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Teresa of Avila and Her Many Confessors: Lowly and

Exalted Men in The Book of Her Life

JULIA ROMBOUGH

Abstract

In the mid-sixteenth century Teresa of Avila (1515–1582), under the orders of

her confessors, composed the autobiographical The Book of Her Life outlining

her spiritual practices and vision for the Catholic Church. This paper examines

Teresa‘s depiction of confessors and her complex relationship to them. Teresa

writes extensively about her regular encounters with male clerics and shifts

between expressing deep criticism of bad confessors, their poor advice and

education, and her unwavering support of the institution of confession and

good confessors. This paper examines how over the course of her writings

Teresa uses the character of the confessor, good and bad, to frame her own

spirituality and reformist attitudes and discuss why this type of male figure is

useful to her larger project of self-identification. It will be argued that this

intersection of female spirituality and male supervision functions as a

pedagogy upon which Teresa projects discussions of church reform and

spiritual authority.

Résumé

Au milieu du 16e siècle, Thérèse d‘Avila (1515-1582), sous les ordres de ses

confesseurs, a rédigé son autobiographie résumant ses pratiques spirituelles et

sa vision de l‘Église catholique. Cet article explore le portrait fait par Thérèse

d‘Avila des confesseurs et de la relation complexe qui les liait entre eux.

Thérèse a beaucoup écrit sur ses rencontres avec les clercs et présente une

vision où elle critique les mauvais confesseurs, leurs mauvais conseils et leur

piètre enseignement, tout en supportant l‘institution du confessionnal et des

bons confesseurs. L‘article examine donc l‘utilisation dans ses écrits du rôle du

Strata Julia Rombough

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confesseur, bon ou mauvais, dans la création de sa propre spiritualité et de ses

attitudes réformistes en plus de discuter de l‘importance de cette figure

masculine dans son processus de compréhension de soi. L‘argumentation

tournera autour de cet enchevêtrement de spiritualité féminine et de

supervision masculine créant une base de pédagogie sur laquelle repose les

discussions de Thérèse sur les réformes de l‘Église et sur l‘autorité spirituelle

de celle-ci.

🍁

Without a doubt it seems to me that my salvation would have been in jeopardy if I should

have then died since on the one hand my confessors were so poorly educated and on the other

hand I was wretched, and for many other reasons.

— Teresa of Avila1

In the prologue to The Book of Her Life Teresa of Avila (1515–1582) writes

about the nature of her autobiography and the impetus behind its creation:

―Since my confessors commanded me and gave me plenty of leeway to write

about the favors and the kind of prayer the Lord has granted me, I wish they

would also have allowed me to tell very clearly and minutely about my great

sins and wretched life…But they didn‘t want me to.‖2 Teresa suggests that

despite her mystical experiences and her confessors‘ desires to present her as

other-wise she remains a lowly sinner, a literary element present throughout

the entirety of The Book of Her Life (1554), a spiritual autobiography detailing

Teresa‘s religious life, mystical experiences, reformist attitudes, methods of

prayer, and the founding of Discalced Carmelite convents.3 Teresa‘s self-

deprecating attitude is central to her larger project of self-identification in

which she presents herself as a humble, wretched, and subservient woman

who by no merit of her own enjoys an intimate relationship with God. This

1. Teresa of Avila, The Book of Her Life. trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio

Rodriguez (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2008), 23. 2. Ibid., 1. 3. Teresa began to write The Book of Her Life in 1554 and continued to write, rewrite,

edit and share the manuscript over an eleven year period.


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self-representation serves to authenticate Teresa‘s religious experiences and

protect her from the Inquisition‘s accusations of pride-fullness, false visions,

and collusion with the devil that plagued many of her contemporaries.4 Teresa

was successful in this regard and was sainted in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV,

and her piety and mystical experiences upheld as exemplary models of the

religious life. As is hinted at in her prologue, Teresa relies heavily on her

relationship with male confessors to construct this identity. Teresa outlines a

complex relationship with these men in which they both enrich and at times

hinder her religious life. Her praises and criticisms of her confessors are

directly linked to how she wishes her audience to understand her. A unique

element of Teresa‘s writing is the way in which she outlines her feminine

religious identity through the simultaneous construction of her masculine-

counterpart, the confessor.

This essay examines the relationship between Teresa of Avila and her

many confessors, as expressed in her own writings in The Book of Her Life. The

emerging portrait is of a complex relationship often characterized by divergent

wills and distrust. Despite her unwavering support for the larger system of

confession and penance, Teresa writes regularly of the poor education of

confessors, their bad advice and their worldly interests, telling her readers: ―I

speak of it here in order to warn others against so great an evil.‖5 At other

points however, Teresa expresses gratitude towards confessors, describing

them as a great comfort in life and claiming that positive interactions with

certain confessors ―left me consoled and encouraged.‖6 This simultaneous

criticism and exaltation of confessors is paralleled in Teresa‘s own self-

representation. She oscillates between self-deprecating humility bordering on

self-hatred constantly referring to herself as ―wretched‖ and ―such filthy mud

4. Many female mystics were apprehended and tried in Inquisitional courts during

Teresa‘s life, if found guilty, these women were often exiled, imprisoned and ostracized from their communities. For specific examples see Lisa, Vollendorf, The Lives of Women: A New History of Inquisitional Spain (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2005); Lu Ann, Homza, Religious Authority in the Spanish Renaissance (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2000). Suspicions surrounding female mystics and the nature of Inquisitional trials is further discussed below.

