The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Eire Carlos;

The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Eire Carlos;

Author:Eire, Carlos; [Eire, Carlos;]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780691164939
Publisher: PrincetonUP
Published: 2019-03-28T00:00:00+00:00


Wayward Disciples

Teresa’s influence, as well as that of her Vida, did not always flow in a positive direction in the eyes of the Catholic Church. In religion, more so than in other human endeavors, the interpretation of any text is a wild card, unpredictable and always potentially susceptible to unexpected twists and turns, often of an ironic sort. Consequently, despite all of the acclaim and veneration earned by Teresa and her Vida in Catholic culture, some of her interpreters ended up on the side of heresy rather than orthodoxy. The two most significant of these wrong turns were the theological and devotional movements known as Jansenism and Quietism.

Jansenism was a reformist movement within early modern Catholicism that focused primarily on theological and ethical issues rather than mysticism, but nonetheless had an odd connection to Teresa, her Vida, and other books of hers. The theologian who gave rise to this movement was Cornelius Jansen (1585–1638), a Dutch theologian from the University of Louvain who was also bishop of Ypres. Jansen’s chief interest was the relation between the human will and divine grace. In 1640, his massive posthumously published study of Saint Augustine’s theology of grace, titled Augustinus, won him a substantial following, and before long, a powerful movement arose within the Catholic Church that bore Jansen’s name and occasioned the “Jansenist” controversy, the most serious rift among Catholics since the advent of the Protestant Reformation.

Jansenism’s links to Teresa were not to be found in Jansen or his theology, however, which stressed the damage caused to humanity by original sin and advocated a rigorous puritanical ethic. The connection to Teresa was to be found most intensely in the Cistercian abbey of Port-Royal-des-Champs, a convent in France that became the epicenter of Jansenism, where several key figures were highly devoted to Teresa and very fond of her Vida. The most significant of these Teresians at Port-Royal was its abbess, Jacqueline-Marie-Angélique Arnauld (1591–1661), who, after reading Teresa’s Vida, Way of Perfection, and Foundations began to reform her convent in 1609 along Teresian lines, emphasizing strict enclosure, poverty, and silent prayer. In fact, so much emphasis was placed on Teresa at Port-Royal by its abbess Angélique that her fellow nuns began to refer to her as “the Teresa of our order.” In 1625, when Angélique opened another reformed convent of Port-Royal in Paris, she immediately visited the Discalced Carmelite nuns of that city, all of whom began to call her “Madre Teresa” because of how much she resembled their sainted reformer, not just in spirit but also in physical appearance.17 In addition, Angélique’s oldest brother, Robert Arnauld d’Andilly (1589–1674), a distinguished writer who would later spend his final years at the abbey of Port-Royal as a hermit, produced one of the most widely read translations of Teresa’s works, including the Vida.

The nuns’ devotion to Teresa at Port-Royal was eventually eclipsed by the Jansenist theology of several individuals who became associated with their convent, most notably, two of Angélique’s brothers, the above-mentioned Robert Arnauld and Antoine



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