PROLOGUE
1. She is referring to her confessors and the learned men who ordered her to write her Life, that is, to Fathers Pedro Ibañez, O.P., García de Toledo, O.P., Baltasar Alvarez, S.J., etc. For more details about all her confessors see Spiritual Testimonies 58.
2. See Life 37.1.
CHAPTER 1
1. The saint’s father was Don Alonso Sánchez de Cepeda (1480?–1543). His first wife, Doña Catalina del Peso y Henao, died in 1507. In 1509, he married Doña Beatriz de Ahumada (1495?–1529), who was fourteen at the time. She gave birth to St. Teresa, March 28, 1515.
For more detailed information about persons and places mentioned in this book, see E. Allison Peers, Handbook to the Life and Times of St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross (Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1954).
2. At that time families belonging to the nobility had at their service Moors who, with limited freedom, remained in Spain after the conquest of Granada by the Catholic monarchs in 1492.
3. There were two from the first marriage: María de Cepeda, born about 1505, and Juan de Cepeda, 1507. From the second marriage, there were ten: Hernando de Ahumada, 1510; Rodrigo de Cepeda, 1511; TERESA DE AHUMADA, 1515; Lorenzo de Cepeda, 1519; Antonio de Ahumada, 1520; Pedro de Cepeda, 1521; Jerónimo de Cepeda, 1522; Agustín de Ahumada, 1527; Juana de Ahumada, 1528; and another child of whom nothing is known.
4. According to a note by Father Gratian on this passage, she is referring to her brother Rodrigo de Cepeda, who sailed to the Americas in 1535 and later died there in battle.
5. Doña Beatriz signed her last will November 24, 1528, and, it is believed, died a little later; so St. Teresa was about fourteen.
6. According to an old tradition, she is referring to a statue of Our Lady of Charity that was venerated in the hermitage of St. Lazarus, outside the walls of the city, near the river Adaja. After the destruction of the hermitage in the nineteenth century, the statue was moved to the cathedral where it is venerated today.
CHAPTER 2
1. Life 1.2.
2. These were adventure stories, very popular in sixteenth-century Spain. They were later ridiculed by Cervantes in Don Quixote, Pt. 1, ch. 6.
3. She is probably referring to the sons of Don Hernando Mejía and Doña Elvira de Cepeda, her father’s sister. We know of three of them: Vasco, born in 1507; Francisco, 1508; and Diego, 1513.
4. Her half sister, María de Cepeda.
5. It was a convent of Augustinian nuns, named Our Lady of Grace, and it still exists in Ávila. In St. Teresa’s time, the nuns operated a boarding school where girls from the nobility were prepared for marriage. The educational level certainly would not have reached that of the present-day high school. This took place about 1531, when Teresa was sixteen.
6. Her half sister married Don Martín Barrientos in January of 1531. They established their home in a little town about a day’s journey northwest of Ávila, called Castellanos de la Cañada.
This nun was Doña María de Briceño y Contreras. She was in charge of the girls, who slept in large dormitories.
CHAPTER 3
1. Mt 22:14.
2. Juana Suárez, according to Gratian. She was a nun at the Carmelite monastery of the Incarnation in Ávila.
3. See Life 2, note 6.
4. This uncle was Don Pedro Sánchez de Cepeda, widower of Doña Catalina del Aguila. He lived in the village of Hortigosa, near the town in which Teresa’s sister lived. Later he retired to the monastery of the Jeronimites, and it was there he died.
5. See Life 1.4.
6. St. Jerome’s letters were translated into Spanish by Juan de Molina and first published in Valencia in 1520.
CHAPTER 4
1. This happened about 1535 when she was twenty. The brother was Antonio de Ahumada, who applied to the Dominicans but was unable to convince them to accept him without paternal consent. He then joined the Jeronimites but did not persevere for lack of health. He went to the Americas and died in Quito, Ecuador from wounds received in the battle of Iñaquito, January 20, 1546.
2. Her friend was Juana Suárez (Life 3, note 2). Teresa entered the monastery of the Incarnation November 2, 1535, at age twenty-one.
3. According to the rules, the clothing took place after one year of postulancy; in St. Teresa’s case, November 2, 1536. The prioress of the Incarnation was Doña Mencía Cimbrón, a distant relative of Teresa’s.
4. She made her religious profession after one year of novitiate, that is, November 3, 1537.
5. A village called Becedas, about fifty miles southwest of Ávila. It was there that the much talked about healer resided.
6. Juana Suárez.
7. See Life 5.7.
8. María de Cepeda. See Life 3.3.
9. Pedro Sánchez de Cepeda. See Life 3.4.
10. This was the distinguished spiritual work by the Franciscan Fray Francisco De Osuna. It was published in Toledo in 1527. The copy used by St. Teresa can be seen in St. Joseph’s monastery at Ávila. It is without doubt one of the books that left the deepest impression on her. In 1931, it was translated into English by a Benedictine of Stanbrook Abbey. See also Francisco De Osuna, Third Spiritual Alphabet, trans. Mary E. Giles, The Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1981).
11. She is referring to the path of the prayer of recollection as taught in Osuna’s book. As for the gift of tears, see Life 11.9. She goes on to speak in this number of the prayer of quiet and of the prayer of union. These are two higher degrees of prayer about which she speaks in chapters 14–15 and 18–22 respectively.
