teresianum 43 (1992/1) 133-174trina espiritual huellas de santa teresa (rome: colegio internacional...

FRAY LUIS DE LEON'S WRITINGS ON ST. TERESA OF JESUS: A DEFENSE OF MYSTICISM AND

RELIGIOUS REFORM

JOSEPH F. CHORPENNING

1991 marks the quincentenary of the birth of St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) and the quatercentenary of the death of St. John of the Cross (1542-1591) and of Fray Luis de León (1527-1591). While Ignatius Loyola and John of the Cross are familiar names today, Luis de León is not well known outside the field of Spanish literature, which regards him principally as one of the finest lyrical poets of the Golden Age. This was not case during Fray Luis' lifetime. In late sixteenth-century Spain Fray Luis was renowned as the leading Spanish Biblical exegete of his age and as, not only the first editor of the writings of the recently deceased Mother Teresa of Jesus, but also a vigorous defender of her spirituality and Carmelite reform. Fray Luis' Biblical scholarship and theology has been the subject of an important recent book by the British Hispanist Colin Thompson however, Fray Luis' edition of Teresa's works receives only passing reference, and his writings on the Mother of Carmel are scarcely mentioned, let alone systematically studied, in the standard commentaries on his life and works 2.

1 C o l in P. T h o m p s o n , The Strife o f Tongues: Fray Luis de Leon and the Golden Age o f Spain (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988). This article is a revised and expanded version of a paper of the same title read twice during spring 1991: in March, at the symposium «Mystical Language: The Saying of the Ineffable», marking the fourth centenary of the death of Fray Luis de León and of St. John of the Cross, at the Society for the Humanities, Cornell University; and, in June, as a lecture given in conjunction with the exhibition «Temples of Gold, Crowns of Silver: Reflections of Majesty in the Viceregal Americas» at The Art Museum of the Americas, The Organization of American States, and at The George Washington University Dimock Gallery, Washington, D.C.

2 See, e.g., A u b r e y F. G. B e l l , Luis de León: A Study o f the Spanish Renaissance (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1925), pp. 190, 194-95, 203; K a r l V o s s l e r , Fray Luis de León, trans. Carlos Claveria, 3rd ed. (Madrid:

Teresianum 43 (1992/1) 133-174

134 JOSEPH F. CHORPENNING

Similarly, in the existent body of scholarship on Teresa, there is no comprehensive study of these writings; rather, Teresian scholars have tended to focus on a few select passages in these texts, often as a point of entry into Teresa's prose 3. The purpose of this article is to fill this major lacuna in Teresian and Luisian studies.

The «Biblioteca de autores cristianos» edition of Fray Luis' complete Spanish works contains three short pieces on Teresa, all of which were written during the last four years of his life: the dedicatory letter to the Mother Prioress Anne of Jesus and the nuns of the Madrid Carmel («Carta- dedicatoria a la Madre Priora Ana de Jesus y religiosas Carmelitas Descalzas del monasterio de Madrid») that precedes the text of his edition of Teresa's works which was published in 1588; an apology of Teresa's works («Apologia de los Libros de Santa Teresa de Jesús») which was written in 1589 and first published in 1615; and a biography of Teresa (De la vida muerte, virtudes y milagros de la Santa Madre Teresa de Jesús), left unfinished at his death and not publi

Espasa-Calpe, 1960), pp. 43-44; O r e s t e M a c r ì, La poesia de Fray Luis de León, trans. Francisco de Pino Calzacorta (Salamanca: Anaya, 1970), pp. 126-38, 150-52; M a n u e l D u r á n , Luis de Leon (N ew York: Twayne Publishers, 1971), pp. 149-53, 157; E l ia s L. R iv e r s , Fray Luis de León: The Original Poems (London: Grant & Cutler, 1983), pp. 11, 72; and Thompson, pp. 123,129, 269. Despite its title, Fray Luis' writings on Teresa are given short shrift in G u s tav o V a l l e j o , Fray Luis de León: Su ambiente, su doctrina espiritual huellas de Santa Teresa (Rome: Colegio Internacional de Santa Teresa, 1959), pp. 232-34, 253-55.

3 See, e.g., V ic t o r G a r c ía d e l a C o n c h a , El arte literario de Santa Teresa (Barcelona: Ariel, 1978); F e r n a n d o L á zar o Ca r r e t e r , «Fray Luis y el estilo de Santa Teresa», in Homenaje a Gonzalo Torrente Ballestar (Salamanca: Biblioteca de la Caja de Ahorros y M. de P., 1981), pp. 463-69; E r ik a L o r e n z , «Eine Lanze für Teresa! Die Apologie des Fray Luis de León (1589)», in Der Weg zum Quell Teresa von Avila, 1582-1982 (Dusseldorf: Patmos, 1982), pp. 177-98; T o m á s Á l v a r e z , «Fray Luis de León y Santa Teresa de Jesús: El humanista ante la escritora», in Teresa de Jesús: Estudios histórico-literarios. Studi storico-letterari (Rome: Teresianum, 1983), pp. 75-100, and «Fray Luis de León y Santa Teresa: El profesor salmantino ante la monja escritora», in Santa Teresa y la literatura mística hispánica: Actas del I Congreso Internacional sobre Santa Teresa y la mistica hispánica, ed. Manuel Criado de Val (Madrid: EDI-6, 1984), pp. 493- 502; and E l ia s L. R iv e r s , «The Vernacular Mind of St. Teresa», Carmelite Studies, 3 (1984): 113-29. Also see E n r iq u e L l a m a s - M a r t ín e z , Santa Teresa de Jesús y la Inquisición española (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1972), especially part 2, passim.

FRAY LUIS DE LEON'S WRITINGS ON ST. TERESA OF JESUS 135

shed until 1883, which the Empress Maria of Austria, the sister of Philip II and widow of Maximilian II, requested Fray Luis to write 4. In the pages that follow I will offer a reconstruction of the context in which Fray Luis composed these works as well as a systematic study of the structure and content of each text, giving special attention to Fray Luis' own intellectual and theological imprint as evidenced by the presence of ideas, themes, and images common to these texts and to his theological and literary opus as a whole. But before narrowing my focus, it would be helpful to offer a synopsis of Fray Luis' life so that his writings on Teresa can be situated within the broader context of his career as a whole 5.

Fray Luis' Life and Works

Luis de León was the first son born to Lope de León, who was from a prosperous, distinguished family of lawyers, and to Inés de Valera, the daughter of a local landowner, at Belmonte, a small town in the Castilian province of Cuenca, probably in 1527. Luis had two sisters and three brothers. His ancestry was partially Jewish: in 1512 his maternal greatgrandmother and her sister were «reconciled» by the Inquisition, established in 1478 by the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella to ensure the religious orthodoxy of conversos and thereby foster national unity. When Luis was

4 F r a y L u is d e L e ó n , Obras com pletas castellanas, ed. Felix García, 4th ed., 2 vols., B ib lioteca de autores cristianos, 3a and 3b (M adrid : Editorial Católica, 1957), 1: 904-41. References to the Spanish text o f Fray Luis' writings on Teresa are to this edition; those to the English translation o f the dedicatory letter are to The Complete Works o f St. Teresa o f Jesus, trans. E. A llison Peers, 3 vols. (1946; London: Sheed and W ard, 1978), 3:368-78. Occasionally I emend Peers' translation. English translations o f quotations from the «Apo log ia » and biography are my own.

5 The overview that follows is based on the secondary sources cited in notes 1-2, as well as the fo llow ing: E l ia s L. R iv e r s , Renaissance and Baroque Poetry o f Spain (N ew York: Dell, 1966), pp. 18-19, 344-45, and Q u ixo tic Scrip tures: Essays on the Textua litv o f H ispan ic L itera ture (B loom ington : Indiana University Press, 1983), pp. 70-72; and Ja n e T i l l i e r , «'O u r Conversation is in H eaven ’: An In troduction to the Spirituality o f Fray Luis de León », The Way, 28 (1988), 357-64 (reprinted in Traditions o f S p iritua l Guidance, ed. Lavin ia Byrne [C ollegeville : The Liturgical Press, 1990], pp. 89-98). These works w ill not be referred to further unless quoted directly.


five or six, his father's career took the family first to Madrid and then to Valladolid. When his father was appointed to a judgeship in Granada in 1541, Luis was sent to the University of Salamanca to study law. Several months later Luis renounced his inheritance and entered the convent of the Augustinians in Salamanca as a novice; he made his solemn profession of vows on January 29, 1544. Luis' vocation was both religious and intellectual. He studied for years with the best professors at Salamanca, one of the leading universities of Europe, and the University of Alcala de Henares, the center of Spanish Renaissance Christian humanism founded by Cardinal Ximenez de Cisneros in 1508 and where Ignatius Loyola, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Quevedo also studied; in 1560 Luis received his advanced degrees in theology at Salamanca, which would remain his home for the rest of his life, and became elegible for a professorship. The next year he won the Chair of St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the minor chairs (cátedras menores), which had a limited four-year tenure. He held various minor chairs until 1579, when he won the tenured Chair of Biblical Studies. In the interim he had also spent nearly five years imprisoned by the Inquisition for insisting on the primacy of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament rather than of the Vulgate, the «official» translation of the Bible, and for translating the Song of Songs into Spanish because it was illegal to publish vernacular editions of the Bible. (He had intended his translation of, and commentary on, the Song of Songs only for his cousin Isabel Osorio's private reading, but a copy fell into the wrong hands.) Fray Luis' views on the Vulgate had led to conflicts at the university with Dominican colleagues, who were generally more conservative than the Augustinians; these Dominicans denounced Fray Luis as well as two other professors who shared his views to the Inquisition for judaizing. With the mind of a true lawyer, Fray Luis mounted his own valiant, combative, and tenacious defense against equally tenacious accusers, finally winning acquittal, establishing his orthodoxy, and returning triumphantly to the university in December 1576. Fray Luis' trial and imprisonment were the prelude to a period of great creativity and increasing renown. Most of his Spanish and Latin works were published during the 1580s. In the middle of that decade, thinking of Fray Luis prima-


rily as a prose writer, Cervantes wrote of him, in Book 4 of his pastoral romance Galatea, as one «whom I revere, worship, and follow» "a quien yo reverencio, adoro y sigo” 6. Fray Luis' reputation as a poet developed only after 1631, when Quevedo edited and published the first edition of the Augustinian friar's original poems in the hope that they would serve as a corrective to the affected style fashionable in poetry of the time. In 1591, shortly after being elected provincial of the Augustinian Order in Castile, Fray Luis died.

In sixteenth-century Spain the language of scholarship and of theology was Latin, and accordingly Fray Luis did his strictly professional writing in Latin. But he also wanted to reach a larger audience beyond his fellow theologians because he believed that Scripture and theology should be accessible to the people. To bring the Spanish-reading public into closer contact with the Bible, he wrote works in eloquent Spanish classical prose based on Scripture since it was illegal to publish vernacular translations of the Bible: The Perfect Wife (La perfecta casada; 1583), a popular treatise on the ideal wife, and On the Names o f Christ (De los nombres de Cristo; 1583-85), an elegant Platonic dialogue in which the names attributed to Christ in the Bible are explained. Fray Luis also wrote in Spanish a double translation — both literal and poetic — with commentary, of the Book of Job (Exposición del libro de Job)] but this work was not published until the eighteenth century. In effect, these works provided a substitute for a vernacular version of the Bible. Fray Luis was also a classical Latin scholar who translated into Spanish verse the Eclogues and part of the Georgies of Virgil and selected Odes of Horace; these translations remained unpublished during his lifetime. The formal model for Fray Luis' twenty-odd original poems, which are often of the highest quality, was the Horatian ode; thematically Fray Luis' poetry, in the words of the distinguished Golden-Age Spanish literature scholar Elias L. Rivers, «was fundamentally transcendental and syncretistic, combining ancient philosophy — Pythagorian, Platonic, Ptolomaic — with Old and New Testament allusions and Judeo-Christian theo

6 M ig u e l d e Ce r v a n t e s S a a v e d r a , La Galatea, ed. Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce, 2 vols., C lasicos castellanos, nos. 154-55 (M adrid : Espasa- Calpe, 1961), 2: 219.


logy in a soaring mystical urge to abandon the earth» 7. Sometime before he died, Fray Luis did gather together the manuscripts of all of his Spanish poetry, both original and translations, but he did not publish them because in his day it would have been considered frivolous and unseemly for a theologian to write poetry.

