Translation In History Lecture Series - Professor Stephen M. Hart

Translation In History Lecture Series: 27 March 2014 The Translation of a Saint: Santa Rosa de Lima Professor Stephen M. Hart (UCL Spanish, Portuguese & Latin American Studies) Santa Rosa de Lima, patron saint of Peru and the Philippines, inaugural saint of the Americas, was born in the City of Kings (as Lima was then known) on 20 April 1586. Strikingly beautiful with blond hair, her mother, Maria de Oliva, tried to marry her off, but Rosa resisted, devoting herself to a life of prayer. She had visions of hell and purgatory, she cured the sick, she made flowers grow overnight, she made a picture of Christ ´sweat´, and she was known for her extreme self-mortification, on one occasion whipping herself 5,000 times. She died at the age of 31 on 24 August 1617 and, as a result of the further miracles which blossomed, she was beatified on 15 April 1667 and canonised on 12 April 1671, one of the quickest canonisations in history. This lecture looks at the process of the ´Procesos´(the Ordinary ´Proceso´in 1617-1618 and the Apostolic in 1630-1632) and, specifically, the role played by translation in the canonising transformation of the original testimonies (recorded in Spanish) into the first official biography written in Latin, Vita mirabilis et mors pretiosa venerabilis sororis Rosae de Sa. Maria Limensis (1664), by the enigmatic Dominican friar and master of the English Province, Leonardus Hansen.