To Educate and Evangelize
To Educate and Evangelize
Laywomen, Clergy, and Late Colonial Girls’ Schools
Chapter 4 examines the case studies of three new primary schools for non-elite girls in and around late-colonial Guatemala City, as locals called the recently relocated capital. These educational initiatives illustrate both change and continuity, blurring the perceived battle lines between baroque and enlightened pieties. Enlightened feminine ideals based on the social utility of educated mothers and Bourbon reform efforts operated in conjunction with on-going alliances between laywomen and clergy and an attachment to monastic models of feminine piety. These schools also show how laywomen acted as pioneers and innovators, shaping educational reform through creative engagement with Bourbon reforms, Enlightenment ideas, and progressive Catholicism. The formation of Guatemala City’s “Teacher’s College” for native women in the Beaterio de Indias also challenged entrenched racial ideologies and illustrates a critical shift toward acknowledging native laywomen’s capacity to serve as teachers and spiritual leaders.
Keywords: Female education, schools, Bourbon Reforms, laywomen, beaterio, indigenous, Enlightenment, Guatemala City, Catholic Church
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