Resumen de Identity, remembrance and the question of queer becoming: Juana de la Cruz’s sermon on the legend of St Bartholomew

Andrew M. Beresford

• The sermon that Juana de la Cruz (1481–1534) devoted to St Bartholomew offers an insight into her deep-seated and longstanding attachment to the saint as well as the transcendence of traditional boundaries and categories. Flaying, appraised as a metaphor capable of counterpointing the distinction between container and contained, destabilizes perceptions of identity, shedding light on both Juana’s androgyny and the complexity of the relationship between Christ and the Virgin. It thereby becomes possible to build on advances in queer theory, approaching the sermon in terms of the gender-fluid dynamism of pious identification.