Writing Women in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain. The Mothers of Saint Teresa of Avila by Ronald E. Surtz (review)

560 BOOK REVIEWS VIII of crucial importance for the history of both Florence and Rome. In December , i486, Innocent established an appalto or tax farm with nine firms of Italian bankers (including the Medici bank) which loaned the pope money in advance on his spiritual revenues, thereby assuring him of a more regular income . Over the eight-year period of the farm's existence, these nine expanded to become a body of forty-six investors, and from the point ofview of the initial bankers, the enterprise was a dismal failure and may, in Lorenzo's case, have helped to lead to the downfall of the Medici bank. Innocent, however, profited, and the idea of a funded debt was taken up later by Clement VII. Bullard also maintains that the arranged marriage between Lorenzo's daughter and InnocentVffl 's son which took place in 1487 bound the two fathers together for the rest of their lives, providing Lorenzo with a much-enlarged arena for patronage and with greater financial opportunities, but in addition sucking him into the black hole of Innocent's debt. This collection makes very exciting and persuasive reading, and is coherent, accessible, and well written. It is a welcome and individual contribution to studies of Laurentian Florence and of the late fifteenth-century papacy. Kate Lowe Goldsmiths'College, University ofLondon Writing Women in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain. The Mothers of Saint Teresa ofAvila. By Ronald E. Surtz. [Middle Ages Series.] (Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press. 1995. Pp. xii, 223. $32.95.) The topic of women writers is not a novel area of research for Ronald Surtz. In the Guitar of God, published in 1990, Surtz treated questions of gender, power, and authority in the visionary world of Mother Juana de la Cruz (1481-1534), depicting the Franciscan abbess as an avid chronicler and defender of her visionary experiences of the divine. Mother Juana's only extant work,El libro del conorte, is again treated in the final chapter ofthe present volume ,which also examines perceptively the writing of four other women of the Spanish Middle Ages and Renaissance, namely, Teresa de Cartagena, Constanza de Castilla, María de Ajofrín, and María de Santo Domingo. Against the formidable obstacles—social and religious—posed to women intent on writing, these nuns undertook with vigor and firm conviction the task of not only recording on paper their extraordinary religious experiences but also incorporating into their verbal message a staunch defense ofthe authenticity ofthose supernatural events. In chapter I,"The NewJudith:Teresa de Cartagena," Surtz reviews the pathetically moving life of the deaf Franciscan nun and her avant-garde assertiveness as an exponent of literary expression, once cited by Alan Deyermond as a rare example in medieval Spanish letters of "a writer's reflections on the creative process, an indication of how it feels to be a writer" ("'El convento de BOOK REVIEWS 561 dolencias': the Works of Teresa de Cartagena,"Journal ofHispanic Philology, I [1976], 25). In fact, Teresa de Cartagena's Admiración operum Dei, a powerful defense of her right to literary activity, has been seen by some critics as an exquisite example of a feminist text. Following a brief explanation ofTeresa's first extant work, a spiritual treatise titledArboleda de los enfermos, Surz focuses at length on the Admiración'^, rhetorical strategies and varied imagery to explain Teresa's defensive and protective posture toward her own writings. Surtz pays particular attention to Teresa's skillful use of three images, the bark/pitch image, the biblicalJudith, and the blind man on the road toJericho. The result is a carefully structured work which points to the role of divine empowerment in enabling a feeble woman, Teresa, to conquer her weak female status by performing tasks traditionally reserved to the male gender, while picturing herself and her writing as a "sign of divine might" (p. 40). Chapter 2, titled "Constanza de Castilla and the Gynaeceum of Composition," provides a socio-historical and literary picture of Constanza, the legitimate granddaughter of King Pedro I,who in the midst ofpolitical feuds sought refuge in the Dominican convent of Santo Domingo el Real, where she served as prioress for some...