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The Paradoxical Life of Saint Teresa of Avila: Submission and Subversion Within the Patriarchal

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The Paradoxical Life of Saint Teresa of Avila: Submission and Subversion Within the Patriarchal The Paradoxical Life of Saint Teresa of Avila: Submission and Subversion within the Patriarchal Hierarchy of the Catholic Church in Sixteenth-Century Spain by MELODY SMITH Dr. Carlos Gutierrez, Advisor A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Spanish Literature UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI Cincinnati, Ohio 20 May 2011 Submissive daughter of the Church and radical reformist. Revered doctor of the Catholic Church and canonized author of Spanish Golden Age literature. Few people can compare their accomplishments with those of Saint Teresa of Avila; and even fewer can boast such an influence across so wide a range of social contexts. Teresa's life was characterized by paradoxes: sustaining her body while feeding her soul, living in the world while longing for heaven, submitting to ecclesiastical establishment while desiring the authority to change the institution. The opposites that she experienced during her life combined to produce her unique personality, which persists today through her distinct writing style. I1 . #& GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG'7 R GGGGGGGGGGGGG9 & ,1 GGGGGGGGGG'''9 R , ! GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG'2 : R& GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG'; R GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG55 0 &+ GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG'''5< R$ = 0 , & GGGGGGGGG33 0 & , GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG''G33 R& , ! GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG'''3> 1 R , R& GGGGGGGGG75 $ GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG'77 ? GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG''79 1 GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG'7; 1 R ,GGGGGGGG@7 R GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG@7 : A GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG'''@< Smith 2 Chapter 1. Introduction Submissive daughter of the Church and radical reformist. Revered doctor of the Catholic Church and canonized author of Spanish Golden Age literature. Few people can compare their accomplishments with those of Saint Teresa of Avila; and even fewer can boast such an influence across so wide a range of social contexts. Teresa’s life was characterized by paradoxes: sustaining her body while feeding her soul, living in the world while longing for heaven, submitting to ecclesiastical establishment while desiring the authority to change the institution. The opposites that she experienced during her life combined to produce her unique personality, which persists today through her distinct writing style. In an attempt to understand and interpret Teresa’s writing style, a close study of her spiritual autobiography Life proves to be beneficial for various reasons. One reason is the work’s popularity: for many, her Life stands as the model of Teresian literature. No analysis of the saint’s major works is complete without the inclusion of her Life . In it , Teresa provides a first- hand account of “the life of the holy mother Teresa of Jesus and some of the favours granted to her by God” ( Life 9). Therefore, Teresa has evaluated all the events in her life and has chosen the instances that she has deemed most necessary to share in order to provide an explanation of herself. Because it was written by herself, she gives an apparent unbiased perspective of the occurrences of the most significant aspects of her life and the spiritual favors she experienced. However, as will be investigated more thoroughly later in the paper, Teresa’s works were influenced by a number of indirect factors, most significantly the patriarchal structure of the Catholic Church. Smith 3 The role of the patriarchal structure of the Catholic Church on Teresa is best illustrated by her relations with specific male ecclesiastical authorities. Her relationships with her confessors present the most in-depth influence upon Teresa’s life and theology. Because she sought them for council concerning her soul, she related all of her experiences to them and heeded their advice and orders. She also had a confessor almost continuously from the time she entered the convent 1536 until her death in 1582, so an analysis of the role of her confessors will provide information covering the most significant portion of her life. Analyzing her relationship with her confessors will also provide examples of the patriarchal demands and her submission to and defiance of the system, shedding light on her often contradictory writing style. For these reasons, an examination of the influence that her confessors and other male authorities had on her life will supplement the information given in each section. The social context under which Teresa lived created some of the strongest influences on her life. Sixteenth century Spain’s ideals of social class placed severe restrictions upon those who found themselves positioned within the lower class, especially new Christians and women. Religious ideology of the time also created an atmosphere of oppression and fear to those who opposed the institution. Having been raised under such an oppressive social system, Teresa, like most citizens of sixteenth century Spain, developed a tendency to submit to authority, both social and ecclesiastical. Teresa’s position within society as a woman and from a family of recent converts from Judaism put her at a severe disadvantage as far as ever having a chance to express herself. Her entrance into the religious vocation restricted her even further. Finally, her mystical theology made her a target of suspicion by church officials, so her only option of survival was to be honest about her experiences and submit to the discretion of her male authorities. Throughout Smith 4 her Life Teresa details several examples of obeying her confessors and superiors, despite her own desires to oppose them. While Teresa learned how to practice humility and submission, she never abandoned her own theology. Due to the religious reform that was sweeping across Europe at the time, certain “new Christianity” theology was made accessible to Teresa. Her love for reading and desire for education led her to the writings of mystical thinkers such as Francisco de Osuna and Bernardino de Laredo. In their explanations she found answers to the confusion she had been experiencing in her own prayer life. She also met the acquaintance of several Jesuit and Franciscan clergy who answered her questions and advised her in the way she should go to attain spiritual development. The relationships she had with these new thinking confessors and other clergy reveal crucial information to Teresa’s theological development. Based on her own experience and confirmation she received through her prayer and visions, she knew this mystical theology to be true. Therefore, Teresa was confronted with the conflicting sentiments of her loyalty to the church and devotion to the holy sacraments and her pleasure in prayer and desire for spiritual growth. This internal conflict between her loyalties to the religious institution and her longings for a deeper personal religious experience explains the apparent inconsistencies in Teresa’s writing style. Patterns of Teresa’s conforming to societal views are found all throughout her Life, but so are hints of her theology which the church considered to be a threat. In order to safely incorporate her new theology into her works, Teresa had to make careful adaptations in her language when expressing potentially contradictory views. Recent research conducted by Teresian scholars has interpreted these adaptations as subversive tendencies in the Saint’s writings (Perez-Romero and Weber). The rhetorical devices incorporated into her writing style Smith 5 illustrate how Teresa used submission to attain the results she wanted within an oppressive system. This battle of opposites that Teresa experienced produced an ironic relationship between obedience and defiance within the patriarchal authority of the sixteenth-century Catholic Church in Spain. An analysis of the writing style found in the spiritual autobiography of this great saint reveals how Teresa overcame this oppressive social system in order to maintain and spread her new theology, illustrated by her relationships with her confessors. Teresa’s Life represents her paradoxical stand against oppressive authority – the power that she found in submission. Chapter 2 Teresa’s Submission within Her Social Context The Ideology that Formed Sixteenth-Century Spanish Society Teresa lived under one of the most controlling social environments within the world’s history. In sixteenth century Spain, the code of “honra” which classified persons in society based on the purity of their blood generated an obsession with nobility and honor. Meanwhile the powerful Catholic Church with its menacing Inquisition produced a nation-wide requirement of obedience. These two forces resulted in the strict hierarchical structure of Spanish society as well as the general ambient of fear of nonconformity with the rules. Antonio Perez-Romero describes the historical context that led to the creation of the domineering Spanish castizo ideology of the time period. The word c astizo in Spanish refers to Smith 6 the unique and typical characteristics associated with a given subject, in this case the traditional ideology of sixteenth century Spain. Romero notes that the seeds of the castizo ideology date back to the Spanish-Christian struggle against the Moors and the Reconquest of the peninsula to restore the Christian-Roman-Visogathic Spain (6). The most significant results of the Reconquest were the expulsion (or conversion) of all the Jews from Spain in 1492 and the establishment of the Inquisition. Bilinkoff concentrates the effects of this war-focused history on Teresa’s
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