Page 48 - Nada temas, dice ella

writings as honest and natural as they are beautiful.’2
Saint Teresa of Jesus discovered her own existential purpose in the refounding of the Carmelo Order, in internal prayer and in writing. Her life and oeuvre have been examined and acclaimed in a range of texts, yet they have also been manipulated to ideo- logical ends. Up until the year 1946, when the documents that proved her Jewish origin were recovered, she had been attributed a false ‘old Christian’ genealogy and her ‘warlike bravery’ was used for advertising ends to extol her as a ‘saint of the race’ during the Franco dictatorship.3 Some anarchist visions celebrate how she avoids hierarchies and exerts her individual sovereignty to address God directly. Anthropologists have pointed out her courage in defending the idea that both man and woman are subjects of knowledge. Her figure has been the object of medical and psychoanalyti- cal interpretations that have described her as hysterical, epileptical and anor- exic. Today, gender studies qualify
her as a feminist as she was fully aware of the subordinate position to which patriarchal society and the Catholic Church condemned women.
In the first chapter of her Medita- tions on the Song of Songs addressed
to Carmelite nuns, written for the first time between 1566 and 1567
and rewritten in 1574, Teresa upheld women’s right to enjoy knowledge and
share it, even though she ironically excused herself for not pontificating: ‘Nor must we make women stand so far away from enjoyment of the Lord’s riches. If they argue and teach and think they are right without showing their writings to learned men; yes that would be wrong. Consequently, I am not thinking I am right in what I say ... it consoles me to tell my meditations to my daughters, and what I tell will contain plenty of foolishness.’4
However, we should not forget that Saint Teresa of Jesus was subjected
to great moral suffering, for she was continually obsessed with her honour and with the risk of being condemned by the Spanish Inquisition. The Tri- bunal of the Holy Office prevented
her The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Herself from being printed for twelve years, and it only appeared after her death when it was published by an- other persecuted figure, Friar Luis de León. As we learn from Rosa Rossi, there are strange paths through which the inquisitor Alonso de la Fuente, who launched a violent attack against works previously published by Teresa, did her a favour by recognising from his misogynistic point of view that her oeuvre ‘had been revealed by an angel, as it exceeds the ability of woman.’5
The mission of historians and cura- tors consists in critically analysing the changes produced over the course of time; understanding how images condense fears, hopes and beliefs, how
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