The century of Columbus

by James J. Walsh

Scarcely any writer has had as wide a European influence as this cloistered saint, who wrote only because her confessor commanded her to and who had no thought of style or of anything other than getting the thoughts that would come to her as simply as possible before her Spanish religious brethren. Her Spanish prose is a marvel of simple dignity and correctness representing the best Spanish prose, even down to our time. When Echegaray, the well-known Spanish novelist of our time, received the Nobel Prize for literature a few years ago, he was asked what he did for the perfection of his Spanish style. He declared that almost the only book that he read for the sake of its style was "The Letters of St. Teresa." We have nothing quite like these letters in English, though Cowper's letters approach nearest to them. They are full of simplicity, are deeply interesting in their detail of ordinary life and above all are full of humor. This is the quality that most people would be quite sure was lacking in the great Spanish nun. Those who would explain her visions and her mortification on the ground of hysteria or psycho-neurotic conditions would be undeceived at once in their estimation of her character did they but read her letters. The hysterical are above all lacking in a sense of humor and take themselves very seriously.

Dante is probably the only writer in European literature with whom St. Teresa can properly be compared. She has the same power to convey all the deep significance of other-worldliness, the same universality of interest, the same marvellous quality that draws to her particularly those who are themselves of deeply poetic or profoundly spiritual nature. Men who have spent long years in the study and the experience of the things with which her writings are concerned, find them most wondrously full of meaning and are most willing to devote time to them. The editions of her various works would fill a very large library, and there is no doubt at all that the [{310}] writings of no woman who ever lived occupy so large a place in libraries all over the world at the present time as those of St. Teresa.

Beside St. Thomas and Dante as a worthy member of a glorious trinity of writers, with regard to the subjects that have been most elusive though most alluring for men, St. Teresa deserves a place. Anyone who would think, however, that she was merely a mystic would be sadly mistaken in the estimate of her career. She was above all a thoroughly practical woman. Her many foundations of the reform Carmelites under the most discouraging circumstances show the indomitable will of the woman and her power to live to accomplish. It was she who said when her poverty was urged as a reason for not making further foundations, "Teresa and five ducats can do nothing, but Teresa with God and five ducats can do everything." There is no doubt now that she more than any other in Spain turned back the tide of the Reformation. Her advice was eagerly sought on all sides. While carefully maintaining her cloistered life, she made many friends and influenced all of them for what was best in them. Her reform of the Carmelites brought many enemies, above all because other religious orders recognized that they too would have to share in the reform, yet all was carried out to a marvellously successful issue with gentleness and sweetness, but with a firmness and courage that nothing could daunt and a power of accomplishment that nothing could balk.

Those who think that Teresa's books are mere essays in pietism or pleasant reading for moments of spiritual exaltation will be sadly mistaken. For depth of meaning and profundity of aspiration after the unknowable, yet approaching it nearer than any other has ever done, St. Teresa's books are unmatched. For analysis of the soul and for the manner of its unfolding in its strivings after higher things, Teresa has no equal. Her pictures of celestial things are a constant reminder of Dante. Most people think of the "Inferno" as Dante's masterpiece. Those who know him best think rather of the "Purgatorio," but a few lofty, poetic souls, steeped in the spiritual, have found his "Paradiso" the sublimest of human documents. While there are constant reminders of the [{311}] "Purgatorio" in many of Teresa's writings, it is the "Paradise," however, that most frequently recurs in comparison. What Cardinal Manning said of the "Paradiso" may well be repeated of Teresa's mystical works. It has been said, "After the 'Summa' of St. Thomas nothing remains but the vision of God." To this Cardinal Manning added, "after the 'Paradiso' of Dante there remains nothing but the beatific vision." Those whose life and studies have best fitted them as judges have felt thus about the Spanish Doctress of the Church.

Teresa was eminently human in every regard, and though what might be considered harsh with herself, she was always kind to those who were around her, and especially any who were in real suffering. She came by these qualities very naturally, for her father is noted as an extremely good man and exceptionally good to his servants and charitable toward the poor of Avila. Indeed Teresa's biographers insist so much on these qualities as to make it very clear that the spirit of the time is represented by this member of the old Spanish nobility, who took his duties towards others so seriously. Teresa was not one of the exceptional souls who find convent life easy and even consoling from the beginning, but on the contrary she has told herself that she found the first eight days of her convent life terrible. It seemed to her a prison. She had a physical fear of austerities and pious books bored her. Perhaps the one very human thought that tempted her more than any other to enter the convent was her feeling of independence. The idea of marriage was quite distasteful. As she expressed it, it was one thing to obey God, but quite another thing to bind oneself to obey a man for a lifetime.

As if in compensation for all that the neurologists and psychiatrists had to say of her, she herself had something to say of nervous patients. For her, nervousness so-called was largely selfishness. While sympathetic for feelings of depression, she had no sympathy for those who would not throw them off by occupation of mind, but yielded to them. She said, "What is called melancholy is at bottom only a desire to have one's own way." She believed firmly that one could not be made good by many rules, but goodness had to come from within and from the spirit. She was quite impatient with the [{312}] religious visitors, that is, special superiors sent to make inspections of houses of religious who gave a number of new rules for the communities. She said: "I am so tired with having to read all these rules that I do not know what would become of me if I were obliged to keep them."

It is easy to understand then why Cardinal Manning should have said that St. Teresa furnishes an example that "spirituality perfects common sense." She herself was one of the most sensible, joyous and charming persons. Miss Field in the Atlantic for March, 1903, says: "Her charm, her sweetness, the loveliness of her conversation were irresistible." It was Cardinal Manning, I believe, who declared that "she was one of those sovereign souls that are born from time to time as if to show what her race was created for at first and to what it is still destined."

Teresa once said: "God preserve me from those great nobles who can do something, yet who are such strange cranks." She reminded her nuns on more than one occasion when she found in them a tendency to go to too great lengths in austerity that we have a body as well as a soul, and that this body when disregarded revenges itself upon the soul. There are few subjects of importance in life on which St. Teresa has not expressed herself wisely, and to know her writings is to be able to quote many marvellous summations of worldly experience that the cloister might seem to have precluded in her. On the subject of the relation of low wages and virtue, Miss Repplier in the article on "Our Loss of Nerve" (Atlantic Monthly, September, 1913) quoted St. Teresa's profound comment which sums up so well our whole social situation "where virtue is well rooted provocations matter little."

MOSTAERT, VIRGO DEIPARA (ANTWERP)