Fray Luis and St. Teresa's Works

In 1588 the first and official edition of St. Teresa's works, which the Royal Council had commissioned Fray Luis to prepare, was published in Salamanca. The censors of Teresa's Life (Vida; begun in 1562 and completed in 1565) had advised the Inquisition, in whose possession were the manuscripts of this work, that it should not be published until after the author's death. It seemed prudent to suspend judgment on Teresa until it was clear to what end she and her reform would come 8. Teresa died «a daughter of the Church» on October 4, 1582 (October 15 according to the Gregorian calendar). Nine months after her death (July 4, 1583), Teresa's body was exhumed and found to be incorrupt. On October 17, 1585 it was exhumed again so that it could be transferred from Alba de Tormes, where Teresa had died and was buried, to Ávila and was discovered to remain incorrupt. On January 1, 1586, after another examination of her miraculously preserved body, the Bishop of Ávila opened a formal investigation into the heroicity of Teresa's virtues 9. A year after Teresa's death, the Way of

7 Quixotic Scriptures, p. 70.8 L l a m a s -M a r t íNEZ, p. 284. Teresa herself entertained the idea o f

publishing her L ife in 1568 (Llamas-Martinez, p. 242). On Teresa's gradual em ergence and d eve lopm en t as a w riter, see F rancisco M árquez Villanueva, «L a vocación literaria de Santa Teresa », Nueva Revista de Filologia Hispánica, 32 (1983), 355-79; and K a r e n H o l l is , «Teresa de Jesús and the Relations o f W riting», in Conflicts o f Discourse: Spanish Literature in the Golden Age, ed. P. W . Evans (N ew York: M anchester University Press, 1990), pp. 26-47.

9 Fuentes históricas sobre la muerte y el cuerpo de Santa Teresa de Jesús (1582- 1596), eds. Juan Luis Astigarraga, Eu logio Pacho, and Otilio Rodríguez, Monumenta H istórica Carmeli Teresiani, 6 (Rom e: Teresianum, 1982), pp. 203-204, 208-209, 211-13; Depositions Given by Those Who Knew St. Teresa o f Jesus, trans. E lvira Sarm iento and a Carm elite o f


Perfection (Camino de perfección; 1566?) was published. The time was now right to publish in a single edition the trilogy of the Life, Way o f Perfection, and Interior Castle (Castillo interior, 1577).During Teresa's lifetime, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, Gaspar de Quiroga, who was also Primate of Spain and Inquisitor General, had opposed her project of founding a convent in Madrid. However, with the news of the official inquiry into Teresa's sanctity occasioned by the miraculous preservation of her body, Quiroga sought to establish in Madrid a monastery of her nuns as well as a foundation of friars. Anne of Jesus, who was regarded by the nuns almost as the successor to Teresa, was appointed prioress; the first Mass and ceremony of enclosure of the Madrid Carmel was celebrated on September 17, 1586. The monastery was dedicated to St. Anne in accord with the express desire of the Empress Maria, who had made a handsome gift of church furniture to the foundation in memory of her beloved deceased daughter, Anne of Austria 10. Fray Luis had close ties to the Mother Prioress Anne of Jesus and the nuns of the Madrid Carmel, to whom he dedicated his edition of Teresa's works. His niece was a nun in this convent. During his visits there, Anne of Jesus often sought his counsel on internal matters of the community and of the Order. It is not improbable that Anne of Jesus herself nominated Fray Luis to prepare the first edition of the Mother Foundress' works u. For his part, Fray Luis held Anne of Jesus in the highest esteem. He is reported to have remarked more than once: « I f prayer, meditation and knowledge of spiritual things all came to be lost, they could be recovered in Anne of Jesus. She, without having studied theology, knows more than I do, for all my years of professorship» n. Fray Luis also dedicated his Exposition o f the Book o f Job to Anne of Jesus. (As is well known, St. John of the Cross dedicated his Spiritual Canticle [Cántico espiritual] to her as well.) Nonetheless, the great Carmelite scholar Tomás Alvarez no

Grand Rapids, M ichigan (The Carmel o f F lem ington, NJ, 1969), pp. 28-29, 39, 140, 144; A Sister o f Notre Dame de Nam ur (S ister Anne Hardman), Life o f the Venerable Anne o f Jesus (St. Louis: Herder, 1932), p. 130.

10 Life o f the Venerable Anne o f Jesus, pp. 130-34.11 L l a m a s -M a r t In e z , p. 289.12 Quoted in Life o f the Venerable Anne o f Jesus, p. 139.


tes that the choice of Fray Luis to edit Teresa's works is surprising for two reasons 13 . First, judging from the traditional view of woman presented in The Perfect Wife, it seems unlikely that Fray Luis would have been inclined to take up the cause of a woman writer. From the late Middle Ages through the seventeenth century, writings about women prescribed that they were to be chaste, silent, modest, humble, and obedient 14. «St. Paul's edict (1 Corinthians 14.34) against women speaking in church was continually cited as the authority for prohibition against their speaking out publicly in any form, including writing» ,5. Second, Teresa was a close friend of two Salamanca professors who were responsible for denouncing Fray Luis to the Inquisition as well as with another Dominican, Domingo Banez, who served as the censor of some of her writings, and with whom Fray Luis had recently had a sharp disagreement over the question of predestination and free will ,6. These two considerations notwithstanding, Fray Luis accepted the charge to edit the works of this woman writer, no doubt due to his warm friendship with, and admiration for, Anne of Jesus, bringing all of his erudition and prestige to bear on this project. From this point on, Fray Luis, who confesses in the dedicatory to his edition of Teresa's works that he had never met her in life l7, becomes one of the most vigorous defenders of Teresa and her nuns. For example, it has been observed that Fray Luis' « ’Apologia de los Libros de Santa

13 «F ray Luis de León y Santa Teresa: E l profesor salmantino ante la monja escritora», p. 493. Also see Lázaro Carreter, pp. 466-67.

14 H. D ia n e R u s s e l l and B e r n a d in e B a r n e s , Eva!Ave: Woman in Renaissance and so Baroque Prints (W ashington, D.C.: National Gallery o f Art, 1990), p. 29; c fp . 18.

15 Electa Arenal and Stacey Schlau, Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in Their Own Works, translations by Am anda P ow e ll (A lbuquerque: University o f N ew M exico Press, 1989), p. 5. For an account o f the mi- sogynistic context in which Teresa lived and wrote, see A lison W eber, Teresa o f Ávila and the Rhetoric o f Femininity (P r in ceton : P rin ceton University Press, 1990), pp. 17-41.

16 For the specifics o f this debate, see Thompson, pp. 80-83.17 However, before undertaking his ed ition o f Teresa's works, Fray

Luis was fam iliar w ith the Way o f Perfection, which was first published in 1583: see Vallejo, p. 227.


Teresa'... is much more favourable than the judgement given by Banez» 18.

«A collection o f many miracles»: The Dedicatory Letter toTeresa's Works

There has been a recent trend in Teresian scholarship to use the section of the dedicatory letter to Fray Luis' edition of Teresa's works in which the Augustinian friar discusses the Mother of Carmel's literary style as a point of entry into Teresa's «deliberately subliterate prose», which was the opposite of Fray Luis' own artistic humanistic prose 19. However, this letter in its totality has not been studied on its own terms. Although not previously adverted to by scholars, this letter has a clear rhetorical structure. Considering Fray Luis' mastery of rhetoric, this is hardly surprising: «There

18 Thompson, p. 269, note 34.19 The quote is from Rivers, Q uixotic Scriptures, p. 68. Teresa's w riting

style does not im itate the spelling and syntax o f the Spanish texts o f devotional and imaginative literature she voraciously read; her style is the antithesis o f the humanistic prose o f spiritual writers like Luis de León and Luis de Granada, whose Spanish texts usually had a model, o r subtext, in Latin (see Rivers, «The Vernacular M ind o f St. Teresa», pp. 120-25; fo r inventories o f Teresa's readings, see A lf r e d M o r e l -F a t io , «Les Lectures de Sainte Thérèse», B u lle tin H isp a n iqu e , 10 [1908], 17-67, R o d o l p h e H o o r n a e r t , Sainte Thérèse écrivain: Son m ilieu, ses facultés, son oeuvre [Paris: Desclee, 1922], pp. 303-91, and Ga s t o n E t c h e g o y e n , L 'A m ou r divin : Essai sur les sources de Sainte Thérèse [Bordeaux: Féret et Fils, 1923], pp. 13-22, 33-46). Rivers sees Teresa's prose as «an attempt to express Christian faith and humility by avoiding the normal written forms o f basic Spanish words and by transcribing instead the pronunciations and phrases as heard from the mouths o f illiterate peasants» (Q u ixo tic Scriptures, p. 68). In this respect Teresa seems akin to St. Augustine, who invented in his C on fess ion s and sermons a new co lloqu ia l eloquence to m ake the Scriptures available to all and to parallel the hum ility o f the Incarnation (see Erich Auerbach, «Serm o H u m ilis », in his Literary Language and Its Pu b lic in Late Latin A ntiqu ity and in the M iddle Ages, trans. Ralph M anheim [N ew York: Pantheon Books, 1965], pp. 27-66). R ivers further describes Teresa's written Spanish as «com parable, w ith in an Am erican context, to something composed by a w riter o f Black English, who deliberately tries to avoid the academ ic sound o f white bourgeois correctness» («T h e Vernacular M ind o f St. Teresa», p. 121). Representative o f scholarship that approaches Teresa's prose from the perspective o f Fray Luis' appreciation o f her style are García de la Concha, Lázaro Carreter, and Rivers, «The Vernacular M ind o f St. Teresa». C f Duran, pp. 149-53.


can be no doubt that Fray Luis was the first writer of Spanish prose to use the inheritance of classical and Renaissance rhetorical theory so comprehensively and to apply its precepts with such fine results» 20. The dispositio of his dedicatory letter follows the precepts of late medieval and humanistic rhetorical manuals on letter-writing (artes dictaminis): exordium (salutation and securing of good will [captado benevolendae]), division of subject-matter, narration, refutation of adversaries, petition, and conclusion 21.