5. Teresa of Avila, The Book of Her Life, 19. 6. Ibid., 156.


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as I‖7 and confidence in her spiritual authority and relationship with God,

alluding to her ―purity of conscience.‖8 Alison Weber explains: ―with

remarkable dexterity she engages in contradictory speech acts, pleading

innocent and guilty at the same time. Conceding to the institutional authority

of her confessors, she nevertheless carves out and defends inviolable areas of

individual authority.‖9 I argue that Teresa applies this same paradox of

simultaneous innocence and guilt to her confessors and that her discussion of

confessors functions as a pedagogy upon which she projects larger discussions

of her own identity. In a nuanced and deft rhetorical move, Teresa uses her

critiques of individual male Church authorities to reaffirm her own spiritual

authority; while at the same time uses her support of the larger

institutionalized program of male spiritual supervision, of which these men are

central, to portray herself as humble and subservient. Teresa braids together

her criticism of individual confessors and her unwavering support of the larger

penitential system. Ultimately, by framing her discussion in terms of her

relationship with confessors, Teresa links herself to the official institutions of

the Catholic Church while simultaneously using that very same link to outline

her criticisms and spiritual superiority.

Teresa of Avila enjoyed immense popularity as a holy woman and

authoritative religious figure during her life, and has remained one of the most

influential female figures in the Catholic Church. Her writings on prayer,

mysticism and the soul‘s search for communion with God have been deeply

influential to western Christian thought, a reality attested to by her status as a

Doctor of the Church, a title given to her in 1970 and of which she was the

first woman to receive. Born in 1515 in Avila, Spain from a converso family

Teresa describes in detail in The Book of Her Life her transition from a wayward

youth who ―dared to do many things truly against my honor and against God‖

to a devoted nun enraptured with Christ.10 In 1554 Teresa recounts

experiencing a ―conversion‖ and began to receive visions and to enter into

7. Ibid., 113. 8. Ibid., 52. 9. Alison Weber, Teresa of Avila and the Rhetoric of Femininity, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 1990), 51–52. 10. Teresa of Avila, The Book of Her Life, 7.


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deep states of prayer that would continue to occur throughout the rest of her

life. As a result of these mystical visions, Teresa began to express her reformist

attitudes, becoming a strong proponent of mental prayer, educated confessors,

and enclosed convents devoted to spiritual growth, topics which dominate

much of The Book of Her Life. Teresa describes at length the benefits of mental

prayer and speaks out against those Church authorities who were suspicious

of this style of prayer (particularly amongst women) as it was difficult to

monitor and thought to be more susceptible to the persuasions of the devil.

She writes: ―I don‘t understand what they fear who fear to begin the practice

of mental prayer. I don‘t know what they are afraid of. The devil is doing his

task well of making truth [the power of mental prayer] seem evil.‖11 The latter

half of Teresa‘s life was spent implementing the religious reforms she

advocated. She spent many years writing and making public her methods of

prayer and recommendations for the religious life-ideas that are recorded in

The Book of Her Life as well as her other major works The Way of Perfection, The

Interior Castle and The Book of Her Foundations. Furthermore, by the time of her

death Teresa had personally founded fourteen convents that operated under

the primitive Carmelite rule. Teresa carried out all these accomplishments

under the watchful eyes of the Catholic Church and Spanish Inquisition and in

doing so was careful to always emphasis her devotion to the Church and the

orthodoxy of her ideas. Her status as a holy woman and saint is a testament to

her charisma and persuasive writing style.

Many scholars have examined closely Teresa‘s self-representation and

rhetorical writing strategies. Alison Weber, Gillian Ahlgren, Carole Slade and

Jodi Bilinkoff have outlined in detail how Teresa‘s writings are reflective of

the social and religious climate of Inquisitional Spain as well as gendered

understandings of religious women in early modern Europe. This paper seeks

to add to these discussions of Teresa‘s self-identification and writing strategies

by examining not only how she portrays herself, but also those male authority

figures, confessors, who occupied a central role in her life. In this sense, this

paper seeks to bridge research on Teresa‘s writings and rhetoric with the work

11. Ibid., 45.


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of scholars like John Coakly and Jodi Bilinkoff who have recently begun to

outline the complex relationship that existed between spiritual women and

their male companions and advisors in the late medieval and early modern

period.

To understand how the complex negotiation of power between

Teresa and her confessors takes place within The Book of Her Life, it is

important to first say something of the nature of autobiography in the late

medieval and early modern period. As Alison Weber notes, the very nature of

the text and the confessors‘ command that Teresa record her experience to

prove their orthodoxy ―should alert us immediately to the ambiguous

appropriateness of this generic attribution [of ‗autobiography‘].‖12 Teresa is

not writing without expectations, nor is she writing without a purpose. She

intends to convince her audience of her orthodoxy and the validity of her

mystical visions, experiences and reformist attitudes. The Book of Her Life

therefore must be understood not as the simple narration of a life, but rather

construction of a life. Scholars have readily noted the extent to which

sainthood and identity is highly constructed in the genre of hagiography and

how the written vitae simultaneously records and creates a saint‘s identity.13

Hagiography readily relies on tropes and rhetoric to imbue saintliness into a

holy man or woman. While The Book of Her Life does not fall easily into the

category of hagiography (it is not written by a devotee or confessor and is not

written posthumously) it too relies heavily on tropes and rhetoric to construct

Teresa‘s identity. Here, I forward that confessors, both good and bad,

function as powerful tropes and rhetorical tools that are used by Teresa to

construct her identity. This should not discount the very real relationships that

Teresa undoubtedly had with these men, for as I will discuss the historical

relationship between female penitent and male confessor was marked by a

complex and ambivalent set of cultural understandings. However, it does

allow us to examine her writings from a unique angle. In this view, confessors

are used as characters, and their identities are shaped and formed to serve

12. Weber, 42. 13. See David A., Williams, Saints Alive: Word, Image, and Enactment in the Lives of the

Saints (Montreal: McGill-Queen‘s University Press, 2010).


