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Title: The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus

Author: Teresa of Avila

Release Date: May, 2005 [EBook #8120]

[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]

[This file was first posted on June 16, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

Produced by Elizabeth T. Knuth

The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus

Transcriber’s Note: Corrections suggested in the Corrigenda,

[viii] of the original text, have been made. Section number

added for L 3.9, since both the translator’s preface and the

index refer to it. Footnotes gathered at the ends of chapters.

Typographical errors in two Scriptural quotations have been

corrected: In L 21 note 10, I have changed “Quæ præparavit Deus

iis qui” to “Quæ præparavit Deus his qui;” and in L 29 note 12,

I have changed “As the longing of the heart” to “As the longing

of the hart.”

The Life

of

St. Teresa of Jesus

Re-imprimatur.

+ Franciscus

Archiepiscopus Westmonast.

Die 27 Sept., 1904.

The Life

of

St. Teresa of Jesus,

of the Order of Our Lady of Carmel.

Written by Herself.

Translated from the Spanish by

David Lewis.

Third Edition Enlarged.

With additional Notes and an Introduction by

Rev. Fr. Benedict Zimmerman, O.C.D.

London: Thomas Baker.

New York: Benziger Bros.

MCMIV.

Contents.

Chap.

Introduction to the Third Edition, by Rev. B. Zimmerman

St. Teresa’s Arguments of the Chapters

Preface by David Lewis

Annals of the Saint’s Life

Prologue

I. Childhood and early Impressions—The Blessing of pious

Parents—Desire of Martyrdom—Death of the Saint’s Mother

II. Early Impressions—Dangerous Books and Companions—The Saint

is placed in a Monastery

III. The Blessing of being with good people—How certain

Illusions were removed

IV. Our Lord helps her to become a Nun—Her many Infirmities

V. Illness and Patience of the Saint—The Story of a Priest whom

she rescued from a Life of Sin

VI. The great Debt she owed to our Lord for His Mercy to her—She

takes St. Joseph for her Patron

VII. Lukewarmness—The Loss of Grace—Inconvenience of Laxity in

Religious Houses

VIII. The Saint ceases not to pray—Prayer the way to recover

what is lost—All exhorted to pray—The great Advantage of

Prayer, even to those who may have ceased from it

IX. The means whereby our Lord quickened her Soul, gave her Light

in her Darkness, and made her strong in Goodness

X. The Graces she received in Prayer—What we can do

ourselves—The great Importance of understanding what our Lord is

doing for us—She desires her Confessors to keep her Writings

secret, because of the special Graces of our Lord to her, which

they had commanded her to describe

XI. Why men do not attain quickly to the perfect Love of God—Of

Four Degrees of Prayer—Of the First Degree—The Doctrine

profitable for Beginners, and for those who have no

sensible Sweetness

XII. What we can ourselves do—The Evil of desiring to attain to

supernatural States before our Lord calls us

XIII. Of certain Temptations of Satan—Instructions

relating thereto

XIV. The Second State of Prayer—Its supernatural Character

XV. Instructions for those who have attained to the Prayer of

Quiet—Many advance so far, but few go farther

XVI. The Third State of Prayer—Deep Matters—What the Soul can

do that has reached it—Effects of the great Graces of our Lord

XVII. The Third State of Prayer—The Effects thereof—The

Hindrance caused by the Imagination and the Memory

XVIII. The Fourth State of Prayer—The great Dignity of the Soul

raised to it by our Lord—Attainable on Earth, not by our Merit,

but by the Goodness of our Lord

XIX. The Effects of this Fourth State of Prayer—Earnest

Exhortations to those who have attained to it not to go back nor

to cease from Prayer, even if they fall—The great Calamity of

going back

XX. The Difference between Union and Rapture—What Rapture

is—The Blessing it is to the Soul—The Effects of it

XXI. Conclusion of the Subject—Pain of the Awakening—Light

against Delusions

XXII. The Security of Contemplatives lies in their not ascending

to high Things if our Lord does not raise them—The Sacred

Humanity must be the Road to the highest Contemplation—A

Delusion in which the Saint was once entangled

XXIII. The Saint resumes the History of her Life—Aiming at

Perfection—Means whereby it may be gained—Instructions

for Confessors

XXIV. Progress under Obedience—Her Inability to resist the

Graces of God—God multiplies His Graces

XXV. Divine Locutions—Delusions on that Subject

XXVI. How the Fears of the Saint vanished—How she was assured

that her Prayer was the Work of the Holy Spirit

XXVII. The Saint prays to be directed in a different

way—Intellectual Visions

XXVIII. Visions of the Sacred Humanity and of the glorified

Bodies—Imaginary Visions—Great Fruits thereof when they come

from God

XXIX. Of Visions—The Graces our Lord bestowed on the Saint—The

Answers our Lord gave her for those who tried her

XXX. St. Peter of Alcantara comforts the Saint—Great Temptations

and Interior Trials

XXXI. Of certain outward Temptations and Appearances of Satan—Of

the Sufferings thereby occasioned—Counsels for those who go on

unto Perfection

XXXII. Our Lord shows St. Teresa the Place which she had by her

Sins deserved in Hell—The Torments there—How the Monastery of

