Self-management and Narrativity in Teresa of Avila's Work

ABSTRACT

In this article, I propose a philosophical interpretation of Teresa of Avila’s The Book of Her Life as a point of departure for a consideration of the relationship between subjectivity and narrativity. The Book of Her Life reveals a tension between self-affirmation and humility, between Teresa’s attachment to the world and the detachment from the world as required by the ascetic path she chose to undertake; between her strong sense of self and her drive to renounce her own will. The ways in which Teresa resolves such tensions reveal a particular conception of the self as something one can shape by using ascetic techniques like ascetic humility, by practising rhetorical humility intended to create a public reputation, by engaging in public self-affirmation meant to promote one’s way of life (exemplarity), and by transforming the renunciation of one’s will into an acceptance of God’s will, which results in a consolidation of Teresa’s charisma and self-confidence.

KEYWORDS:

• Teresa of Avila
• self
• narrativity
• autobiography

Introduction

The Book of Her Life (Libro de la vida) is the first work of the Carmelite reformer Teresa of Avila (*1515, Avila, Spain; 1582, Toledo, Spain).¹ Previously, in 1560, Teresa wrote a ‘Cuenta de conciencia’ (lit. account of conscience), wherein she describes her way of praying, her extraordinary mystic experiences – ‘arrobamientos’ (raptures) and visions – and confesses her sins, thus showing the ‘state of her soul’ to her confessor at the time, Pedro Ibáñez (De Jesús 2006, 21; Javierre 1982). It is known that Teresa wrote her autobiography at least three times at the request of her confessors or counsellors, and that her purpose was to show the state of her soul and to confess her sins.² However, her perseverance and the fact that she wrote the final version even under the threat of drawing the attention of the Inquisition make it obvious that writing this book was a personal wish. The Book of Her Life is not merely an autobiography or a confession, but a deep reflection of the circumstances surrounding Teresa’s life and deeds, the forces which influenced her, an account of her responsibilities, a description of her sufferings and her resources for managing them, a detailed reflection on her feelings and emotions as well as their influence on her actions and decisions, and even a particular form of self-affirmation. She frames the first 50 years of her life as a history of a religious search for perfection full of progress, setbacks and doubts, detailing her ascetic practices, work, as well as her social engagement (particularly with regard to her foundations of reformed monasteries).³ She combines this account of her life with a reflection upon it in the context of the search for perfection, and tries to find moral lessons the reader (particularly the nuns of her reformed monasteries) can glean from her life experiences. In other words, Teresa did not write her autobiography just for her confessors, given that she constantly provides advice to others by drawing on her own experience of trying to conduct herself in a certain moral, virtuous way.

Teresa used The Book of Her Life as a testimony of her religious life and her deeds, a kind of general confession which she gave to each new confessor whose advice she sought. The book was soon also distributed among the clergy, Teresa’s personal friends, and even members of the Spanish nobility, like the Duchess of Alba or the Princess of Eboli, whose maids ridiculed it. The Princess of Eboli denounced the book to the tribunals of the Inquisition in retaliation against Teresa, who had originally overseen the foundation of a reformed Carmelite convent in Pastrana under the protection of the princess, but had to transfer the nuns to another convent because the princess’ eccentricities were incompatible with the Carmelite way of life (De Jesús 2006, 32). After Teresa’s death, the book became well known in the Spanish religious and intellectual world, with the first edition by Luis de León being published in Salamanca in 1588.⁴ As a writer, Teresa has been compared to Cervantes, and is considered one of the best Spanish literature writers of all time.⁵ As a mystic, she became a key figure of Spanish and European mysticism, together with John of the Cross (1542–1591), who helped her to develop the reform of the Carmelite friars. As a Catholic, she achieved the highest acknowledgments; she was canonised in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV and named Doctor of the Church by Pope Paulus VI in 1970, making Teresa the first woman to attain this title, together with Catherine of Siena.

I propose a philosophical interpretation of The Book of Her Life as a point of departure for a consideration of the relationship between subjectivity and narrativity. The Book of Her Life reveals a tension between self-affirmation and humility, between Teresa’s attachment to the world and the detachment from the world as required by her chosen ascetic path, between her strong sense of self and her wish to renounce her own will.⁶ The ways in which she resolves these tensions show a particular relationship between subjectivity and narrativity, and reveal a particular conception of the self. To Teresa, her self is an object of daily hard work (in terms of self-reflection and self-improvement) and her subjectivity becomes an enlarged experimental space full of struggle and contradictions, subject to the influence of controllable and uncontrollable external and internal forces.⁷

In The Book of Her Life, Teresa tries to give an account of herself, that is, to acknowledge herself as the subject of her actions, and more specifically, to acknowledge herself as a moral subject (the subject of her moral actions). The debate on how exactly the subject relates to morality (the sets of norms) is ongoing, but it is clear that what is at stake here is not only the fact that moral norms require moral subjects, but the fact that the mere conception of a subject somehow entails morality in a double sense. For one, norms already exist when a new human being begins to think about him/herself. In this reflexivity, a new subject emerges, perhaps stimulated by the demands of a society which expects this subject to answer the question ‘Who are you?’ or to give an account of his/her actions. The morality and normative ideals intrinsic to the current systems of truth determine or condition the emergence of selves, as Foucault argues (1988, 1991). For another, the subject is a subject inasmuch as it is able to appropriate norms, to internalise them by assuming that they function as norms and occasionally by adopting a critical attitude towards them.⁸