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rhetorical purposes. The phenomenon of confessor as character in The Book of

Her Life is hinted at by the anonymity of the majority of the confessors to

which Teresa refers. Rather than specifically naming individual men, Teresa

most often refers to them as ―my confessors‖, ―my master‖ or ―a confessor of

mine.‖ In doing so, these men are easily grouped together and the qualities of

an individual confessor, good or bad, become representative of the larger

group of men as a whole.

My analysis begins with a brief discussion of the Catholic penitential

system of confession in late medieval and early modern Spain, offering an

analysis of its gendered implications for both female penitents and male

confessors. It will become clear that this relationship involved a complex set

of power relations for both male and female participants, a central point to

understanding how Teresa uses her relationship with confessors to construct

her own identity in The Book of Her Life. With this context, I will move on to

an examination of Teresa‘s literary uses of confessors in The Book of Her Life,

examining key passages in which she both criticizes and exalts the role of the

confessor. Thus there are two elements to my analysis of Teresa‘s relationship

with her confessors: the social and political factors surrounding her

relationship with confessors and the literary uses of the character of

―confessor‖ she employs.

Confessors and Penitential Culture in Sixteenth-Century Spain

Teresa counted many men as confessors and spiritual directors and gives the

impression that she maintained intimate and regular contact with these men.

The relationship between penitent and confessor was, in Teresa‘s time, an

important mainstay of devotional life. The popularity of the confessional

model, with its focus on repenting one‘s sins and receiving spiritual guidance

from a trained member of the clergy, had reached a new height in the Counter

Reformation and Early Modern period.14 Several factors contributed to this

14. Moves to increase the regularity of confession not just amongst monastic

communities but in lay peoples as well began in the thirteenth century when the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) stipulated that all Christians must confess once a year. The focus on repentance


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new focus on penance. The edicts of the Council of Trent placed a renewed

emphasis on the importance of the sacramental and penitential system.

Tridentine reforms were focused on restructuring the presence and power of

the clergy.15 The call for an increased presence of clergy in Christian

communities and the lives of lay peoples manifested itself in a new emphasis

on the practice of confession whereby devotees would outline their spiritual

experiences, doubts and practices to a confessor. The confessor, a trained

member of the clergy, would then prescribe the necessary course of action

tailored to the individual‘s needs.16 Increasingly, the faithful, by their own

volition, were seeking out clergy to hear their sins and offer advice. The

devout desired regular and individualized spiritual advice, and in response to

this need, the clergy increasingly took on the role of spiritual advisor to

members of their community. Jodi Bilinkoff notes that the popularity of the

penitent/confessor relationship was ―a highly gendered one. Contemporaries

noted the prominence of women among the faithful now hastening to

sermons, absorbing devotional literature, joining third orders.‖17

For female monastics, spiritual direction from a male confessor had

become a fixture of religious life, and female monastics and their male

confessors often enjoyed long sustained friendships. Bilinkoff explains that

many late-medieval and early modern women expressed genuine desire to

and confession was further solidified in the Counter-Reformation period when the Council of Trent ruled that all faithful must confess prior to receiving communion.

15. The Council of Trent (1545–1563) aimed to implement many reforms to the Catholic Church. These reforms were wide reaching, covering areas such as convent reform, clerical power, and the sacramental system. The Council also sought to reaffirm Catholic power and faith in the face of the Protestant Reformation which shook Europe‘s political and religious landscape to its core. For more information on the Council of Trent see John, O‘Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).

16. The enthusiasm with which people sought out confession is directly linked to notions surrounding sin and salvation. Sin increasingly came to be understood not only as dangerous for the individual soul, but for the larger community as well. Furthermore, anxiety concerning salvation was implicit in the popularity of the sacramental system, of which confession and penance was a central component. See John Bossy, Christianity in the West 1400–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 35-42.

17. Jodi Bilinkoff, Related Lives Confessors and Their Female Penitents, 1450–1750 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univeristy Press, 2005), 15.


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share their spiritual lives with confessors and that ―spiritual direction,

moreover, offered something that may have been quite rare for women in pre-

modern society: sustained and serious conversation with a member of the

opposite sex.‖18 It is important to recognize the reciprocal and collaborative

nature that seems to have characterized many female penitent and male

confessor relationships, a fact that Teresa attests to herself when recounting

one interaction with a confessor: ―when I began to confess with this

cleric…he became extremely fond of me…and so we conversed a great deal.

But I was so fascinated with God at that time that what pleased me most was

to speak of the things of God. . . and by reason of the strong love he had for

me, he began to explain to me about his bad moral state.‖19 Teresa presents

her confessor as equally interested in spiritual discussion with Teresa as she is

with he, and moreover, that the role of spiritual advisor is shared between the

two, with Teresa offering spiritual guidance and support to her male superior

as well. Teresa‘s confidence in her ability to give spiritual advice to her

confessors is one of the ways in which she uses the penitent/confessor

relationship to frame her own identity and hint at her spiritual authority, a

point I will return to shortly.20

The sixteenth century female penitent/confessor relationship also

served as a form of institutionalized surveillance. This is particularly true in the

case of women mystics around whom a myriad of misogynistic suspicions

existed. In Spain, women, who were said to be naturally weak, were often

given the title mujercilla, ―little woman,‖ a term that appealed to their

understood mental, physical and spiritual inferiority.21 In his Jardín de las nobles

18 Ibid, 18. Bilinkoff goes on to suggest that this type of sustained interaction

between sexes would have been an unique experience for many women in the late medieval and early modern period, for whom gender relations were often hierarchical and closely monitored. The Spiritual director however, was required to listen to his female penitents and engage with their spiritual experiences and woes on an intimate level.

19. Teresa of Avila, The Book of Her Life, 20. 20. Teresa goes on to explain that this confessor was under the spells of a woman

and had accepted bewitched amulets from her. Teresa ministers to the confessor and cures him of his ailed state, returning him to a moral life. Here, Teresa shows spiritual authority and her role as a religious caretaker.

21. Weber, 18.


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donzellas the fifteenth century writer Martín de Córdoba explains: ―reason is

not so strong in them as in men, and with their greater reason men keep

carnal passions in check; but women are more flesh than spirit, and therefore

more inclined to the passions than to the spirit.‖22 The weakness of female

flesh was understood to make them particularly susceptible to the persuasions

of the devil, an attitude Teresa expresses when describing a woman whom she

encountered using witchcraft, ―men should believe that since these women

have lost their shame before God (for women are obliged to modesty more

than men), they can be trusted in nothing; for they will stop at nothing so as

to hold on to this friendship and passion the devil has placed in them.‖23 She

quickly attempts to distance herself from these types of feminine wiles

however, saying: ―I have never fallen into anything of this sort, nor have I

ever tried to do evil.‖24

While Teresa curtails any possible accusations of witchcraft, the

nature of her religious life with its visions, mental prayer, and reformist

attitudes invited a unique brand of distrust. Female mystics, who claimed

direct communion with God, came under great suspicion by the Church and

Inquisition for potential collusion with the devil, and their visions were said to

require close scrutiny in order to discern if their origin lay with God or the

devil.25 The confessor stood in a position of official authority over his female

penitents and often took on the role of examining visions, experiences and

ideas for potential unorthodoxy. Often, confessors carried out this

supervisorial role by commanding their female penitents to record their

visions in a written autobiography.26 This is precisely the nature of The Book of

22 Martín de Córdoba, Tratado que se intitule Jardín de las nobles donzellas, ed. Fernando

Rubio (Madrid, 1946), 91. In Gillian T. W. Algren, Teresa of Avila and the Politics of Sanctity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 7.

23. Teresa of Avila, The Book of Her Life, 21. 24. Ibid., 21. 25. For an example of Inquisitional trial methods for female mystics see The Inquisition

of Francisca: A Sixteenth-Century Visionary on Trial, ed. and trans. Gillian T. W. Ablgren (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005).

26. Carole Slade has noted the extent to which Teresa bases many of her discussions in The Book of Her Life around the questions asked of defendants in Inquisitional trials. In this way Teresa anticipates possible criticisms and addresses them in her writing. See Carole Slade,


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Her Life. Teresa gives the impression that she is writing solely to appease the

commands of her confessors, telling her readers, ―so as to do no more than

what they gave me command to do, I will be briefer in many matters than I

desire, more extensive in others than necessary.‖27 Weber, however, has

outlined the extent to which female penitents, and Teresa in particular,

capitalized on the confessor‘s command to write and used it as an opportunity

to disseminate their ideas: ―although the confessor‘s command to write marks

her text as a religious/legal confession, the ‗leeway‘ they concede her allows

Teresa to expand a written confession into a psychological as well as

theological apologia.‖28

The confessor enjoyed a position of institutionalized authority over

his female penitents, but this did not make him immune to institutional

scrutiny, nor was he safe from the Inquisition‘s suspicions that he collaborated

too closely with his female penitents. Often, the confessors of female mystics

were found equally guilty and imprisoned by the Inquisition for collusion with

the devil and falling prey to the deceptions of women. Many confessors were

explicitly warned to keep their distance from such women and were

encouraged to do no more than their clerical duties required.29 Teresa

experienced this type of distrust herself, detailing the experiences of one

confessor: ―he suffered many great trials in many ways on my account. I knew

they told him to be careful of me, that he shouldn‘t let the devil deceive him

by anything I told him; they brought up examples to him of other persons. All

of this made me anxious. . . I did nothing but weep.‖30

St Teresa of Avila Author of a Heroic Life (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), 67–70.

27. Teresa of Avila, The Book of Her Life, 28. 28. Weber, 42. 29. Bilinkoff, Related Lives Confessors and Their Female Penitents, 1450–1750, 18. 30. Teresa of Avila, The Book of Her Life, 192. The reference to ―other persons‖ could

refer to either female penitents who were found to be deceiving others with their visions-labeled products of the devil, or to confessors who were imprisoned for becoming too close with their female confessees. Often the two went hand-in-hand, and both the female mystic and her confessor were imprisoned. Again, see The Inquisition of Francisca: A Sixteenth-Century Visionary on Trial, p. 19 for an example.