The exordium consists of two parts. First, the salutation or formal greeting to the addressees: «To the Mothers, Prioress Anne of Jesus and the Discalced Carmelite nuns of the Madrid monastery ... salvation in Jesus Christ» ’A las madres, Priora Ana de Jesús y religiosas carmelitas descalzas del monasterio de Madrid ... salud en Jesucristo’ 22 . The securing of the goodwill of the addressees follows: «I never knew, or saw, Mother Teresa of Jesus while she lived on earth; but now that she lives in Heaven I do know her, and I see her almost continuously in two living images of herself which she left us — her daughters and her books» ’Yo no conocí ni vi a la Madre Teresa de Jesús mientras estuvo en la tierra; mas agora que vive en el cielo la conozco y veo casi siempre en dos imágenes vivas que nos dejó de sí, que son sus hijas y sus libros’ 23. The captado benevolentiae leads directly into the division of subject-matter:

These [her daughters and her books], in m y judgm ent, are also exceptionally fa ith fu l w itnesses to her great virtue.... For, as the W ise M an says, a m an is know n by his children. It is the fruits w h ich each o f us leaves w hen he dies that are the

20 Thompson, p. 227.21 See, e.g., Ch a r l e s S. B a l d w in , Medieval Rhetoric and Poetic to 1400

(1928; G loucester, M A: Peter Sm ith, 1959), pp. 206-27; H e i n r i c h L a u s b e r g , M anual de retòrica literaria: Fundamentos de una ciencia de la litera tu ra , trans. José Pérez R iesco, 3 vols. (M adrid : Gredos, 1966-68), 1:226-367; Keith Whinnom, «In troducción » to his edition o f D ie g o d e Sa n P e d r o , Obras completas, I I : Cárcel de A m or (M adrid: Castalia, 1971), pp. 5354; and Ja m e s J. M u r p h y , R hetoric in the M iddle Ages: A H istorv o f R hetorica l Theory from Saint Augustine to the Renaissance (Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1974), pp. 194-268.

22 1:904. Peers omits the salutation found in the original Spanish text in his translation.

23 3:368-69; 1:904.


true witness to his life, as Christ tells us in the Gospel when, to differentiate the evil from good, He refers to these alone. «By their fruits», He says, «ye shall know them». Just so, if I were to see Mother Teresa, I might be uncertain and doubtful about her virtue and sanctity, but now, when I cannot see her, but see her books and the works of her hands, which are her daughters, I consider this quite clear and certain. And the virtue resplendent in them unmistakably reveals all the grace which God bestowed on her whom He made to be mother of this new miracle, as what God works in and through her daughters must needs be called.

[A] mi juicio, [sus hijas y sus libros] son también testigos fieles, y mayores de toda excepción, de su grande virtud.... Que, como el Sabio dice, «el hombre en sus hijos se conoce». Porque los frutos que cada uno deja de sí, cuanto falta, ésos son el verdadero testigo de su vida, y por tal le tiene Cristo cuando en el Evangelio, para diferenciar al malo del bueno, nos remite solamente a sus frutos: «De sus frutos», dice, «los conoceréis». Ansí que la virtud y santidad de la Madre Teresa, que, viéndola a ella me pudiera ser dudosa y incierta, esa misma agora, no viéndola, y viendo sus libros y las obras de sus manos, que son sus hijas, tengo por cierta y muy clara. Porque por la virtud que en todas resplandece se conoce sin engaño la mucha gracia que puso Dios en la que hizo para Madre de este nuevo milagro, que por tal debe ser tenido lo que en ellas Dios agora hace, y por ellas 24.

Thus the narration will be devoted to an account of the «exceptionally faithful witnesses» to the grace of God that was at work in Teresa, namely, her daughters and her books. These form «a collection of many miracles» un ayuntamiento de muchos milagros’ 25, each of which Fray Luis will enumerate and explain.

Fray Luis begins the narration by defining a miracle: «For what comes to pass outside the natural order of things is a miracle ...» ‘[E]s milagro lo que aviene fuera de lo que por orden natural acontece ...’ 26. According to Renaissance medical ideas, derived from Aristotle and Galen, the female

24 3:369; 1:904.25 3:369; 1:905.26 3:369; 1:905.


was physically and mentally inferior to the male and was «best suited for private as opposed to public life» 27. This concurred with St. Paul's prescription in 1 Corinthians 14.34, which Fray Luis paraphrases: «it belongs to women not to teach, but to be taught» 'no siendo de las mujeres el enseñar, sino el ser enseñadas’ 2S. Consequently Fray Luis explains that the first miracle is that «one woman alone ... a weak woman with courage ... and with wisdom and efficiency» una mujer ... sola ... una flaca mujer tan animosa ... y tan sabia y eficaz’ has restored «perfection to a whole Order, both of men and of women» 'a perfección una Orden en mujeres y en hombres’ 29. Fray Luis promptly contextua- lizes this miracle in the historical circumstances of late sixteenth-century Spain. The eminent Lutheran theologian Jurgen Moltmann has pointed out that sixteenthcentury Catholic and Protestant reformers alike regarded themselves as living in an era of «apocalyptic horrors» 30. This perspective, from the Catholic side, is much in evidence in the writings of Teresa and of Fray Luis: they viewed their historical period as one in which the Church was besieged by the devil and his henchmen, the Protestant reformers 3I. In the Church's hour of need, Fray Luis says, God has chosen as his champion a woman to confound the powers of darkness:

At a time like this, when the devil seems to be triumphing and a multitude of unbelievers follow him and so many nations are obstinate in their heresies and the many vi

27 R u s s e ll and B a r n e s , p. 17.28 3:369; 1:905.29 3:369; 1:905.,30 «Teresa o f Ávila and M artin Luther: The Turn to the M ysticism o f

the Cross», Studies in Religion, 13 (1984), 265-78, at 265.31 Teresa's works attest that her reform o f Carmel and foundations

were aim ed at a id ing the Church in its self-reform and defense against Protestantism by means o f the apostolate o f prayer that she and her nuns carried out: see, e.g., Life, chapter 32 (1:217; 144); Way o f Perfection, chapters 1-3 (2:3-15; 197-206); and Foundations, chapters 3 (3:12; 527) and 18 (3:88; 568). References to the English translation o f Teresa's works are to Peers' (see note 4) and above are given first; references to the Spanish text o f Teresa's works above, and throughout this article, are given a fter the sem icolon and are to Santa Teresa de Jesús, Obras completas, eds. E frén de la Madre de Dios and Otger Steggink, 7th ed., Biblioteca de autores cristianos, 212 (Madrid: Editorial Católica, 1982).


ces o f the fa ith fu l debase and m ake a m ock o f re lig ion , it seems, so fa r as I can judge, to have been G od 's w ill that they should be faced, not by a valiant m an arm ed w ith learning, but by a poor w om an w h o defied the devil and set up her standard against h im and openly ra ised up peop le to conquer h im and spurn h im and tram ple h im beneath their feet. D oubtless H e w as pleased to do this in order to dem onstrate the greatness o f H is pow er in this present age w h en so m any thousands o f m en, som e w ith their de luded m inds an d others w ith their degraded habits, are attacking H is k ingdom , in that a w om an shou ld enlighten the understanding and re fo rm the habits o f m any w h o daily increase in n u m ber an d are rep a irin g the harm w rought b y the devil.

E n que, a lo que yo puedo ju zga r, qu iso D ios en este tiem po, cuando parece triunfa el dem onio en la m uchedum bre de los infieles, que le siguen, y en la p o rfía de tantos pueblos de herejes, que hacen sus partes, y en los m uchos vicios de los fieles, que son de su bando ; pa ra evilecerle y para hacer bu rla de él, ponerle delante, no un hom bre valiente rodeado de letras, sino una m ujer pobre y sola, que le desafiase y levantase bandera contra él, y hiciese públicam ente gente que le venza y huelle y acocee. Y quiso sin duda, pa ra dem ostración de lo m ucho que puede, en esta edad, adonde tantos m illares de hom bres, unos con sus errados ingenios y otros con sus perdidas costum bres, aportillan su reino, que u n a m ujer a lum brase los entendim ientos y ordenase las costum bres de m uchos, que cada día crecen para reparar estas qu iebras 32.

In this passage Fray Luis emphasizes the difference between himself, «a valiant man armed with learning», and Teresa, «a poor woman». In the natural order of things, Teresa's gender is an obstacle to her being a reformer and hero, but God's «grace ... and ... the power of His Spirit» ‘gracia ... [y] la virtud de su espíritu’ 33 supply what is lacking in Teresa's weak female nature.

The second miracle is the perfection to which Teresa restored Carmel which is «a picture of the sanctity of the early Church» un retrato de la santidad de la Iglesia primera’ 34. Renaissance Christian humanism, of which Fray Luis is the premier Spanish representative, sought to return to the

32 3:369-70; 1:905.33 3:370; 1:905.34 3:370; 1:906.


thought not only of classical but also Christian antiquity. The restoration of the theology of the ancient Church was seen «as a means of reforming theology and revivifying Christian life» 3S. Fray Luis avers that, by their detachment from worldly honor, strict practice of poverty, and unanimity and joy in leading a life of perfection, Teresa's nuns retrieve the harmonious, prayerful, and common life of the primitive Christian community36, «a life which had seemed to exist no longer save in writing and in speech» ‘[una vida que] parecía estar en sólo los papeles y las palabras' 37. Like Teresa herself, her nuns are able to accomplish this because although they have «the limbs of weak and tender women» ‘miembros de mujeres, tiernos y flacos’, they also possess «the spirits of strong men» 'ánimos de varones fuertes’ 38. But, Fray Luis continues, they are more than men: in their «perfection of life» 'perfección de la vida’ and in «the similarity and the unity that exists between [them]» ‘la semejanza y unidad que entre sí tienen’, they are «angels» ‘ángeles’ 39. Fray Luis1 imaging of Teresa's nuns as angels has a threefold significance. First, in the monastic literature of the patristic period and Middle Ages, the religious life was often described as approximating the life of the angels 40; thus Fray Luis indicates that the reformed Carmel is part of the ancient and venerable monastic tradition. Second, in the Book o f Her Foundations (Libro de las fundaciones; begun in 1573 and completed in 1582), Teresa herself refers to her nuns as angels 41; Fray Luis concurs with Teresa's identifi

35 Jo h n C. O l in , Catholic Reform from Cardinal Ximenes to the Council o f Trent. 1495-1563: An Essav with Illustrative Documents and a Brief Study o f St. Ignatius Loyola (N ew York: Fordham University Press, 1990), p. 7.

36 See Acts 4.32-33.37 3:370; 1:906.38 3:370; 1:906.39 3:371; 1:906.40 For an excellent overview o f this theme in monastic literature, see

Jean Leclercq, The Life o f Perfection: Points o f View on the Essence o f the Religious State, trans. Leonard J. Doyle (Collegeville: The L iturgical Press, 1961), pp. 15-42.

41 In the Foundations, chap. 1, Teresa characterizes the nuns at St. Joseph's in Avila as having «angelic souls» (3:3) ‘almas de ángeles’ (522). In later chapters Teresa speaks o f nuns who died in her monasteries as being angelic at the hour o f death. Beatriz de la Encarnación o f the Valladolid Carmel died w ith «h er eyes fixed upon Heaven ... look ing like an angel»


cation of her nuns as well as corroborates it. Third, in her correspondence with her dear friend Jerónimo Gracián, Teresa used «Angela» as her pen name; shortly after her death, Teresa appears under this name in Gracián's Dialogue o f Angela and Eliseo (1582; Diálogo de Angela v Eliseo) and Death and Final Journev o f Angela (1583; Tránsito v última jornada de Angela) and in the Book o f Recreations (1585; Libro de recreaciones) which was composed by Maria de San José Salazar, one of Teresa's nuns and close associates, who played a major role in disseminating and institutionalizing her reform, and whose spirituality recently has been compared to that of Fray Luis 42. Thus by describing Teresa's nuns as «angels», Fray Luis underscores their identification with the Mother of Carmel herself.