12. By this time she was close to twenty-three.
CHAPTER 5
1. From Castellanos de la Cañada to Becedas. See Life 4.6.
2. Juana Suárez.
3. Father Vicente Barrón, confessor to her family and an outstanding theologian.
4. Not the Dominican father, but the priest of Becedas, whose name was Pedro Hernández.
5. See Life 5.4.
6. She is referring here to the Morals of St. Gregory, Pope, Doctor of the Church. This was the Spanish translation from the Latin, done by Alonso Alvarez de Toledo and published in Seville in 1514. The Carmelites of St. Joseph’s in Ávila have a copy of this two-volume work. The second volume bears the notation: “These Morals were those used by Our Holy Mother, and during the hours of sleep she rested her holy head upon them; and some of the marks she made with her holy hands to note the things that stirred her devotion.”
7. Job 2:10.
8. August 15–19, 1539, when she was twenty-four. See Life 6.1.
9. She is referring probably to the popular custom, still existing in some small towns in Castile, of closing the eyes of the dead with a few drops of wax from the candle used during the death agony.
CHAPTER 6
1. See Life 5.9.
2. A term to denote a fever that increased, along with chills, every fourth day. They were called the tertian fevers if they increased every other day.
3. This happened about the end of August 1539.
4. From the middle of 1539 to about April of 1542. She attributed her cure to St. Joseph. See Life 6.6–8.
5. Gal 2:20.
CHAPTER 7
1. This passage is further clarified in Life 7.14: “. . . I who was sicker in soul, steeped in many vanities, than he was in body; although, during this entire more lax period of which I am speaking, never so steeped in them—insofar as I understood—as to be in mortal sin.”
2. The monastery of the Incarnation, not St. Joseph’s.
3. Probably Doña Mencía Cimbrón, prioress of the Incarnation during Teresa’s novitiate year.
4. Life 7.3.
5. Life 1.1.
6. See Life 8.5; 19.4, 10–15.
7. Don Alonso died December 24, 1543.
8. Father Vicente Barrón, O.P.
9. Father García de Toledo, O.P.
CHAPTER 8
1. See Life 8.1-2; 5.11; 7.22.
CHAPTER 9
1. Not a statue of Christ bound to the column as has been thought, but an ecce homo (“Behold the man”), a statue depicting the scourged Christ before Pontius Pilate. It is still venerated at the monastery of the Incarnation in Ávila.
2. She probably had the translation done by the friar, Sebastián Toscano. This was published in Salamanca in 1554, the same year of her spiritual conversion.
3. The Augustinian nuns of Our Lady of Grace.
4. Confessions, VIII, ch. 12.
5. This conversion, as the event has been called, took place during Lent of 1554, when she was thirty-nine.
6. The experiences related in Life 9.1, 8.
CHAPTER 10
1. Reference to her confessors and particularly to Father García de Toledo O.P., to whom she addresses her Life.
2. In Life 9.9; 4.7.
3. In Life 13.4.
4. See Life 10, note 1.
5. In Life 13.16-21; 23.3; 28.6.
CHAPTER 11
1. Chapters 11–22 comprise a small treatise on mental prayer and its degrees; the tone changes from autobiographical to didactic. They prepare the reader for an understanding of what she will begin to speak of in Life 23.
2. In Life 12.5. In Life 18.2, she mentions the difficulty she has with understanding and using the proper terminology.
3. The source of this allegory is not known with any certitude. See Life 14.9.
4. According to Ribera there was a water wheel in the house in which she grew up.
5. Most probably she is referring to Fr. García de Toledo.
6. In Life 13.14–15; 15.6, etc.
7. See Letters of St. Jerome, Letter 22: to Eustochium.
8. Mt 11:30.
CHAPTER 12
1. She uses terms common among the spiritual writers of her times, but with her own nuances. See Osuna, Third Spiritual Alphabet, IX, ch. 8; Bernardino de Laredo, The Ascent of Mount Sion, trans. E. A. Peers (London: Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1950), ch. 41. For St. Teresa, “supernatural” corresponds roughly to “mystical” or “infused.” See Spiritual Testimonies 59.3.
2. A very popular book by a Franciscan friar, Alonso de Madrid, published in Seville, 1521.
3. She is referring to the Dominican fathers, Pedro Ibañez, García de Toledo, and Domingo Bañez; to Baltasar Alvarez, S.].; to Master Gaspar Daza; and also perhaps to the Bishop Don Alvaro de Mendoza.
4. See Life 34.7.
5. In Life 10.1; 11.5.
CHAPTER 13
1. Life 11.15–16.
2. References are to: Phil 4:13; Confessions, X, ch. 29; Mt 14:29–30.
3. In Life 7.17 passim.
4. In Life 7.10ff.
5. According to Gratian, the three were: María de San Pablo, a nun at the Incarnation; Ana de los Angeles, a nun at the Incarnation who went with St. Teresa on the new foundation in Ávila and became the first prioress there; and María de Cepeda y Ocampo, a lay woman who lived at the Incarnation (see Life 32.9) and also joined Teresa on the new foundation.
6. In the latter part of the book, chs. 32–36.
7. In Life 12.2.
8. In Life 13.11; 12.2.
9. Jn 14:2.
10. See Life 15.12.
11. In Life 13.12; 11.6.
12. This was the opinion of St. Peter of Alcántara and others. They held that in matters pertaining to the perfection of the spiritual life one should consult those who are living this life, and not jurists and theologians.
13. Good judgment, experience, and learning. See Life 13.16.
CHAPTER 14
1. See Life 14.7; 15 passim.
2. In Life 14.5.
3. The new monastery she founded, St. Joseph’s in Ávila. She gives an account of this foundation in chapters 32–36. The little community was extremely poor.