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Given these dangers, what attracted confessors to spiritual women

and drove them to forge such intimate relationships? John Coakly explains

that a tension existed between ―two aspects of the relations of clerics with

female saints- authority and control on one hand, fascination and often

subservience on the other. . . it is a tension that masks a deeper connection

between them. For here authority and subservience do not stand

unambiguously in a relationship of ‗either/or.‘‖31 Male clerics sought out

spiritual women, and despite the dangers in doing so, expressed fascination

and reverence in these women. This simultaneous relationship of control and

subservience is the direct result of the ambivalent status of religious women in

the Early Modern period. While on the one hand, women were understood as

inferior, weak and untrustworthy- thus requiring control, on the other, these

very same qualities of feminine weaknesses were thought to bring them closer

to God, endowing them with a unique spiritual power. As fleshly, weak and

unintelligent, women were understood to be more open to receiving raw

mystical experiences; Coakly explains that their perceived weakness offered

them ―a privileged position as intimates of Christ, beneficiaries of his mystical

presence and recipients of divine revelations.‖32 Teresa capitalizes on this

attitude and in her Meditaciones Sobre los Cantares (Meditations on the Song of

Songs) explaining: ―Indeed, His Majesty is pleased that His works should

shine forth in those who are weak, since in these there is more scope for His

power and for the fulfillment of His desire to grant us favors.‖33 Teresa‘s

confessors seem to have invested both power and danger in her feminine

weakness, thus approaching her mystical vision with both awe and suspicion.

For Teresa of Avila and her male confessors, then, the relationship

between female mystic and confessor is marked by a complex set of, often

31. John Coakly, Women, Men, & Spiritual Power Female Saints & Their Male Collaborators

(New York: Columbia Unversity Press, 2006), 2. Coakly is referring to the earlier medieval period, but the same beliefs apply to Teresa and her contemporaries.

32. Ibid., 10. 33. The Complete Works of Saint Teresa of Jesus, vol. 2, ed. and trans. E. Allison Peers

(London: Sheed & Ward, 1950), 379. The text was written between 1566 and 1571 and was first published in 1611 in Brussels by Jerónimo Gracián.


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contradictory, cultural understandings. Teresa is at once lowly and exalted, and

presents herself as such. Likewise, the confessor is both authoritative and

subservient. Both look to the other to enrich their religious authenticity; thus,

Teresa draws on the confessor‘s institutional authority to lend orthodoxy to

her written works, claiming them to fall under the rubric of a confessor‘s

supervisorial duties and the command to write. The confessor enriches his

spiritual life and bolsters his religious authority by carving out an indispensible

role for himself in Teresa‘s mystical life.34

Bad Advice and Poor Education: Shaming Confessors

Given my suggestion that Teresa capitalizes on her confessors‘ institutional

authority and uses it to place herself at the centre of orthodoxy, we might

expect her to present her confessors in a positive light. However, this is not

always the case. Over the course of The Book of Her Life Teresa includes sharp

criticisms of individual confessors and even blames them for her own spiritual

struggles. These criticisms circulate largely around issues of competency and

education and showcase Teresa‘s reformist attitudes. She writes: ―half-learned

confessors have done my soul great harm when I was unable to find a

confessor with as much learning as I like. . . It was on account of my sins, I

believe, that God permitted these confessors to be mistaken themselves and

to misguide me. And I mislead others by telling them what these confessors

told me.‖35 Here, Teresa weaves an intricate argument: her sins result in failed

confessors but she is also shown to be intellectually superior. She claims the

authority to choose and critique confessors, inadvertently placing herself in a

position of power, and blames uneducated confessors not only for her own

spiritual failings, but also those of others. This sharp criticism, however, is

couched in an appeal to her own sinfulness- thus making her perpetrator and

victim at the same time. Yet even this appeal to sinfulness cloaks a strong

34. Jodi Bilinkoff, ―Confessors, Penitents, and the Construction of Identities in Early

Modern Avila‖ in Culture and Identity in Early Modern Europe (1500–1800), ed. Barbara B. Diefendorf and Carla Hesse (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1993), 87.

35. Teresa of Avila, The Book of Her Life, 19.


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critique of uneducated confessors: Teresa‘s sins do not cause her to create and

spread deception, as we might expect in light of the understandings of

feminine corruptibility discussed above, but rather, it is male confessors who

are ―mistaken‖ and ―misguided.‖ Teresa, in an act of humility and

subservience, follows the advice of her confessors to her own and others‘

―great harm.‖ Thus in this reading, Teresa places the dangerous feminized

qualities of fickleness, weakness and corruptibility onto her male confessors

while reserving the ―positive‖ feminine qualities of humility and subservience

for herself. It is they, not she, who are mistaken—a result of their poor

education.

Teresa‘s criticisms of poorly educated confessors can, I propose, be

understood as a rhetorical tactic that intends to shame the masculinity of these

men and in the process exalt her own feminine spirituality. Ruth Karras has

outlined the extent to which rationality and intellect were qualities understood

to be synonymous with masculinity in late medieval and early modern Europe.