The third miracle is that «in the space of no more than the twenty years which must have gone by since the Mother (i.e., Teresa) made her first foundation, Spain is now full of her houses, in which God is served by more than a thousand religious» 'en espacio de veinte años, que puede haber desde que la Madre fundó el primer monasterio ... tiene ya llena la España de monasterios, en que sirven a Dios más de mil religiosos’ 43. Like Teresa, Fray Luis uses images and metaphors in his writings to express spiritual truths, hence offering an alternative theological method to the abstract concepts or theorems of scholasticism 44. Having just described Teresa's nuns as angels, Fray Luis now describes them as «clear mirrors» ‘espejos puros’ in which is reflected «one face, which is that of the holy Mother, visible in her daughters» ‘un rostro, que es el de la Madre santa que se traspasa en las hijas’; as «the brighest stars among the hea-

(3:60) ‘los ojos en el cielo ... quedando com o un ángel’ (553), w h ile an unnamed sister o f St. Joseph's monastery in Toledo died «like an angel» (3:78) com o un ángel’ (563).

42 See Fuentes históricas sobre la muerte y el cuerpo de Santa Teresa, pp. 1-36; Arenal and Schlau, pp. 20-21, 27-30, 37-41, 80-108. In some ways there is a striking sim ilarity between the themes o f Fray Luis' dedicatory letter and the Libro de recreaciones. Although the latter was not published until this century, it did circulate in manuscript and was w ell known during its author's lifetime. W ritten by a wom an for women, it was a theological tou r de force which o ffered a vigorous defense o f Teresa and critiqued accusations o f heresy (Arenal and Schlau, p. 37).

43 3:371; 1:907.44 See Thompson, p. 176; Tillier, p. 361.


venly constellations» ‘luceros entre las estrellas menores'; and as «fair flowers which beautify the barrenness of these present times, the choicest branches of the Church» ‘flores hermosas que embellecen la esterilidad de estos siglos, y ciertamente partes de la Iglesia de la más escogidas’ 45. These images of Teresa's nuns as mirrors, stars, and flowers and branches cast into relief the identity between Teresa and her daughters. This is most evident in the case of the image of the mirrors, for, as Fray Luis remarks in On the Names o f Christ:

I f w e put m any m irros togetheer and p lace them be fo re ou r eyes, the im age o f the face, w h ich is one, is reflected in each th ing as the sam e and at the sam e time, an d from all these im ages, w ithout confusion, they return to the eyes, and from the eyes to the soul o f the person w h o looks in the m irro rs .

[S ]i jun tam os m uchos espejos y los ponem os delante los ojos, la im agen del rostro, que es una, reluce una m ism a y en un m ism o tiem po en cada uno de ellos; y de ellos todas aquellas im ágenes, sin con fund irse , se to rn an jun tam ente a los ojos, y de los o jos al a lm a de aque l que en los espejos se m ira 46.

The other two images have a clear relationship with Teresa, for both appear in Teresa's works in reference to the reformed Carmel, in the accounts of the supernatural phenomena that accompanied the saint's death, and in literature about Teresa. In the Life, chapter 32, Teresa reports that, in a locution she had one day after receiving Holy Communion, the Lord told her that the first reformed Carmelite monastery of St. Joseph in Ávila «would be a star

45 3:371; 1:907.46 Luis d e L e ó n , The Names o f Christ, eds. and trans. Manuel Durán

and W illiam Kluback, Classics o f Western Spirituality (N ew York: Paulist Press, 1984), p. 44; Obras completas castellanas, 1:415. For an overview o f the meanings associated w ith the im age o f the m irror in Golden-Age Spanish art and literature, see Julián Gállego, Vision y símbolos en la pintura españiola del Siglo de Oro (Madrid: Cátedra, 1984), pp. 223-26; on this im age in Fray Luis, see Enrica Cancelliere, «L a celebración de la palabra en el poema d e F r a y L u is d e L e ó n », in Fray Luis de León: Aproximaciones a su vida y su obra, eds. C iríaco M orón A rroyo and M anuel Revuleta Sañudo (Santander: Sociedad M enéndez Pelayo, 1989), pp. 169-201, especially 188-93, 198-200.


giving out the most brillant light» ‘sería una estrella que diese de sí gran resplandor’ 47; in the Foundations, chapter 28, Teresa records that when the discalced friars, whose reform she also inspired, came out to meet her and her nuns at Villanueva de la Jara, «In that lonely field they seemed like fragrant white flowers, and in God's sight I believe they are» ‘Parecían en aquel campo unas flores blancas olorosas, y ansí creo yo lo son a Dios’ 4S. In the depositions for Teresa's beatification, one nun testified that «some of the Religious of the convent of Alba had seen a very luminous star, which appeared in the air near a window of the cell where the said Saint was; and they saw this two or three days before she died» 49; others attested that at Teresa's death a tree outside her cell flowered, though it had long been barren 50. In his biography of Teresa, Fray Luis repeats her testimony that St. Joseph's in Ávila would be a «star that would extend its rays» ‘estrella que extendería sus rayos’ 51; and in the Book o f Recreations Maria de San José calls Teresa «the flower of Carmel» ‘la flor de Carmelo’ 52.

In his explanation of the first miracle, Fray Luis maintains that the reform of Carmel by a weak woman was a manifestation of the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, turning to yet another miracle, Teresa's writings, Fray Luis, the foremost Biblical exegete of Golden-Age Spain, first, praises Teresa's style, which, although it was the opposite of his own artistic humanistic prose, he appreciates on its own terms; then, he declares his conviction that Teresa's books were inspired by the Holy Spirit!

W h en ever I read her w orks I w on d er at them afresh, and

471:220; 145.48 3:155; 606.49 Depositions Given bv Those Who Knew St. Teresa o f Jesus, p. 238.50 E fren de la M adre de Dios and Otger Steggink, Tiempo y vida de

Santa Teresa, 2nd ed., B ib lio teca de autores cristianos, 283 (M adrid : Editorial Catolica, 1977), p. 989. This phenom enon was im m ortalized by being included in the account o f Teresa's death in the sixth lesson o f the Second Nocturn in the old Rom an Breviary: see Roman Breviarv in English: Autumn, ed. Joseph A. Nelson (N ew York: B enziger Brothers, 1950), p. 592.

51 1:940.52 In Arenal and Schlau, pp. 80, 92.


in many parts of them I feel that I am listening to no human voice at all. I do not doubt that in many places it was the Holy Spirit Who spoke through her and Who guided her pen and hand. This is manifest from the light which she sheds upon dark places and the fire which her words kindle in the heart of him who reads them.

Y ansí, siempre que los leo, me admiro de nuevo, y en muchas partes de ellos me parece que no es ingenio de hombre el que oigo; y no dudo sino que hablaba el Espíritu Santo en ella en muchos lugares, y que la regía la pluma y la mano; que ansi lo manifiesta la luz, que pone en las cosas escuras, y el fuego que enciende con sus palabras en el corazón que las lee 53.

For Fray Luis, this divine inspiration is manifested both «in the sublimity of the subjects which [Teresa] treats, and in the delicacy and clarity with which she treats them» ‘en la alteza de las cosas que trata, y en la delicadeza y claridad con que las trata’ as well as the «numerous and great benefits which come to those who read these books» 'muchos y grandes provechos que hallan los que leen estos libros’ 54. Fray Luis limits himself to enumerating two such benefits: «One is that she makes it easier for her readers to follow the path of virtue; the other, that she enkindles them in the love of her and of God» 'Uno, facilitar en el ánimo de los lectores el camino de la virtud, y otro, encenderlos en el amor de ella y de Dios’ 55. Thus Fray Luis reprises his argument that the true nature of Teresa's books, like her reform, is revealed ex fructibus. It hardly seems happenstance that in the 1588 edition of Teresa's works, on the page facing the beginning of Fray Luis' dedicatory letter, is an engraving inspired by Fray Juan de la Miseria's 1576 portrait of Teresa, for which Maria de San José and Gracián persuaded her to sit. In this engraving Teresa, with her hands joined in prayer and the legend «Misericordias Domini in aetemum cantabo» (1 will sing the mercies of the Lord forever’), added to Fray Juan's portrait by an unknown hand, ringing her head, has her eyes raised to the dove of the Holy Spirit, from whom rays of light emanate, and who hovers above her in the upper left- hand corner. The dove of the Holy Spirit was added to Fray

53 3:372; 1:907-908.54 3:371-72; 1:907-908.55 3:372; 1:908.


Juan's portrait after Teresa's death and before the publication of her works; from this point on the dove of the Holy Spirit would be a regular feature of Teresian iconography 56. Fray Luis' text offers a theological justification for this iconography, which in turn visualizes the miracle of the power of the Holy Spirit at work in Teresa the woman and the author.

Fray Luis concludes this section of his letter by recapitulating his fundamental theme that the mother is known by her children, the tree by its fruits, Teresa, by her nuns and her books:

Y o u r Reverences ... are the very patterns o f your M other. I never rem em ber hav ing read these w o rk s o f hers w ithout im agin ing that I am listening to you r Reverences' voices, nor, on the other hand, have I ever heard you speak w ithout feeling that I w as read ing the w o rd s o f the M other.... It is thus that (to return to w hat I said at first), if I never saw h e r w h en she lived on earth , I see h er n o w in her book s and in her daughters.

Vuestras Reverencias... son sus dechados m uy semejantes; porque ninguna vez m e acuerdo leer en estos libros, que no m e parezca o igo h a b la r a V u estras R everencias; ni, al revés, nunca las o í hab lar, que no se m e figu rase que le ía en la M adre... Ansí que, tornando al princip io , si no la vi m ientras estuvo en la tierra, agora la veo en sus lib ros y hijas 57.

Finally, Fray Luis provides an account of his editorial procedure. He compared the copies of Teresa's manuscripts with their originals; he «neither emended [Teresa's works] verbally» ‘sin mudarlos [=los libros] ... en las palabras’ nor adopted the textual changes found in the copies in circulation and made by «the copyists own carelessness or out of presumption and error» ‘descuido de los escribientes o por atrevimiento y error’ 5S. Rather, he restores Teresa's texts to

56 See Je a n d e la C r o ix , «L 'Iconograph ie de Thérèse de Jésus, Docteur de l'É glise», Ephemerides Carmeliticae, 21(1970), 219-60, especially 221- 25, 227-35; and Tomás Álvarez, «E l retrato de Santa Teresa en los primeros grabados: 1588-91», M onte Carmelo, 93 (1985), 355-61, especially 359.

57 3:372-73; 1:908.58 3:373; 1:909.


«their original purity» 'su primera pureza' 59. His rationale for this conservative approach is the divine inspiration of Teresa's writings: «For to make changes in the writings of one whose breast was the home of God, Who may be presumed to have moved her to write them, would be the utmost presumption and the grossest error» 'Que hacer mudanza en las cosas que escribió un pecho, en quien Dios vivía y que se presume le movía a escribirlas, fue atrevimiento grandísimo, y error muy feo querer enmendar las palabras’ 60. This makes for a smooth transition to the next section of the letter, the refutation of adversaries.

In this section of his letter, Fray Luis tackles objections that have been raised to Teresa's writings. He begins: «But as there is nothing so good that evilly disposed men cannot construe it as a failure, it will be well here, while I am addressing Your Reverences, to reply briefly to ideas which some have brought forward» ‘Mas porque no hay cosa tan buena en que la mala condición de los hombres no pueda levantar un achaque, será bien aquí, y hablando con Vuestras Reverencias, responder con brevedad a los pensamientos de algunos’ 61. In the dedicatory to On the Names o f Christ, Fray Luis specifies what he considers to be the three major sources of theology: «We can understand that the disputes of the Schools are only the beginning of theology. Its growth is the doctrine which the saints expose; its summit, its perfection, and its loftiness are the Holy Scriptures» ‘[D]e la cual [teología], como se entiende, el principio son las cuestiones de la F-scuela, y el crecimiento la doctrina que escriben los santos; y el colmo y perfección y lo más alto de ella las Letras Sagradas’ 62. In his defense of Teresa's writings here and in his subsequent «Apología», Fray Luis constantly appeals to these theological sources as «authorities» that support his arguments.

