ABSTRACT
In the last two decades or so, the steady trickle of scholarly writings on St Teresa of Avila has turned into a flood. For example, there are careful analyses of Teresa’s writings by Alison Weber, Carole Slade and Gillian Ahlgren; there are thoughtful reassessments of her theological position by Deidre Green and Edward Howells; and there are thorough historical studies of the society in which the saint worked and lived, most notably by Jodi Bilinkoff.1 Moreover, it is not only scholars who are interested in the holy woman of Avila. Recently, the fashion journalist Cathleen Medwick published a volume on Teresa perhaps best described as an amateur biography if one takes that to mean a carefully compiled work.2 A little more than four centuries after the original Saison Carmelitaine – when Teresa’s Discalced Carmelites were fêted for their sanctity across Europe – there has been a most welcome revival of interest. This is perhaps because St Teresa remains the best known and most prominent representative of female monasticism in the early modern period.
