Teresa, My Love

by Julia Kristeva

  Once while I was praying near the Blessed Sacrament, a saint [Saint Dominic] appeared to me whose order was somewhat fallen. He held in his hands a great book. He opened it and told me to read some very large and legible letters. This is what they said. “In the time to come this order will flourish; it will have many martyrs.”

  At another time when I was at Matins in the choir, there were shown or represented to me six or seven members—it seems there were that many—of the same order, holding swords in their hands. I think this meant that they will defend the faith. For at another time when I was at prayer, my spirit was carried off to where it seemed to be in a large field in which many were in combat, and those belonging to this order were fighting with great fervor. Their faces were beautiful and very much aglow. They conquered many, throwing them to the ground; others, they killed. It seemed to me this battle was against the heretics.16

  Clearly, a battle plan was taking shape: with His interior Majesty on one flank and sympathetic priests on the other, Teresa’s strategic weapons were primed. Every element was in place for the next step, although money was still short. Her reason “governed” and “fortified” by His Voice, Teresa was soon to discover that the Carmelite Primitive Rule actually prescribed making foundations without an income—thus neutralizing her adversaries’ major argument at a stroke. But she did not know this yet. She was alone with His Majesty, attentive to that Other who was renovating her soul; estranged from herself, reassured and at peace in this new, sonorous love, less psychic, more active, enterprising, and detached. True, she lacked resources. To be realistic, though, she had the support of some highly influential clerics. In the solitude and grandeur of enthusiasm, the ecstasy of transfixion here mutates via a new alchemy. In it are mingled the exaltation of knowing she must act and the fear of being unable to do so: ambition and persecution. Despite the obstacles, the dread, the dead weight of so many difficulties, a female self triumphantly convinced of being the Other’s mouthpiece gains self-awareness over the course of these pages. And aspires to become…freer still!

  “All the rest of the trouble was mine [y todo el más trabajo era mío], trials of so many kinds that now I’m amazed I was able to suffer them. Sometimes in distress I said: ‘My Lord, how is it You command things that seem impossible? For if I were at least free, even though I am a woman!’.”17

  And, as if the better to embody Teresa’s vow to operate through His Majesty’s Voice, a triangular construction comes to her aid, composed of Teresa, the symbolic Father (Saint Joseph), and the Virgin Mother:

  Once when in need, for I didn’t know what to do or how to pay some workmen, St. Joseph, my true father and lord, appeared and revealed to me that I would not be lacking, that I should hire them. And so I did, without so much as a penny, and the Lord in ways that amazed those that heard about it provided for me. The house struck me as being very small, so small that it didn’t seem adequate for a monastery…And one day after Communion, the Lord said to me: “I’ve already told you to enter as best you can.” And by way of exclamation He added: “Oh, covetousness of the human race, that you think you will be lacking even ground! How many times did I sleep in the open because I had no place else!” I was astonished and saw that He was right. I went to the little house and drew up plans and found that although small it was perfect for a monastery.18

  On one of those same days, the Feast of the Assumption of our Lady while at a monastery of the order of the glorious St. Dominic, I was reflecting upon the many sins I had in the past confessed in that house and many things about my wretched life. A rapture came upon me so great that it almost took me out of myself. I sat down; it still seems to me that I couldn’t see the elevation or hear Mass, and afterward I had a scruple about this. It seemed to me while in this state that I saw myself vested in a white robe of shining brightness, but at first I didn’t see who was clothing me in it. Afterward I saw our Lady at my right side and my father Saint Joseph at the left, for they were putting that robe on me. I was given to understand that I was now cleansed of my sins.…

  The beauty I saw in our Lady was extraordinary, although I didn’t make out any particular details except the form of her face in general and that her garment was of the most brilliant white, not dazzling but soft. I didn’t see the glorious St. Joseph so clearly, although I saw indeed that he was there, as in the visions I mentioned that are not seen. Our Lady seemed to me to be a very young girl.19