One objection is that Teresa's books contain revelations (‘revelaciones’) and passages that «touch upon the interior commerce of the soul with God» ‘toca[n] al trato interior del

59 3:373; 1:909.60 3:373; 1:909.61 3:373; 1:909.62 3 7; 1:406. For a discussion o f this passage, see Saturnino Á lvarez

Turienzo, «P erfil humano e intelectual de Fray Luis de León », in Fray Luis de León: Aproxim aciones a su vida y su obra, pp. 1-40, at 26-27.


alma con Dios', and to make these public to all would be an «occasion of peril» ‘ocasión de peligro' 63. Fray Luis gives a number of reasons why this view is mistaken. First, revelations made by the Holy Spirit should be written about and made known, for as the archangel Raphael said to Tobias (Tobit 12.7): «A king's secret it is prudent to keep, but the works of God are to be declared and made known» ‘el secreto del Rey bueno es esconderlo; mas las obras de Dios, cosa santa y debida es manifestarlas y descubrirlas’ 64. Second, there is ample precedent for these revelations in the lives of the founders of Orders like St. Dominic and St. Francis of Assisi. Third, «God talks with His friends» ‘Habla Dios con sus amigos’ and «bestows ... special favours upon one soul... in order to bring profit... to many others» ‘hace ... mercedes especiales a uno ... para aprovechar ... a otros muchos’; now that Teresa's body has been found miraculously incorrupt and «other miracles taking place daily» ‘otros milagros que cada día hace’ establish «her sanctity beyond all doubt» ‘fuera de toda duda su santidad’, it is time to make known «the favours which God granted her in her lifetime» ‘las mercedes que Dios le hizo viviendo’ for «the good of so many souls» ‘para bien de tantas gentes’ 65.

Another objection is that Teresa should not have written about revelations granted to herself. Fray Luis' response: First, Teresa wrote them under obedience to her confessors and spiritual directors; those who do not find Teresa's writings acceptable do so «not because of any errors in the writings, but because of their own errors» ‘no por el engaño que puede haber en ellas, sino por el que ellos tienen en sí,’ e.g., Teresa's detractors «may find it impossible to believe that God can so far condescend to man» ‘no les deja creer que es humana Dios tanto con nadie,’ thereby contradicting the Incarnation 66. Second, Teresa's writings «do not merely give a bald account» ‘no cuentafn] desnudamente’ of these revelations but «also tell of the pains she took to have them examined and show what were the effects of genuine revelations» ‘dice también las diligencias que ella hizo para exa

63 3:373; 1:909.64 3:374; 1:910.65 3:374; 1:910.66 3:357; 1:911.


minarlas, y muestra las señales que dejan de sí las verdaderas’ 67, i.e., the practice of virtue both for the good of the recipient and of many others, obedience to the Church's teaching and divine revelation in Scripture, willingness to suffer for Christ, self-mortification, detachment from self and the world, etc. Third, Teresa did not hold that spiritual perfection consists in revelations, and she herself often had misgivings about them. Fourth, Teresa «was never guided by [revelations] so much as by what her superiors and confessors ordered her» ‘se gobernó, no tanto por ellas, cuanto por lo que le mandaban sus prelados y confesores’ 68. And, lastly, «their [Teresa's revelations'] obvious genuineness was borne out by the good effects which they produced upon herself and upon her whole Order» ‘con ser ellas tan notoriamente buenas cuanto mostraron los efectos de reformación que en ella hicieron y en toda su Orden’ 69.

Yet another objection to Teresa's writings — which seems to be a variation on the first objection — was that they were dangerous «because of the delicacy of the matters treated in them, which ... are not meant for all» ‘por la delicadeza de lo que tratan, que ... no es para todos’ 70. Fray Luis considers this a specious argument. There are, he says, three kinds of people: those who practice prayer; those who could practice prayer if they wanted to do so; and those who cannot practice prayer because of their state of life. Teresa's works, he continues, cannot harm any of these people. It does a spiritual person «no harm to read of what one does and professes oneself» ‘no es daño saber uno eso mismo que hace y profesa’ 71. For persons with an aptitude for spirituality, Teresa «will not only guide them in the practice of prayer, but will also encourage and enkindle them to pray» ‘no sólo ... los guíe cuando lo fueren, sino ... los anime y encienda a que lo sean’ n. As for the third group of people, «Is it a peril to know of God's loving-kindness to men?» ‘¿[E]n qué tienen peligro? ¿En saber que es amoroso Dios con los

67 3:357; 1:911.68 3:375-76; 1:912.69 3:376; 1:912.70 3:376; 1:912.71 3:376; 1:91272 3:376; 1:912.


hombres?’ To this response, Fray Luis adds two other observations. First, holy things can always be abused, e.g., the ill-disposed can interpret Scripture erroneously and misuse the sacraments. Second, the devil himself is the source of objections raised against Teresa's writings, for the prince of darkness knows well

that he will lose more in those who through reading these books will become better and more perfect in spirituality than he will gain through the ignorance or malice of this or that person to whom they may prove a stumbling-block because he is insufficiently prepared for reading them. And so, in order not to lose those of the former class, he suggests and exaggerates the harm such reading will do to those of the latter class to whom he has already done harm in a thousand ways more.

que perderá más en los que se mejoraren y hicieren espirituales perfectos, ayudados con la lección de estos libros, que ganará en la ignorancia o malicia de cuál o cuál, que por su indisposición se ofendiere. Y ansí, por no perder aquéllos, encarece y pone delante los ojos el daño de aquestos que él, por otros mil caminos, tiene dañados 74.

This passage echoes an idea often found in Teresa's writings, namely, that the devil was the source of the opposition she encountered in disseminating her reform and spirituality 75.

The last objection to which Fray Luis responds concerns Teresa's discussion of the Prayer of Quiet which had been misinterpreted to mean that whoever enjoys this favour is assured of salvation. Fray Luis explains:

What she means, and what is true, is merely this — that in these exercises souls feel the presence of God through the effects which He works in them then, giving them delight and illumination and counsels and consolations. For, although these are great favours of God and are often accompanied by the grace of justification or lead the way to it, yet they are not themselves that grace, nor are they always born of it or united

73 3:376; 1:912.74 3:377; 1:913.75 See, e.g., L ife , chapters 33 (1:225; 148) and 34 (1:233; 152);

F ou n d a tion s , chapters 3 (3:9; 526), 18 (3:87; 568), 29 (3:173; 615), and 31(3:188; 623).


w ith it. As is seen in prophecy, grace can exist in one w h o is in an evil state. Such a person is then certain that G o d is speak ing to h im , and does not kn ow if H e justifies him , an d in fact G od does not justify h im at that time, though H e speaks to him and teaches h im .

Sólo quiere decir lo que es la verdad : que las a lm as en estos ejercicios sienten a D ios presente p a ra los efectos que en ellas entonces hace, que son de le itarlas y a lu m brarlas , dándoles avisos y gustos. Q ue aunque son grandes m ercedes de Dios, y que m uchas veces, o andan con la gracia que justifica o encam inan a ella; pero no po r eso son aquella m ism a gracia, ni hacen ni se juntan siem pre con ella. Com o en la p ro fecía se ve, que la puede haber en el que está en m al estado. E l cual entonces está cierto de que D ios le hab la , y no sabe si le justifica; y de hecho no le justifica D ios entonces, aunque le hab la y le enseña 76.

Howeveer, the Augustinian friar qualifies his response by adding that «it is possible that ... [Teresa] had some revelation and certification of [God's] grace of her own» ‘posible es que ... [la Madre] tuviese alguna propria revelación y certificación de su gracia’ 77.

The final sentences of the letter constitute a double petition (that Teresa's writings will benefit souls and that the nuns of the Madrid Carmel will remember Fray Luis in their prayers) and the conclusion, which consists of a recapitulation (Teresa's nuns, who were formed by her doctrine, are living witnesses to its efficacy) and the entry of the place and date:

I believe, and hope, that it [w h a t Teresa has w ritten ] w ill be very profitable to souls, as can be seen in the souls o f Y ou r Reverences w h o w ere b rough t up and are nurtured in it, and w h om I beg to m ake m ention o f m e in your ho ly prayers. At Saint Philip 's, M adrid , on the fifteenth o f Septem ber, 1587.

Que según yo juzgo y espero, [tod a aquesta escritura] será tan p rovech osa a las a lm as cuan to en la s de V u estras Reverencias, que se criaron y se m antienen con ella se ve. A quien suplico se acuerde siem pre en sus santas oraciones. E n San Felipe de M adrid , a 15 de septiem bre de 1587 78.

76 3:377-78; 1:914.77 3:378; 1:914.78 3:378; 1:914.


It is a commonplace of scholarship on Fray Luis that harmony is the hallmark of his literary style and thought. The Renaissance aesthetic categories of harmony, balance, proportion, and symmetry are much in evidence in the rhetorical structure and content of his dedicatory letter. Fray Luis devotes approximately the same amount of space to the exordium, division, and narration and to the refutation, petition, and conclusion. Furthermore, there is a symmetry between the content and arrangement of these parts which may be schematized as follows (read counterclockwise):

EXORDIUM1. Salutation2. Captatio benevolentiae: Vision o f two living images o f Teresa:her daughters and her books

IDIVISION OF SUBJECT-MATTER God's grace in Teresa is revealed by (1) her daughters and (2) her books, which form «a collection o f miracles»

1

NARRATION: «A Collection o f Miracles:

1. God's grace in a weak woman restores Carmel to perfection and confoundsthe devil

2. The reformed Carmel is a return to the holiness o f the early Church3. Wide dissemination and rapid growth o f the reformed Carmel

4. Teresa's writings are inspired by the Holy Spirit and thus impart numerous and great benefits to their readers

CONCLUSION 2. Place/Date1. Recapitulation: Nuns' souls evince the efficacy o f Teresa's books

T

PE T IT IO N2. Remembrance in nuns' prayers1. May Teresa's books be profitable to all

T

R E FU TATIO N OF ADVERSARIES

4. Prayer o f Quiet and Teresa's assurance o f grace o f justification

3. Teresa's books are helpful to all kinds o f people in the Church2. Teresa's revelations were recorded under obedience and producedgood effects in her and Carmel 1. Teresa's books make known the revelations o f the Holy Spirit and thus profit many souls

T

A Defense against odium theologicum: The «Apologia»

Although the publication of Teresa's works was enthusiastically welcomed in many circles, it was met with alarm


in some. Not long after their appearance in print, a Dominican Inquisitor named Alonso de la Fuente, who was one of the most energetic prosecutors of Illuminists in Extremadura, initiated a campaign to have Teresa's works banned. In a letter, dated August 26, 1589, to the Council of the Inquisition, he writes:

The author of the said book passes it off and recommends it as doctrine revealed by God and inspired by the Holy Spirit; but if in fact the author was that nun whose name is on the title-page, it is a matter praeter naturam for her to have written something taught by an angel, because it exceeds a woman's capacity. In any case it could not have been a good angel, but a bad one, the same one that deceived Mohammed and Luther and the other leaders of heretics. This being the case, the so-called miracle of the nun Teresa of Jesus, that her body is today intact and uncorrupted, is a fabulous business, either the work of Satan or the invention of heretics.

