1698 Oration to the nuns at San Pedro de las Justinianas in Cuenca. Unrecorded.

[Nuns] / Manuel Roldan. Oracion Pangirica del R.P.M.F. Manuel Roldan, Lector que ha sido de Artes, y Theologia en su Real, Militar, y Sagrado Orden de N. Señora de la Merced, Redempcion de Cautivos, Comendador de Olmedo, y Actual del Convento de la Ciudad de Cuenca. En Madrid: En la Imprenta de Antonio Roman. 4to [20.5 x 14.8 cm], [14] ff., 23 pp., [1] p. blank verso, with woodcut initials. Unbound, tied with string. Occasional edge wear, occasional minor staining, a few contemporary annotations and corrections

Unrecorded “Panegyric Oration” delivered by Father Manuel Roldán “on the Feast of Saint Lawrence Justinian, Archbishop and first Patriarch of Venice, celebrated by the Most Religious Cloister of Nuns of Saint Peter, Order of the same Saint Lawrence, on the 8th day of January 1698.”

This was the Convento de San Pedro de las Justinianas in Cuenca, whose cloistered nuns were followers of St. Lorenzo Giustiniani (1381-1456), who had been recently canonized in 1690.

The prefatory matter of this work—various dedications, approbations, eulogies and licenses—is longer than the Oracion itself. Roldan extends and mixes his metaphors to link cloister, saint, scriptures and Christ, e.g., by likening the Seraphim of Isiah 6:2, who cover their feet with their wings, to the nuns, who enclose themselves in the convent: “And thus appeared this Choir of Daughters of Justinian Laurentius, who, praising and loving of their Husband Christ, and of their Father Laurentius, with their faces hidden, their feet bound by the cloak, and their hearts uncovered, sing in soft meters sweet consonances, ‘Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus’,” etc.

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