  In order for you to hear the Voice of His Majesty within, Teresa, my love, you had to transcend the paternal seduction that was so disturbing and malign as to send you into coma. You had to persuade yourself that your “real father” was a symbolic one: Saint Joseph, the non-procreator, the paradigm of all symbolic fathers, who dispels the fantasy of seduction, oedipal rivalry, and incest. And your mother had to be a virginal young girl. But was this an idealization of your mother in her youth, before she was worn out by her many pregnancies, or was it rather a vision of yourself, projected in the place of this ideal because untouchable woman, this immaculate body? Either way, you truly live out the being in which I discover you at this point of your adventure (and of mine). You write it as the deliverance from your limited condition as a begotten creature. Because of the way they transmute father and mother into ideal figures, Mary and Joseph will always accompany you in your upward flight toward eternal othernesses, eternal and yet possible, for when you are outside yourself these ideal constructs burn on, inside: “I remained for some time…almost outside myself. I was left with a great impulse to be dissolved for God [un ímpetu grande de deshacerme por Dios].”20

  Chapter 22

  THE MATERNAL VOCATION

  I heard the words: “While one is alive, progress doesn’t come from trying to enjoy Me more but by trying to do My will.”

  Teresa of Avila, Spiritual Testimonies

  Now everything can be speeded up, it’s time to leave the footdraggers, the ill-wishers, the antagonists behind: let’s get moving!

  On August 15, 1561, Teresa settled her sister Juana and brother-in-law Juan de Ovalle into a small house she had bought in their name, located west of Avila outside the walls. The couple would live on the ground floor—the future chapel—while thirteen monastic cells were planned for the upper story, as well as service areas. The first Convent for Discalced Carmelites, to be called after Saint Joseph, was about to see the light. Money had been found: Aldonza de Guzmán, Giomar’s mother, had given 30 ducats and Jerónima Guiomar de Ulloa had given whatever she could spare, on top of the dowries of two of Teresa’s nieces (200 ducats from Isabel de la Peña, and maybe from Leonor de Cepeda) and the 200 ducats sent by brother Lorenzo from Peru.

  It was a modest building, unworthy perhaps of being a monastery, and Teresa was frustrated by the cramped spaces that cruelly belied the magnificence of her project. Still, we must take things as they come, we’ll improvise, just get it done, we’ll do better next time. Surprise attacks and shows of strength became the “trademark” of La Madre’s campaigns. Where foundations were at stake, she was not above taking possession at dead of night of premises disputed by her enemies!

  This, the first of the works to be dictated by His Majesty’s Voice, was coddled by Teresa like a newborn babe. She drew up the plans, whitewashed the walls, designed the close-grilled jalousies that would enable the nuns to see without being seen, directed the workmen. Her sister Juana’s family seconded her efforts, as did old friends like Francisco de Salcedo and Fr. Gaspar Daza. Did she notice them at all? Was she aware of the lives around her? Or was she simply hovering over the taut thread of the Other’s Voice?

  One morning Teresa stumbles over the body of her little nephew Gonzalo lying unconscious on the floor beside the door. From the heights of her mirage with His Majesty she descends precipitously to earth, sweeps the insensible body into her arms, rubs her face against his, warms him under the rough cloth of her veil. Gonzalo rapidly revives in her arms.

  “You resurrected him!” cries the boy’s mot
her, sobbing with joy at the miracle, while doña Guiomar and Salcedo clasp their hands together, awed to witness such a sign from God.

  “Stuff and nonsense,” retorts Teresa briskly, batting away the sin of pride. Or is she just more reasonable than the others, always lucid in the midst of her dream?