El autor del dicho libro lo vende y encomienda por doctrina revelada de Dios e inspirada por el Espíritu Santo. Que si en efecto fue la monja, como suena el título dél es negocio preter naturam y cosa enseñada por ángel, porque excede la capacidad de muger. Mas, no fue posible ser ángel bueno, sino ángel malo y el mesmo que engañó a Mahoma y a Lutero y a los demás heresiarcas. Y siendo esto así, el milagro que se dice de la monja Theresa de Jesús, que está oy entera e incorrupta, es negocio fabuloso o prestigio de sathanás, o imben- ción de hereges 79.

In five memorials to the Inquisition written between 1589 and 1591, the friar repeats his assertion that Teresa's works are heretical80.

Fray Luis had anticipated this odium theologicum in his dedicatory letter; now, in 1589, he writes what he entitles an «Apología» of the beneficial nature of Teresa's writings for the Church. During his inquisitorial trial Fray Luis had successfully mounted his own defense against formidable adversaries. He was no stranger to the kind of defense that it

79 The Spanish text is from Llamas-Martinez, pp. 396-97; the English translation is from Rivers, «The Vernacular M ind o f St. Teresa», p. 120.

80 The text o f these mem orials is given in Llam as-Martinez, pp. 397-423.


was necessary for him to make of Teresa's writings against their detractors. Throughout its history rhetoric has been closely related to the legal profession 81. Fray Luis' «Apología» is a rhetorical masterpiece, in which, with its smooth, quick pace, rhetorical questions, and constant citation of precedents and authorities, he seeks to move and persuade the reader much as a lawyer does a judge or jury. While Erika Lorenz has discussed the interrelationship of several prominent themes of the «Apología», e.g., Teresa's visions, the obscurity of her writings, the prayer of union, and the humanity of Christ, the work as a whole remains to be studied 82.

At the outset Fray Luis explains that this «Apología» is occasioned by rumors he has heard (‘he oído’ 83) that some have spoken less favorably than they should have of Teresa's writings, which had been published the previous year. He discloses that three criticisms have come to his ears: first, that Teresa's writings teach the prayer of union, which should not be taught; second, that they contain some obscure things that cannot be understood by everyone; and, third, that in her works Teresa recounts many revelations that she had. Fray Luis responds to each criticism individually.

Apropos of the prayer of union, Fray Luis observes that Teresa's works define this form of prayer, its good effects, and how to discern whether it is true or false. He then proceeds to turn the tables on his adversaries. If Teresa's detractors say that this kind of prayer does not exist, they are in error because they contradict the testimony of Scripture and the saints. If they concede that there is such a form of prayer, how can it be evil if it comes from God? If they say that one cannot attain this prayer by following a method, they concur with Teresa, who, in fact, does not prescribe a method. If the «way of union» ‘camino de unión’ 84 is good, then it is both good and necessary to have books that explain it. How can learning about union harm anyone? The contrary is true:

81 See, e.g., Murphy, passim.82 See Lorenz's introductory essay to her German translation o f the

«Apo log ia » cited in note 3 above. I thank Dr. A. Gordon K inder for his assistance with this essay.

83 1:915.841:916.


knowledge of this divine favor fosters admiration for this gift of God and awakens the desire to follow this path and to abandon all things to find God. Lastly, Fray Luis insists, it is unjust to target Teresa for criticism on this point because many other authors, including St. Bonaventure, Richard of St. Victor, Jean Gerson, and Fray Francisco de Osuna, speak of this prayer.

The second objection to Teresa's writings is equally specious. Theologians, Fray Luis points out, do not understand everything St. Augustine or the Pseudo-Dionysius have written. Often scholastic theologians are at a loss to understand parts of the works of the «scholastic doctors» — Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Durandus of Pour^ain, Henry of Ghent. The obscure passages of Teresa's works are few in number. Moreover, «whoever understands the obscure part will derive benefit from it, and whoever does not, neither harm nor benefit» ‘quien lo [=lo escuro] entiende, saca provecho de ello, y quien no, ni danio ni provecho’ 85. The obscurity of Teresa's works, he continues, resides not in the words themselves, but in the experience of the reader, who, if he/she has not experienced what Teresa speaks about will not understand it. In any event, this lack of understanding fosters admiration for, and the desire to experience, what Teresa writes about, two things that are of spiritual profit to the reader.

In the dedicatory letter to his edition of Teresa, Fray Luis dealt at length with the question of Teresa's revelations. Now he defends them even more vigorously:

Conceerning the third matter, that of revelations, I say that those who condemn the revelations recounted in these Books do so, either because they believe that revelations do not exist and this is manifestly contrary to faith, or because they imagine that these are not revelations, and that is a te- merious judgment based only on their own willfulness; or because even if they do not regard them as false, they at least suspect that they are doubtful, but this is hardly correct because these revelations all have the signs o f being authentic: the known sanctity of the person; the truth of the doctrine they contain; the great effects of virtue and reform that they produced in the holy Mother Teresa and produce in those who

851:917.


follow her example; the extensive examination of them that the same Mother made during her lifetime; and their approval by spiritual and learned persons.

Y cuanto al tercer artículo, de las revelations, digo que los que condenan las de estos Libros es, o porque creen que no hay revelaciones, y esto es manifiestamente contra la fe, o porque imaginan que éstas no lo son, y eso es juicio temerario, fundado en su sola voluntad; o porque si no las tienen por falsas, sospechan a lo menos que son dudosas, en que no tienen ninguna color de razón, porque las señales de las ciertas todas las tienen éstas: la santidad conocida de la persona, la verdad de la doctrina que contienen, los efectos grandes de virtud y reformación, que hicieron en la santa Madre Teresa, y hacen en los que siguen su ejemplo, el examen grande que sobre ellas hizo la misma Madre en su vida, y la aprobación que tuvieron de personas de espíritu y letras 86.

Furthermore, if Teresa's detractors say that, although these revelations may be good and authentic, they ought not be written down and made public, this is a departure from the Church's tradition because since the foundation of the Church revelations made by God to humankind have been written down. In order to substantiate his point, Fray Luis cites numerous precedents: Scripture, ecclesiastical histories, the lives of the saints, the histories of the Orders-the Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, etc., the books of the revelations of St. Bridget and of St. Gertrude the Great, the life of St. Catherine of Siena and of Fray Luis Beltrán, whose beatification process had recently been opened. To the detractors' objection that credulous women who are prone to diabolic illusion will be harmed by reading about Teresa's revelations, Fray Luis counters that reading about good and true revelations does not enkindle inordinate desires for them. If Teresa's detractors further object that this reading does awaken some desire, then they must also proscribe the reading of the Bible, ecclesiastical histories, lives of the saints, St. Gregory the Great's Dialogues, and the histories of the Orders. The principle that must govern access to holy things, Fray Luis specifies, is not the misuse that some may make of them but their contribution to the com

86 1:917-18.


mon good. In the case of Teresa's writings, their salutary effects are abundantly evident in the genuine piety, holiness, and love of God of the nuns and friars of the reformed Carmel who have been formed, nourished, and nurtured by these books.

Fray Luis concludes his «Apología» with a blistering denunciation of Teresa's slanderers. Their refusal to believe Teresa's revelations is «intolerable presumption» ‘presunción intolerable’ 87 for several reasons: because of their incredulity, they forbid others to benefit from Teresa's experience; because they have not experienced revelations, they do not believe others may; they have set themselves up as the sole arbiters of sanctity, yet there may be saints who are unknown to them; and they deny that God communicates with, and grants favors to, his friends, and Teresa's great love of God, expressed by her spending herself in his service reforming Carmel and founding convents, makes it clear that she was God's friend and servant. Fray Luis challenges anyone who doubts Teresa's experience and sanctity to live according to the doctrine set forth in her books, for they will quickly come to believe in her authenticity. Teresa's revelations are not extraordinary; they are similar to those about which other saints have written and are in complete conformity with Catholic doctrine. According to Fray Luis, Teresa's detractors are motivated by neither reason nor zeal for God but by obstinate willfulness, vanity, envy, and incurable blindness. The source of their opposition to Teresa's writings is not divine but demonic: «I have no doubt whatsoever that those who do not speak of these Books with the reverence they ought are deceived by the devil» ‘tengo por sin duda que trae el demonio engañados a los que de estos Libros no hablan con la reverencia que deben’ 88. In closing Fray Luis measures his adversaries ex fructibus, the way Jesus himself taught to discern good and evil spirits, and finds them wanting: if Teresa's detractors were inspired by God, they would, first and foremost, condemn books like Celestina, the romances of chivalry, and others filled with material harmful to souls; however, since they are not divinely inspired, they are silent about these books that corrupt

87 1:919.88 1:920.


faith and morals and attack instead those that direct and lead souls to God.

What's in a name?: Fray Luis' Biography o f Teresa

Shortly before his appointment as first Bishop of Madrid, Narciso Martinez Izquierdo, Bishop of Salamanca, discovered in the Salamanca Carmel the autograph manuscript of Fray Luis' unfinished biography of Teresa, which covers the period from Teresa's birth in 1515 to the inauguration of her reform of Carmel (early 1560s). The bishop gave a copy of this text to the monthly periodical Revista Augustiniana, so that it could be published in connection with the observance of the third centenary of Teresa's death. Accordingly Fray Luis' biography appeared in three installments, in the January, February, and March 1883 issues of the Revista 89.

Various aspects of Fray Luis' biography of Teresa have been briefly studied by scholars. Fidel Fita has called attention to the importance of several points of historical data in this work 90. In the introduction to his critical edition of Fray Luis' poetry, the Italian Hispanist Oreste Macri argues that this biography is essentially a chronicle of Teresa's mystical life, and hence a «voice» that needs to be taken into account in any discussion of the Augustinian friar's mysticism 91 Manuel Duran gives a less favorable evaluation of this biography in his book on Fray Luis' life and works; he consigns this text to a single paragraph in a chapter on Fray Luis' minor works:

This is an incomplete text, written towards the end of Leon's life and dealing with St. Teresa's youth, religious vocation and first years as a nun. Lively and succinct, it suffers from that fact that it is derivative, since it is based upon the

89 Fidel Fita, «Cuatro b iógrafos de Santa Teresa en el siglo X V I: el P. Francisco de Ribera, Fray D iego de Yepes, Fray Luis de León y Julián de Avila », Boletín de la Real Academia de la H istoria, 67 (1915), 550-61, especially 556-57; Fray Luis de León, Obras completas castellanas, 1:921, note 1; and Vallejo, p. 255.

90 «Cuatro biógrafos de Santa Teresa ...», pp. 557-60.91 La poesía de Frav Luis de León, pp. 126-38.


Saint's autobiography. Its truncated character makes it difficult to judge its value. Leon's purpose was to add to the aura surrounding Teresa: he saw in her a powerful ally against the forces of old-fashioned, bureaucratic clericalism ... 92.

Consequently Fray Luis' biography of the Mother of Carmel has not been studied as a unit and on its own terms. As will become evident from what follows, there are points of convergence and divergence between this text and Teresa's autobiography. Fray Luis' own intellectual and theological imprint is very clear in this biography, which is not simply a rehash of Teresa's Life.

