Although still little studied by most critics, Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza's poetry has earned high praise from her biographers. Perhaps because the extant number of poems—fifty in all—composed by this extraordinary noblewoman is so small and limited to a specific period of her life, they convey an immediate—and seemingly unmediated—manifestation of Carvajal's spiritual experiences. Yet their very immediacy is itself a function of the writer's skill in composing the poems and in creating a poetic persona. Although the majority of Carvajal's poetry is written in the popular style of coplas, quintillas, romances, romancillos, and redondillas, she was equally at ease composing sonnets and liras. Indeed, Carvajal reveals her literary virtuosity by conflating her emotive experience and spiritual desire through a mystical language that has yet to be given its due. This essay investigates how, by means of the imitation and appropriation of the secular mode of pastoral poetry, and through the evocation of Christ's Passion, Carvajal expresses her devotion to the sacrament of the Eucharist.

In all probability, Carvajal composed most of her poetic corpus during the decade following her uncle and aunt's death in 1592. Luisa de Carvajal belonged to a branch of the leading noble family of the Mendoza and was the granddaughter of the powerful bishop of Palencia, Gutierre de Vargas Carvajal, known for his elaborate marble tomb in Madrid, still called “The Bishop's Chapel.” Despite her family connections, which imbued her with a strong sense of entitlement, the young girl's life was disrupted by death and frequent moves. Orphaned at age five, she was adopted first by a great-aunt who lived in the Royal Palace, and on her great-aunt's death, by an uncle on her mother's side, the marqués de Almazán, and his wife, who adopted the child and brought her to live with them; first, in the towns of Almazán and Pamplona, then in Madrid. Carvajal's uncle, a zealous Catholic who was recalled from his post as Spanish Ambassador to the Austrian court, assumed the role of religious tutor to Carvajal; his mistreatment of the adolescent by imposing extremely cruel penitential practices left indelible scars on her psyche that, as I claim elsewhere, are reflected in the graphic imagery of some of her most moving poems.