First of all, Sor Juana, even though she was brilliant, did take lessons in latin and greek. In her autobiography (Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz) she said that she mastered latin in twenty lessons.

She also was not taught by the Vicereine, she was her protégée. Sor Juana got into the viceregal court because she was very famous at the time, being beautiful and intelligent she managed to create fame on her own.

The famous test took place when she was 15, not 17. If you look closely at the painting that you have here, it says so at the bottom.

We don’t know if she was asked to get married.

The letter published was not written to attack Sor Juana. It was her own writing. The letter is called “Carta Atenagórica” or “Letter worthy of Athena” in which Juana criticize a sermon by Antonio Vieira. This letter was written in confidence as a request from her confessor Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz but he published it without her consent, which lead to the outrage of the church.

Also, by the time when the letter was published, she did not have the support of the viceregal court. Her patron have longed been sent back to Spain and there was another “administration” in place. Which explains why she got into trouble (she no longer had their protection). Also the Jesuits never supported her writing because they thought they were scandalous (a nun writing love poems to other men!).

We do know that she was prosecuted by the inquisition and was ordered to stop her studies in order to dedicate herself to her responsibilities as a nun. Her defense on the rights of women’s education has been viewed as the start of feminism. The response was called “Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz” or “Answer to Sor Filotea de la Cruz” which was the pen name of father Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz since the fact that a man and a woman exchanging mail was frowned upon.

I hope that this brings more light to the story.

Kind regards

Francisco Maury

First, the juicy one. Sor Juana would spend a lot of time with the Vicereine. Nobody can possibly prove it, of course, but everyone assumes that, well, “she would spend a lot of time with the Vicereine”.

Second, I absolutely must explain the last two lines of the quote above. The original in Spanish reads:
“la que peca por la paga
o el que paga por pecar?”

And a literal translation would be:
“the one who sins for the pay
or the one who pays to sin”

This is the most famous quote by her, perhaps because it captures so well the essence of prostitution.