Teresa of Avila - Saint Teresa of Ávila - Collected Works

Mr. Lewis, whose translation is the fifth, was born on the 12th of November, 1814, and died on January the 23rd, 1895. The first edition was printed in 1870, the second in 1888. It is regrettable that the latter edition, of which the present is a reprint, omitted the marginal notes which would have been so helpful to the reader.

St. Teresa's life and character having always been a favourite study of men and women of various schools of thought, it may be useful to notice here a few recent English and foreign works on the subject:--

The Life of Saint Teresa , by the author of "Devotions before and after Holy Communion" (i.e., Miss Maria Trench), London, 1875.

The Life of Saint Teresa of the Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel . Edited with a preface by the Archbishop of Westminster (Cardinal Manning), London, 1865. (By Miss Elizabeth Lockhart, afterwards first abbess of the Franciscan convent, Notting Hill.) Frequently reprinted.

The Life and Letters of St. Teresa , by Henry James Coleridge, S.J. Quarterly Series. 3 vols (1881, 1887, 1888).

And, from another point of view:

The Life of St. Teresa , by Gabriela Cunninghame-Graham, 2 vols, London, 1894.

Histoire de Sainte Thérèse d'après les Bollandistes. 2 vols, Nantes, 1882. Frequently reprinted. The author is Mlle. Adelaide Lecornu (born 5 July, 1852, died at the Carmelite convent at Caen, 14 December, 1901. Her name in religion was Adelaide-Jéronyme-Zoe-Marie du Sacré-Coeur).

An excellent character sketch of the Saint has appeared in the "Les Saints" series (Paris, Lecoffre, 1901):

Sainte Thérèse , par Henri Joly.

Although the attempt at explaining the extraordinary phenomena in the life of St. Teresa by animal Magnetism and similar obscure theories had already been exploded by the Bollandists, it has lately been revived by Professor Don Arturo Perales Gutierrez of Granada, and Professor Don Fernando Segundo Brieva Salvatierra of Madrid, who considered her a subject of hysterical derangements. The discussion carried on for some time, not only in Spain but also in France, Germany, and other countries, has been ably summed up and disposed of by P. Grégoire de S. Joseph: La prétendue Hystérie de Sainte Thérèse. Lyons.

The Bibliographie Thérèsienne, by Henry de Curzon (Paris, 1902) is, unfortunately, too incomplete, not to say slovenly, to be of much use.

Finally, it is necessary to say a word about the spelling of the name Teresa. In Spanish and Italian it should be written without an h as these languages do not admit the use of Th ; in English, likewise, where this combination of letters represents a special sound, the name should be spelt with T only. But the present fashion of thus writing it in Latin, German, French, and other languages, which generally maintain the etymological spelling, is intolerable: The name is Greek, and was placed on the calendar in honour of a noble Spanish lady, St. Therasia, who became the wife of a Saint, Paulinus of Nola, and a Saint herself. See Sainte Thérèse, Lettres au R. P. Bouix, by the Abbé Postel, Paris, 1864. The derivation of the name from the Hebrew Thersa can no longer be defended (Father Jerome-Gratian, in Fuente, Obras, Vol. VI., p. 369 sqq.).

Benedict Zimmerman,

Prior O.C.D.

St. Luke's Priory,

Wincanton, Somerset.

16th July, 1904.

1Chap. xxxiv., note 5.

2Chap. xviii. § 11.

3Fuente, Obras (1881), vol. vi. p. 133.

4See the licence granted by Leo X. to the prioress and convent of the Incarnation to build another house for the use of the said convent, and to migrate thither (Vatican Archives, Dataria, Leo X., anno i., vol. viii., fol. 82). Also a licence to sell or exchange certain property belonging to it (ibid., anno iv., vol. vii., f. 274; and a charge to the Bishop of Avila concerning a recourse of the said convent (ibid., anno vii., vol. iv., f. 24).

5Chap. iv § 9.

