ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, Peter Tyler has argued that Teresa of Avila is working rmly in the Dionysian tradition. He shows, most of all, her many debts to Jean Gerson. The resonance between the two writers is striking. A genealogy of inuence can be identied: Teresa acknowledges Francisco de Osuna’s Third Spiritual Alphabet (V: 4.7); Osuna cites Gerson, particularly on the experiential and affective nature of mystical theology (TA: 21.6); and in turn Gerson cites Dionysius, repeatedly mentioning his Victorine interpreters, Hugh and Richard of St Victor (SMT: 1.6.2; 1.8.5; 1.39.3; 2.12 postscript). There are other routes, in addition, that this ‘Affective Dionysianism’ would have found its way to Teresa, via 16th-century Spanish mystical literature. Luis M. Girón-Negrón mentions as Dionysian inuences on Teresa not just Osuna but also John of Avila, Luis de Granada, Peter of Alcántara and Bernadino de Laredo (Girón-Negrón 2009: 166).1 In the background, further mediating gures between Dionysius and these Spanish Dionysians are also important to recognise: Thomas Gallus, the Carthusian Hugh of Balma and the Flemish Franciscan Hendrik Herp. Gerson is one of these mediating gures, who helped to produce the major groundswell of Affective Dionysian writings that characterised Teresa’s spiritual milieu.