A man‘s ability to apply reason and maintain emotional equilibrium marked

him as a true man. Karras notes that with the emergence of university culture

in the late medieval period, the training grounds for clergy, notions of

manhood and rationality became increasingly entwined. For the late medieval

and early modern religious man, "his task was now to use intellect to dominate

other men. He proved his manhood by his rationality, which distinguished

him not only from women but also from beasts.‖36 A successful female

mystic/male confessor relationship therefore, blended raw feminine mystical

visions (the product of her weak and susceptible state) and masculine intellect

and rationality. In Teresa‘s critiques of uneducated confessors, however, these

men neither offer strong intellect, allowing themselves to be mistaken and to

misguide others, nor are they shown able to rationally asses Teresa‘s spiritual

queries. Instead, Teresa claims to be unable to trust these men saying, ―nor

was I able to believe completely that what my confessors did not consider

serious was less wrong than I in my soul felt it was.‖37 She continues on to

36 Ruth Karras, From Boys to Men Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe

(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 67. 37. Teresa of Avila, The Book of Her Life, 47.


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explain, ―experience and a spiritual master are necessary. . . If there isn‘t

anyone with experience, there is no remedy at all; because lacking experience,

the master will only disturb and afflict the soul.‖38

The disturbances Teresa references refer to poor advice, mistrust and

a lack of attention. Teresa writes regularly of confessors who were unwilling to

hear her concerns, who did not take her spiritual woes seriously, and worse,

who wrongly suspected her visions to have origins in the devil.39 She writes:

―Without doubt, I fear those who have such great fear of the devil more than

I do the devil himself, for he [the devil] can‘t do anything to me. Whereas

these others, especially if they are confessors, cause severe disturbances.‖40

Teresa‘s critique of poorly educated confessors contains an emasculatory

quality. These men are unable to lend intellect and rationality to their spiritual

partnership with Teresa, rendering them emasculated and useless. They are

unable to use their rationality to, in Ruth Karras‘ terms, prove their manhood

and distinguish themselves as superior to Teresa, a woman. They irrationally

fear the devil while Teresa stands confident and resolute. Furthermore, they

are shamed by Teresa‘s feminine spirituality, which despite its lack of intellect

(as she frames it), remains stable, constant and close to God—the very

qualities that confessors are meant to display. Thus, not only do these men fail

to display their masculine qualities in Teresa‘s account, but they are also

further shamed by her own feminine spirituality. In criticizing uneducated

confessors, Teresa hints at her own spiritual superiority, suggesting that she

maintains religious orthodoxy, spiritual insight and ―purity of conscience‖41

despite the failings of her confessors to contribute strong masculine qualities

to the shared penitential partnership.

While Teresa‘s criticisms of uneducated confessors serve a rhetorical

purpose, they are also reflective of the larger movement of Spanish Catholic

and clerical reform. Teresa uses the character of the confessor in her own life

to participate in this discussion. Large groups of Catholics in Avila, and Spain

38. Ibid., 305. 39. See Ibid., 19, 47, 173–174. 40. Ibid., 171. 41. Ibid., 52.


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more generally, were in the process of advocating for reforms to the clerical

system that would address the issues of absenteeism, monetary abuse, and

poor education that marked clerical ranks and were harshly criticized by

Protestant and Catholic reformers alike.42 In response to the angry criticisms

of clerical abuse, the Council of Trent made motions towards a clergy that was

to be educated and devoted to their communities.43 These ideas were also

popular amongst humanist circles and influenced by the works of Erasmus,

who valued humanist education and the cultivation of an interior religious

life.44 Teresa maintained regular contact with many Catholic humanist

reformers and shares many of their criticisms, expressing them in The Book of

Her Life. The famous preacher and proponent of clerical reform, Juan de Avila

(1499–1569), kept correspondence with Teresa and echoes her concerns when

he writes of the clergy that, ‗it is ordained by God that the harm and benefit of

the people depends upon the diligence and care of the ecclesiastical estate as

the land depends upon the influence of the heavens.‖45 Bilinkoff records that

with this belief in mind, ―Maestro Avila and a group of followers began to

redefine the character and function of the clergy, especially at the parish level

[that which Teresa often experienced]. He proposed restricting ordination to a

small but select group of men who felt a genuine calling, rather than including

anyone who wanted to enjoy the material comforts of a benefice…Potential

priests, he claimed, must receive theological and moral training from the

earliest age.‖46 Teresa uses the character of the uneducated confessor in The

Book of Her Life to express similar concerns and mark herself as a reformer.

One such group of priests that embodied this new priestly vision was

the Society of Jesus, Jesuits, with whom Teresa worked closely and upheld as

exemplary confessors. The Jesuit creed, developed by Ignatius of Loyola

42. Euan Cameron, The European Reformation, 2nd ed., (Oxford: Oxford Univeristy

Press, 2012), 33–35. 43. Jodi Bilinkoff, The Avila of Saint Teresa Religious Reform in a Sixteenth-Century City

(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), 90. 44. Ibid., 80. 45. ―Memorial Segundo al Concilio de Trento, 1561,‖ Obras 6:86 in Bilinkoff, The

Avila of Saint Teresa Religious Reform in a Sixteenth-Century City, 81. 46. Ibid., 81.