A subject develops his/her self-conscience in the context of the broader panorama of norms, the demands of others, and public scrutiny. The norms ‘prepare a place within the ontological field for a subject’ (Butler 2005, 9) and the subject interacts, struggles and coexists with such norms, demands and questions. One’s own identity is partially the result of conditioning and partially the result of a personal effort to distinguish between the expectations of others and one’s own (i.e. those created under the influence of others’ expectations). Foucault considered the process of self-constitution to be a kind of self-making (poiesis). However, I prefer the expression ‘self-management’ because ‘self-making’ presupposes the creation of something with a clear goal in mind and a perceived end result, yet the formation of the self is not like that. ‘Self-management’ entails dealing with the reality one has discovered one was born into. It includes the idea that a person is expected to ‘do’ something with this reality every day in a social context, probably without a clear goal in mind and without an end result (human beings are always ‘moving,’ ‘on the road,’ and there is no definitive, crystallised version of the self, even after death, because it is impossible to create a definitive biography or picture about anybody. New unknown data about this person can always be revealed and a certain level of interpretation is unavoidable in a biography. Selves are not absolutely transparent, neither to themselves nor anybody else. Narrations, biographies and autobiographies cannot be but incomplete as there are aspects of the ‘narrated self’ that they simply cannot capture through their structure and language. Moreover, narrations do not simply chronicle the process of self-management, but contribute to it. This is especially the case with confessions, which have a clear performative effect. Teresa’s Book of Her Life is a good source for studying all these dimensions of the construction of identity and its relationship with norms. Teresa herself was unsure of her life goal in the beginning, and had the impression of being unable to make progress on her path to perfection. Nevertheless, her autobiography is a story of success,⁹ as Teresa recounts how she eventually manages, through her observance of the rules of Christian asceticism, to become worthy of God’s trust: In the end, he becomes her direct advisor, the ultimate proof that she has chosen the right path.

Writing and publishing an autobiography is always an exercise in self-affirmation. It entails, or requires, the idea ‘I am somebody,’ inasmuch as ‘somebody’ is the subject of an interesting story, a subject which has something interesting to tell. Teresa wanted to provide the world with an answer to the question, ‘Who are you?,’ even though, as a woman and a nun, the world would never even think to ask her.¹⁰ Her most relevant public actions were the foundations of the Discalced Carmelite monasteries. Her actions spoke for her, but telling her own story from her own point of view, which entails a strong self-consciousness, reinforced them. The story always follows the actions and can capture them only partially, but it has its own performative functions in the social realm. The autobiography contributes to the image of the self one tries to portray; it completes the character revealed by the actions. Given this, how can humility contribute to making an autobiography (that is, the revelation of a particular self) possible, especially in a context in which such a (feminine) self was not supposed to be revealed? In other words, how can humility be used for self-affirmation?

Giving an account of the self to the world. Self-affirmation vs humility

The Book of Her Life shows the complexity of giving an account of oneself, and the particular difficulties faced by a person who is not expected to be visible or to have an account worth sharing. Teresa was faced with societal pressures and marginalisation for being a woman, a descendant of converted Jews, and the fact that she belonged to a family of ‘hidalgos,’ low-ranking Spanish nobility, which was in decline at the time (Rodríguez-Guridi 2010); moreover, she witnessed the economic decline of her family as well (Javierre 1982). All these circumstances shaped her, but her status as a woman was certainly the greatest handicap for writing an autobiography that reveals a self with a rich interior life, intellectual and emotional capacities, and a public character. She uses the rhetoric of humility extensively in order to achieve the seemingly impossible: to reveal a self that society at the time did not expect a priori to be revealed.

Teresa not only had to contend with societal pressures, but also had to deal with the oppressive role which the religious authorities tried to impose on her, the model of a Christian religious woman and a Catholic nun. Since the Catholic clergy at the time felt threatened by the Protestant Reformation, they reacted by consolidating their power and strengthening their influence, which created an unfavourable climate for questioning the ecclesiastic authority or defending one’s own divine experiences. At the same time, the Catholic Church needed new public figures and figureheads in order to fortify its position. Teresa never defied the ecclesiastic authority openly, and considered the obedience she had sworn as a Catholic nun to be part of her spiritual outlook, although she occasionally tried to find ways around it (e. g. by keeping her preparations for founding her first monastery a secret, because she knew it would not be accepted by all her superiors). While she often acquiesced to the demands of her superiors, she also found ways to develop her own initiative, which she felt was supported by God and legitimated by the purified state of her soul, the result of her ascetic practices.¹¹

Rhetorical humility is a constant in Teresa’s writings. From the beginning, she presents herself to the world as a sinner, considering her life to be morally ‘wretched’ (V1).¹² Humility fulfils two different purposes in Teresa’s life. On the one hand, it represents a purgative step taken by the soul in the search for God. Teresa’s relationship with God (they spoke to each other and God joined mystically her) was hardly a relationship between two equals, and she expresses this incommensurability in different ways throughout her work. The overemphasised humility, or ‘ascetic humility,’ is one of them. On the other hand, humility was expected and required of any virtuous Catholic woman in sixteenth-century Spain. This public attitude is expressed through ‘rhetorical humility’ in Teresa’s autobiography and other writings.¹³ This is not to say that Teresa’s humility was merely affected or a facade, a feature of the ‘character Teresa’ whom she wanted to portray in her written works. Rather, Teresa considered humility to be a vital virtuous attitude, a part of her training on her path to spiritual perfection, that is, to be ready in case God decides to join her. But at the same time, the rhetoric of humility cultivated in her writings is undoubtedly intentional, an act of speech intended to persuade her readers of the truthfulness of her experiences and testimony, which supports her deeds in her active life (e.g. her reformation).¹⁴ This second kind of humility is not always in line with Teresa’s personal striving for perfection, but serves the construction of a reputation. It is a rhetoric resource used to shape the public character of Teresa. These two kinds of humility do not always correspond, which can be seen in the following examples.

