María Vela y Cueto

María Vela y Cueto (1561–1617) was a Cistercian nun born in Cardeñosa, Spain and raised in Avila for most of her young life. She became mostly known for her spastic episodes of euphoria in which many of her congregation believed that she may have been under demonic possession.

Early life

Vela y Cueto was born in Cardeñosa, Spain to parents Don Diego Alvarez y Cueto, and Doña Ana de Aguirre who were part of the Spanish Aristocracy. She was born into wealth on Easter Sunday in 1561, as the third child after her parents had conceived two older brothers; Diego and Lorenzo. After Vela y Cueto's birth, Don Diego and Doña Ana went on to conceive two more daughters; Jeronima and Isabel. It is said that "all but one, Diego, did not follow the ecclesiastical route". Both of Vela y Cueto's parents raised them in a strictly religious household which explains the careers paths that she and her siblings took. Although born in Cardeñosa, she was raised the majority of her young life in the nearby provincial capital of Avila, Spain. In 1570, tragedy would befall her and her family when her father Don Diego died, a year before Vela y Cueto's first communion which lead the family into a state of poverty. At fifteen Vela y Cueto decided to make the monastic life part of her permanent life as she entered into the Cistercian house of Santa Ana. She remained in the Cistercian house for forty years. However, her decision to devote her life to the Catholic church is rare since it was a custom for those days to have marriage as a first option, the church as a second option, and prostitution was the last chance to survive in a world that would frown upon anyone who chose this life.

Convent life "On February 2, 1576 [Vela y Cueto's sisters Jeronima and Isabel carried her into the Convent because she was] too frail to cross the threshold by foot" The monastery was very disturbed by these claims that Vela y Cueto that "a sister who has made her profession but is so unhappy with everything in the convent that is not to her liking that she goes around crying like a two-year-old". In 1603 Vela y Cueto crossed paths with Dr. Miguel Gonzalez Vaquero became her spiritual supervisor and sympathizer of sorts. Vaquero was a secular priest who was also raised in Avila and heard about the thrashing nun and decided to make it his personal goal to help Vela y Cueto make sense of her divine interventions. As time went on Vela y Cueto slowly found herself to be a respected member of the convent through her involvement with the novitiates the leading of worship through song while playing the organ.

Death and legacy On 17 September 1614, Vela y Cueto fell ill with pleurisy and pneumonia and died on 24 September of that same year. "er body, writings, and reputation were all taken over by priestly guardians. Chief among them was Dr. Vaquero, the sympathetic confessor of her later years and author of the biography, La Mujer Fuerte, first published in 1618."

With her life and writings taken over by hagiographers, Doña Maria's body and clothes were soon sought after by relic-gatherers and, instead of being buried in a simple shroud and an insignificant grave as her sisters Jeronima and Isabel had been, her corpse was honoured in the grand ceremonial of a funeral which the Bishop of Avila organised and attended, before her burial in an imposing tomb."