Rose of Lima

Peruvian saint

• Born: April 20 or 30, 1586
• Birthplace: Lima, Peru
• Died: August 24, 1617
• Place of death: Lima, Peru

The first native-born New World saint, Rose of Lima exhibited an exemplary mysticism and rigorous asceticism that inspired colonial Peruvians, as did her charitable service to Lima’s sick and destitute. Her death in 1617 immediately touched off a movement for Rose’s canonization, based on her intense spirituality and the miracles attributed to her.

Early Life

Saint Rose of Lima was born Isabel Flores de Oliva, the daughter of Gaspar Flores and María de Oliva. Her father, a Spaniard, probably arrived in Peru from Puerto Rico in 1548, during the tumultous civil wars that followed the conquest of the Inca Empire. For his service to the Crown in helping suppress the rebellion of Gonzalo Pizarro, he was made one of the viceroy’s guards. Gaspar Flores wed María de Oliva, a native of Lima, and they had eleven children. Isabel was born in 1586, when her father was already of an advanced age, perhaps 60.

Isabel displayed characteristics from infancy that afterward seemed to foreshadow her piety and mysticism. Both her childhood and adult life are known chiefly through the documents from the investigation that resulted in her canonization. These portray her in a hagiographic light, seeking to prove her saintliness. According to popular belief, Isabel’s future sainthood was foreshadowed by two pink roses that appeared on her cheeks as an infant. Peruvian Catholics associated the rose with the Virgin Mary. The maid who first noticed the symbol and Isabel’s mother were both convinced of its miraculous origin and began calling her Rosita, or Little Rose. Soon, other relatives and friends took up the new name. The holdout was her maternal grandmother, Isabel de Herrera, for whom the little girl had been named and who resented the attempt to change it.

Reportedly a lovely young girl, Isabel nonetheless made, as a five-year-old child, a vow of lifelong chastity and butchered her own hair when her brother perhaps jokingly said it was so beautiful that it enticed men. Isabel spent much of her childhood learning skills deemed appropriate to her gender. Her mother taught her to read and write, although Isabel never displayed notable literary or intellectual ability. The girl preferred music, needlework, and gardening. The sale of her embroidery, fruits, and vegetables provided an important supplement to the family income.

Gaspar Flores’s salary as a viceregal guard was not enough to make the family financially secure. His occupation did, however, confer social status, as did the fact that Isabel’s parents were of Spanish rather than indigenous origin. In 1597, the family moved to the town of Quives, in Canta province, where her father served as mining inspector. While there, Isabel received the sacrament of confirmation from another future Peruvian saint, Archbishop Toribio Alfonso de Mogrovejo. He confirmed her, perhaps at the family’s urging, as Rosa de Santa María, thereby giving ecclesiastical sanction to her association with the Virgin. In 1600, the family returned to Lima, where Rose spent the remainder of her life.

Life’s Work

From an early age, Rose showed strong spiritual yearnings and profound mystical abilities. She preferred prayer, meditation, and solitude to social interaction. Her mother had difficulty accepting Rose’s childhood vow of virginity, for it frustrated her hopes to improve the family’s prospects through her marriage to a wealthy husband (her elderly father rarely appears in her biographies). Rose was determined, however, to reserve herself for a mystical marriage with Jesus Christ. On at least two occasions, she nearly took the vows to become a nun but at the last moment desisted. Instead she remained a beata, a single woman who wore monastic robes and committed her life to unceasing religious devotion and acts of charity without ever officially joining a convent. At first, Rose wore a Franciscan habit, but in 1606, she adopted the white Dominican robes that she used until her death.

Hernando, one of Rose’s brothers, built a hermitage in the family garden where she could pray and meditate in peace. This hermitage became the setting of many miracles attributed to Rose and soon became the gathering place of important limeña ladies, who sought her friendship and religious instruction. Rose dedicated her life to ascetic disciplines: Austere fasts left her body emaciated, and she wore a silver crown of thorns to emulate her savior and bridegroom. Her confessor counseled Rose to sleep more than the two hours per night she allowed herself. At one point she bound a chain tightly about her torso, locked it, and threw the key into the family’s well. Fearful that pedestrians might step on the symbol of Christianity, she stopped in the street to separate pieces of straw when she found them crossed.