  Juana’s firstborn, so early snatched from the jaws of death, will soon be presented with a little brother. Does Teresa, the perceptive midwife, recognize his frailty straight away? While others celebrate the birth, the aunt’s worried diagnosis cuts through the theological platitudes required by the occasion: “If you are not destined to be a man of God, I pray God to take you, little angel, before you come to offend Him…”

  The child does not live long. Far from being moved, let alone upset, by this death, Teresa goes into raptures: “Praise God for the sight of one of those little souls ascending into Heaven, and the throng of angels gathered to welcome it!”1

  Since life in the Beyond trumps life down here, Teresa, my love, you must have thought that the child was well “saved,” spared the journey through this vale of tears. Fair enough. And yet I feel, along with your biographer Marcelle Auclair who picks up on the story, that you behaved heartlessly toward that baby and toward Juana, who might have preferred to see her sickly son alive at her side rather than buried beneath the earth, angel or not. But you don’t really like mothers, do you, and deplore still more the motherhood of your younger sister—almost as much as you disliked your own mother when she was surrounded by a gang of pestering brats.

  Furthermore, La Madre has a horror of imperfection. Years later you explain in a letter to one of the great benefactors of your foundations, María de Mendoza, sister of the bishop of Avila, that you will not accept a certain postulant into your Valladolid establishment, on grounds that she has only one eye. You proffer a somewhat glib excuse: “In a house where there are many nuns, one can overlook whatever defect there may be; but where there are so few, it makes sense to be selective.”2 Teresa envisions her discalced nuns as akin to an elite corps, in the image of La Madre herself, who suffers, to be sure, but also causes suffering. She expects vocations to be ironclad, constitutions to be robust, and minds to be keen. Lord preserve us from birdbrains, melancholics, and females possessed by the devil! Pitiless she undoubtedly was, at times. “I am not at all like a woman in such matters, for I have a robust spirit [a tough heart: tengo recio corazón].”3 I shall always remember that remark, for it does not express regret. Yours was undoubtedly a merciless pride—the logical outcome of your fusion with His Majesty and an indispensable condition for your work. A superhuman, inhuman, mesmerizing hardness: such was the price of the diamond of your soul.

  Life treads water and the longing gets fiercer, as the brief from Rome authorizing the foundation of Saint Joseph’s has still not arrived. Anguish, cramps, and vomiting ensue. Intense exchanges with the confessor Pedro Ibáñez: he proposes to Teresa that she write about her life. She enjoys frequent stays at the house of doña Guiomar, who continues to activate her high-society network: “For more than four years we have been…closer than if we were sisters”—but the true family is that of the works, the Work. Teresa naturally mobilizes all of her most successful relatives to help with the Carmelite reforms, first among them the conquistador of the family, her younger brother Lorenzo, who has married a wealthy woman in Quito, Ecuador. As befits the gravity of the circumstances, she addresses him as señor—later on, she will exert a steely spiritual direction over him. But just now the date is December 23, 1561, the señor has generously offered 40 pesos, and she is overcome:

  Señor.…Certainly all those to whom you sent money received it at such an opportune moment that I was greatly consoled.…

  I have already written you a long letter about a matter that for many reasons I could not escape doing, since God’s inspirations are the source. Because these things are hard to speak of in a letter, I mention only the fact that certain saintly and learned persons think that I am obliged not to be cowardly but do all I can for this project—a monastery of nuns. There will be no more than fifteen nuns in it, who will practice very strict enclosure, never going out or allowing themselves to be seen without veils covering their faces. Their life will be one of prayer and mortification…

  That lady, doña Guiomar, who is also writing to you, is a help to me. She is the wife of Francisco Dávila, of Salobralejo, if you recall. Her husband died nine years ago. He had an annual income of 1,000,000 maravedís. She, for her part, has an entailed estate in addition to what she has from her husband.…For more than four years we have been devoted friends, closer than if we were sisters.…At present she is without funds, so it is up to me to buy and prepare the house.…But then His Majesty comes along and moves you to provide for it. And what amazes me is that the forty pesos you added was just what I needed. I believe that St. Joseph—after whom the house will be named—wanted us to have the money, and I know that he will repay you. In sum, although the house is small and poor, the property has a field and some beautiful views. And that’s sufficient.4

  With regard to papal briefs, the one received in August will not suit, because it has to derive from the ordinary authority, that is, the authority of the bishop of Avila, and not that of the Carmelite provincial, who has declared himself incompetent. On Christmas Eve of 1561, the same provincial commands Teresa to go to Toledo: the daughter of the duke of Medinaceli, doña Luisa de la Cerda, is in a bad way. In fact she is delirious, and only Teresa can help her. While awaiting permission to found, the future saint will act as a “psychological cell,” and failure is not an option.

