Mystical Death in the Spirituality of Saint Teresa of Ávila

Few Americans had any insight into the critical part that Spain had played and still continues to play in the development of the modern world, through the fact that Spain endeavored to transpose the dying medieval culture into a modern key; witness Loyola’s Society of Jesus.Spain gave to her colonies in the New World her language, religion, civic institutions, her system of education, her social customs, her chivalric sense of honor and her mystic fervor. Spain gave her body and soul to the New World.It is, therefore, in my humble opinion, of paramount importance to know the soul of Spain in order to comprehend and understand the Spanish American people. To that purpose—to better understand the spiritual and cultural background of Spanish America by studying the “Soul” of Spain—this work is dedicated.—THE AUTHOR.At the close of the eighteenth century Nicholas Masson de Morvilliers raised a hubbub in Europe by asking these two questions in the Encyclopédie Méthodique: “Mais que doit-on a I’Espagne? Et depuis deux siecles, depuis quatre, depuis six, qu’a-t-elle fait pour l’Europe?”At the end of a century of positivistic philosophy and at the beginning of the industrial era this was a very logical question. It is true that Spain did not invent the locomotive, the telegraph, the telephone nor the modern frigidaire; but in the realm of human and eternal values could a more idiotic question have been asked? The metaphysics of Suarez, the international law of Victoria, the great theologians of the Council of Trent, Cano and Soto, had no value whatsoever for this Positivistic century; nor did the fact that Spain had produced one of the most human and original theatres with Lope de Vega, Calderón, Tirso de Molina and Alarcón; the greatest novel in the modern sense of the word, Don Quijote;the most profound satirist of all Europe, Quevedo; the outstanding moralist of the seventeenth century, Lorenzo Gracian; and above all these a school of mystics in Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint John of the Cross, Fray Luis de León and Juan de los Angeles, which has never been equaled. Even if Mr. Masson de Morvilliers could not see the importance of these contributions it is difficult to comprehend how he could ignore the transcendental fact that Spain had broken the columns of Hercules and had spread Mediterranean culture through the countries lying on the other side of the Atlantic and on the remotest shores of the Pacific.

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Ronald E. Surtz. Writing Women in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain: The Mothers of Saint Teresa of Avila. (Middle Ages Series.) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. 223 pp. $32.95.

Renaissance Quarterly ◽

10.2307/3039391 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 50 (1) ◽

pp. 342-343

Author(s):

Sara A. Taddeo

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Middle Ages ◽

University Of Pennsylvania ◽

Early Modern Spain ◽

Late Medieval ◽

Teresa Of Avila ◽

Saint Teresa Of Avila

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Ecstasy as Polemic: Mysticism and the Catholic Reformation

Irish Theological Quarterly ◽

10.1177/0021140017742793 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 83 (1) ◽

pp. 3-23

Author(s):

Carlos M.N. Eire

Keyword(s):

Catholic Church ◽

16Th Century ◽

Catholic Reformation ◽

Spanish Inquisition ◽

Teresa Of Avila ◽

Saint Teresa Of Avila ◽

Mystical Experiences ◽

The Catholic Church

In the 16th century, Protestants rejected the possibility of mystical encounters between humans and God. Catholics responded in various ways, but perhaps most forcefully by continuing to claim mystical experiences and by emphasizing extreme forms of mysticism. This paper analyzes how that rejection affected the development of Catholic mysticism at that time, especially in the case of Saint Teresa of Avila (1515–82), whose ecstasies were closely examined by the Spanish Inquisition, but were subsequently approved and promoted as exemplary of the truths professed by the Catholic Church.

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Dziewiętnastowieczne wydania polskich przekładów pism Świętej Teresy z Ávili

Annales Universitatis Paedagogicae Cracoviensis | Studia Historicolitteraria ◽

10.24917/20811853.21.20 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 21 ◽

pp. 352-371

Author(s):

Marta M. Kacprzak

Keyword(s):

19Th Century ◽

Religious Life ◽

The Other ◽

Christian Mysticism ◽

Teresa Of Avila ◽

Saint Teresa Of Avila ◽

The 19Th Century ◽

Ideological Assumptions

From the 1840’s to the end of the 19th century more than twenty editions of Polish translations of texts by Saint Teresa of Ávila, as well as the ones attributed to her, were released. It was attempted to popularise her works, information about her life and thought, as well as the cult of her, knowledge about Christian mysticism and the revival of religious life. Two important bibliographies presenting the reception of Teresa in Poland: one by Stefania Ciesielska-Borkowska (1939) and the other one by Benignus Wanat (1972) require complementing and corrections, which should find reflection in contemporary editions and catalogues. The paper presents all the editions of works by Teresa (fragments, all works, collections of works, as well as paraphrases), released in Polish in the 19th-century books and periodicals. It corrects the mistakes in bibliographical descriptions, which result from mistakes in the publications themselves, as well as errors in attribution. It refers to the authorship of anonymous translations and their undetermined bases, it characterises briefly the environments in which Saint Teresa’s works were translated and published. It presents the religious, literary, social and scientific purposes accompanying the texts by Teresa, as well as translation, editorial and ideological assumptions. It shows the editions of Saint Teresa’s texts in translations or paraphrases by: Sebastian Nucerin, Ignacy Hołowiński, Nina Łuszczewska, Eleonora Ziemięcka, Michał Bohusz Szyszko, Eleonora z Paprockich Szemiothowa, Zygmunt Krasiński, Lucjan Siemieński, Ignacy Domeyko, Karmela Wiktima od Jezusa (Amalia Zenopolska), Tadeusz Miciński, Henryk Piotr Kossowski, as well as anonymous translators.

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