4. Reference to the Arabic spoken by the Moors who remained in Spain and which was unintelligible to Castilians.
5. Prov 8:31.
6. She is addressing Father García de Toledo, O.P.
7. Biblical allusion to Lk 7:47.
CHAPTER 15
1. Mt 17:4.
2. Biblical allusion to Ex 16:3.
3. In Life 15.2–3.
4. See Life 18.2; 32.2–3.
5. See Life 15.2.
6. Biblical allusion to Mt 25:25.
7. In Life 15.3.
8. In Life 15.6.
9. Lk 18:13.
10. In Life 15.4.
11. See Life 11.12–16; 12.3.
12. In Life 13.15.
13. In Life 15.11.
14. Mt 16:24.
CHAPTER 16
1. She continues to address Father García de Toledo, O.P.
2. Lk 15:9
3. See 2 Sam 6:14 The feast of King David was approved for the Carmelite liturgical calendar in 1564 and was celebrated December 29.
4. Her motherly way of addressing García de Toledo, O.P.
5. Among the five were certainly the Dominican, García de Toledo, and the saintly layman, Francisco de Salcedo (see Life 23.6). Two other possible ones were: her friend and benefactress, Doña Guiomar de Ulloa (see Life 24.4); and the devout, learned priest and confessor, Gaspar Daza (see Life 23.6).
CHAPTER 17
1. García de Toledo, O.P.
2. See Life 14.2.
3. She distinguishes, then, three kinds of union: the union just mentioned (the lowest kind, Life 17.4); another higher kind, but still not complete union (Life 17.5); and the complete union, “that which was mentioned in reference to this third water” (Life 16 passim).
4. She refers to the memory and the imagination without distinguishing them from each other.
5. In Life 14.3; 15.6–9. Although in the latter reference, she seems to refer preferably to the intellect, it should be remembered that Teresa doesn’t always make clear distinctions between the intellect and the imagination.
6. Gen 29:20–30.
7. In Life 17.5.
8. In Life 16.3; 17.2–3.
9. In Life 17.4–5.
CHAPTER 18
1. One of her censors, probably Father Bañez, crossed out this last sentence of the chapter heading. He was possibly somewhat bothered by the high estimate the saint had of her own work. But this is an excellent example of the ingenuous way in which she composed her chapter headings. See chapters 14, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25 and almost all the chapters in the Interior Castle.
2. In Life 16.1ff. She means that in the third water there is no ecstatic suspension of either the faculties or the senses.
3. She refers to the prayer of quiet also in this way (see Life 14.1). She is using terminology learned from books read in her time, particularly Laredo’s Ascent of Mount Sion (see Life 12, note 1).
4. Ps 92:6; 104:24.
5. Biblical allusion to 2 Cor 4:7.
6. Allusion to Mt 25:18.
7. “Elevation of the spirit,” “joining with heavenly love,” “flight of the spirit,” “rapture,” “suspension,” and “transport” are analogous terms which in Teresa’s spiritual language are the equivalent of ecstasy, although with slight differences. See Life 20.1.
8. See Life 16.2.
9. It was a custom at the joust for one in a group of supporters to hold up a banner bearing the colors of the group’s favorite knight. In this prayer, it is the will that continues in act even when the other two faculties falter.
10. The two faculties are the intellect and the memory. The mystical terminology is inspired by the Song of Songs. A fluctuating between the prayer of the sleep of the faculties (the third water) and the prayer of ecstasy (the fourth water) is what is designated by this imagery.
11. In Life 18.10, 13.
12. According to Father Gratian, she is referring here to Father Vicente Barrón, O.P.
CHAPTER 19
1. See Life 7.11. This was so important a fact to her in the story of her interior life that she refers to it a number of times.
2. Saints Peter, Paul, Augustine, and Mary Magdalene, favorite intercessors for Teresa.
3. Probable allusion to Lutheran doctrine which held that justification does not take away sin but only covers the wounds of sin.
4. Ps 119:137.
5. In Life 19.6.
6. In chapters 25–27.
7. There follows a series of allusions to the temptation to which she yielded of abandoning prayer. See Life 19.4; 7.11.
8. Father Vicente Barrón, according to Father Gratian. See Life 7.17.
9. See Life 20.22; 21.11.
10. See Life 20.22–29; 21.11.
11. In Life 19.3, 5, 10; 7.11.
12. In Life 19.4.
13. Allusion to biblical passages in which the Lord promises pardon to the sinner; Ezek 33:11; Mt 9:13; Lk 15.
CHAPTER 20
1. Some words of St. John of the Cross are worth noting here: “This would be an apt place to treat of the different kinds of raptures, ecstasies, and other elevations and flights of the soul . . . Then too, the Blessed Teresa of Jesus, our Mother, left writings about these spiritual matters, which are admirably done and which I hope will soon be printed and brought to light.” See Spiritual Canticle 13.7 in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. K. Kavanaugh, O.C.D. and O. Rodriguez, O.C.D. (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2017), 522. St. John of the Cross promoted publication of the writings of St. Teresa in a council meeting, September 1, 1586.
2. In Life 18.1, 9; 19.1.
3. She adds in the margin: “I have heard that this is so, that the clouds gather up the vapors; or the sun does.”
4. The feast of St. Joseph.
5. Later she again experienced ecstasies, raptures, and levitations. See Spiritual Testimonies 12 and 31, also her letter to Don Lorenzo de Cepeda, January 17, 1577.
6. She writes of these visions and revelations in chapters 27, 28, 29, 32, 38, 39, 40.
7. See Life 29.8–14.
8. When she writes in Latin, Teresa spells the words according to the way they were pronounced by Castilians, e.g., “vigilavi ed fatus sun sicud passer solitarius yn tecto.” Ps 102:8.
9. Ps 42:4.
10. Gal 6:14.
11. In Life 20.9.
12. In chapters 4 and 5.
13. In Life 20.7, 9.
14. In the margin after the last lines, she makes the annotation: “I mean that these impulses come after the favors here mentioned that the Lord granted me.”
15. She began to speak of raptures in Life 20.1, and continued until the subject of levitation came up in Life 20.5. In Life 20.9–16 she speaks of that strange solitude and infused painful prayer.
