate inside front cover; 8 x 5 3/4 in.
"As suggested by the title of her biography, Sebastiana Josepha (or Josefa) de la Santísima Trinidad was praised by her religious superiors for the intensity of her penitential practice, which involved whipping herself, refusing sleep, and fasting ceaselessly. In fact, Valdés's biography suggests that Sebastiana starved herself to death at age forty-eight. Yet the engraving shown here makes only scant reference to her corporeal self-punishment: a whip and a penitential chain rest on the table beside the comely, youthful Sebastiana, who folds her hands in prayer. Rather than penitence, the engraver emphasized Sebastiana's devotion to the child Christ. Like many nuns, Sebastiana kept a sculpture of the infant Christ in her cell. According to a story recounted by Valdés, the sculpture performed a miracle which demonstrated the divine favor granted to Sebastiana: the image grew in size, in the manner of a real child. In her adoration of the holy infant, Sebastiana adhered to the devotional practice of her convent, whose nuns expressed particular reverence for another Christ child sculpture, the Santo Niño de San Juan (the Holy Child of Saint John). As Valdés has it, the Santo Niño saved the convent church during an earthquake, when it held up, 'with two fingers,' the archway beneath one of the altars." (Quoted from the online exhibition catalogue for the John Carter Brown Library's Women of the Page: Convent Culture in the Early Modern Spanish World, curated by Tanya Tiffany, 2017: https://jcblibrary.org/exhibitions/women-page-convent-culture-early-modern-spanish-world
