Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in Their Own Works

1: More Than One Teresa: A Movement of Religious Women

19 1 More Than One Teresa A Movement of Religious Women A na de San Bartolomé (1549–1626) and María de San José (1548–1603), two of Saint Teresa’s most beloved Daughters and direct inheritors of her vision, played a central role in extending and institutionalizing the Discalced Carmelite Order. For both, fidelity to the Teresian Constitution and Rules became a raison d’être. Each chronicled the intense struggles that were part of the efforts of Spain and Rome to stem the spread of Protestantism, and ultimately each contributed to women’s efforts to remain active and visible within their Church. To read their works is to acquire a sense of Catholic Reform in the making. Almost daily, the nun-leaders of the first generation of Reformed Carmelites spent time writing. Literary activity—composing, dictating, transcribing, copying —was as much part of their spiritual practice as prayer. Both Ana de San Bartolom é and María de San José had close personal relationships with Madre Teresa. It was their love for her, the desire to emulate her spirituality, and the will to defend the Reform movement that gave them the impetus to write. As the authors of texts for Mistresses of Novices, as well as talented leaders and teachers, Madre Ana and Madre María represent the two poles of Teresa of Ávila’s character and Reform work. Ana de San Bartolomé, an unlettered Castilian peasant who embodied Teresa of Ávila’s respect for simplicity and humble origins, defended the tenet that experience took precedence over book learning. Direct in word and action, she insisted on copying established precedents to the letter of the practiced Teresian law. Socially, her connections with powerful figures crossed class lines. Ingrained respect for hierarchy, however, made it difficult for her to be consistently independent of official authority. In her writings she described the events and personalities of the early years of the Reform over and over again from similar but varying angles, creating a detailed collage of figures, emotions, visions, incidents, and teachings. Because of her close association with the Saint of Ávila, Madre Ana became an important missionary, attaining near mythic stature. She was sent from Madrid to found Reformed Carmelite convents in France and Belgium many years after her 20 cHapTer One Mother’s death. In Antwerp, she became an icon of deliverance when on two occasions her visions and prayers were believed to have preserved the city from invasion . A self-trained scribe, she wrote thousands of pages of letters and recorded the historical and spiritual events of her life. By contrast, María de San José grew up and was educated in an aristocratic household. She defended the tenet that access to book learning could advance the cause of women by helping to bring about honorable religiosity. Madre Teresa respected the young María’s learning, although she also teased her and called her letrera (bookworm). Direct in action, Madre María was indirect in word. A sense of humor did nothing to temper the sharpness of her irony. She represents a normative rather than an imitative attitude toward the Reform. As a “new Christian,” she had contacts with influential new Christians. Her trust in the intelligence and strength of women led to an independent stance, for which she was persecuted. Her capacity for reconceptualization and analysis made her the first important historian of the Carmelite Reform. María de San José is the unsung martyr of the movement; not coincidentally, she is also one of its most able leaders and writers.1 She defended Carmelite women ’s right to autonomous rule and protested the belittlement of female intelligence.2 It was as leader of the Reformed Carmelite convent in Lisbon for several three-year terms in the last eighteen years of her life that she accomplished the major part of her writing. In poems she prophesied the stormy vicissitudes through which the Reform was still to pass and which she would suffer so directly. Imprisoned and called before the Inquisition several times, she died in internal exile in her native land, persecuted and ostracized. As they differed in background and politics, so Ana de San Bartolomé and María de San José differed as writers, each displaying her own style, perspective, and emphasis. Following Madre Teresa’s way, Ana de San Bartolomé combined visions with daily experience in her autobiographical and other religious-historical narratives. She used visionary, biblical, and hagiographic allusions, salting her sentences with popular proverbs...