Prevod
It was a widespread belief among our grandparents that pregnant women must be indulged in even their most extravagant whims. To oppose them was to undo work already accomplished. And the disciples of Galen did more than anyone to strengthen this opinion, if we are to credit the many medical theses and dissertations printed in Lima in various years and collected in volume XXIX of the National Library’s Miscellaneous Papers.
Women are curious by nature, and the mere fact that they were forbidden to enter cloisters was enough to make them all yearn to stroll through convents. Thus, in the last century, there was not a woman in Lima who had not explored them from the prior’s or abbess’s cell down to the kitchen.
No sooner did a daughter of Eve in the family find herself in an interesting condition than her sisters, friends, and even the maids would set about planning a month’s pilgrimage through the convents. And one fine morning ten or twelve veiled ladies would appear at the gate of San Francisco, for example, and the liveliest among them would address the lay brother serving as porter:
“Hail, Mary most pure!” “Conceived without sin. What can I do for you, little sisters?” “Go to the reverend father guardian and tell him that this young lady, as anyone can see, is rather rounded, that she has taken a fancy to stroll through the convent, and that we have come along in case anything should happen to her.”
“But so many of you!” the lay brother would mutter under his breath. “We are all family: this handsome woman is her own aunt; these two are her sisters—you can see the resemblance in their faces; these three plump little things are her cousins on her mother’s side; this pockmarked girl and I are her nieces, though we may not look it; that one over there, that wizened black woman, is the nurse who brought her up; this is her—”
“Enough, enough of the family tree—it is quite a long one,” the lay brother would interrupt, smiling. At this point the young lady with the craving would heave a sigh, and her companions would say in chorus:
“Jesus, my child! Do you feel something? Hurry along, brother, and get permission. Do not dawdle, or we shall have a mishap on our hands! Virgin of Candelaria! Run, man, run!”
And the porter would make his way, one measured step after another, to the guardian’s cell; five minutes later he would return with his superior’s permission, for his reverence had not the heart of an ogre, to thwart a pregnant woman’s desire.
“The young lady with the craving may enter, together with the entire Holy Family.” And another lay brother would take on the duties of guide or cicerone. Of course, on many occasions the belly was a sham—a bundle of rags, in other words—but neither guardian nor porter could undertake to investigate. To them, a rounded belly was a passport in good order.
And from the friars’ convents they would go on to the nuns’ monasteries; after every visit, the young lady with the craving would return home laden with bouquets of flowers, cherries and apricots, scapulars and sweetmeats. Her companions also shared in the blessed bounty.
And the pilgrimage through Lima lasted at least a month. One archbishop, seeking to curb the abuse without daring to break openly with the custom, decreed that the craving ladies of Lima must obtain permission not from the convent authorities but from the curia; and since this meant paying for a sheet of stamped paper, signing a petition, and returning the next day for the decree, the cravings began to dwindle.
His successor, Señor La Reguera, cut the evil off at the root by giving a flat refusal to the first woman who came with such a request. “And what if I miscarry, Your Grace?” the petitioner persisted.
“I know nothing of that, my child, for I am an archbishop, not a male midwife.” And the certain fact is that no tradition records any woman in Lima having miscarried because she could not stroll through cloisters.
Among the manuscripts in the Matalinares collection at the Royal Academy of History in Madrid, an archive of curious documents relating to the Americas, there is one (notebook 3 of volume LXXVII) that is nothing more than a digest of legal proceedings occasioned in Peru by the young lady with the craving.
Around 1806, the guardian of the Recoleta in Cajamarca was Friar Fernando Jesús de Arce, who, in defiance of the archbishop’s disciplinary decree, took to allowing Christian women to stroll through his cloister when they requested it on the grounds of their delicate condition. The civil authorities may or may not have had their reasons for trying to bring him into line; at any rate, legal proceedings ensued, and quite a case it was.
The father commissary general supported Father Arce, advancing, among other arguments, the following, which he considered paramount and decisive: “The preservation of the fetus is a matter of natural law, whereas the rule of enclosure is a matter of positive law, and it would be uncharitable to expose a woman to miscarriage out of regard for the latter.”
Father Arce said that indulging the feminine whim was, for him, a matter of conscience; for once, when he had refused such permission, the young lady with the craving had appeared before him three days later carrying the fetus in a jar and blaming him for her misfortune. Father Arce added that no other little soul should go to limbo on his account, and that he had not the stomach to slight a pregnant woman’s cravings.
The vicar forane found himself sorely pressed to reach a verdict and requested the opinion of Matalinares, who was then prosecutor of the Audiencia of Lima. Matalinares maintained that women’s entry into the cloisters of religious orders had been tolerated not because of any danger to the fetus, but through corrupt practices and considerations of expediency, or by virtue of apostolic privileges granted to certain persons of distinction; and that this business of cravings was nonsense and superstition. In short, he concluded by recommending that the father commissary general be instructed to order the guardian of the Recoleta to permit no further visits from women under any pretext, on pain of the penalties laid down in the Bull of Benedict XV, issued on January 3, 1742.
The vicar, relying on so authoritative an opinion, ruled against the guardian; but the latter refused to admit defeat and appealed to the bishop, who upheld the decision.
Friar Fernando Jesús de Arce was stubborn, and at first declared that he would not obey the order unless it came from the Pope himself; but his friend, the commissary general, managed to soothe him, saying:
“Reverend Father, skill is better than force. Since this is above all a question of pride, yours will remain intact if you acknowledge the order without carrying it out.” Father Arce remained thoughtful for a minute; then, slapping his forehead like a man who has hit upon the key to a tangled problem, he exclaimed:
“Precisely! That is it!” And then and there he formally resigned as guardian, so that someone else, and not he, would bear the burden of sending little souls to limbo.
