ABSTRACT
In order to establish the kind of cultural comparisons underlying Teresa's writing, this chapter looks at her remarks on the experience of confession in the years 1539–54 in the light of Trent's guidelines on confession and the advice provided in the existing confession manuals in Spanish, and also contrast them with the kind of expectations which books like Osuna's Tercer abecedario might have placed on their readers as beneficiaries of spiritual direction. The chapter seeks to challenge Foucault's discussion of confession as 'a power that constrains us' under the illusion that it is an instrument for reaching the 'truth, lodged in our most secret nature'. In the late Middle Ages, while the majority of people saw the sacrament of penance as no more than an annual obligation, the people who had spiritual aspirations went to confession once a month, or even once a week, as a way of obtaining encouragement in their search for spiritual perfection.