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(1491–1556), who not coincidentally corresponded regularly with Juan de

Avila, demanded true vocation of its priests and focused on missionary work,

close contact with its communities across Europe and the New World,

confession and spiritual discernment. Bilinkoff explains that the Jesuit

―organizational structure, which featured a hierarchy bound by a sense of

commitment and obedience, offered an alternative to a larger, societal,

hierarchy based upon birth and privilege [which had often marked the old

clerical model].‖47 Teresa presents Jesuit priests as the antithesis to uneducated

confessors. In one instance she describes the poor advice she received by

uneducated confessors for whom ―what was venial sin they said was no sin at

all, and what was mortal sin they said was venial.‖48 She continues on to

recount: ―I went on in this blindness for I believe more than seventeen years

until a Dominican Father, a very learned man, enlightened me about many

things. And the Jesuit Fathers made me fear everything so much, by showing

me how wrong those theories [of uneducated confessors] were.‖49 Here, Jesuit

priests, who for Teresa represent true masculinity embodied, further shame

uneducated confessors. Furthermore, by attaching herself to the Jesuit

program of confession Teresa places herself at the centre of orthodoxy and

assures her readers that her reformist attitudes are orthodox and supervised by

good confessors. Thus, Teresa uses her support of confession and good

confessors to outline her criticisms of uneducated confessors.

Teresa‘s reformist attitudes and her rhetorical project of self-

identification and authorization converge in her discussion of uneducated

confessors. Through her literary use of bad confessors Teresa is able to carve

out an important religious role for herself and hint at her spiritual strength. Of

uneducated confessors she writes: ―for during the twenty years after this

period of which I am speaking, I did not find a master, I mean a confessor,

who understood me, even though I looked for one.‖50 Her distance and

discomfort with these men functions not only to separate her from their

47. Ibid., 88. 48. Teresa of Avila, The Book of Her Life, 19. 49. Ibid., 19–20. 50. Ibid., 15.


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failings, thus making her appear innocent, but also allows her to lay full claim

to her spiritual experiences and power. Because poorly educated confessors do

not contribute positively to her spiritual life (worse, they hinder it) any

spiritual growth and closeness with God Teresa experiences during this time,

is logically a product of her own faith and intellect. Thus, bad confessors allow

Teresa to express her individuality and power.

Good Confessors and Mystical Authenticity

Teresa is not always displeased with her confessors. Throughout The Book of

Her Life she maintains the importance of the penitential system claiming, ―for

every reason there is need of a master and for discussions with spiritual

persons.‖51 She presents educated confessors as insightful and authoritative

men who vouch for the validity of her mystical experiences. Her praises of

these men allow her to position herself and her visions at the centre of

orthodoxy and share in their institutional authority. Teresa is particularly eager

to present an image of the good confessor when describing events

surrounding her mystical visions. In these cases Teresa‘s exaltation of

confessors is interwoven with a desire to present herself as orthodox, humble

and subservient- thus authenticating her visions. Unlike in her experiences

with uneducated confessors, Teresa shows her penitential relationship with

good confessors to consist equally of feminine spirituality and male intellectual

authority.

The nature of Teresa‘s visions was of concern to the Inquisition, who

feared origins in the devil, and Teresa takes great care to outline the qualities

of these experiences.52 She recounts: ―the following happened to me. Being in

prayer on the feastday of the glorious St. Peter, I saw or, to put it better, I felt

Christ beside me; I saw nothing with my bodily eyes or with my soul, but it

seemed to me that Christ was at my side. I saw that it was He, in my opinion,

51. Ibid., 119. 52. Teresa‘s writings were brought towards the Inquisition several times throughout

her career. No formal accusations were ever made against her, but her works were examined several times and formal investigations of her Carmelite convents carried out. See Slade, 17–20.


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who was speaking to me.‖53 She continues on to say, ―since this vision is

among the most sublime (as I was afterward told by a very holy and spiritual

man whose name is Friar Peter of Alcantara and of whom I shall speak later,

and by other men of great learning) and the kind in which the devil can

interfere least of all, there are no means by which those of us who know little

here below can explain it. Learned men will explain it better.‖54 Teresa makes

no attempt to authorize the orthodox nature of her visions herself, but rather

allows this confirmation to be voiced through her confessors- whom she

carefully labels as holy and learned. In carefully documenting their responses

however, Teresa presents herself as a full participant in the confessional

model, sharing in its authority.

Unlike her experiences with uneducated confessors, these men are

shown to be rigourous and thorough, subjecting Teresa to a series of

questions that closely resemble those asked of defendants during Inquisitional

trials: ―I immediately went very anxiously to my confessor to tell him [what I

had experienced]. He asked me in what form I saw Him [Christ]. I answered

that I didn‘t see Him. He asked how I knew it was Christ. I answered that I

didn‘t know how, but that I couldn‘t help knowing that He was beside me.‖55

Inquisitors considered mystical visions that took on a strong corporeal and

visual nature to be suspect and more likely to have origins in the devil, who

was skilled at disguising himself in many forms. Women brought before the

Inquisition regularly confessed to having been deceived by the devil and

tricked into thinking that their visions were of divine origins. They often said

to have encountered the devil as a handsome man, or worse, in the guise of

Christ or a holy spirit.56 Teresa carefully transcribes the confessor‘s

53. Teresa of Avila, The Book of Her Life, 176. 54. Ibid., 176. 55. Ibid., 176. 56. For example see Gillian T. W. Ahlgren, ―Francisca de los Apostoles A Visionary

Voice for Reform in Sixteenth-Century Toledo,‖ in Women in the Inquisition Spain and the New World, ed. Mary E. Giles (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 129–131. The Inquisitor employed rigorous tactics to draw out confessions from female mystics, often leaning on them heavily until they admitted to their guilt, real or not. For a more in depth examination of these various tactics see the fifteenth-century text Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of the


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examination and her answers in hopes of curtailing institutional suspicion. She

addresses the issue of the nature of her vision by using her confessor‘s

intellect and authority as the template upon which she defends herself. Her

vision, she assures her readers, was not corporeal in the rudimentary state, but

a deeper mystical experience that brought her into union with Christ. The

character of the good confessor therefore, is extremely useful to Teresa

project of self-authentication and stands to provide the type clerical approval

that she cannot do without. It is for this reason that Teresa claims: ―still, the

devil can play many tricks, so there is nothing more certain in this matter than

to have greater fear and always to seek counsel, to have a master who is

learned, and to hide nothing from him.‖57

While bad confessors allow Teresa the opportunity to voice her

individualism and unique spiritual power, good confessors allow her to figure

herself squarely at the centre of orthodoxy lending approval to her visions.