Fray Luis' biography of Teresa is hagiography. That is to say, it is the life-story of a holy person, a saint. (I do not, then, use the word «hagiography» in a pejorative sense, as it sometimes used nowadays, but rather to identify accurately the literary genre of Fray Luis' text.) The conventions of hagiography are easily detected in Fray Luis' text. The life- story of a saint who is a religious follows a narrative formula that sketches the holy person's «homelife and Christian upbringing, call to religious life, and efforts to follow a life devoted to God» 93. What unifies the individual elements of this narrative formula is the point of view from which the life-story of the saint is told, namely, that the saint is the friend of God. This friendship is manifested in a variety of ways, including the saint being devout from youth, the practice of virtue, the exercise of miraculous healing and intercessory power, the saint being God's champion in the cosmic battle between good and ev il94.

In the first sentence of his biography of Teresa, Fray Luis defines the point of view from which he will recount her life- story: «Just as in the houses of grandees it is the custom that some sons are much more favored and made more of than others, so too in the house of God, in this age, the blessed

92 Luis de León, p. 157.93 K a th le e n A. M y e r s , «S or Juana's respuesta: Rew riting the vitae»,

Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, 14 (1990), 459-71, at 460. Also see H ippolyte Delehaye, The Legends o f the Saints, trans. Donald Attwater (N ew York: Fordham University Press, 1962), pp. 72-73.

94 See the «F o rew ord » to Granger Ryan's and H elm ut R ipperger's translation o f The Golden Legend o f Jacobus de Vorágine (1941; N ew York: Arno Press, 1969), p. x.


Mother Teresa of Jesus was favored more than others with the greatest gifts of grace and favors» ‘Como en las casas de los grandes suele haber unos hijos muy más favorecidos y regalados que otros, ansí en la de Dios, en esta edad, lo fue con grandísima particularidad de gracias y dones la bienaventurada Madre Teresa de Jesús’ 9S. This perspective is underscored two paragraphs later, when Fray Luis speaks about the name «Teresa». In On the Names o f Christ Fray Luis articulates his conviction «that the reality of the object participated in the word by which it was named, and that the form and sound of a name or word were related to the signifícate it was intend to convey 96. Consonant with this understanding, Fray Luis states that when Alonso de Cepeda and his second wife Beatriz de Ahumada named their third child, born in 1515, «Teresa», they were «guided ...by God, who knew the miracles and wonders that he was to work in and through her, because Teresa is Tarasia, an ancient Greek name for women that means ‘miraculous’ ... she was born to draw many to virtue, nurturing and inculcating in them an affection for the things of heaven» ‘guiados ... por Dios, que sabía los milagros y maravillas que en ella había de hacer, y por ella, porque Teresa es Tarasia, nombre antiguo de mujeres, y griego, que quiere decir «milagrosa» ... nacía para atraer muchos a la virtud, criando en ellos, poniéndoles afición de las cosas del cielo’ 97. Consequently Teresa was chosen by God from the moment of her birth to be his friend, one who would be a wonderworker and win many souls for him. To help Teresa carry out her divinely ordained mission, Fray Luis further notes, God gave Teresa an extremely attractive, charming, and likeable personality.

Having established the perspective from which he views Teresa's life, Fray Luis now turns to the various phases of her life, in which the hand of God is clearly present. The grace Teresa received in baptism took firm and deep root in her and quickly yielded fruit which foreshadowed her fu

95 1:92196 Thompson, p. 176.97 1:922. H ow ever, what Fray Luis does not m ention here is that

Tharasia was the Spanish noblewom an w ho was the w ife o f St. Paulinus o f Nola: see Benedict Zimmerman, «Teresa o f Jesus, Saint», The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1907-14.


ture greatness: Teresa was a devout child who loved the poor, read and spoke about the lives and virtues of the saints, longed for solitude and silence, despised the world and aspired to heaven, and desired to die as a martyr for Christ. Teresa's devotion cools in adolescence. Fray Luis puts it this way: «she began to open her eyes to the world» comenzo a abrir los ojos al mundo' 9S. Now Teresa is inclined to frivolity and vanity; she is harmed by her reading of profane books such as the chivalric romances. The Bollandist Hippolyte Delehaye observed of the hagiographer: «if ... he can persuade himself that the saint's failings, before or even after his conversion, so far from tarnishing his glory actually enhance the triumph of God's grace, why, then, the hagiographer will not leave his subject's human side in the shade, and will avoid putting him on so high a peak that others are discouraged from emulating him» ". This is precisely the manner in which Fray Luis presents Teresa's fall from grace. According to Fray Luis, God permits this lapse to occur so that it is clear that sanctity is not a gift of nature but of grace, and so that he can raise Teresa up, as he did David, St. Paul, Mary Magdalen, St. Mary of Egypt, and St. Augustine, for her and for our greater benefit; thus God teaches us to trust in him alone when we fall and not to become discouraged and to loose hope. In the Way o f Perfection, chapter 21, Teresa states that the devil sometimes tries to lead astray the servants of God by obscuring their path with fog, but «God raises up someone to open their eyes and bid them look at the fog with which the devil has obscured their path» ‘levanta Dios uno que los abra los ojos y diga que miren los ha puesto niebla para no ver el camino’ 10°. Fray Luis employs this same image to depict Teresa's fall and spiritual awakening: God the Sun allows the fog ('niebla'101) of worldly things to obscure Teresa's vision only to burn off this fog by his own divine radiance 102. When Teresa was on the threshold of

98 1:923.99 The Legends o f the Saints, p. 54.100 2:92; 263.I01l:924.102On sun im agery in Golden-Age devotional poetry, see M. Louise

Salstad, «Sun M otifs in Sixteenth-Century Spanish Relig ious Poetry », Bulletin o f Hispanic Studies, 55 (1978), 211-30. On fog as an image o f spiri-


adolescence, her mother died; now her father, concerned about his daughter's welfare, sends her to the Augustinian nuns' convent of Our Lady of Grace, where God provides the intelligent and kind nun charged with the supervision of the boarders, Dona Maria Briceno, to restore Teresa's spiritual sight and to put her back on the path to God.

Teresa's stay at Our Lady of Grace opens the way for the next phase of her life because while she is there she begins to struggle with a religious vocation. This struggle is resolved when on November 2, 1536, Teresa takes the habit at the Carmelite convent of the Incarnation. Fray Luis sees Teresa's reception of the habit on All Souls Day as having a particular spiritual significance: on the day when the Church militant prays for the Church suffering, God signals that many souls will be saved by this nun. Within a year of entering Carmel, Teresa becomes critically ill. But, Fray Luis discloses, this occurs for God's own purpose. By means of her sickness, God draws Teresa to a greater intimacy with himself and also teaches her humility and patience, the foundations ('cimientos') of the spiritual edifice (‘soberano edificio' ,03), which he was constructing in Teresa's soul; Fray Luis' use of architectual imagery of speak of Teresa's soul echoes her own in her masterwork The Interior Castle.

Eventually restored to health, Teresa now enters a period of warfare with the devil that will continue until her death. The first phase of this conflict focuses principally on Teresa herself; the second, on her reform of Carmel. In the prototype of the literary genre o f hagiography, St. Athanasius’ Life o f St. Antony (composed ca. 357), when Antony withdrew from the world to lead a life of intense prayer and asceticism, he encountered violent opposition from demonic forces 104. Similarly Fray Luis indicates that

tual malaise and confusion in the Book o f Job, which Fray Luis translated and on which he wrote a commentary, in m edieval theology and spirituality, and in the Life o f Ram on L lu ll, see M ark D. Johnson, «Ram on Llull's Conversion to Penitence», Mystics Quarterly, 16 (1990),179-92, especially 187,192, note 50.

103 1:927.101 St. Athanasius, The L ife o f St. Antony, trans. Robert T. Meyer,

Ancient Christian W riters, no. 10 (W estm inster, MD: N ew m an Press,1950), pp. 22-31. Also see Boniface Ramsey, Beginning to Read the Fathers(N ew York: Paulist Press, 1985), pp. 150, 156-57.


Teresa's virtue and dedication to prayer were odious to Satan ('Erale al demonio muy odiosa la virtud y oration de esta santa’ 105) because God was arming her to destroy the devil and to deprive him of innumerable souls. The batte- field for the first phase of this war was Teresa's heart (‘el pecho de esta bienaventurada mujer' 106), which was now torn between friendship with God and attachment to the world 107. The devil drew Teresa away from God by worldly attachments and also by leading her in the path of false humility (she came to believe that it was pride for her to pray while she was still imperfect) so that she would abandon prayer. But God again intervenes on Teresa's behalf by providing her with a confessor who commanded her to return to prayer. However, the devil was not so easily repelled; his siege lasted for many more years, until Teresa's profoundly moving conversion experience before an Ecce Homo which left her dissolved in tears. (In Teresa's own account of her conversion in the Life, chapter 9, she ascribes a central role to her reading of St. Augustine's Confessions as well; surprisingly the Augustinian friar omits any reference to the Confessions in his discussion of Teresa's conversion.) From this point on, Teresa was a new person, spiritually renewed and fortified; this was the result of divine providence's intervention on behalf of she whom God had chosen as his own from all eternity (‘desde su eternidad la tenia Dios escogida’ 10S). God draws Teresa ever closer to himself by freeing her from the earthly attachments from which she could not liberate herself and by granting her «extraordinary favors» ‘extraordinarias mercedes’ 109. This liberation takes place the first time God grants Teresa the divine favor of locution when she hears these words: «No longer do I want you to converse with men but with angels» ‘Ya no quiero que tengas conversaciones con hombres, sino

105 1:928.i°6 1 : 9 2 9 ,107 C f Joseph F. C h o rp e n n in g , «H eart Im agery in Santa Teresa», in

Studies in H on or o f E lias L. Rivers, eds. B ru n o M . D am iani and R u th E l S a f f a r (Potom ac, M D : Scripta Humanistica, 1989), pp. 49-58, especially pp. 53-54.

108 1:930.109 1:930.


con ángeles' uo. As a result Teresa was «re-created by the word of him who creates and renews things by his word» 'criada de nuevo por la palabra del que con ella cría y renueva las cosas’ m. Ciríaco Morón Arroyo has described Fray Luis as preeminently «a theologian of salvation history (Heilsgeschichte)» U2; Fray Luis' phrasing here links this pivotal moment in Teresa's life to the broader, Biblical context of salvation history, specifically its rich theology of the Word in the first chapter of Genesis and of St. John's Gospel "3. Fray Luis images Teresa's re-creation by citing Song of Songs 2.10-11: «Arise and hasten, my beloved, my dove, my beautiful one, now that the winter is past and gone» ‘Levántate y apresúrate, amiga mía, paloma mía, hermosa mía, que ya pasó el invierno y fuése’ 1U. In his Latin commentary on the Song of Songs (first edition, 1580; definitive edition, 1589), Fray Luis regards the springtime that follows winter in these verses to describe «a state in which the skies of the soul are clearing and the seed of Christ is growing» "5; in On the Names o f Christ Fray Luis comments on these same verses: «Winter, the harsh season of servitude, is past, and a spring full of hope is beginning» ‘[E]l invierno y los tiempos ásperos de su servidumbre han pasado, y ya comienza a aparecer la primavera de su mejor suerte’ m. In a similar vein, for St. John of the Cross, these verses herald «the passing of the winter of purgation and the mystical nights with the announcement of the soul's spiritual springtime in union» "7. However, even at this stage Teresa is not free of disturbance. Fray Luis puts it this way: «But divine favors are always paired with crosses» 'Mas siempre andan como hermanados la cruz y las mercedes de Dios’ " 8. Teresa must submit to frightened and

110 1:933.111 1:933." 2 «F ray Luis de León: Sistem a y dram a», in Fray Luis de León:

Aproximaciones a su vida y su obra, pp. 311-35, at 328.id Fray Lu is1 exploration o f the theology o f the W ord is studied by

Thompson, pp. 161-64, 213-15, 226-27, and passim.114 1:933.115 Thompson, p. 107.116 257; 1:674.117 E l iz a b e th T e r e s a H o w e , Mystical Imagery: Santa Teresa de Jesús

and San Juan de la Cruz (N ew York: Peter Lang, 1988), p. 103.118 1:933.


inexperienced confessors. But because of her humility, demonstrated by her obedience, she becomes even «more beautiful in the eyes of God» ‘más hermosa en los ojos de Dios’ ll9. And Fray Luis again uses the metaphor of the fog burned off by the sun to depict God's vindication of Teresa: «finally, the sun rose to its place in the sky and dispelled the fog, and the truth was made known with the progress that God effected by means of those favors in that holy soul» ‘al fin, subió la luz en su lugar y deshizo la niebla y declaróse tanto la verdad con el mejoramiento que criaba Dios por medio de aquellas mercedes en aquella santa alma’ ,2°.