When Teresa reconstructs the story of her spiritual progression, she refers to her beginnings as a sinner who did not give herself completely to God. For example, she mentions that the real reason why she entered a monastery was to avoid the fires of hell and to attain access to heaven, but not out of a pure love of God. Although she accepted the Catholic dogma from the outset, she needed to work more on her own attitude, intentions and tendencies in order to achieve a higher spiritual state. She considers this initial lack of dedication to God even after becoming a nun a grave offence against God (V 4, 3). However, God still bestowed His grace and mercy upon her. She interprets the contrast between her sins and the great mercy of God as a sign of His greatness and her insignificance.

At least, Teresa is happy to know that her sinfulness emphasises the great mercy of God (V 4, 3). This kind of humility emphasises the greatness of God and contributes to legitimising her relationship with him, a relationship that is disproportionate by nature. Going one step further, Teresa reaffirms this position with a rhetoric paragraph in which she uses her literary abilities to persuade the reader of her appealing to the reader’s spontaneous emotional response (compassion):

In whom, Lord, can your mercies shine as they do in me who have [sic] so darkened with my evil deeds the wonderful favors you began to grant me? Woe is me, my Creator, for if I desire to make an excuse, I find none! Nor is anyone to be blamed but myself. For if I would have paid back some of the love you began to show me, I should not have been able to employ it in anyone but You.¹⁵ (V4, 4)

She repeatedly emphasises her own unworthiness by using rhetorical figures like hyperbole (‘I have no excuse,’ ‘I am the only one guilty’), rhetorical questions and exclamations. She tries to appeal to the readers’ benevolence by presenting herself as an unworthy sinner whose transgressions are at least useful for showing the grandiosity of God’s mercy. In addition, she takes great care in choosing her words and creating a harmonious rhythm of the text. This emphasis on the beauty of language shows that the text clearly is not meant solely for her confessors. In crafting her reputation, her public character, the captatio benevolentiae plays an important role (Weber 1990, 49). In this case, Teresa’s ascetic humility is reinforced by her rhetoric humility.

At the beginning of her spiritual development, Teresa’s ascetic humility was so extreme that she would be drawn into a spiral of self-doubt and anxiety: she regretted her sins to the point of not even daring to pray because she considered her offences against God so grave that even her prayers would be unworthy. She feared the weight of her sorrow, as prayer would render her completely conscious of her sins, and require her to accept any punishment (V6, 4). Yet, she found not praying to be even more painful, and suffered because of her sins regardless. In her account, Teresa comes to the conclusion that this turned out to be a ‘false humility,’ a trick of the devil and its evil forces to separate her from her spiritual path to God (7, 1). From her own experience, she comes to understand that failing to pray out of fear or false humility is not an option that should be taken (V 8, 9). In other words, any kind of humility that can refrain anybody from praying cannot be but a false humility. When her counsellors Baltasar Álvarez and Francisco de Salcedo recommend she stop praying because they do not trust the divine nature of her mystic experiences, she feels on the verge of losing her mind. The contradiction that arises from her conviction of the authenticity of these experiences versus her confessors’ lack of trust causes her extreme suffering, which she expresses with rhetorical humility in V28, 18:

For the opposition of good men to a little woman, wretched, weak, and fearful like myself, seems to be nothing when described in so few words; yet among the very severe trials I suffered in my life, this was one of the most severe. (V 28, 18)¹⁶

However, she is finally vindicated by Pedro de Alcántara and Diego de Cetina’s trust in her and her experiences, which gives her the certainty that not praying to God because of feelings of unworthiness is a kind of ‘false humility’ instilled by the devil. It is possible to recognise this false humility because it comes with unrest and anxiety (‘inquietud y desasosiego’), leaving the soul shrouded in obscurity and sadness, arid and barren, which is a disposition ill-suited for prayer and good deeds. Genuine humility brings calm, softness, and light. It is the result of being aware of one’s sins; although it is indeed pain – and sorrowful (‘una pena’), this feeling of sorrow is useful, dedicated to the recognition of divine mercy (V30, 8). In the end, Teresa is finally able to reconcile her ascetic humility with a certain inner calm and even self-confidence.

Teresa was also conscious of the empowering capacity of humility in her particular social context, and made use of it. Humility was seen as a sign of a good Christian, particularly in a woman. Teresa claims the strength of being directly chosen by God to transmit his testimony against the mundane resources of the ‘hombres letrados’ (learned men), who aimed to find ‘true’ wisdom in their books. She knows that humility is a good method for substantiating the truthfulness of her experiences: Two examples are the Virgin Mary or the Samaritan woman, whose testimonies were accepted because they were humble (Slade 1986, 39). She emphasises her low position with her rhetorical humility repeatedly, alternating between confession and self-exculpation (Weber 1990, 54). For example: ‘So believe me, for the love of God, believe this small ant that the Lord wants her to speak … ’ (V31, 21).¹⁷ In other words, even as she acknowledges and reinforces her insignificance, she describes her conviction and connection to God as genuine, and asks to be believed on these grounds.

