TERESA DE AVILA CAME INTO MY WORLD DURING A TIME OF PERSONAL trauma. I found in her not only a spiritual guide, but also a role model—a tough, energetic woman who confronted myriad obstacles without ever losing her faith, warmth, and sense of humor. Although I was not a religious person, Teresa’s Interior Castle gave me a new way to think about prayer. By describing God as a King lodged deep within a castle that is the soul, Teresa makes it possible for people of different religious backgrounds to find faith by turning inward. Teresa helped me to muster the inner strength to face the challenges in my life, and Sister Teresa is my thanksgiving offering. It is also my way of sharing Teresa’s spirituality with readers of all religions and backgrounds.
From Teresa’s writing emerges the image of a complex and sometimes contradictory woman. Teresa was a mystic and spiritual teacher, but also a shrewd administrator, politician, and fundraiser. She challenged authority, yet seemingly conformed to the rules. She could be manipulative, but also naïve; her trust in her allies was so complete that she sometimes fell victim to the manipulation of others. A woman of converso background living in a Spain obsessed with “purity of blood,” Teresa never mentions her Jewish ancestry. Yet, scholars such as Catherine Swietlicki and David Gitlitz, have demonstrated how her Semitic roots influenced her thinking. The peculiarities of Teresa’s personality made me wonder what it would be like to be close to such a person. What would it be like to live with a woman who talked to God, saw visions, and slipped into trances, yet played the tambourine and told jokes? Sister Angélica is the narrative device I invented in order to observe Teresa from an essentially secular perspective. Although Angélica follows Teresa into the convent, she remains attached to the material world. For her, Teresa’s ecstasies are both wonderful and frightening. Is Teresa saintly, she wonders, or just crazy? Teresa’s own descriptions of others’ reactions to her experiences make Angélica’s confusion perfectly credible.
Sister Teresa required an immense amount of research. In addition to all of Teresa’s writing, I immersed myself in many areas of history: Carmelite, conventual, Spanish-Jewish, and women’s. I read Inquisition documents, nun’s letters, and countless scholarly analyses of Teresa’s work. By writing a novel, I aspired to conjure up Teresa’s world. To do so, I had to learn about daily life in early modern Spain—everything from farthingales to chamber pots, from marriage rituals to eating customs. I am indebted to the work of many researchers, in particular, Efrén de la Madre de Dios and Otger Steggink, Teófanes Egido López, Américo Castro, Alison Weber, Jodi Bilinkoff, Gillian Ahlgren, Carole Slade, Joan Cammarata, María Carrión, James Casey, Víctor García de la Concha, David Gitlitz, Henry Kamen, Cathleen Medwick, Ildefonso Morriones, Edgar A. Peers, and John Welsh.
Although my portrayal of Teresa’s career in the Reform is historically accurate, because this is a novel, I took certain artistic liberties. Most of the characters that appear in the book are historical (Juan de la Cruz, Gracián, María de San José, Ana de San Bartoloméo, Rubeo, Sega, and Tostado). However, two main characters, Angélica and Braulio, are fictional. Don Javier is also fictional, although he emerged from Teresa’s intriguing admission, at the end of Chapter 2 of Life, that she originally entered the convent because of a “friendship with one of my cousins [which] was in view of a possible marriage.” She does not elaborate on this friendship except to note that her confessor told her that she was “doing nothing against God.” Some investigators, notably Victoria Lincoln, have interpreted this comment as an acknowledgment of sinful behavior on Teresa’s part. However, in the absence of any concrete evidence on this relationship, I have spun the mysterious cousin into Don Javier. In some cases I changed the name of historical characters in order to avoid a superabundance of Marías, Juans, and Pedros. For example, Don Alejo, the seductive priest of Becedas, has been identified by researchers as Pedro Hernández. Miguela, the woman who turns Teresa over to the Inquisition in Seville, was actually María del Corro.
I would like to express my gratitude to the novelist Janice Eidus, my agent Anna Ghosh, and my editor Alex Young for their very helpful suggestions. I also wish to thank my husband, Mauro E. Mujica, for his patience and support during the writing process, and two special friends, Janet O’Brien and Jeffrey von Arx, S.J., for their unflagging encouragement. Finally, I thank the two Carmelite monasteries of Washington D.C.—Calced and Discalced at last united in a common purpose—for carrying on Teresa’s legacy.