Rose never received the stigmata, nor did she experience transverberation (piercing of the heart), two of the more extreme signs of saintliness. Through all her austerity, she tried to avoid drawing attention to herself, for public notoriety was not her aim. She humbly sought instead to please God. Thus, she wore a hood to cover her crown of thorns and bloody scalp.

Ecclestiastical officials, including the Inquisition, were wary of mystics, because they sought the divine will via direct communication with God rather than through the authority of the clergy. Thus, as the church hierarchy noticed Rosa’s growing fame, it began to investigate her behavior for any signs of heresy. A long interview convinced them that her spirituality was genuine and holy rather than satanic. Rosa devoted much of her time to charitable works, caring for Lima’s destitute and sick in her family’s home. At first, her mother protested such intrusions, but later she joined in her daughter’s efforts. Inspired by Rose’s example, other young women became her disciples, whereupon Rose established a Dominican convent in memory of Saint Catherine of Siena, whose pious and mystical example Rose tried to follow. She regularly visited the Lima churches most closely associated with the Virgin Mary (Our Lady of the Rosary, Our Lady of Los Remedios, and Our Lady of Loreto), where the priests allowed her to care for the images of the Mother of God.

One miracle attributed to Rose occurred in 1615, when a Dutch squadron under Joris van Spilbergen attacked Lima. Seeking martyrdom, Rose confronted the raiders as they began to plunder a church. Her appearance allegedly so intimidated the pirates that they sailed away (they continued to plunder the west coast of Spanish America before heading across the Pacific to the Philippines).

Rose’s asceticism undermined her health, but her devotions continued. She moved to the home of Doña María de Uzategui, one of her closest friends and wife of the royal accountant. On April 15, 1617, as she prayed before a picture of the Savior, Christ began to perspire. The crowd that gathered to witness soon spread the story, adding to Rose’s popular esteem as a holy woman. On Palm Sunday, she had a vision in which the Christ Child invited her to be his bride, satisfying her greatest desire. One of her brothers fashioned a wedding ring for her, and she was secretly married to Christ on Easter Sunday in a ceremony solemnized by clerical friends. Only four months later, on August 24, 1617, Rose died.

Significance

From a modern, secular perspective, one unsympathetic to miracles and mysticism, the life of Saint Rose of Lima raises questions of psychological abnormality. Rose’s own culture, however, gave far greater credence to ascetic mysticism than does ours. Her death touched off a wave of popular mourning in Peru. A tumult erupted at her funeral as worshipers struggling to obtain relics seized pieces of her clothing and her corpse. Officials stopped the rites and buried her secretly. Within a year after her death, church authorities began official inquiries to determine if she qualified for canonization. For the people of Lima, there was no doubt as to Rose’s saintliness, and popular devotions to her sprang up throughout Peru. The Inquisition tried to stop them, but it could not block the tide of popular enthusiasm. On April 12, 1671, Rose of Santa Maria became the first American canonized by the Catholic Church. The papacy declared her the spiritual patroness of the New World, the Philippines, and India.

Bibliography

Graziano, Frank. Wounds of Love: The Mystical Marriage of Saint Rose of Lima. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. A profound examination of Rose’s mysticism that emphasizes the erotic aspects of her spiritual devotions.

Keyes, Frances Parkinson. The Rose and the Lily: The Lives of Two South American Saints. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1961. Contains biographies of both Saint Rose of Lima and Saint Mariana of Jesus in an accessible if not always analytical narrative.

Martín, Luis. Daughters of the Conquistadores: Women of the Viceroyalty of Peru. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983. Analyzes the life of Rose of Lima as the chief example of a Peruvian beata, while placing her life within the context of women in early colonial Peru.

Morgan, Ronald J. Spanish American Saints and the Rhetoric of Identity, 1600-1810. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2002. Chapter 4 (“Heretics by Sea, Pagans by Land: St. Rosa de Lima and the Limits of Criollismo in Colonial Peru”) presents a biography of Rose of Lima and examines how Andean social and ethnic groups competed to define her spiritual and cultural legacy.