Teresa de Avila -- Lettered Woman by Barbara Mujica, Vanderbilt UP '09, $45, 272 pages, ISBN #0826516319. Index, bibliography, source notes, appendix, unillustrated.
Talk about David and Goliath! On one side are arrayed the hierarchy of the 16th century Church and the Spanish Inquisition. On the other, a nun with a pen, seeking whosesale reform of their institutions.
Georgetown Spanish Prof. Barbara Mujica recounts how Teresa de Avila wrote hundreds, perhaps thousands, of letters to an array of people "from the king to prelates to mothers of novices." But lest one conclude she was just an obsessive harpie, Mujica writes that Teresa had the pen of a diplomat, explaining "how she manipulated language, varying her tone and rhetoric according to the recipient or slipping into deliberate vagueness in order to avoid divulging secrets."
"Teresa believed in the capability of women and gave her prioresses tremendous power," argues Mujica, "and her constitution established at all nuns in her convents would learn how to read. Most important, she believed in the spirituality of women and gave women a place to lead an active spiritual life. In this sense, she was a feminist."
Mujica, a specialist in early modern Spanish literature, is also the author of Sister Teresa, based on the life of Teresa de Avila.