Teresa’s humility (both the rhetorical and the ascetic kind) relates to the connection between her confessions and the exemplarity that she expects her life and experiences to have for others. One of the functions of her confessions is to make her experiences useful for other Christians who are interested in leading a spiritual life. She almost apologises when she moves from pure confession to giving recommendations, as in chapter 6 of The Book of Her Life: ‘If I were a person who had authority for writing, I would willingly and in a very detailed way enlarge upon what I am saying … ’ (V6, 8).¹⁸ In other words, she has to first construct the authority to write by using hypotheticals. At the end of Chapter 10, 7–8, she declares that her confessors are free to decide if her texts follow Catholic doctrine or not, to modify or even destroy them. She uses the excuse of being a woman and not having any education or good capacities to free herself in order to write what she wants: Nobody should expect her to know all the correct theological references – although she acknowledges having read Augustine, Jerome, and Francisco of Osuna, she claims to have a very bad memory. How to justify her audacity of going from mere confession to recommendation and exemplarity, particularly taking into account that the Catholic Church prohibited women from teaching the doctrine?¹⁹ In V11, 6, she refers directly to the confessor who is expected to read the text:²⁰ Being a woman would be a reason not to dare make ‘comparisons’ (she refers to her recommendations about how to pray included in her allegory of how to cultivate a garden), and be limited to ‘write simply what they ordered me to write’ (that is, the confessions). But being uncultured is problematic in the sense that she does not dominate the ‘language of the spiritual things,’ so she is ‘obligated’ to use her imagination, that is, literary resources. In this way, she uses her position (woman, uncultured) as a resource to empower herself, with rhetorical humility a crucial resource.

Between public self-affirmation and detachment from the world

There exists a tension between the public self-affirmation of Teresa’s writings and her desired and lived detachment from the world. Total detachment from the world does not require any testimony or witness, simply anonymity. However, Teresa wanted to promote a certain way of living: Her writings, including The Book of Her Life, are meant to provide a public testimony of a perfect Christian life, and her works were promoted in this vein after her death.

Teresa’s public self-affirmation is a consequence of that situation: By affirming herself, presenting her progressive way of spiritual development which culminates in an intimate relationship with God through her strong efforts, she affirms this way of life. By showing her spiritual development, as well as the spiritual and physical rewards she received even in this life (rewards were generally seen as attainable only in the afterlife) – that is, her achievement of a disposition which allowed her to be ‘touched’ by God and the divine grace – she reveals to the world the advantages of living this kind of life (V11, 11; V4, 2). This serves as an indication as to how public self-affirmation can be compatible with detachment from the world. Detachment from the world and one’s life (Luc 14, 26) is one of the main requirements of Christian asceticism,²¹ together with the surrender of oneself, the acceptance of suffering (named ‘the Cross’) (Luc 9, 23), and the renunciation of material possessions (Mat 19, 21).²² The kind of liberation sought by Teresa and the Christian ascetics was grounded in the belief in life after death. Detachment from this world was a first step in this belief, a way of preparing oneself for the afterlife and a practice meant to confirm the believer’s faith in it. Assuming that human beings can never feel at home in this world because they can find their real ‘home’ only after death entails renouncing one’s attachment to the world in order to ‘be ready’ for the ‘important’ life, i.e. life after death.²³ The mystic union with God anticipates the feeling of being at home which one can expect to feel in heaven, but this is only a short reprieve compared to the permanence of the afterlife (V18, 9).

Detachment from the world has a moral dimension: It entails the renunciation of property, of having a family and children, marriage, commodities (by accepting the monastic life and rule), and even the acceptance of mortification (whether in order to placate one’s own passions, to minimise one’s physical needs and to maximise one’s spiritual life, to pay for one’s own sins or even the sins of others).²⁴ This attitude is considered morally superior; detachment from the world is virtuous because it liberates the soul and the body from worldly issues and situates the person closer to God. It is also a way of liberation from its penalties, including its toils, persecutions, gossip and calumny, as well as illness (V19, 3). Teresa reports having achieved such a state at the end of The Book of Her Life (V40, 21). Attaching less importance to worldly concerns frees the practitioner to attend to spiritual concerns. This is a kind of state of the soul for Teresa, a particular state of grace in which she lives closer to God than to the world, and she experiences the worldly things as if she were dreaming (V40, 22).

Teresa resolves the tension between public self-affirmation and detachment from the world in two ways. In her active life, she aims to carry out God’s work.²⁵ Her reformation of the Carmelite order entailed a reinforcement of the austere living conditions required by the spiritual path to perfection; in other words, Teresa aimed to institutionalise the way of living she first devised for herself. As a founder of new monasteries, she led an active social life, and was perceived (both during her life and afterwards) as a spiritual leader.²⁶ However, it was only through the public affirmation of her spiritually successful way of life that she could promote the principle of detachment from the world. At the same time, once she took on her mission to promote the Catholic ascetic-mystic way of life, she could not follow her own principles completely and fully renounce the world. Her first way of resolving this tension was to attach herself to the world only inasmuch as such attachment was necessary in order to promote the Catholic ascetic-mystic way of life, seen in the example of her intention to found the monasteries without any regular income or funds, relying only on the occasional charity of the towns.²⁷