16. See Life 18.12.
17. The suspension of the corporeal functions and the lightness of the body of which she speaks in Life 20.18.
18. Life 18.12.
19. Ávila.
20. See chapters 23 and 24.
21. St. Vincent Ferrer, O.P., writes: “And know for certain that the greater part of the raptures, indeed rabies, of the messengers of the Antichrist comes in this way.” Tractatus de Vita Spirituali (Madrid, BAC, 1956), ch. 14.
22. Ps 55:7.
23. Ps 143:2.
CHAPTER 21
1. Teresa takes up again the theme of both the effects and the spiritual state that correspond to the fourth degree of prayer. She began to speak of this in ch. 19, no. 1, and returns to it in Life 20.7,23. She concludes in this chapter.
2. Reference to an old popular belief that when an important person dies there are signs in the sky, as happened at the death of our Lord. See Mt 27:45.
3. See Life 21.1; 20.22, 26.
4. Rom 7:24.
5. In Life 21.5; 20.25.
6. In Life 19.6–10; 18.4; 15.7; 10.4.
CHAPTER 22
1. Jn 16:7. In the margin she adds: “It seems to me that if they had faith that He was both God and man as they did after the Holy Spirit came, this would not have hindered them; for these words were not spoken to the Mother of God, even though she loved Him more than all of them.”
2. The clause beginning with the words, “that is,” is a clarification St. Teresa added in the margin.
3. In chapter 28.
4. The second reason is given in Life 22.9–10.
5. Jn 19:26.
6. Mt 3:17.
7. Jn 10:9.
8. This is the first time that in addressing Father García de Toledo she alludes to his title of lord. He merited this title because he was a nephew of the count of Oropesa. The title provides further evidence that it was to this Dominican priest that she addressed herself throughout her book.
9. In chapters 18ff.
10. In Life 22.5.
11. Biblical allusion to Lk 10:42.
12. In Life 11.13; 12.3.
13. In Life 22.9.
14. In Life 22.9.
15. Lk 5:8.
16. In Life 22.2, 8.
17. In Life 11.10.
18. In Life 14.
19. Lk 14:10.
20. Lk 10:39. The last clause alludes to the legend about St. Mary Magdalene. Following St. Gregory the Great, in the past the Latin Church generally (but not universally) identified Mary Magdalene with the repentant woman of Lk 7:36–50 and with Mary of Bethany of Jn 11.
21. Mk 10:29–30.
22. In Life 22.5.
CHAPTER 23
1. She takes up again the account of her life, which she interrupted in chapter 11 for her little treatise on the degrees of prayer.
2. A reference to the autos da fe against the Illuminists held by the Inquisition in various cities, such as Córdoba, Seville, and Valladolid, during the sixteenth century.
3. The Jesuit Fathers made their foundation, named after St. Giles, in Ávila about 1554.
4. In Life 23.3.
5. See Life 7.1.
6. Maestro Gaspar Daza, a diocesan priest in Ávila. See Life 16.7; 36.18.
7. Don Francisco de Salcedo, who became one of Teresa’s closest friends. His wife was Doña Mencía del Aguila, a cousin of the wife of Teresa’s uncle Don Pedro Sánchez, who had introduced Teresa to spiritual books (Life 3.4; 4.7). Don Francisco attended classes in theology at the Dominican College of St. Thomas in Ávila for a period of twenty years. He was an authentically spiritual man, and after his wife died he became a priest.
8. Don Alonso Alvarez Dávila.
9. In Life 23.5.
10. Bernardino de Laredo’s Ascent of Mount Sion. See Life 12, note 1. Laredo was a Franciscan brother who had been a physician before entering the religious life. His book was first published in Seville in 1535.
11. See Life 28.5–6, passim in the final chapters.
12. A marked copy of the Ascent of Mount Sion and her first Spiritual Testimony, or autobiographical account, which has been lost.
13. 1 Cor 10:13.
14. Another autobiographical account, lost as was the previous one.
15. Father Diego de Cetina, S.J., Teresa’s confessor during the summer of 1555. See Life 24.1.
CHAPTER 24
1. The Incarnation in Ávila.
2. St. Francis Borgia, S.J., (1510–1572). After succeeding his father as fourth duke of Gandía, he joined the Society of Jesus and renounced his titles and estates. In 1565 he was elected the Society’s third general. It is believed that he first met Teresa during the summer of 1555. Teresa says that she met him twice. See Spiritual Testimonies 58.3.
3. Father Diego de Cetina, S.J., St. Teresa’s first Jesuit confessor. He remained in Ávila for only a few months, so he could not have directed her for long.
4. Father Diego de Cetina, S.J.
5. Doña Guiomar de Ulloa. Her husband left her a small inheritance which she used largely for charity. She provided a great part of the income for Teresa’s new foundation of St. Joseph’s, Ávila. Later on she tried the Carmelite life at St. Joseph’s, but had to leave due to poor health.
6. Father Juan de Prádanos, S.J., who was also confessor of Doña Guiomar.
7. This was St. Teresa’s first rapture; it took place either in 1556 or 1558. She speaks of her first vision in Life 7.6, and of her first locution in Life 19.9. For about two years she resisted the raptures and locutions (Life 25.15; 27.1–2).
CHAPTER 25
1. Here we have a communication of verbal knowledge in contrast to the pure, distinct knowledge of the intellectual vision. See Life 27.6.
