In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

178 Chapter 6 Forging Sainthood: Teresa’s Letters as Relics O f the thousands of letters that Saint Teresa wrote, only about 230 authenticated autographs remain, some of which are not entirely in Teresa’s hand (Rodríguez Martínez and Egido 51). Illness and exhaustion frequently prevented her from writing her own letters. She used several amanuenses, among them her nurse and companion Ana de San Bartolomé.1 However, even when Teresa dictated letters to others, she sometimes added post data and marginal notes. The Valladolid collection contains examples of letters begun by amanuenses but continued by Teresa , who was apparently so anxious to express herself in writing that she yanked the page away from her secretary. The remaining of the approximately 450 extant letters are duplicates, some made to ensure delivery of at least one copy, some made to preserve Teresa’s words for posterity. Of the thousands of letters that have been lost, some were destroyed and others were passed from hand to hand until they disappeared. Rodríguez Martínez and Egido cite the odyssey of Teresa’s letters to Gracián as an example. When Teresa died, Fray Jerónimo had a pile of her letters “four fingers high.” Due to the internecine disputes among Discalced Carmelites, he wound up traveling from Spain to Italy and North Africa, and then on to Flanders and Brussels. He gave the letters to his sister , prioress of the Consuegra Carmel, for safekeeping. She passed them on to another brother, Tomás Gracián, with the expectation that they would be used in Teresa’s beatification process. Before the letters were dispersed and lost, seventeenth-century friars had the chance to copy many of them (Rodríguez Martínez and Egido 52). The scattering of Teresa’s letters continued throughout the centuries and still goes on today. Egido laments that convents often gave away Teresa’s letters as gifts to benefactors without taking into consideration their historical importance. Even now, holders sometimes store them or pass them on to relatives rather than turning them over to institutions that would preserve them. As a result, letters disintegrate and are lost forever.2 Forging Sainthood: Teresa’s Letters as Relics 179 Preserving Teresa’s Epistolary Legacy Fortunately, some early Discalced Carmelites did have the foresight to safeguard these irreplaceable documents. The largest collection of extant autographs is housed at the Discalced Carmelite convent in Valladolid. The collection consists of forty letters to María de San José, as well as one to Doña María de Mendoza, the original sponsor of the Valladolid foundation. María de San José took the letters Teresa had written her to Lisbon, and through a circuitous route they came into the possession of Francisco Sobrino, who would later become archbishop of Valladolid. He deposited them in the Discalced Carmelite convent, where two of his sisters , María de San Alberto and Cecilia del Nacimiento, were nuns.3 The importance Sobrino attached to these treasures is evinced by the preface to the collection: Todas las cartas aunque no contienen nada de particular importancia de doctrina ni su storia por solo ser todas firmadas de la Me Sta Teresa y haberse escritas de su propia mano y letra sino son dos o tres que son de mano agena, y por la veneración que se debe a todas sus cosas se recogieron aquí en este libro y en estas hojas hasta la foja 119—el qual libro porque quede en lugar y reuerencia que se deue, le entrego oy a la Me Priora y convento de nuestra Señora de la Concepción de las descalças Carmelitas de esta ciudad como a casa suya para que en el se guarde con la veneraci ón que se deue a tan santa madre y fundadora—en Valladolid a seis dias del mes de agosto de mill y seiscientos y catorce años. Fray CI Fr Franco Sobrino [All the letters, even though they contain nothing of any particular doctrinal or historical importance [are valuable], if only because they were signed by our Mother Saint Teresa and were written by her own hand, and in her own handwriting, except for two or three that were written by someone else, and because of the veneration that we owe everything of hers, we gathered them up into this book and in these pages up until folio 119. So that this book will remain in a place where it will be...

Share