Biography

by Sarah-Jane Christensen, Perla Escobar & Anna-Lisa Halling

Diogo Barbosa Machado affirms that Soror Violante was born in Lisbon, Portugal on May 30, 1601 (792). However, Andrés José Pociña López and Margarida Vieira Mendes have evidence to suggest that she was actually born in 1607, citing documentation from the cathedral of Lisbon which shows that her parents were married in 1606 and she was baptized on June 6, 1607 (Halling, “Edition of Villancicos” 1). Pociña López notes the improbability that she was baptized at six years old, and states that Machado’s date of 1601 could have been a typographical error due to the numbers one and seven having such a similar appearance (19). Anabela Galhardo Couto cites Frei Lucas de Santa Catarina’s Quarta Parte da História de São Domingos and upholds the birth date of 1607, but this source contains no record of Soror Violante’s birth (69). She was born into nobility, as evidenced by her family, her education, and the status of the people she associated with throughout her life (Costa e Silva 57). Her parents were Manoel da Sylveira Montesino, an attorney, and Helena da França de Ávila (Machado 792).  Her birth name was Violante Ávila da Silveira Montesino, though there is some speculation as to if it was Montesino or Montesinos, some sources citing it with an s at the end and others without (Pociña López 20). She was named after her grandmother, Violante Álvares, and Violante Nunes (who may have been an aunt), her godmother (Mendes 12).  Her father passed away when she was three years old—this age being calculated with Soror Violante’s birth year as 1607—and she had one sister, Catarina, born in 1609 (Mendes 12).

In her youth, she wrote romantic and even erotic poetry (Halling, “Edition of Villancicos” 2), allegedly dedicated to a man named Paulo Gonçalves de Andrade, whom she planned to marry but did not because her grandfather, Gonçalo Nunes de Ávila, would not allow it. Paulo Gonçalves de Andrade then left Portugal and never returned (João Franco Barreto, qtd. in Mendes 11). She entered the Convent of Nossa Senhora da Rosa on August 29, 1630 (Machado 792). Even after she entered the convent, she continued to maintain contact and relationships with her friends and family (Navarro 213). She is “considered a proponent of conceptismo because of the intellectual density of her work” (Commire and Klezmer 1938).

Soror Violante never had any formal training in poetry, but rather was naturally gifted from a young age (Remédios 15). She often participated in certámenes, or poetry competitions, and won many prizes for her elegant and tender writing (Machado 792). Teresa Leitão de Barros stated that she was one of the most accomplished representatives of ascetic and mystical poetry during the seventeenth century (123). Her work was noticed and esteemed by many members of the royal family, including D. João IV, D. Luísa de Gusmão, and Príncipe Teodósio (Perym 450). In 1619, King Felipe III of Spain (II of Portugal) visited Lisbon and it is said that her play La Transformación por Dios, also known as Comédia de Santa Eugénia (or perhaps Santa Engrácia) was performed for him, though the text has since disappeared, the Convent of Nossa Senhora da Rosa being destroyed during an earthquake and subsequent fire in 1755 (Halling, “Edition of Villancicos” 1). Serrano y Sanz (267) and the online database Escritoras cite La Transformación por Dios and Comédia de Santa Eugénia as two separate works, but Perym (449) cites them as the same work. Presumably, Perym had access to the texts before their destruction because his work predates the incident, making him the most credible source.

Aside from her distinguished reputation as a poet, she also played the harp, was fluent in Portuguese, Latin, and Spanish (Escritoras), and was well-versed in science (Serrano y Sanz 264). While some of her work was published posthumously, she published Rimas Várias (sometimes written as Rimas varias de la Madre Soror Violante del Cielo, religiosa en el monasterio de la Rosa de Lisboa) in 1646 in Rouen, France, with the help of Miguel Botelho de Carvalho (Barrera y Leirado 91) and Vasco Luis da Gama, the Portuguese ambassador in Paris (Pérez and Ihrie 135). Rimas Várias is a work that includes songs, glosses, sonnets, and romances, most of which were written in Spanish (Serrano y Sanz 265). Despite being a nun, the works in Rimas Várias do not focus on religious topics, but rather draw inspiration from the author’s more or less fictitious loves (Serrano y Sanz 265), and many of them are characterized by disappointment, passion, and jealousy (Navarro 213). Since she wrote a lot about love, she often wrote anonymously (Commire and Klezmer 1938).