Christianity looks back on a long tradition of hagiographies (narratives describing the exemplary lives of the saints), one of the most widely disseminated being The Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine (1993). The narration of exemplary lives is much more effective than simply disseminating a set of rules because narratives, unlike normative texts, are much more capable of moving the emotions and feelings of the believers (Salmon 2008) because it promotes identification with the exemplar, and the ambition to live as she does, and because narratives can lay out the process of leading such an exemplary life, touching upon the progress made, the failures, the regressions, and the difficulties. Narratives are very efficient at showing that a virtuous Christian life is indeed possible for a human being – at least in the case of the more or less realistic hagiographies, such as that of Augustine of Hippo or Teresa of Avila. In both cases, they attain spiritual perfection, but neither hides the fact that they had to fight against themselves and the temptations of the world, or that they achieved this perfection only after great effort and sacrifice. During the first stages of her spiritual development, Teresa desires death in order to be with God (‘muero porque no muero’; ‘I die because I do not die’).²⁸

After her spiritual marriage, she comes to understand that she must not desire death, instead accepting life and its intrinsic sufferings as a service to God, as a proof of love to him (E 15; M 7, 3). She concludes that her obligation is to serve God in this world because she finds that there are particular ways to do so that are not available in the afterlife. In other words, perfect detachment from the world does not entail a renunciation of one’s life. One should not be too attached to one’s life – meaning that one needs to be able to die for Christ, as well as to accept any illness or death gracefully, as Teresa reminds the nuns of her reformed monasteries (CV2, 5, 3) – but one has an obligation to preserve and treat one’s own life and the life of others with care.²⁹

While Teresa renounces certain attachments to the world, she sees her public self-affirmation as legitimated by the usefulness of her experiences to others who are interested in following the same spiritual way and by the aim of continuing God’s work in this world.

Giving an account of the self to God, renouncing one’s own will to join God’s will

For Teresa, giving an account of her self to the world parallels giving an account of her self to God. Her ascetic practices are aimed at surrendering or silencing one’s own will in order to accept God’s will in its stead. Which kind of self does Teresa affirm, when the will of this self has been minimised or even annihilated, and substituted entirely by God’s? What is human will? Which kind of self emerges after practising complete obedience? In the works of Augustine and Duns Scotus, the will is conceived as a power of the soul which is able to resist the commands of the intellect and the exigencies of desire (Arendt 1981). Hannah Arendt re-conceptualizes will as the basic ability of human beings to want or not want the objects offered by intellect or desire. The idea is that it is impossible to force one’s will to want or not want something (Arendt 1981), so a person’s will belongs entirely to them and can even be considered their principium individuationis. The will is seen as a particular power of the soul which is completely independent from external influences, a completely autonomous power, free from anything other than its own self-determination.

Francis of Assisi mentions Adam’s disobedience when he refers to human will in his text Admonitioni (cap. 2). He interprets the fact that Adam ate from the tree of knowledge in the sense that he appropriated his own will by pretending that his good deeds were ‘his’ actions, and not God’s actions through him, which is seen as a sin of pride (Fonti Francescane 2011). Francis argues that human beings are responsible for their misdeeds, but they are not the subjects of their good deeds, because good deeds are expressions of the traces of God in them.³⁰ The practices of obedience and humility are meant to lead the practitioner down the opposite path from the one followed by Adam. Christian ascetic mysticism intends to create the habitus of obedience in order to become used to not following one’s own will, to renounce one’s own capacity to want or not want something offered by intellect or desire. One’s will is seen as a source of unrest and anxiety because, as Duns Scotus states, wanting or not wanting is always contingent (cit. by Arendt 1981). The Christian promise is that the renunciation of one’s own will results in rest for the soul, in peace of mind (Kempis 1486, cap XVII), which is not only a reward of the afterlife, but can be enjoyed in this life too. According to Augustine, one’s will must transform into love of God, assuming a kind of love which is modelled after the Holy Trinity (the Father is the one who loves, the Son is the beloved, and the Holy Spirit is love itself), assuming that ‘[l]ove is life that joins’ (Augustine of Hippo 1968, 435). Therefore, the love of God equates to a union with Him.

The practice of obedience is not a simple matter of allowing others to make decisions for an individual, although this can be seen as a kind of renunciation of a crucial aspect of the self as well. Instead, ascetic obedience intends to intervene in what a person wants or does not want, and to shape such internal signs of individuality. What is of interest here is not whether or not free will as defined by Christian theology exists, but why the renunciation of one’s own will was such an important part of the ascetic way and what exactly the practice entailed, given that Teresa’s example shows that it is possible to reconcile the renunciation with an active life and a certain form of self-affirmation. In fact, the renunciation of one’s own will cannot be absolute, even in the context of asceticism. At least the desire to renounce one’s will must persist, which is in itself a kind of will-driven act. Teresa adopts the Augustinian anthropology, making clear that she can intervene in the expression of her own will, both by judging it on a case-by-case basis (for example when she arrives at the conclusion that her own desire for poverty is not perfect, CC1a, 16) and by wanting or not wanting to have her own desires. For Teresa, the total renunciation of one’s will is possible during mystic unions because one’s will and understanding simply ‘rest’ in God for the time being. During the mystic experiences, the will simply ‘loves God’ (V10, 1). In this way, she ‘loves’ the order of God (instead of the disorder of free will), and she assumes that the Catholic Church represents such order.

