Juana Inés was buried the same day she died. It is certain that she had no public obsequies to honor her memory because in an epidemic, both in the past and now, the survivors rushed to bury the victims and dispose of her remains. The only ceremonies that could be held, in case of extreme necessity and as dictated by the spirit of the times, were acts of expiation and reparation, in case it was necessary to request divine justice or appease fury for some sin that had not been committed in life. corrected.
At his burial, in the lower choir of the temple of San Jerónimo, only his sisters, the Jerónima nuns, could attend. To do so, the undertaker located the oldest grave. He opened it, removed the bones that were there, placed them in the ossuary and left the hole ready where his body would rest and hopefully await eternal life. The death of that illustrious woman, the nun, the poetess, the rebel, the punished daughter of God, spread quickly like all the bad news. However, no one wanted to get close and everything seemed lonely and quiet. Although it was said that the Chapter of the Cathedral had wanted to attend the funeral and the canon Francisco de Aguilar was very sorry for not having performed the funeral. They said that Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, a faithful friend of Juana Inés had written a Funeral Oration, but no one heard it or could find it. It was learned that when Juana Inés died she had more than a hundred books. That she had written her will and she inherited nothing more than a child of God, some shell paintings and a bundle of papers. And that the religious images that accompanied her in her cell were left to the archbishop.
The memory of the episcopal process conducted in secret and against Juana Inés was still fresh in my mind. In the convent it was whispered that having been condemned to “deliver her property and library to the archbishop”, to “abjure her errors” and not to publish more of her would cause her death. Because it was notorious that her mood had changed and the fire in her eyes, before full of arrogance, she was barely a spark and all her rebellion had melted into silence. From her fist and her handwriting, only the additions and subtractions of the remedies for the epidemic that she administered to her sisters infected with her appeared and they were running out. She no longer even presumed to change the alchemy of the stews to restore the sick to health.
Exhausting hours of work and contact with the infected weakened Juana Inés since the beginning of April. No one yet knew how to cure the plague and nine out of ten sick people died. She endured without complaint until the pain began to take over her body, leaving her icy, almost undaunted. Although that day, suddenly, her fever returned her speech and made her scream madly. She prayed with verses, called Santa Paula and swore never to ask God in vain again. She begged them to read what months before, in the convent’s Book of Professions, she had written as her last will: “Up here the day of death, month and year must be noted. I beg, for the love of God and His Immaculate Mother, to my beloved sisters, the nuns that they are and will be from now on, to commend me to God because I have been and am the worst that has ever been. I apologize to all of you for the love of God and his mother. Me, the worst in the world”:
Finally, the bleeding from her nose calmed her to death. Four in the morning arrived and in her cell at the convent of San Jerónimo, Juana Inés de la Cruz undertook her last journey. She was running the year of 1695 and it was April 17. A day like today, dear reader.
