ABSTRACT
In 1554 Teresa of Avila was given a copy of Augustine’s Confessiones published in Castilian in January of that year. This is how she describes the effect the book had on her:
As I began to read the Confessiones, it seemed to me I saw myself in them. I began to commend myself very much to this glorious saint. When I came to the passage where he speaks about his conversion and read how he heard that voice in the garden (Confessiones 8.12.29), it only seemed to me, according to what I felt in my heart, that it was I the Lord called. I remained for a long time totally dissolved in tears and feeling within myself utter distress and weariness. (V: 9.7-8)1
Teresa goes on to speak of the pain she experienced in giving up the false, self-reliant, ego before being in full possession of the new self dependent on God. ‘Dear God,’ she says, ‘what a soul suffers and what torments it endures when it loses its freedom to be its own master! I am astonished now that I was able to live in such a state of torment.’
