Could Early Modern Women Write Biblical Commentaries? A Closer Look at Mariana de San José's Exegesis of the Song of Songs

Abstract: Augustinian founder Mariana de san José (1568–1638) explicated the first two chapters of the biblical love poem Song of Songs in her Comentario al "Cantar de los Cantares ," a rare female-authored exegesis of scripture. In this explicit biblical commentary, Mariana offers an affective, mystical reading of the Bride and Bridegroom's amorous exchange, through which God shapes the soul into an evermore perfect masterpiece. In comparing her commentary to contemporary male-authored exegeses, particularly to Fray Juan de los Ángeles's 1607 commentary on the Songs of Songs , we see that Mariana eschews scholarly approaches generally inaccessible to women of her time; she refrains from a theological interpretation of the Song as allegory between God and the Church, and instead comments primarily on the tropological relationship between God and the soul—an area of knowledge within the purview of virtuous nuns. Yet, Mariana also displays biblical erudition as she quotes scripture extensively and draws parallels between imagery in various biblical books, a methodology common to medieval (male) interpretative tradition. Furthermore, she creates an empowered subject position for the soul-bride from which it acts alongside the Divine, despite its avowed "nothingness." Mariana's unique text challenges a superficial dichotomy between embodied experience and intellectual erudition, and her own gendered subject position, though ostensibly a hindrance, opened a door for innovative contributions to contemporary spiritual discourse. Furthermore, Mariana's commentary demonstrates that early modern spanish society sometimes sought women's spiritual knowledge with high regard; under the proper circumstances, this esteem allowed nuns access to otherwise-forbidden genres.