2. See Life 13.3.
3. In Life 25.2–3.
4. Not in the second but in the fourth water. See Life 18.1ff.; 20.3ff.
5. It is helpful to recall here St. Teresa’s teaching about ecstasy in chapters 18 and 20, especially in Life 18.12–13.
6. In Life 25.4.
7. In Life 25.1, 6.
8. In chapter 23.
9. In chapter 31. See also Life 32.1; 36.7–11; 38.23–24; 39.4.
10. In Life 7.6–7.
11. They were probably Gaspar Daza, Gonzalo de Aranda, Juan de Prádanos, S.J., and the two laymen, Francisco de Salcedo, and her cousin, Don Alonso Alvarez Dávila.
12. Either Juan de Prádanos, S.J. or Baltasar Alvarez, S.J.
13. In Life 23.13.
14. Mk 4:39.
15. See chapters 31, 32, 38 and 39.
16. A gesture of contempt made by placing the thumb between the first and second fingers and pointing it at the scorned object from the tip of one’s nose.
CHAPTER 26
1. In Life 25.1.
2. She will speak of this in Life 29.8–14, and has already spoken of it in Life 20.9–14; 21.6.
3. She is referring to her foundation of St. Joseph. See chapter 36.
4. In Life 25.3, 18.
5. Baltasar Alvarez, S.J. See Life 28.14.
6. In 1559, Don Fernando de Valdés, the Inquisitor General, published an Index of forbidden books, among which were some spiritual books written in the vernacular that he thought could be harmful to simple souls.
CHAPTER 27
1. In Life 25.15.
2. In Life 24.5; 25; 26.2, 5.
3. It was an intellectual vision. St. Teresa will distinguish at least three kinds of visions: intellectual (like the present one, which she will describe in her own way in Life 27.3); imaginative (perceived with what she calls “the eyes of the soul,” that is, the imagination or phantasy, and described in chapter 28); and corporeal (seen with the bodily eyes and which she says, in Life 28.4. she never experienced). She is very free in the use of terminology, so in speaking of the intellectual vision, she says she felt this vision.
4. In Life 27.16–20; 30.2–7.
5. In chapter 25.
6. In Life 27.2ff. She distinguishes three kinds of locutions: those that are explicit and heard with the sense of hearing; those that are explicit but not heard with the bodily ears, although they are understood much more clearly than if heard (see chapter 25); those that are not explicit, just as in heaven one understands without speaking: “God and the soul understand each other only through the desire His Majesty has that it understand Him, without the use of any other means . . .” (see Life 27.10.). It is of this latter that she now begins to speak.
7. She begins to list them in the following number, but loses the thread and does not return to them until Life 29.1.
8. In chapter 25 passim.
9. Song 4:9; 6:5.
10. Rom 2:11.
11. Lk 23:26; Mt 27:32.
12. See Life 27.14; 16.1, 4, 8; 21 passim.
13. She is referring to Venerable María Díaz (1495–1572). This devout woman was guided by St. Peter of Alcántara and was renowned in Ávila for her sanctity.
14. In Life 27.3; 30; 36.20.
15. He was born in 1499 and died in 1562. If this meeting took place in 1558, he was only fifty-nine, hardly very old. She is probably judging by appearance.
16. Ps 122:1. In another example of her unusual Latin spelling, Teresa wrote: letatum sun yn is que dita sun miqui. See Life 20, note 8.
CHAPTER 28
1. That is, to the vision spoken of in Life 27.2–5.
2. She is referring to a first account of her spiritual experiences made for García de Toledo, which has been lost. This vision of the sacred humanity of Christ took place most probably on the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, January 25, 1561.
3. In Life 29.7.
4. In Life 10.9; 13.18.
5. In Life 30.12, 15, 18.
6. In Life 27.2.
7. In Life 28.10.
8. In Life 27.7ff.
9. In Life 28.4.
10. Baltasar Alvarez, S.J. He was twenty-five or twenty-six when he undertook the direction of St. Teresa.
11. He was her confessor for six years according to her own account in Spiritual Testimonies 58.3. The first three difficult years to which she refers here must have been from 1558–1561.
12. See Life 25.14.
CHAPTER 29
1. In Life 27.7. she began to explain why the devil interferes least in the intellectual vision, and the language God speaks without explicit words.
2. In Life 29.8–14.
3. According to Gratian, she is referring to Gonzalo de Aranda.
4. In Life 29.4; 27.1.
5. June 29. See Life 27.2; 28.3.
6. In Life 29.8; 30.8ff.; 34.16.
7. See Life 29.6.
8. In Life 20.9ff.
9. In Life 29.8, 10.
10. Ps 42:2.
11. In Life 27.2. She does not mean she had a corporeal vision but an imaginative one. See Life 28.4, where she says she never experienced corporeal visions.
12. In Life 20.9ff.
CHAPTER 30
1. In Life 27.16–20.
2. She is probably alluding to the Treatise on Prayer & Meditation, trans. D. Devas, O.F.M. (Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1949). But the authenticity of this work and others has been challenged.
3. Doña Guiomar de Ulloa. See Life 24.4.
4. In Life 28.4.
5. The confessor was Baltasar Alvarez, S.J. The gentleman was Francisco de Salcedo.
6. She is referring to the Franciscan semi-province that bore the title of St. Joseph.
7. In Life 30.8.
8. Job 2:6.
9. Baltasar Alvarez, S.J., according to Gratian.
10. In Life 25.18; 26.2.
11. It is worth recalling that St. Teresa does not always distinguish clearly between intellect, thought, and imagination.
12. In Life 29.8–14; 26.1.
13. Jn 4:15.
14. In Life 10.7; 14.8.
CHAPTER 31
1. In Life 30.9ff.
2. Domingo Bañez, O.P., according to Gratian.
3. The diabolical interventions mentioned in Life 31.6.
4. In the monastery of St. Joseph.
5. She is referring to an intellectual vision, which she explains in Life 27.2.
6. In Life 31, note 1; 30.9ff.
7. Domingo Bañez.
8. It is difficult to identify. Some think it was located outside Spain; others think it was in Spain—perhaps the Incarnation at Valencia.
