THE ONLY FEMALE JESUIT
HER HIGHNESS PRINCESS JUANA OF AUSTRIA
by Fr. John Padberg S.J.
In 1554, Juana d'Austria, a princess of the Spanish branch of the house of Hapsburg, became a Jesuit. The story is not very well known.
Previously, in 1545, Pope Paul III had directed Ignatius to accept Isabel Roser and three companions as members of something like a women's branch of the Society of Jesus, but that experiment did not last.
Then, almost 10 years later, enter Juana. Born in 1535, at 17 she had married the heir to the Portuguese throne. However, her husband died two years later and Juana returned to Spain.
Young, beautiful and aware of her position and power, she was also endowed with a talent for ruling. While her brother, Philip II of Spain, was in England as husband of Mary Tudor, he made Juana Spain's regent.
But Juana had an additional ambition, to become a Jesuit. Telling none of her family, she informed a Spanish grandee and early Jesuit, Francis Borgia, that she wanted to join the Society.
The idea was heaped with danger. Her father, the Emperor Charles V, and her brother, Phillip, would be furious at her and the Jesuits. Such a decision could wreck future dynastic marriage plans for Juana.
The Society, still new and in some parts of Spain strongly opposed, could not afford to alienate Juana; It depended on her good favour for its continued existence in Spain.
So perilous was the project that surviving Jesuit correspondence does not use her real name but the pseudonyms Mateo Sanchez or Montoya. In a quandary, Ignatius appointed a committee to advise him. It recommended that Juana enter the society as a permanent scholastic, truly a Jesuit but still in formation. Otherwise, with solemn vows, she would in canon and civil law be 'dead': dispossessed of everything and incapable of marrying again. But with the terminable vows of Jesuit scholastics, she could separate from the Society if necessary.
When Juana pronounced her three religious vows as a Jesuit, absolute secrecy was enjoined on everyone. She could make no obvious change in her manner of life. For her, poverty meant living a rather austere life in her already simple court. Chastity meant refusing offers of marriage. And obedience? Well, her letters show her sometimes trying to give orders to Ignatius and Borgia.
The secret was so well-kept that no-one ever suspected it. As far as is known today, she lived the rest of her rather short life (she died in 1573) as the only woman Jesuit. - Fr. John Padberg S.J.
ANNALS Australia, August 1999.
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