Chapter 7: St Teresa of Avila
7.5: Effects of her teaching on union with God
7.5.2: Effect on the patriarchal and religious norms
be allowed to leave the house on only three occasions: once for her baptism, another in order to go to the house of the man she marries, and a third for her burial” (Kavanaugh and Rodriegez 1980; 23). Women were certainly not encouraged to visit churches, to travel, to study or to think. By their nature, women were barred from personal, social or ecclesiastical power. By their nature, it was believed that they were incapable of learning. By their nature as women, they were highly susceptible to delusion by the devil. Accordingly, the virtues by which women were to shape their lives were those of humility and obedience. Purity, passivity and withdrawal from the public domain were marks of holiness for women. Men were called to active ministry, to preaching, to social and ecclesiastical power; women were called to care for the sick and dying, or to prayer in enclosed environments, either at home or in a convent.
As Protestantism advanced, the church responded by increasingly suppressing the role of women and the laity. Obedience became the critical tool for their survival in a church that placed all power in the hands of the clergy. The Inquisition increasingly attempted to control gender roles, and responded swiftly to any women who claimed religious authority. Most of the alumbrados prosecuted by the Inquisition were in fact women, and these trials were a direct attack on women‟s own experiences of God and the power they derived there from. Women were more often targeted than men as it was believed they had a “natural” tendency towards emotionalism, visions, and were off course seen as the means through which the Devil could tempt men, and thus the church, and draw them into evil.
In Spain, during the time of Teresa‟s life, there were two options available to women: marriage, which meant repeated pregnancies and childbirth, and submission to one‟s husband in everything; or the religious life. We must not forget that Teresa had as a young girl witnessed her mother‟s ill health, due to repeatedly difficult pregnancies, and her eventual death at the very young age
of 33. For many women, then, religious life offered a measure of independence and freedom, and education that would not have otherwise been possible.
Deidre Green writes that:
It is not surprising that some women who chose the latter (religious life) did so, not so much from a wholehearted sense of religious devotion, as because it was the only way they could gain a measure of autonomy and freedom. This is not to deny the reality of genuine spiritual vocation for many women who became nuns: the celibate life of withdrawal and renunciation of the world was, indeed, a way in which many women could realise their spiritual aspirations but it was also a means of transcending some of the limitations placed on women in sixteenth-century Spain (Green 1989; 3).
However, despite the above, this was nevertheless a period which was highly suspicious that women could even have authentic experiences of God, and certainly not experiences unmediated through the church. To therefore write or speak of one‟s experience of God, or attempt to teach others as a woman, was considered to be arrogant and deceptive. Women were taught to not trust their own lived experience and therefore their own power and authority.
This ambiguity and tension around women in religious life is picked up by Ahlgren who writes that “The post-Tridentine trend toward the claustration of women was not always successful in decreasing women‟s sphere of influence.
Women found creative ways to establish public support for their religious endeavours. Further, the life of the cloister enabled some women to form communities of mutual support in their efforts for spiritual advancement.
Such, of course, was Teresa‟s vision of the Discalced Carmelite order”
(Ahlgren 1996; 25).
Teresa was called throughout her life to defend the legitimacy of her lived experiences of God, of her reforms in the Carmelite order, and even her own personhood and integrity. She was aware of how these criticisms were rooted in the deeply misogynist thinking of the church, and so her writings were a defence, not just of her own experience, but of the experiences of women in general. Teresa argued not just for the validity of women‟s spirituality, but the full inclusion thereof. She boldly wrote: “There are many more women than men to whom the Lord grants these favours… that women make much more progress along this path than men do” (Life 40.8). This was a radical statement in the context of her times. Teresa nurtured in women a confidence in their capacity for direct relationship with God. She taught them mystical theology, a theology that was more developed than many male clergy had studied. She provided them with a vision and model not just for contemplative life, but also for a life of active mission and the formation of new communities. To have established such communities, to have taught what she did, was revolutionary, calling for great faith and courage. For groups of women to live and talk theology and mental prayer, to travel and establish new foundations, were bound to be looked on with distrust and suspicion.
Teresa scathingly wrote:
Is it not enough, Lord, that the world has intimidated us, so that we may not do anything worthwhile for You in public or dare speak some truths that we lament over in secret, without Your also failing to hear so just a petition? I do not believe, Lord, that this could be true of Your goodness and justice, for You are a just judge and not like those of the world. Since the world‟s judges are sons of Adam and all of them men, there is no virtue in women that they do not hold suspect (Way of Perfection 3.7).