9. See Life 22.13.
10. In the rest of the chapter she addresses García de Toledo, O.P., more expressly. It is he with whom she keeps up a dialogue throughout almost the whole book.
11. Her youngest sister, Doña Juana de Ahumada, who with her husband came to Ávila from Alba de Tormes. She had marriage difficulties because of her husband’s troublesome temperament and because of financial problems.
12. In ch. Life 30.20.
CHAPTER 32
1. In chapters 23–31.
2. See Life 6.1–2.
3. In chapters. 30–31.
4. A reference to the bull Romani Pontificis of Eugene IV, February 15,1432. See Life 36.26. For the text of this bull see Monumenta Historica Carmeli Teresiani, ed. Eulogio Pacho et al. (Rome, Teresianum, 1973) I, 459–461. (Henceforth cited as Monumenta.)
5. We know the names of almost everyone in the group. The one who mentioned the idea was María de Ocampo, a daughter of Teresa’s cousin. She joined the Carmelite nuns at St. Joseph’s and took the name María Bautista. Almost all the others in the group were likewise relatives of Teresa; some were Carmelites, others, lay friends. They used to gather in Teresa’s cell at the monastery of the Incarnation. The group included: Beatriz de Cepeda, Leonor de Cepeda, María de Cepeda, Isabel de San Pablo, Inés de Tapia, Ana de Tapia, and Juana Suárez. María de San José writes: “One day the Saint together with María de Ocampo and other nuns from the Incarnation began to discuss the saints of the desert. At this time some of them said that since they couldn’t go to the desert, they should found a little monastery with few nuns and that there they could join together to do penance.” By the discalced, María de Ocampo was referring to the Descalzas Reales (Royal Discalced), Franciscan nuns founded in Ávila by Philip II’s sister, Princess Doña Juana, who followed St. Peter of Alcántara’s initiative.
6. Doña Guiomar de Ulloa, already mentioned in Life 24.4; 30.3.
7. The monastery of the Incarnation.
8. Baltasar Alvarez, S.J.
9. This written account has been lost.
10. Angel de Salazar, who in 1560 succeeded Gregorio Fernández as provincial of Castile.
11. Later on Teresa changed her mind and allowed for a larger number of nuns in her monasteries.
12. Pedro Ibáñez, O.P.
13. See Life 35.4–6; 36.23.
14. Francisco de Salcedo. See Life 23.6.
15. Gaspar Daza. See Life 23.6.
16. See Life 33.12.
CHAPTER 33
1. See Life 32.15.
2. The confessor she is referring to throughout this chapter is Baltasar Alvarez, S.J.
3. The Incarnation.
4. A dark cell in the monastery for those who by law were to be thus punished.
5. In Life 29.9ff.
6. Pedro Ibáñez.
7. Pedro Ibáñez retired to the solitary monastery of Trianos (León), where he died February 2, 1565.
8. Dionisio Vázquez was followed in office by Gaspar de Salazar in April, 1561. Disagreements with the bishop of Ávila led to Salazar’s removal early in 1562.
9. Doña Juana de Ahumada, who lived in Alba with her husband, Juan de Ovalle. See Life 31.19.
10. She is referring to the money received from her brother Lorenzo, who was living in Quito, Ecuador. See her letter thanking him, December 23, 1561.
11. See Life 32.18.
12. August 12, 1561.
13. It was a monastery of Poor Clares in the city.
14. St. Teresa received this mystical experience in the Christ chapel of the Dominican church of St. Thomas, outside the walls of Ávila, August 15, 1561.
15. In Life 27.2.
16. See Life 33.14.
17. See Life 36.15ff.
CHAPTER 34
1. Doña Luisa de la Cerda was a daughter of the second duke of Medinaceli and, through him, descended from the royal houses of Spain and France. Her husband, Arias Pardo de Saavedra, one of the wealthiest men in Castile, died January 13, 1561.
2. December 24, 1561.
3. This Jesuit foundation was made by St. Francis Borgia in 1558.The rector was Pedro Doménech, and the minister was Gil González Dávila.
4. In Life 34.1.
5. García de Toledo, O.P., was a nephew of the count of Oropesa and cousin of the viceroy of Peru. In 1555, he was subprior at the Dominican house at Ávila, St. Thomas. It was probably there that Teresa met him the first time. In 1577, he went to Peru as provincial. He returned in 1581 and died at Talavera in 1590.
6. Pedro Ibáñez, in Life 33.5.
7. Gaspar de Salazar, S.J., in Life 33.9–10.
8. In Life 32.12; 33.2.
9. In Life 13.14. She is referring, perhaps, to Baltasar Alvarez, S.J. See Life 28.14–16.
10. See 1 Thess 5:19.
11. At the time Teresa was writing this chapter, two of those who had guided her were already dead: Peter of Alcántara, October 18, 1562, and Pedro Ibáñez, O.P., February 2, 1565.
12. Gaspar de Salazar, in Life 33.9–10.
13. Pedro Ibáñez and Domingo Bañez, especially the former.
14. In Life 34.15.
15. She is speaking of García de Toledo, O.P., who was not in Ávila at the time.
16. Teresa is speaking about the interior life of García de Toledo for whom these pages were destined. But since they were destined for others as well, she speaks of these things in a veiled way.