  Despite her six children, doña Luisa remains inconsolable for the death of her husband Antonio Arias Pardo de Saavedra, marshal of Castile, nephew of the archbishop of Toledo (and General Inquisitor) Juan Pardo de Tavera, and one of the richest men in Spain. The grieving widow has lost her mind, ceaselessly repeating “I believe in the resurrection of the flesh.” Teresa, a woman of faith if ever there was one, recognizes the emergency of the situation. For it is the Carmelite provincial, Ángel de Salazar himself, who has “sent an order, under precept of obedience, to go immediately” and minister to the unhappy soul! Besides, there is great “consolation” and “security” in the fact that by the grace of God, she can also count on a house of the Society of Jesus established in Toledo, near the home of the bereaved noblewoman! Teresa is not the sort to hesitate in such circumstances.5

  Toledo was far away, however. You need only look up a map of Spain, and recall that in 1561 there were neither trains nor planes nor cars. It was winter, snow was falling, the roads were slippery and impassable. Accompanied by her brother-in-law Juan de Ovalle and her good friend Juana Suárez, Teresa reached the town of her ancestors by early January. She could not have failed to think of her disgraced grandfather in his sambenito, the rich merchant Juan de Toledo, alias Juan Sánchez, who fled the town to save his honra. Who mentioned honor? We will see what we will see!

  Teresa stayed for six months. Six months of luxury living, of exquisite female friendships, of rubbing shoulders with grandees and making useful contacts with eminent churchmen and highborn ladies. Luisa de la Cerda turned out to be a conscientious person of great piety and kindness. Deeply attached to Teresa, she followed her like a shadow, lavishing elaborate attentions upon her and even a set of diamonds, to the amused indifference of the recipient.

  Once, when I was with that lady I mentioned, I was ill with heart sickness; as I said my heart trouble was severe, although it isn’t now. Since she was very charitable, she gave orders that I be shown some of her jewels of gold and precious stone that were very valuable, especially one of the diamonds that was appraised highly. She thought they would make me happy. Recalling what the Lord has kept for us, I was laughing to myself and feeling pity at the sight of what people esteem.…In this way the soul has great dominance, so great that I don’t know whether anyone who doesn’t possess this dominion will understand it. It is the detachment proper and natura
l to us.”6

  At Luisa de la Cerda’s you meet the cream of Toledan society, Teresa, my love, and these people impress you, but not at the expense of your critical sense or knack for making use of them at the right time: the duchess of Escalona, the duchess of Maqueda, the duchess of Medinaceli, the duchess of Alba. You also make the acquaintance of doña Luisa’s niece, Ana de la Cerda de Mendoza, princess of Eboli, who will denounce you to the Inquisition; but that’s another story, in which animosity between women plays its part, a far trickier business to handle than the skirmishes with your confessors, whose fingers you slip through, by now, like a fish. We will return to that later.

  For the present, in Toledo, you proceed to analyze these Spanish grandees with the inexorable delicacy hitherto reserved for your musings on yourself. Immersed in His Majesty, you’re used to mortifying yourself or stepping “outside yourself”; but also, as I know, to conducting a meticulous dissection of your experiences, in terms commonly regarded as “mystical.” Now we see this strenuous introspection turning its hand to reportage! The glittering circle around sweet, sad Luisa de la Cerda inspires passages of high dramatic realism. Your feats of social psychology, my novelistic Teresa, are doubtless less amusing that those of Cervantes, and never plebeian in the manner of Lazarillo de Tormes. Refusing to be either duped or dazzled by these celebs avant la lettre, you portray them with lofty feminine exactitude: