The Avila of Saint Teresa: Religious Reform in a Sixteenth-Century City

"Yes. This is a wonderfully vivid and well researched study of the actual civic, urban world in which Teresa lived and it certainly reinforces the impression that this is a city well supplied, or even over-supplied, with religious communities—not untypical of its time. Avila is, as those who have visited it know, a classic medieval walled city. As with so many others, its geography is marked out with churches and religious communities of different sorts. Bilinkoff’s book gives a very clear sense of just how much the religious and monastic communities were entwined with the economic life of the city. They drew from that economic life, they enjoyed the patronage of various people. They depended quite a lot on aristocratic patronage, on aristocrats buying their tombs in the churches, or indeed buying their retirement homes in convents and monasteries, living on their patrimony within a religious community, when they were no longer particularly active in society. “Spain is not quite a chosen nation, but certainly a favoured child of God” Also, of course, as in the rest of pre-Reformation Europe, the religious communities provided social services, employment, and so on, for the population at large. Pretty well every major religious order is represented, even in a middle-sized town like Avila. If you wanted to become a nun or a friar, or a monk, there was plenty of choice. There, as elsewhere, when Teresa founds new communities, she has to overcome just a little bit of suspicion from civic authorities who ask whether they can really cope with yet another convent. Part of what Teresa is eager to promise is that her new foundations will not be a drain on resources. So, I put Bilinkoff’s book in there because it’s really helpful to see how deeply entwined religious communities were with the civic landscape and how all that worked. Very much so, which is why she travelled a great deal of the time. Her Book of the Foundations is a very vivid account of just how she stumped around the country, going to places where she thought there might be an opening, where perhaps somebody had written to her saying, ‘We think we could do with a reformed Carmelite convent here.’ This is another reason why the Bernini sculpture doesn’t give you much of a picture. Part of her life is just trundling around Spain in overheated, uncomfortable oxcarts visiting new possible settings for convents. Some of the best-known little anecdotes of her life come from those travels. When she says that we have to think of our human life on Earth as a night spent in a bad hotel, she knows what she’s talking about—you know it’ll be over soon, you’ve got to put up with it, and you’ve got to make the most of it; but there are bedbugs, a draught and overheating. No. Part of the story of the foundations is the interest which she aroused in the men’s branch of the Carmelite order. She began by reforming the women’s Carmelite order. Then, a couple of youngish friars in the Carmelite order say that the men’s communities could do with something similar. One of the first people to respond to that is the man we know as St John of the Cross, who was a very well-educated young friar, though from a very poor background. He recommits himself—Carmelite sisters and brothers would always take a kind of dedication, so Teresa became ‘Teresa of Jesus’. John of the Cross was originally called ‘John of St Matthew’, and then becomes John of the Cross when he recommits to the reformed order. We know quite a bit about the beginnings of the reform in the men’s order from the letters and the testimonies about the life of St John of the Cross. “Teresa is extrovert, even flirtatious” John of the Cross becomes, very importantly, Teresa’s confessor and spiritual director for a period. They’re very, very diverse personalities. They’re clearly deeply fond of each other, and also find each other slightly exasperating. John is very intense, very interior. Teresa is extrovert, even flirtatious. She’s a rather overpowering presence—I think you would know if she was in the room. And I think it’s rather wonderful. The two of them shared so much, exchanged so much and learned so much from each other. There are several notes of Teresa about John of the Cross, but there’s one particular one where she’s talking about a sort of recreation/relaxation period in the convent one day when she’d asked the opinion of various clerical friends on a phrase that had come to her in prayer. She then gives her views, her judgment on each of these comments—rather scathingly. And she says of John of the Cross, ‘And then Father John of the Cross, as usual, went on about darkness and solitude.’ You feel Teresa is teasing him just a little bit."