17. Doña Guiomar. See Life 30.3.
18. Martín de Guzmán y Barrientos, married to her half sister, María de Cepeda.
19. Castellanos de la Cañada, where Teresa went during her early illness. See Life 3.3; 4.6.
CHAPTER 35
1. Doña Luisa de la Cerda, in Life 34.1, 3.
2. A beata was a woman who wore a religious habit, but lived a life of recollection and virtue outside a community. María de Jesús, a young widow, after entering the Carmelite monastery in Granada, felt called to leave before making profession and to found a reformed Carmel. She founded the Carmel in Alcalá, a year after Teresa founded St. Joseph’s. The life she inaugurated there was extremely rigorous, and in 1568 it was mitigated by Teresa herself.
3. The prescription of absolute poverty is not contained in the rule, but was imposed by a brief of Gregory IX, April 6, 1229. See Rule of St. Albert, Eds. H. Clarke, O.Carm. and B. Edwards, O.C.D. (Aylesford: Carmelite Priory, 1973), pp. 19–21.
4. Pedro Ibáñez, who at that time was living a solitary life at Trianos.
5. See Life 32.16–17.
6. Doña Luisa de la Cerda.
7. Besides these oral counsels, he wrote to Teresa a famous letter on poverty. See Monumenta, I, 17–19.
8. This was an academic title in use among Dominicans which was the equivalent of licentiate. She is speaking of Pedro Ibáñez.
9. Angel de Salazar.
10. There were more than 150 nuns according to what she later wrote in Foundations 2.1.
11. Pedro Doménech.
12. See Life 35.8.
13. St. Joseph’s in Ávila.
14. Allusion to Mt 19:29.
15. There is an allusion to three biblical passages here: Mk 10:28; Ps 94:20; Mt 7:14.
CHAPTER 36
1. Toledo.
2. Reference to the brief Ex parte vestra, February 7, 1562. See Monumenta, I, 9–14.
3. The bishop was Don Alvaro de Mendoza, and the other gentleman, in whose house St. Peter was staying, was probably Don Juan Blázquez.
4. The bishop did not at first show any willingness to accept the monastery, but after an interview with Teresa he changed his mind completely.
5. He died in Arenas (Ávila) October 18, 1562.
6. Don Juan de Ovalle, the husband of her sister Doña Juana de Ahumada.
7. Doña Guiomar de Ulloa.
8. To the Incarnation, as in fact happened.
9. See Life 35.8.
10. August 24, 1562. There were four: Antonia Henao (del Espíritu Santo), María de la Paz (de la Cruz); Ursula Revilla (de los Santos), and María de Ávila (de San José).
11. They were Doña Inés and Doña Ana de Tapia. Later, as Discalced, they were known as Inés de Jesús and Ana de la Encarnación.
12. In Life 36.3; 33.11.
13. See Life 33.1–2.
14. Despite this remark, historians point out that Ursula de los Santos, for example, brought three hundred ducats.
15. Allusion to Phil 4:13.
16. In Life 32.14–15; 33.2.
17. The prioress of the Incarnation at that time was Doña María Cimbrón. She was elected in August, 1562, in those elections Teresa had so feared. Life 35.7–8.
18. She is referring to the particular ceremony in which one in the chapter of faults publicly accuses oneself before the provincial.
19. Domingo Bañez.
20. Don Gonzalo de Aranda.
21. Francisco de Salcedo. Life 32.18.
22. Gaspar Daza, in Life 23.6.
23. This letter has been lost.
24. See Life 27.19.
25. It is not known who this person was.
26. Pedro Ibáñez.
27. Obviously Teresa is very careful in recording this data. But the Apostolic Constitution, Quae Honorem Conditoris, which contains the text of the Carmelite rule as ordained by Cardinal Hugo, was given in 1247. It is noteworthy that the Carmelite rule was composed about 1209 by St. Albert, patriarch of Jerusalem, and was approved by Honorius III, with the bull Ut vivendi normam, in 1226. Later, it was modified by Innocent IV in 1247 and mitigated by Eugene IV in 1432. When Teresa writes that in her monastery they keep the rule of our Lady of Mt. Carmel without mitigation, she is referring to their giving up the text mitigated by Eugene IV, which was observed in the monastery of the Incarnation. They substituted for this text the rule as approved by Innocent IV. This was the juridical and spiritual point of departure for her reform. See Rule of Saint Albert; also Monumenta, I, 455–459.
28. María de Jesús, in Life 35.1ff.
29. She is addressing García de Toledo, O.P.
30. See Life 32, note 11.
CHAPTER 37
1. With this chapter she begins the last fragment of her Life. This was written, as she says, by order of God and her directors.
2. Domingo Bañez, O.P. and García de Toledo, O.P.
3. See Life 30.8–18.
4. In Life 30.8–18.
5. In Life 11.15–16.
CHAPTER 38
1. Allusion to 2 Cor 12:2–4 and to Letters of St. Jerome, Letter 22: to Eustochium.
2. She is speaking of Doña Luisa de la Cerda. See Life 34.1. She mentions her heart trouble in Life 4.5; 5.7; 7.11.
3. This probably happened May 29, 1563. The secluded spot was one of the hermitages at the monastery of St. Joseph. “A volume by the Carthusian” refers to the Life of Christ written in Latin by the Carthusian Ludolph of Saxony. The four volumes were translated into Spanish and first printed in 1502 at Alcalá. The meditation for Pentecost deals with the three stages of the spiritual life: beginners, proficients, and the perfect.
4. Pedro Ibáñez.
5. Pedro Ibáñez.
6. Gaspar de Salazar.
7. At the beginning of Life 38.16.
8. She wrote about the effects of the visions in Life 28.10–13; 32.12; and of the differences in degree in Life 37.2.
9. In Life 38.23.
10. Gregorio Fernández.
11. This nun and the one mentioned in Life 38.29. both died at the Incarnation.
12. That is, an intellectual vision. Life 27.2.
13. At the College of St. Giles in Ávila. She speaks of these trials in chapters 23–25 and especially in Life 30.8.
14. The brother’s name was Alonso de Henao. He died April 11, 1557.
15. She is speaking of Diego Matías, a Carmelite in Ávila, who for some time had been confessor at the Incarnation.
16. In Life 37.1. She will repeat this in Life 39.20 and 40.17.
17. In Life 38.13.
18. See 1 Cor 15:41.
CHAPTER 39
1. She is alluding to the imaginative visions of the humanity of the Lord, which were the more frequent. See Life 29.4; 37.4.
