A Life in Memory: María de San José’s Libro de las Recreaciones, the First Biography of Teresa of Ávila

What is it about?

The dissemination of the first biographies of Teresa of Ávila, in reality true hagiographies, laid the groundwork for an overly "angelic" vision of the virtues and supernatural gifts of the saint of Ávila. This exaltation can be understood from the perspective of Baroque hagiographies, whose basic structure was: life (from birth), miracles during life, death, and miracles after death. Thus, The Life of Mother Teresa of Jesus by Francisco Ribera (Salamanca, 1590) and The Life, Virtues, and Miracles of the Blessed Virgin Teresa of Jesus by Diego de Yepes and Tomás de Jesús (Zaragoza, 1606), both of enormous editorial success in their time and throughout history, contributed to the creation of the "long Baroque history," in the words of Teófanes Egido, of Teresa of Ávila. On the contrary, several of her disciples wrote down their most personal and human memories of the saint around the same time, so that later generations of Carmelite nuns would know her. Through these testimonies, preserved in convents in various formats and hidden for centuries, we can reconstruct the woman Teresa, the most human Teresa.One of the most recognized perhaps contains the earliest preserved biography: the Book of Recreations of the Carmelite Maria de San Jose, a highly skilled writer, written around 1585.

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Why is it important?

The Book of Recreations is the first Renaissance humanist dialogue written by a woman, and it is truly significant that the literary genre of dialogue is practiced by a Carmelite nun and that it serves to evoke the life of the reformer of the Carmelite order. This work contributes to the recovery of women's writing in 16th-century Spain and to a greater understanding of the person of Teresa of Ávila.+