She recounts: ―after I spoke with that servant of God – for he was very much

so and most wise – he explained to me what I was experiencing and greatly

encouraged me. He said it [my vision] was recognizably from God‘s Spirit. . .

He left me consoled and encouraged.‖58 In recording this encounter, Teresa is

able to console not only herself, but also her audience, cementing our

understanding of her as humble and orthodox.

Speaking Through Confessors: Conclusions

Teresa‘s portrayals of bad and good confessors in The Book of Her Life show

the ways in which she uses the qualities of male confessors to outline her own

feminine spirituality. The character of the bad confessor speaks to the power

and authority of Teresa‘s spirituality and allows her an avenue through which

to express her reformist attitudes. Conversely, the character of the good

confessor positions Teresa at the centre of orthodoxy and allows her to share

Witches); Kramer, Heinrich and James Spregner, The Malleus Maleficarum, trans. Montague Summers (New York: Cosimo, 2007).

57. Teresa of Avila, The Book of Her Life, 167. 58. Ibid., 156.


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in their masculine authority. Teresa‘s simultaneous criticism and exaltation of

male confessors in The Book of Her Life must be understood as part of her

larger project of self-identification in which she outlines her spiritual

experiences, reforms, and authority in direct comparison to the nature of her

male authorities. Furthermore, the dual nature of confessors, both good and

bad, reflects the dual way in which Teresa wishes to be understood. She is

both independent and inextricably linked to the larger Church, she is both

weak and strong, and both sinful and saintly. Teresa‘s feminine spirituality is

brought to the fore through the simultaneous construction of her confessors‘

masculinity. Thus, by both shaming and exalting her masculine counterparts,

Teresa is able to highlight the various aspects, authoritative and humble, of

her feminine spirituality. In doing so, she is able to carve out a unique role for

herself within the Church. She is a reformer and spiritual innovator while also

occupying the role of subservient penitent.

The confessor serves as an opportune tool in Teresa‘s complex

project of self-identification, both because he is an intimate and constant

presence in her life, and because of the tangled and ambivalent nature of the

female penitent and male confessor relationship in the late medieval and early

modern period. The paradoxical nature of the relationship, which saw female

penitents as both sinful and worthy of reverence, provides Teresa the

opportunity to reflect these same paradoxical attitudes back on to her

confessors. Thus, in Teresa‘s hands the confessor can be both lowly and

exalted. A complex network of identification via the other is set up whereby

the lowly status of uneducated confessors points to Teresa‘s exalted status

while holy and educated confessors speak to her humble nature as a saintly

sinner. Two different types of religious authority, mystical and institutional,

converge in The Book of Her Life and provide a complex reading of Teresa‘s

spirituality.

While this essay has largely focused on Teresa‘s rhetorical uses of

confessors, it is important to consider the social and historical questions that

can be gleaned from Teresa‘s presentation of her relationship with confessors

in The Book of Her Life. The confidence with which Teresa presents this

ambivalent portrait of confessors (as both good and bad), and the willingness


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of these men to accept such a portrayal—for indeed, they were active

contributors to all writing and editing stages of the book up until its first

publication in 1588—must lead us to entertain a complex and nuanced view

of gender relations amongst spiritual men and women during this historical

period. Rather than a hierarchical chain of power, with the confessor

representing the larger Church on top and religious women below and subject

to the authoritative whims of male authorities, Teresa suggests a much more

dynamic relationship. In her portrayal, it seems that there was room for

disagreement amongst female penitents and male confessors and that

confessee and confessor stood to learn from the other. Gender relations

amongst spiritual women and their confessors, seems to have been marked by

complexity, collaboration, and intimacy. I have endeavored here, to draw this

point out by examining the complex and ambivalent portrait of confessors

that Teresa presents in The Book of Her Life.


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Julia Rombough is a Master‘s student at Concordia University‘s History and

Philosophy of Religion program. Her research focuses on the areas of Gender

and Sexuality, Christianity, Early Modern Europe, and Women‘s Writing.

Specifically, she is interested in nuns and convent culture in Counter-

Reformation and Catholic Reformation Europe.

Julia Rombough est étudiante à la maîtrise à l‘Université Concordia dans le

programme d‘histoire et de philosophie des religions. Ses recherches sont

concentrées sur les thèmes du genre et de la sexualité, du Christianisme, de

l‘Époque Moderne et des femmes de lettres. Elle s‘intéresse plus

spécifiquement aux religieuses et à la culture associée aux couvents dans

l‘Europe de la Contre-Réforme et de la Réforme catholique.

Documents

Teresa of Avila and Her Many Confessors: Lowly and Exalted ...aedhgsa.ca/docs/Strata/Volume_4/Strata_vol4_JULIA_ROMBOUGH.pdf · Teresa‘s religious life, mystical experiences, reformist