- 0:13:23 Vicereine's Visit
- Vicereine: Can we dispense with these bars?
Juana: No, Madam, I regret. I no longer see them after 13 years here. The Mother Abbess spoils me so... She allows me to study and to write. I only teach singing to the pupils and do the accounting.
Vicereine: Don't you get bored?
Juana: I don't have time, Madam. Since I am allowed to have books, the calm silence of my books...
Vicereine: You learned how to read by yourself at 3, I'm told.
Juana: I was a curious child. Solitary...
Vicereine: So was I .
Juana: Really?
Vicereine: We lead similar lives, Sister Juana.
Juana: I doubt it, Madam.
Vicereine: You wear a veil, I wear a crown. You are locked up in the convent. Do you think I can escape from the Palace? You abide by the Rule, and I by the Protocol. At 20, you entered the convent. So I'm told. At the same age, I was married off. I wonder which of our worlds is most stifling.
Juana: May I answer you with four poor lines of mine?
There is no prison for the soul,
Nor Shackles for it to be hindered by.
The only bonds that restrain it
Are those the soul itself creates.
Vicereine: I would like us to become friends. Yes?
- 0:18:11 Juana's Confession
- Father Miranda: You are surrounded by vanities, Juana, and you do not realize it. Those poems to the Viceroys, so impassioned...Where is God in them?
Juana: They are sheer etiquette. Our world forces us to... What about my poems to the Virgin of Guadelupe?
Miranda: That unfortunate skill for poetry! That writing and writing!
Juana: Have you forgotten our talks from 13 years ago? You convinced me that my love for literature was not incompatible with life in the convent. I'm here because you wanted me to.
Miranda: What are you saying? You also wanted it.
Juana: I wanted to study. Where could I do so, if not in a convent? I don't know what you want now, father.
Miranda: Nothing, my child. To keep on being your confessor, your spiritual father... If I may admonish you once in a while...
- 0:52:43 The Kiss (2)
- Juana: That sealed door... Without my books I don't exist, Madam.
Vicereine: And praying?
Juana: It is not that God is deaf to my supplication. I am the one who is deaf. I lose His voice among the noises of the universe.
Vicereine: I never met a woman like you. More poet than nun, more nun than woman. I've wondered for years... How is Juana by herself? When she is alone, when no one is watching her? Take off your veil. It's an order. All of it. This Juana is mine...only mine... So I'll remember.
- 1:19:06 Meeting Face to Face
- Juana: Excellency... Monsignor... Reverend Father... I have here my answer to the accusations of my persecutors.
Archbishop: Have you been able to identify them?
Juana: It is not easy. Some hide behind authority...others feign ignorance.
Archbishop: Can you mention at least one of your "persecutors"?
Juana: "Sister Filotea," the faceless "nun" who condemns my life's work.
Archbishop: A work far removed from the piety which could be expected of a nun...not mindful of God's matters.
Juana: Out of humility! It is the first time I dare interpret that sacred texts. Your Excellency knows I wrote that theological essay to obey a man of the Church who does not speak out to defend me.
Archbishop: You have always defied the Church with your scientific digressions in the fashion of godless Europe and with amorous poems unbecoming to your state.
Juana: Here is my answer to those accusations!
Archbishop: Will you never learn? Will you never stop scribbling?
Juana: Here is the person who advised me to take the veil because, for him, it was not incompatible with my literary vocation...and he too remains silent.
Miranda: True. I induced her to profess. I thought we should win such an outstanding mind over to the Church. With time...I would see...how to persuade her to abandon worldly literature. I failed.
Archbishop: You will have to explain that blunder, Father Miranda. You pushed a penitent onto a path for which she was not prepared...and what's more, you trusted the sound judgment of a woman.
Juana: The Archbishop finally said it! If I weren't a woman, my theological impertinence would not matter!
Archbishop: God didn't create women to philosophize.
Juana: Where is that written? What "revelation" authorizes you to exclude women from knowledge?
Archbishop: Enough! I haven't come here to listen to the impertinence of a bastard.
Juana: What?
Archbishop: May God take pity on you.
Juana: Wait! Don't go! Women are different, true. We have a different smell, a different shape! Smell! Smell and admit it! For you, we are the devil! You're the one who bears the devil in your heart!
Miranda: Get another confessor, my child, who will give you the peace of mind I couldn't.
- 1:39:44 Assembly
- Juana: Juana Ines de la Cruz, the most unworthy creature created by Your omnipotence, the most unknown created by Your love... I appear before the Tribunal of Your divine justice and declare that in the action brought against me for having lived in Your religion without religion like a pagan would, I find that to be condemned to eternal death would be clemency because my crimes deserve everlasting Hell. Still, knowing Your divine mercy, I implore to appeal for that act of love with which You died on the Cross for my sins... And as a token of what I say, I wish to shed blood in defense of my supplication.