6Lettres de Ste. Thérèse, edit. P. Grégoire de S. Joseph, vol. iii, p. 419, note 2.

7Chap. xxxvi. § 10 The date of this part of the Life can be easily ascertained from the two following chapters. In xxxvii. § 18, St. Teresa says that she is not yet fifty years old, consequently the chapter must have been written before the end of March, 1565; and in the next chapter, xxxviii. § 15, she speaks of the death of Father Pedro Ibañez, which appears to have taken place on 2nd February. This, at least, is the date under which his name appears in the Année Dominicaine, and the Very Rev. Prior Vincent McNabb tells me that there is every reason to think that it is the date of his death.

8When about A.D. 1452 certain communities of Beguines demanded affiliation to the Carmelite Order, they were given the Constitutions of the friars without any alterations. These Constitutions were revised in 1462, but neither there nor in the Acts of the General Chapters, so far as these are preserved, is there the slightest reference to convents of nuns. The colophon of the printed edition (Venice, 1499) shows that they held good for friars and nuns: Expliciunt sacrae constitutiones novae fratrum et sororum beatae Mariae de Monte Carmelo . They contain the customary laws forbidding the friars under pain of excommunication, to leave the precincts of their convents without due licence, but do not enjoin strict enclosure, which would have been incompatible with their manner of life and their various duties. St. Teresa nowhere insinuates that the Constitutions, such as they were, were not kept at the Incarnation; her remarks in chap. vii. are aimed at the Constitutions themselves, which were never made for nuns, and therefore did not provide for the needs of their convents.

9Reforma lib. i., cap. 47. Bollandists. no. 366.

10Chap. vii. § 11.

11Chap. v. § 2.

12Constitutions of 1462. Part i., cap. x.

13Chap. xxiii. § 17.

14Deposition for the process of canonisation, written in 1591. Fuente, Obras, vol. vi., p. 174.

15See the notes to chapters vii. § 11; xvi. § 10; xx. § 6; xxiv. § 4; xxvii. § 17 At the end of chapter xxxi. we are told on the authority of Don Vicente that the "first" Life must have ended at this point.

16Bollandists, no. 1518.

17Lettres, edit. Grégoire. I., pp. 13 (18 May, 1568); 21 (27 May); 35 (2 November).

18Reforma, vol. i., lib. v., cap. xxxv., no. 9. Bollandists, no. 1518.

19If the latter, it must have been very much shorter than the second edition, and can scarcely have contained more than the first nine chapters (perhaps verbatim) and an account of the visions, locutions, etc., contained in chapters xxiii.-xxxi., without comment.

20Chap. xxxiii. § 7.

21Chap. xxxiv. § 8.

22Chap. xvi. § 2.

23Chap. xvii. § 7.

24Chap. xxviii. § 10.

25In the Prologue to the Book of Foundations , Father Garcia de Toledo, [note continues, p. xviii.] her confessor at St. Joseph's Convent, is said to be responsible for the order to rewrite the "Life"; but in the Preface to the "Life" St. Teresa speaks of her "confessors" in the plural. Fathers Ibañez and Bañez may be included in the number. See also ch. xxx. § 27.

26Chap. xviii. § 11.

27Chap. xiii. § 22 In chap. xvi. § 12, the Saint says: "I wish we five who now love one another in our Lord, had made some such arrangement, etc." Fuente is of opinion that these five were, besides the Saint, Father Julian de Avila, Don Francisco de Salcedo, St. John of the Cross, and Don Lorenzo de Cepeda, St. Teresa's brother: but this is impossible at the date of this part of the "Life." It is more probable that she meant Francisco de Salcedo, Gaspar Daza, Julian de Avila, and Father Ibañez, the latter being still alive in the beginning of 1564, when this chapter was written. It is more difficult to say who the three confessors were whom St. Teresa desired to see the "Life" (ch. xl. § 32). If, as I think, the book was first handed to Father Garcia de Toledo, the others may have been Francisco de Salcedo, Baltasar Alvarez, and Gaspar de Salazar.