The practice of obedience entails accepting the authority of a pastoral power. If obedience is practised, then it follows that somebody has to give orders which require obedience. Pastoral power can be comforting in the sense that one does not doubt what to do; the anxiety induced by one’s will is calmed, as Thomas Kempis states. However, this comes at the cost of renouncing one’s own capacity for making decisions, instead entrusting them to others. Since the pastoral power penetrates to the most intimate dimensions of a person, the practice of obedience can leave individuals in a very vulnerable position, both at the mercy of possible manipulation and exploitation by others, and unable to make decisions by themselves. This was not the case for Teresa, who accepted the pastoral power only to a certain point. For instance, she did not unquestioningly accept the first confessor assigned to her, but took it upon herself to seek out the best counsellors of her time (e.g. John of Avila). She also compared their recommendations, and finally decided to follow what she considered to be God’s will, e.g. when proceeding with the Carmelite reformation.³¹ Teresa’s founding of a new Carmelite monastery with stricter rules likewise required her to circumvent the rule of obedience at times, since her superiors frequently disagreed with her intentions. In her narration of the events, she declares that she tries hard not to disobey her superiors’ orders, but that the command of God prevails: If a counsellor tells her that it cannot be done, ‘I would leave it or I would look for another way [to do it]; but the Lord did not give any other way to me, only this one’ (V32, 17).³² In her internal dialogue with God, He tells Teresa when and why she must found the monastery (V32, 11–36). In order to fulfil God’s direct commands, she has to circumvent certain worldly rules like obedience to her superiors, since her devotion to God is stronger than any rule.

For Teresa, renouncing her own will and accepting God’s will instead means having a strong sense of determination and trust in herself. She considers her mystic experiences, like the unions and transverberations, to be proof of the genuine nature of her communication with God. Her visions and prophecies corroborated the Catholic dogma – such as the divine dimension of the sacraments³³ – thus helping to fortify the Catholic position against the Protestant Reformation.

Conclusion

Teresa resolves the tension between the self-affirmation intrinsic to any autobiography and the humility she was expected to practice (and wanted to practice as an ascetic, moral attitude) by affirming herself as a humble person both in a rhetorical way – intended to construct a certain reputation in order to enable her to take the step from merely confessing her sins to giving moral recommendations – and in her ascetic practices. However, this humility and self-effacing attitude do not entail a pure and total denial of the self. Such a denial would be incompatible with any self-narrative or autobiography, since the total denial of the self can only be accomplished in complete silence. Teresa’s way of resolving the tension between self-affirmation and humility reveals a particular conception of the self. The self is seen as something one can shape, at least partially – on the one hand by using the ascetic techniques in which humility paves the way to surrendering one’s own will, and on the other hand by invoking a ‘literary humility,’ a style of writing destined to give credibility to the self-presentation and thus build a public reputation.

The subject which emerges from the resolution of the tension between detachment from the world and public self-affirmation is aware of the impossibility of the total alignment between her interior spiritual life and the moral model she wants to create, because she knows that the worldly judges are not only fallible, but able to commit the gravest injustices (like condemning Juan Bautista or the Son of God). However, this kind of subject still opens her soul and performs a public, often painful affirmation of herself because if she is not believed, she can use such public discredit as an exercise in humility and, of course, can find consolation in her belief in the afterlife. If she is believed, then it means that her message has been understood and is perhaps even followed by others, giving them the best conditions for achieving moral perfection and ascending to heaven themselves.

Giving an account of her self to God was more important to Teresa than any worldly account of her self. Renouncing her will in order to accept God’s will paradoxically provided her with a strong sense of self-trust and determination because she felt inspired by God. She saw herself as empty of herself (her own will, desires, and characteristics), and full of God’s grace. At the same time, Teresa fiercely supported the purity of the Catholic teachings, even defying the Catholic authorities in order to do so. For Teresa, taking on God’s will as her own reinforced her charisma, self-trust, and social position. However, her chosen path of self-denial, including humility, poverty, and renunciation of the will also carries a risk for others, as it has the potential to form very vulnerable human beings who are at the mercy of any given authority figure, empty of themselves, unable to make their own decisions, and lacking self-trust and determination. In other words, there is a possibility of them becoming the victims of the religious system and its intrinsic hierarchical order.

In giving an account of her self, Teresa constituted herself as a subject, not only able to appropriate existing religious norms and structures, but also able to criticise and disagree with them, which required her to develop ways of avoiding the censorship and prosecution, which demanded considerable bravery and imagination. Moreover, she turned her autobiography into an exemplary story by suggesting moral reformations, and founding communities guided by these precepts. Narrativity is essential to building such an enlarged moral subject. It helped Teresa to understand her own psychological and spiritual problems and contributes to the creation of her public reputation. Finally, she found not only inner peace and self-trust, but was also the first woman to attain the highest recognition of the Catholic Church. In summary, Teresa’s self-construction was successful both in the subjective sense and the public sphere.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Anne Siegetsleitner and Peter Kügler for their support during my years at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Innsbruck.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Noelia Bueno Gómez holds a PhD in Philosophy (University of Oviedo). She has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Ethnology (Bratislava, Slovak Academy of Sciences) and as an assistant professor at the Institute of Philosophy (University of Innsbruck, Austria), where she developed a research project entitled ‘The Experience of Suffering. From the Mystic-Ascetic Christian Tradition to the Techno-Scientific Approach,’ funded by the Austrian Science Fund. She is currently an assistant professor in Moral Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy (University of Oviedo). Her main research fields are cultural and social philosophy, philosophy of medicine, political and moral philosophy, and anthropology. Two of her last publications are ‘Conceptualizing Suffering and Pain,’ Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine (2017) 12:7 and Acción y biografía: de la política a la historia. La identidad individual en Hannah Arendt, Valencia, Tirant lo Blanch, 2017.

