In the spirit of the now-substantial body of scholarship that reveals the feistiness and political savviness of people formerly thought to have none, this article focuses on the ways that cloistered religious women argued with ecclesiastical officials using vocabularies of rights and constitutions during the late colony and the early post-independence era in Mexico (Caplan 2009; Chambers 2000; Ducey 1999; Echeverri 2016; Ferrer 2014; Guardino 1996; Guardino 2005; Mallon 1994; Premo 2017; Schaefer 2017; Thomson 1998; Voekel 1992; Warren 2001). Most of what we know about nuns ‘talking back’ comes from studies of major convent crises. Even experts on convent life, then, may not realize that nuns argued with priests regularly on matters of seemingly trivial importance, nor may they know that this was a practiced mode of interaction on the part not only of educated and entitled nuns, but also of the generally poorer and less literate women living in beaterios (houses where pious women lived in semi-enclosure) and colegios (boarding schools/cloistered retreats). Further, convent scholars are likely unaware of the extent to which a language of rights, as established in institution-specific written constitutions, seeped into cloistered communities in the late eighteenth century and began to pervade written communications with ecclesiastical officials. The article, then, gives us a new perspective not only on female religious and their interactions with priests, but also on the impact of enlightened and republican discourses among women living in cloistered communities. The evidence presented strongly suggests that these discourses resonated among religious women, giving them new tools with which to advance the interests of their communities, and seemingly emboldening them to challenge authority more than they had in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. But I also argue that in most cases the impact of these discourses on religious women was limited. The use of new vocabularies did not imply a profound change in ways of thinking or internalization of new concepts such as individualism, individual freedom, universality, rule of law, contracts, or even equality (though there was certainly a powerful element of anti-hierarchical thinking at work in many of the cases we will examine). Rather, the constitutional rights that were more and more frequently invoked over time were social rights that defended the community, not the individual. The article is based on correspondence between religious women and ecclesiastical officials dispersed in boxes of administrative documents for the seven convents and twelve beaterios or colegios in the archive of the large and important archbishopric of

中文翻译：

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回话：在殖民晚期和 19 世纪早期的墨西哥，修女、beatas 和 colegialas 援引权利和宪法原则

本着现在大量的学术机构的精神，揭示了以前被认为一无所有的人的争强好胜和政治智慧，本文重点介绍了在晚期殖民地期间，与世隔绝的宗教女性使用权利和宪法词汇与教会官员争论的方式以及墨西哥的早期独立后时代（Caplan 2009；Chambers 2000；Ducey 1999；Echeverri 2016；Ferrer 2014；Guardino 1996；Guardino 2005；Mallon 1994；Premo 2017；Schaefer 2019；Thomkel 2017；我们对修女“回话”的了解大部分来自对主要修道院危机的研究。因此，即使是修道院生活的专家，也可能没有意识到修女经常就看似无关紧要的事情与神父争论，他们也可能不知道，这不仅是受过教育和有资格的修女的惯用互动方式，而且是生活在beaterios（虔诚的妇女住在半围墙的房子里）和colegios（虔诚的妇女居住的房子）中的普遍较贫穷和文盲的妇女的一种实践模式。寄宿学校/与世隔绝的静修所）。此外，修道院学者可能不知道在特定机构的成文宪法中确立的权利语言在多大程度上渗入了 18 世纪后期与世隔绝的社区，并开始渗透到与教会官员的书面交流中。因此，这篇文章不仅为我们提供了关于女性宗教人士及其与神父的互动的新视角，而且还提供了开明和共和主义话语对生活在与世隔绝的社区中的女性的影响的新视角。所提供的证据有力地表明，这些话语在宗教女性中引起了共鸣，为她们提供了促进社区利益的新工具，并且似乎比 17 世纪和 18 世纪早期更鼓励她们挑战权威。但我也认为，在大多数情况下，这些话语对宗教女性的影响是有限的。新词汇的使用并不意味着思维方式的深刻变化或新概念的内化，例如个人主义、个人自由、普遍性、法治、契约，甚至平等（尽管肯定有一个强大的反等级制度元素）在我们将研究的许多情况下，思考在工作）。相当，随着时间的推移，越来越频繁地援引宪法权利是捍卫社区而非个人的社会权利。这篇文章是基于宗教妇女和教会官员之间的通信，这些信件分散在七座修道院和十二座教堂的行政文件箱中，并保存在大主教的档案中。