Teresa de Avila, Lettered Woman

by Bárbara Mujica

In 1562, Teresa de Avila founded the Discalced Carmelites and launched a reform movement that would pit her against the Church hierarchy and the male officials of her own religious order. This new spirituality, which stressed interiority and a personal relationship with God, was considered dangerous and subversive. It provoked the suspicion of the Inquisition and the wrath of unreformed Carmelites, especially the Andalusian friars, who favored the lax practices of their traditional monasteries. The Inquisition investigated Teresa repeatedly, and the Carmelite General had her detained. But even during the most terrible periods of persecution, Teresa continued to fight for the reform using the weapon she wielded best: the pen. Teresa wrote hundreds, perhaps thousands, of letters to everyone from the King to prelates to mothers of novices. Teresa's epistolary writing reveals how she used her political acumen to dodge inquisitors and negotiate the thorny issues of the reform, facing off the authorities--albeit with considerable tact--and reprimanding priests and nuns who failed to follow her orders. Her letters bring to light the different strategies she used--code names, secret routing--in order to communicate with nuns and male allies. They show how she manipulated language, varying her tone and rhetoric according to the recipient or slipping into deliberate vagueness in order to avoid divulging secrets. What emerges from her correspondence is a portrait of extraordinary courage, ability, and shrewdness. In the sixteenth century, the word letrado (lettered) referred to the learned men of the Church. Teresa treated letrados with great respect and always insisted on her own lack of learning. The irony is that although women could not be letradas, Teresa was, as her correspondence shows, "lettered" in more ways than one.

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

American novelist, short story writer and critic. Her latest novels are Sister Teresa (2007), based on the life of Saint Teresa of Avila, and Frida, (2001) based on the life of Frida Kahlo. The latter was an international bestseller that was translated into seventeen languages. Barbara Mujica’s other book-length fiction includes The Deaths of Don Bernardo (novel, 1990), Sanchez across the Street (stories, 1997) and Far from My Mother’s Home (stories, 1999). Barbara Mujica’s short stories have appeared in numerous magazines including The Minnesota Review, Pangolin Papers, and The Literary Review, and anthologies such as Where Angels Glide at Dawn, eds. Lori Carlson and Cnythia Ventura, Intro. Isabel Allende (1990, 1993), What Is Secret: Stories by Chilean Women, ed. Marjorie Agosín (1995), Two Worlds Walking, ed. C. W. Truesdale and Diana Glancy (1994), and The House of Memory, ed. Marjorie Agosín (1999). Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Miami Herald, The Dallas Morning Star, and hundreds of other publications. In 1990 her essay “Bilingualism’s Goal” was named one of the best 50 op-eds of the decade by The New York Times. Mujica has won several awards for her writing: the Trailblazers Award from Dialogue on Diversity (2004), the Theodore Christian Hoepfner Award (2002), the Pangolin Prize (1998), the E. L. Doctorow International Fiction Competition (1992). She has also won grants and awards from Poets and Writers of New York, the Spanish Government, and other institutions. She is a two-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize for Fiction. A Professor of Spanish at Georgetown University, she has written numerous scholarly books and articles. The latest books are Lettered Women: The Correspondence of Teresa de Avila (Vanderbilt University Press, forthcoming), Espiritualidad y feminismo: Santa Teresa de Jesus,(Ediciones del Orto, 2007), and Women Writers of Early Modern Spain: Sophia's Daughters (Yale University Press, 2004).

Reviews

[Lestari Hairul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious, horrifying in some parts, would totally be a Catholic nun in her time.