Additional information

Funding

This proposal is a partial result of the research project ‘The Experience of Suffering. From the Mystic-Ascetic Christian Tradition to the Techno-Scientific Approach,’ funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF: M2027-GBL).

Notes

1. Teresa’s manuscript does not have a title. She referred to the text as ‘The Big Book,’ ‘My Soul,’ and ‘On God’s Mercy’ (my translations) (De Jesús 2006, 23).

All biographical references are taken from the biographical notes and introductions from the complete edition of Teresa of Avila’s works, edited by Efrén de la Madre de Dios and Otger Steggink for Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos (2006). All references to Teresa’s works rely on the same work and the mentioned English translations. This article follows the standard convention of referring to Teresa’s works by title initial, chapter and section numbers. The following abbreviations are used: CC: Cuentas de conciencia [Accounts of Conscience]; CV: Camino de perfección, códice de Valladolid [Way of Perfection, Valladolid codex]; E: Exclamaciones [Exclamations]; M: Moradas del Castillo interior [The Mansions or The Interior Castle] V: Vida [The Book of Her Life].

2. Since she had doubts about her way of praying along with other spiritual concerns, Teresa consulted her friend Gaspar Daza and Father Franscico de Salcedo, who concluded that her experiences were not authentically divine but demoniac, which greatly troubled her (V 23, 14; De Jesús 2006, 31). Daza and Salcedo recommended she make a confession to Diego de Cetina, which prompted Teresa to write a first ‘discourse of my life’ (V23, 15). In response, De Cetina comforted her by confirming the divine dimension of her experiences.

This first autobiography has been lost; however, Teresa wrote a new version in 1562 at the request of her then-confessor Pedro Ibáñez. This first version of The Book of Her Life has also been lost to time, but Teresa subsequently wrote an extended version, which includes the story of the foundation of the monastery of Saint Josef of Avila (1562). In 1564, Teresa copied this manuscript, adding the latest events in her life in order to bare her soul to John of Avila, even against the advice of her confessor Domingo Báñez, who considered the authenticity of Teresa’s experiences to be already proven and was afraid of attracting the attention of the Inquisition, which did eventually happen. The 1564 edition is the sole surviving version, whose original manuscript is preserved at the Monastery of El Escorial (Spain).

3. Teresa understands perfection as a spiritual state in which one is ready for contemplation. Contemplation results from God’s generosity and no human being can achieve it without God’s help (CV 25, 2), although one can work to be ready for it through ascetic practice.

4. It received high praise and strong criticism alike – for instance, in 1589, the inquisitor Alonso de la Fuente began a campaign to ban Teresa’s works (Weber 1990, 159–160).

5. The most important studies on Teresa as a writer are collected in Marcos (2015). On the comparison to Cervantes, see the references to Aurora Egido on pages 341–342 on.

6. Juan Antonio Marcos has conducted a pragmatic-linguistic analysis on the tension between authority and determination on the one side, and humility and submission on the other in the work of Teresa of Avila (Marcos 2001).

7. Pedro Cerezo Galán explains that Teresa’s work contains a modern subject, which is built through both the narrative itself and through her experiences when trying to conquer a personal ‘sí mismo’ (her self). He connects the importance of Teresa’s introspection with the emergence of modern intimacy (Cerezo Galán 1997).

8. An excellent approach to the problem of how the subject relates to social norms can be found in Judith Butler’s Giving an Account of Oneself, in which she re-examines the philosophical theories of Nietzsche, Adorno, Foucault, Cavarero, and Levinas from this perspective.

9. At least it may be judged as a success, even if ‘her Life is not proclamation of success but of trust in the strictest sense.’ (Sullivan 1983, 458).

10. According to Hannah Arendt, the first answer one provides to the inquiry ‘Who are you?,’ made by the world, is a political action, and actions are the crucial signs of individual identity. Arendt understands ‘political action’ as a public intervention in common issues (Arendt 1998; Bueno-Gómez 2017).

11. As is the case of other female mystics, absolute poverty and penitence represented the guarantee of the truthfulness of their mission (Bartolomei 2006). Absolute poverty was part of the general ascetic ideal, but women needed this guarantee even more than men.

12. Teresa tended to be very strict with herself, and to oversize her own sins. She considered a serious sin to have been worried about human affairs before and just after becoming a nun. Her confessors dissuaded her from her intention to be more explicit about her sins (coquetry, flirtation, banal talk, and probably impure thoughts too) in her writings. To sum up, she considered a serious offense against God not to have begun the way of perfection early on in her life.

13. Víctor García de la Concha emphasises Teresa’s talent for rhetoric, both in the sense of using traditional codified tropes and as a strategy of persuasion (cit. by Weber 1990, 10).

14. This article uses the definition of rhetoric given by López Eire (2000). A detailed description of Teresa’s readers and her perception of them is given by Sullivan (1983, 459).