Soror Violante also wrote about the political climate during her life, which is “an indication that she interacted with members of the upper class, and had an active awareness of her more worldly surroundings” (Halling, “Edition of Villancicos” 2). She was born during the Iberian Union, which was a 60-year time period in which Spain and Portugal were ruled by the same king. During this time, Spanish served as a very common second language for the Portuguese in part because of the Union and in part because of Portuguese sovereigns marrying Spanish princesses (Teyssier 32). According to Paul Teyssier, this led to a certain “castelhanização” of the court (32). In addition to that, Spanish is a much more universal language. By writing in Spanish, the authors of that time were able to reach a larger audience, providing an incentive to produce works both in their native tongue as well as in Spanish. After living and writing in the convent for 63 years, Sóror Violante died on January 28, 1693.

Forty years after her death, in 1733, Parnaso Lusitano de Divinos e Humanos Versos was published in Lisbon (Pérez and Ihrie 135) by Miguel Rodridgues. Parnaso Lusitano includes sonnets, songs, epistles, romances, villancicos, silvas, elegies, and octaves (Serrano y Sanz 267). As with much of her other work, most of Parnaso Lusitano was written in Spanish (Péres 107). In contrast to the secular themes of Rimas Várias, Parnaso Lusitano focuses on a more divine love of God and Sóror Violante even asks forgiveness from God for the poems she wrote in her youth (Couto 71). Though they represent a large part of her written work, the religious poems of Parnaso Lusitano are not as well-known as the poetry from Rimas Várias. This could be due to the fact that, according to Pociña López, the religious poetry is not as touching, original, or interesting as the more secular, romantic poetry (36).

Soror Violante was nicknamed “A Décima Musa” and “Fênix dos Engenhos Lusitanos” in both Portugal and Spain (Flores et al 326). The nickname of “A Décima Musa” is a reference to Sappho of Lesbos, who in her time was also known as “The Tenth Muse.” As expressed by Julián Olivares and Elizabeth S. Boyce, Soror Violante “conceive[d] poetic creation as a literature written by women for women,” just as Sappho before her (196). Her work that focused on women was written with the same elements as early sapphic verse, such as “aristocratic addresses, Petrarchan imagery, and parodic humor that mocks or overturns gendered hierarchies” (Dugaw and Powell 132). This style allowed for the valorization of both “the woman addressed and the woman writing,” which contrasted with the idealization of women that was so common under the Petrarchan convention of the time (Dugaw and Powell 128).

Though her work is still not as recognized or studied as it should be, she received some recognition in the form of street names. In Cidade Ademar in São Paulo, Brasil, in the neighborhood Leônida Moreira, near the Avenida Interlagos, there is a Rua Violante do Céu. It is in between the Universidade Ibirapuera and the Condomínio Residencial Vila Inglesa. There are two streets in Portugal named after her, one in Alvalade, Lisbon, and the other in União das freguesias do Seixal, Arrentela e Aldeia de Paio Pires, Seixal. The one in Lisbon branches off the Avenida de Roma, near the Escola Básica Santo António and the Centro Comercial Alvalade. The street in Seixal diverges from the Avenida dos Metalúrgicos right after the intersection of the Avenida dos Metalúrgicos and the Avenida José Afonso.

Other works by Soror Violante do Céu include: “El hijo, esposo, y hermano (comédia); Romance a Cristo crucificado; Solilóquios para antes e depois da comunhão; Oitavas a Nossa Senhora da Conceição em aplauso da vitória de Montes Claros (1665); Meditações de missa e preparação afectuosas de uma alma devota (1689)” (Flores et al 326).