2. This was her first cousin, Pedro Mejía. He was suffering from stones.
3. Probably Gaspar de Salazar, S.J. See Life 33.7.
4. The hermitage of Christ at the Pillar in the monastery of St. Joseph in Ávila was so called because of a beautiful painting of Christ done under the direction of Teresa herself, Isabel de Santo Domingo declared in her testimony for the processes of Teresa’s canonization: “This painting of Christ at the Pillar, the Holy Mother had painted in the said hermitage, after spending many hours of prayer over it, and instructing a very good painter in the way it should be painted, and how he should do the cords, the wounds, the face, the hair, and especially a tattered piece on the left arm near the elbow. And this declarant knows, as she heard it from some Religious who were present, that, when the painting was finished, and the Holy Mother went to see it, she was enraptured before it, in the presence of the painter, without being able to prevent it.” Depositions of the Processes of St. Teresa of Jesus, trans. E. Sarmiento and a Carmelite nun (Flemington, N.J.: The Carmel, 1969), pp. 229–230.
5. Garía de Toledo, O.P., and Domingo Báñez, O.P.
6. Doña Luisa de la Cerda, in Life 34.1ff.
7. The thought is left suspended here and is interrupted by a sudden digression, a characteristic of Teresa’s spontaneous way of writing.
8. She could be referring to Isabel de San Pablo, who made profession at the age of seventeen; to María Bautista, María de San Jerónimo, and Isabel de Santo Domingo, who were all young and received the religious habit between 1563 and 1564.
9. She is referring to the bull of Pius IV, Cum a Nobis petitur, given July 17, 1565. See Monumenta, I, 43–47.
10. Mt 20:12.
11. See Life 10.7. She returns here to speak of the vision she was about to relate in Life 39.8.
12. Teresa is humbly reticent about words the Lord speaks to her in her own favor. See Life 38.32; 40.2, 17.
13. See Life 7.19; 31.12.
14. Allusion to oral accounts given to García de Toledo, O.P.
15. Rev 4:6–8; Ezek 1:5ff.
16. In Life 29.13.
17. See Life 37.7; 21.9.
18. She probably read it in Osuna’s Third Spiritual Alphabet, XVI, ch. 5.
19. In Life 39.20.
20. The Lord uses the words of Ps 4:3.
21. Not a psalm but the Athanasian Creed which used to be recited at times in the Divine Office.
22. The College of St. Giles in Ávila.
CHAPTER 40
1. She speaks of this vision in chapter 32, and of her lasting remembrance of it in Life 32.1 and 32.4.
2. Allusion to Mt 5:18.
3. This whole passage (Life 40.1–4) is a typical example of an ineffable mystical experience of truth as an attribute of God and as contained in Sacred Scripture.
4. This is the mystical experience that serves as the foundation for Teresa’s doctrine on humility. See Interior Castle 6.10.7.
5. That is, she sees him in an imaginative vision and in glorified form. See Life 28.1, 3; 29.4; 37.4; 39.1.
6. Of all the mystical graces Teresa refers to in her Life, this is one of the most doctrinally fruitful. It provided a basis for her book Interior Castle 1.1 and for one of the most beautiful chapters on The Way of Perfection 28.9–12. See also Spiritual Testimonies 20; 13; 14.
7. In Life 9.4–6. She stresses this in chapters 28 and 29 of The Way of Perfection.
8. The books she alludes to are probably Osuna’s Third Spiritual Alphabet (XVIII, 1) and Laredo’s Ascent of Mount Sion (III, chaps. 22 and 41). As for St. Augustine, she is referring either to the pseudo-Augustinian Soliloquies, ch. 31; or to the Confessions, X, ch. 27. See Interior Castle 4.3.3; 6.7.9; Way of Perfection 28.2.
9. The absorption or suspension of all the faculties doesn’t last long. See Life 18.12; 20.18. As for the semi-ecstatic state that follows the total absorption, see Life 20.19.
10. She does so in Life 40.10.
11. Mentioned in Life 40.5.
12. Teresa delicately avoids further specification about the religious order. As a result, these lines, which today go almost unnoticed, were in the past the occasion of heated disputes during entire centuries. Gratian identifies the order as Dominican; Ribera, as Jesuit; there were other claims that it was Franciscan, Teresa’s own Carmelite reform, and, finally, Augustinian. This section (Life 40.12–15) was drawn as well into other disputes. For the whole strange story, see Tomás Alvarez (de la Cruz), “Pleito Sobre Visiones,” in Ephemerides Carmeliticae, VIII (Rome, 1957), 3–43.
13. The Inquisitor, Francisco de Soto y Salazar. See Spiritual Testimonies 58, note 12.
14. See Life 7.11.
15. In Life 30.8ff.
16. In Life 26.4; 38.1.
17. Monastery of St. Joseph.
18. García de Toledo, O.P.: “lord,” because of his noble lineage; “father,” because of his deep interest in her soul’s welfare.
19. One of these three was for certain Domingo Bañez, O.P., the other two were probably Baltasar Alvarez, S.J., and Gaspar de Salazar, S.J.
EPILOGUE
1. García de Toledo, O.P.
2. See Life 10.8; 30.22; 37.1.
3. She refers to St. John of Ávila, to whom she does in fact send the book.