15. Here, the emphasis is placed on the pathetic dimension of Teresa’s argument. However, she clearly also uses the other two modes of persuasion outlined by Aristotle, the ethical and logical arguments (Aristotle, and Kennedy 2006), as Sullivan (1983) explains. Another point of significance is that Teresa presents her own character in defiance of Aristotelean and classic pre-Christian rhetoric. As Sullivan (1983, 464) notes,

Rather than insure that her own character should look right, she presents in as specific detail as her confessors will allow her sins, her vanities, her deceit, her pride […] In direct violation of classical rhetorical theory, which she probably did not know, she explicitly says in various ways thorough the text: I am wicked, but, or indeed, therefore, believe me. This is the translation by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodríguez. (Avila 2008)

16. Translation by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodríguez (Avila 2008).

17. The translation is mine.

18. Translation by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodríguez (Avila 2008).

19. Theologians usually refer to the Pauline epistles, particularly Corinthians 34.14 (Slade 1986). Yet, when Teresa received the posthumous title of ‘Doctor of the Church,’ Pope Paulus VI declared that this did not violate the apostolic precept that excluded women from the teaching mission. Teresa received the doctorate in 1970 after the ecclesiastic authorities differentiated between the ‘charismatic magisterium’ and the ‘hierarchical magisterium,’ decreeing that women could have a particular charisma which would make their magisterium relevant to the Catholic community, but without any authority of hierarchy (Rossi 2006, 147).

20.

I shall have to make use of some comparison, although I should like to excuse myself from this since I am a woman and write simply what they ordered me to write. But these spiritual matters for anyone who like myself has not gone through studies are so difficult to explain. I shall have to find some mode of explaining myself, and it may be less often that I hit upon a good comparison. Seeing so much stupidity will provide some recreation for your Reverence. (V11, 6).

Translation by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodríguez. (Avila 2008)

21. On the definition of asceticism see Clark (1999).

22. It is interesting to mention at this point the first Epistle to the Corinthians, wherein Paul the Apostle contrasts athletes who exercise and train to obtain a ‘corruptible crown’ (Efe 9, 25) with Christians who practice the renunciatory programme in order to obtain an ‘incorruptible crown’ (Efe 9, 25). Christian immortality is at odds with the Ancient Greek idea of worldly glory (Arendt 1998). However, precedents of the practice of detachment from the world can be found even in the Greek context, particularly among the Cynics, who, via their way of life, challenged the Aristotelean idea that eudaimonía (happiness) and humanity were only possible if human life was integrated into the polis (see the definition of a human being as a ‘zoon politikon’) (Aristotle 2005). The Cynics understood their ascetic renunciation of the world as a way of liberation from its conventions and social norms. For Diogenes, accepting the luxury and commodities of conventional life entailed an acceptance of its social conventions and norms, which was seen as a kind of submission (García Gual 2005).

23. Teresa feels that she ‘anda como vendida en tierra ajena’ (V21, 6) (‘She goes about as one sold into a foreign land’ –transl. by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodríguez (Avila 2008). So she does not feel at home but like someone who has been brought to a ‘foreign land’ against their will. In this sense, one should not be afraid of death because then the soul is finally liberated from the prison of the body (V38, 5). See also V38, 6.

24. Teresa did not see marriage only as a renunciation. When se recommends her nuns not to complain about their ascetic way of life, she remembers them that they are luckily free from the subjection intrinsic to marriage (V2, 26, 4). The monastic way of life was not only ‘spiritually higher’ than marriage (although virtue was not incompatible with marriage) but also better for women in other senses.

25. It was Teresa’s relative María de Ocampo who first proposed to her the idea of founding a monastery. Later, Teresa received a vision of God in which He ordered her to found it (V 32, 10–11).

26. Not everyone saw and recognised Teresa as a spiritual leader, however: As mentioned, she was denounced to the Holy Inquisition, and she mentions that people did not trust either her experiences or her intention of founding a new reformed monastery (V 32, 14).

27. Teresa considers the fact that she was able to found the reformed monastery of Saint Josef in Ávila without any regular income proof of the divinity of her mission (V33, 13).

28. ‘I live, yet no true life I know, / and, living thus expectantly, / I die becasue I do not die’ (Teresa of Avila, and Allison Peers (trans.) 2002). ‘Vivo sin vivir en mí / y tan alta vida espero / que muero porque no muero’ (Poesías líricas 2, (De Jesús 2006, 654). She wrote these verses in 1571. We find the same idea in V21, 6.

29. John of the Cross expresses the same idea very clearly in Noche oscura de la subida al monte carmelo (De la Cruz 2014, 283).

30. According to Candel (2009), the idea of will was necessary in the context of Christian ethics in order to justify the radical evilness of sin and the radical evilness of Adam’s guilt. It was inconceivable to make God responsible for the moral evil committed by humans, and it was necessary to establish the concept of human freedom in order to make human beings responsible for their actions (particularly their bad actions). That is why it was necessary to postulate the existence of a particular power of the soul which is completely independent from external influences and infinite – as infinite as guilt and the requisite expiation. Candel contests the existence of such a power of the soul, because he does not see how is it possible to argue for the existence of a completely autonomous power, free from any other external and internal influences.

31. On one occasion Teresa even switched roles with a confessor, which resulted in more or less taking her confessor’s confession, albeit in a very indirect manner. Of course, she uses rhetorical humility in order to tell this story by stating that she herself did not do what she did; rather, God used her for the purpose of reforming the immoral priest. Any other way of presenting the story would have been intolerable. For the story, see V 5, 4. Weber (1990, 58) also comments on it.

32. The translation is mine.

33. For example, in V38, 23 tells a vision she had corroborating the presence of God in the Eucharist even if the priest consecrating is under mortal sin.