St. Joseph was founded

XXXIII. The Foundation of the Monastery hindered—Our Lord

consoles the Saint

XXXIV. The Saint leaves her Monastery of the Incarnation for a

time, at the command of her superior—Consoles an afflicted Widow

XXXV. The Foundation of the House of St. Joseph—Observance of

holy Poverty therein—How the Saint left Toledo

XXXVI. The Foundation of the Monastery of St. Joseph—Persecution

and Temptations—Great interior Trial of the Saint, and

her Deliverance

XXXVII. The Effects of the divine Graces in the Soul—The

inestimable Greatness of one Degree of Glory

XXXVIII. Certain heavenly Secrets, Visions, and Revelations—The

Effects of them in her Soul

XXXIX. Other Graces bestowed on the Saint—The Promises of our

Lord to her—Divine Locutions and Visions

XL. Visions, Revelations, and Locutions

The Relations.

Relation.

I. Sent to St. Peter of Alcantara in 1560 from the Monastery of

the Incarnation, Avila

II. To one of her Confessors, from the House of Dona Luisa de la

Cerda, in 1562

III. Of various Graces granted to the Saint from the year 1568 to

1571, inclusive

IV. Of the Graces the Saint received in Salamanca at the end of

Lent, 1571

V. Observations on certain Points of Spirituality

VI. The Vow of Obedience to Father Gratian which the Saint made

in 1575

VII. Made for Rodrigo Alvarez, S.J., in the year 1575, according

to Don Vicente de la Fuente; but in 1576, according to the

Bollandists and F. Bouix

VIII. Addressed to F. Rodrigo Alvarez

IX. Of certain spiritual Graces she received in Toledo and Avila

in the years 1576 and 1577

X. Of a Revelation to the Saint at Avila, 1579, and of Directions

concerning the Government of the Order

XI. Written from Palencia in May, 1581, and addressed to Don

Alonzo Velasquez, Bishop of Osma, who had been when Canon of

Toledo, one of the Saint’s Confessors

Introduction to the Present Edition.

When the publisher entrusted me with the task of editing this

volume, one sheet was already printed and a considerable portion

of the book was in type. Under his agreement with the owners of

the copyright, he was bound to reproduce the text and notes,

etc., originally prepared by Mr. David Lewis without any change,

so that my duty was confined to reading the proofs and verifying

the quotations. This translation of the Life of St. Teresa is so

excellent, that it could hardly be improved. While faithfully

adhering to her wording, the translator has been successful in

rendering the lofty teaching in simple and clear language, an

achievement all the more remarkable as in addition to the

difficulty arising from the transcendental nature of the subject

matter, the involved style, and the total absence of punctuation

tend to perplex the reader. Now and then there might be some

difference of opinion as to how St. Teresa’s phrases should be

construed, but it is not too much to say that on the whole

Mr. Lewis has been more successful than any other translator,

whether English or foreign. Only in one case have I found it

necessary to make some slight alteration in the text, and I trust

the owners of the copyright will forgive me for doing so. In

Chapter XXV., § 4, St. Teresa, speaking of the difference between

the Divine and the imaginary locutions, says that a person

commending a matter to God with great earnestness, may think that

he hears whether his prayer will be granted or not: y es muy

posible, “and this is quite possible,” but he who has ever heard

a Divine locution will see at once that this assurance is

something quite different. Mr. Lewis, following the old Spanish

editions, translated “And it is most impossible,” whereas both

the autograph and the context demand the wording I have ventured

to substitute.

When Mr. Lewis undertook the translation of St. Teresa’s works,

he had before him Don Vicente de la Fuente’s edition (Madrid,

1861-1862), supposed to be a faithful transcript of the original.

In 1873 the Sociedad Foto-Tipografica-Catolica of Madrid

published a photographic reproduction of the Saint’s autograph in

412 pages in folio, which establishes the true text once for all.

Don Vicente prepared a transcript of this, in which he wisely

adopted the modern way of spelling but otherwise preserved the

original text, or at least pretended to do so, for a minute

comparison between autograph and transcript reveals the startling

fact that nearly a thousand inaccuracies have been allowed to

creep in. Most of these variants are immaterial, but there are

some which ought not to have been overlooked. Thus, in Chapter

XVIII. § 20, St. Teresa’s words are: Un gran letrado de la orden

del glorioso santo Domingo, while Don Vicente retains the old

reading De la orden del glorioso patriarca santo Domingo.

Mr. Lewis possessed a copy of this photographic reproduction, but

utilised it only in one instance in his second edition. [1]

The publication of the autograph has settled a point of some

importance. The Bollandists (n. 1520), discussing the question

whether the headings of the chapters (appended to this

Introduction) are by St. Teresa or a later addition, come to the

conclusion (against the authors of the Reforma de los Descalços)

that they are clearly an interpolation (clarissime patet) on

account of the praise of the doctrine contained in these