To express her gratitude for God's graciousness on her behalf, Teresa plans to restore Carmel to its primitive observance. This initiates the second phase of Teresa's combat with the devil. Teresa's idea was to found a small, enclosed (cloistered) community in absolute poverty. But there were many obstacles to be overcome before this dream could become reality: a license must be procured; a house had to be purchased; the novelty of this project and the gossip of the inhabitants of Ávila also worried Teresa. At the same time Teresa received some important assurances about her proposed reform: one day after receiving Holy Communion, the Lord told her that this project was in his service, that the convent she intended to found (St. Joseph's in Ávila) would flourish, grow, and be a «star that would extend its rays» ‘estrella que extendería sus rayos’ w, and that she would have his divine assistance and the protection and patronage of his Blessed Mother and of St. Joseph; Fray (later St.) Peter of Alcántara, who enjoyed immense spiritual prestige, enthusiastically approved Teresa's project. Nonetheless, as all is proceeding smoothly, the devil, fully aware of the harm Teresa and her nuns will do him, stirs up civil and ecclesiastical opposition to this foundation. It is at this point that Fray Luis' biography breaks off.

Teresa's autobiography was completed some twenty-five years before Fray Luis began his biography; the former was written by a woman to provide her confessors and spiritual directors with an account of, as Teresa states in the prologue

119 1:934.120 1:936.121 1:940.


to the Life, the «prayer and the favours» ‘modo de oración y las mercedes’ 122 the Lord granted her, while the latter was composed by an admiring theologian and Biblical scholar at the request of an imperial devotee of Teresa and her nuns, the Empress María. Fray Luis includes both events reported in Teresa's autobiography and those to which Teresa makes no reference, e.g., her naming and baptism. As already noted, surprisingly the Augustinian friar omits mention of the role of the Confessions in Teresa's 1554 conversion experience. At a greater distance from the events of Teresa's life than she herself was when she wrote her autobiography, Fray Luis’ interest is in presenting not simply a factual account of Teresa's life but a theological reflection or meditation on that life from the perspective of the overwhelming evidence of her sanctity and extraordinary friendship with God and in the context of God's plan for the salvation of humanity. As a result, even more than Teresa does in her autobiography, Fray Luis draws out the profound spiritual meaning of each event of her life. For Fray Luis, Teresa, whose name signifies «miraculous» or «marvelous», was chosen from all eternity to be the friend of God; she was created and re-created by God's Word, becoming the mother of the miracle of the reformed Carmel and God's champion who came to the aid of his Church in its hour of need, won souls for him, and defeated the devil.

Conclusion

According to Father Alvarez, without Fray Luis' endorsement and vigorous defense, Teresa's writings probably would neither have become a best-seller (three editions were published within fourteen months), nor have emerged unscathed from inquisitorial scrutiny, nor have been so rapidly circulated in translation throughout Europe l23. Many of the hallmarks of Fray Luis' theology and spirituality are found in his writings on Teresa: the Renaissance aesthetic

122 1:4; 28.123 «F ray Luis de León y Santa Teresa de Jesús: E l humanista ante la

escritora», p. 100, and «F ray Luis de León y Santa Teresa de Jesús: El profesor salmantino ante la monja escritora», p. 502.


categories of harmony, balance, and proportion; the idea of a name as a spiritual reality; his mastery of rhetoric; the view of his era as one of «apocalyptic horrors»; the primacy of the thought and spirit of Christian antiquity; the use of images and metaphors to express spiritual truths; the ever present activity of the grace of God and of the Holy Spirit in the Church; Scripture and Tradition as the touchstones of orthodoxy. Fray Luis' support for Teresa's nuns was not limited to his writings on Teresa. When Nicolás de Jesús María Doria attempted to abolish privileges the Discalced nuns enjoyed under the Teresian constitutions, especially the right to choose their confessors, the choice not being limited to friars of the Carmelite Order, Fray Luis was in the middle of the fray, generously and chivalrously acting as the nuns' advocate 124; his efforts were not successful. However, his devotion to the Mother of Carmel and labor on her behalf eventually bore much fruit: in 1614, twenty-six years after the publication of his edition of her works, Teresa was beatified; eight years later she was canonized by Pope Gregory XV on March 12, 1622, together with her fellow Spaniards Ignatius Loyola, Isidore of Madrid, Francis Xavier, and the Italian Philip Neri. On September 27,1970, Pope Paul VI declared this weak, unlearned woman Teresa a Doctor of the Church, a title recognizing eminent learning and a high degree of sanctity that has been conferred on only about three dozen saints in almost two thousand years of Christian history 125. She was the first woman to receive this recognition.

Fray Luis' image of Teresa as a miraculously and divi

124 This episode is discussed by Bell, pp. 195-99; Thom pson, p. 269, note. 34; Joachim Smet, The Carmelites: A History o f the Brothers o f Our Lady o f Mt. Carmel, 4 vols. (Darien, IL : Camelite Spiritual Center, 1975- 85), 2: 121-25; and E. Allison Peers, Handbook to the Life and Times o f St. Teresa and St. John o f the Cross (London: Bums Oates, 1954), pp. 85-92.

125 As W alter J. Ong points out in his seminal essay «La tin Language Study as Renaissance Puberty R ite», Studies in Philology, 56 (1959),103-24 (reprinted in his Rhetoric. Romance, and Technology: Studies in the Interaction o f Expression and Culture [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971], pp. 113-41), in the Renaissance w om en «cou ld be quite literate w ithout having any effective d irect access at all to the learned world, which was a Latin-writing, Latin-speaking, and even Latin-thinking w orld » (p. 108). Certainly this was the case w ith Teresa, who from youth was an avid reader, but was excluded from the exclusively male w orld o f learning.


nely inspired, charismatic writer — an image corroborated repeatedly by witnesses in the processes for Teresa's beatification and canonization — not only prevailed over his adversaries’ image of her as a demonically possessed heretic, but became canonical. Among the earliest and most numerous depictions of Teresa in the visual arts are those showing her as a writer being inspired by the dove of the Holy Spirit 126. There is no dearth of textual parallels for this primordial aspect of Teresian iconography upon which Fray Luis had a formative influence. In 1614, the year of her beatification, the Jesuit Cipriano de Aguayo writes of Teresa: «How was it possible, except by divine inspiration, for an ignorant woman to write what she did, and in such a particular style, plain and humble on the one hand, yet also grave and sententious, with such remarkable words, so pregnant with divine mysteries!» I27. Two years later, across the Pyrenees, another future Doctor of the Church, St. Francis de Sales, himself a superior literary stylist, describes Teresa's writings in the preface to his Treatise on the Love o f God in these terms:

Blessed Teresa of Jesus has written so well of the sacred movements of charity in all the books that she has left us that we are amazed to see so much eloquence amid such great humility and such firmness of mind in such great simplicity. Her most learned ignorance causes the knowledge of many learned men to seem like ignorance, for after their great efforts at study they are put to shame by not understanding what she has written in so happy a way on the practice of holy love. Thus God raises up the throne of his power on the stage of our infirmity, making use of the weak things to confound the strong 12S.

126 See L au ra G u t ié r r e z R u ed a , «Santa Teresa, escritora», in Ensayo de iconografía teresiana, número m onográfico de Revista de espiritualidad, 23 (1964), 61-78.

127 Quoted in translation in Weber, pp. 163-64; the original text m ay be found in Félix G. Olmedo, «Santa Teresa de Jesús y los predicadores del siglo de oro », Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, 84 (1924), 165-75, and 280-95, at 290.

128 Trans. John K . R ya n , 2 vols. (1963; Rockford: Tan Books, 1975), 1:40. On Teresa's influence on Francis, see Pierre Serouet, De la vie dévote á la vie mystique: Sainte Thérèse d'Avila. Saint François de Sales, Études Carmélitaines (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1958); and Alphonse Vermeylen, Sainte Thérèse en France au X V lie siècle. 1600-1660 (Louvain: Publications


In 1627, in a sermon in honor of Teresa's nomination as co-patron of Spain (an honor she would share with Santiago de Compostela), the Jesuit Rodrigo Niño declares of her: «Sanctity in women usually consists in being quiet, obeying, staying in a corner and forgetting about oneself; O new miracle and rare prodigy! Not by keeping quiet, but by speaking, teaching and writing; not only by obeying, but by ordering, commanding, governing; not by observing enclosure but by traveling, disputing» 129. Finally, nearly four centuries after the publication of Fray Luis' dedicatory letter, the Augustinian friar's image of Teresa is clearly reflected in Pope Paul Vi's apostolic letter proclaiming the Mother of Carmel a Doctor of the Church:

Teresa o f Jesus ... was given [the] divine charism of sacred mysteries so copiously that, though unacquainted with the rules of humanities and letters in a natural manner, she was so remarkable by word and writing.... Notwithstanding her want of skill and knowledge to learn and teach, very frequently it was proven that, communing secretly with God, she was able to perceive, teach and commit to writing the most lofty realities.... Teresa penetrated so accurately and so skillfully into the very mystery o f Christ and into the knowledge of the human soul that her doctrine shows forth without any doubt the effect and strength of a divinely inspired gift of the Spirit l3°.

Universitaires, 1958), pp. 89-188. Perhaps Francis' emphasis on Teresa's «learned ignorance» offers a further insight in to w hy Fray Luis cam e to appreciate and to value Teresa's writings so greatly. The locus classicus o f the idea that the unlearned are graced and «take heaven by fo rce » is St. Augustine's Confessions: see The Confessions o f St. Augustine, trans. F. J. S h e e d (1944; London: Sheed & Ward, 1987), pp. 66 (Book 5, chapter 4) and 135 (Book 8, chapter 8); the quote is from the latter page. By his endorsement and advocacy o f the writings and doctrine o f the unlearned nun Teresa, the learned humanist Fray Luis effectively concurs w ith Augustine; it seems unlikely that the Augustinian friar w ou ld have been unaware o f this concurrence.

129 Quoted in translation in W eber, pp. 164-65; the original text is in Francisco López Estrada, «Cohetes para Teresa: La relación de 1627 sobre las Fiestas de M adrid por el Patronato de España de Santa Teresa de Jesús y la polém ica sobre el m ism o», in Actas del Congreso Internacional Teresiano. Salamanca. 4-7 Octubre. 1982, eds. T. E g id o et al., 2 vols. (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1983), 2:637-81, at 654.

130 Trans. Carmelite Nuns o f Louisville, K Y , in Contemplative Prayer according to the Writings o f St. Teresa o f Jesus and St. John o f the Cross, ed. José L. Morales (Brooklyn Carmel, n.d.), pp. i-ix, at i, iv.