Pagan woman of antiquity, revelling in the pleasures of vanity and
sensuality, with a feeble moral sense, and without any distinct
recognition of God or of immortality. The genius of Paganism was simply
the deification of the Venus Polyhymnia,--the adornment and pleasure of
what is perishable in man. It directed all the energies of human nature
to the pampering and decorating of this mortal body, not believing that
the mind and soul which animate it, and which are the sources of all its
glory, would ever live beyond the grave. A few sages believed
differently,--men who rose above the spirit of Paganism, but not such
men as Alexander, or Caesar, or Antony, the foremost men of all the
world in grand ambitions and successes. Taking it for granted that this
world is the only theatre for enjoyment, or action, or thought, men
naturally said, "Let us eat and drink and be merry, for to-morrow we
die." And hence no higher life was essayed than that which furnished
sensual enjoyments, or incited an ambition to be strong and powerful. Of
course, riches were sought above everything, since these furnished the
means of gratifying those pleasures which were most valued, or
stimulating that vanity whose essence is self-idolatry.
With this universal rush of humanity after pleasures which centred in
the body, the soul was left dishonored and uncared for, except by a few
philosophers. I do not now speak of the mind, for there were
intellectual pleasures derived from conversation, books, and works of
art. And some called the mind divine, in distinction from matter; some
speculated on the nature of each, and made mind and matter in perpetual
antagonism, as the good and evil forces of the universe. But the
prevailing opinion was that the whole man perished, or became absorbed
in the elemental forces of nature, or reappeared again in new forms upon
the earth, to expiate those sins of which human nature is conscious. To
some men were given longings after immortality, not absolute
convictions,--men like Plato, Socrates, and Cicero. But I do not speak
of these illustrious exceptions; I mean the great mass of the people,
especially the rich and powerful and pleasure-seeking,--those whose
supreme delight was in banquets, palaces, or intoxicating excitements,
like chariot-racings and gladiatorial shows; yea, triumphal processions
to raise the importance of the individual self, and stimulate vanity
and pride.
Hence Paganism put a small value, comparatively, on even intellectual
enjoyments. It cultivated those arts which appealed to the senses more
than to the mind; it paid dearly for any sort of intellectual training
which could be utilized,--oratory, for instance, to enable a lawyer to
gain a case, or a statesman to control a mob; it rewarded those poets
who could sing blended praises to Bacchus and Venus, or who could excite
the passions at the theatre. But it paid still higher prices to athletes
and dancers, and almost no price at all to those who sought to stimulate
a love of knowledge for its own sake,--men like Socrates, for example,
who walked barefooted, and lived on fifty dollars a year, and who at
last was killed out of pure hatred for the truths he told and the manner
in which he told them,--this martyrdom occurring in the most
intellectual city of the world. In both Greece and Rome there was an
intellectual training for men bent on utilitarian ends; even as we endow
schools of science and technology to enable us to conquer nature, and to
become strong and rich and comfortable; but there were no schools for
women, whose intellects were disdained, and who were valued only as
servants or animals,--either to drudge, or to please the senses.
But even if there were some women in Paganism of high mental
education,--if women sometimes rose above their servile condition by
pure intellect, and amused men by their wit and humor,--still their
souls were little thought of. Now, it is the soul of woman--not her
mind, and still less her body--which elevates her, and makes her, in
some important respects, the superior of man himself. He has dominion
over her by force of will, intellect, and physical power. When she has
dominion over him, it is by those qualities which come from her
soul,--her superior nature, greater than both mind and body. Paganism
never recognized the superior nature, especially in woman,--that which
must be fed, even in this world, or there will be constant unrest and
discontent. And inasmuch as Paganism did not feed it, women were
unhappy, especially those who had great capacities. They may have been
comfortable, but they were not contented.
Hence, women made no great advance either in happiness or in power,
until Christianity revealed the greatness of the soul, its perpetual
longings, its infinite capacities, and its future satisfactions. The
spiritual exercises of the soul then became the greatest source of
comfort amid those evils which once ended in despair. With every true
believer, the salvation of so precious a thing necessarily became the
end of life, for Christianity taught that the soul might be lost. In
view of the soul's transcendent value, therefore, the pleasures of the
body became of but little account in comparison. Riches are good, power
is desirable; eating and drinking are very pleasant; praise, flattery,
admiration,--all these things delight us, and under Paganism were sought
and prized. But Christianity said, "What shall a man give in exchange
for his soul?"
Christianity, then, set about in earnest to rescue this soul which
Paganism had disregarded. In consequence of this, women began to rise,
and shine in a new light. They gained a new charm, even moral
beauty,--yea, a new power, so that they could laugh at ancient foes, and
say triumphantly, when those foes sought to crush them, "O Grave, where
is thy victory? O Death, where is thy sting?" There is no beauty among
women like this moral beauty, whose seat is in the soul. It is not only
a radiance, but it is a defence: it protects women from the wrath and
passion of men. With glory irradiating every feature, it says to the
boldest, Thus far shalt thou come and no farther. It is a benediction to
the poor and a welcome to the rich. It shines with such unspeakable
loveliness, so rich in blessing and so refined in ecstasy, that men gaze
with more than admiration, even with sentiments bordering on that
adoration which the Middle Ages felt for the mother of our Lord, and
which they also bestowed upon departed saints. In the immortal paintings
of Raphael and Murillo we get some idea of this moral beauty, which is
so hard to copy.
So woman passed gradually from contempt and degradation to the
veneration of men, when her soul was elevated by the power which
Paganism never knew. But Christianity in the hands of degenerate Romans
and Gothic barbarians made many mistakes in its efforts to save so
priceless a thing as a human soul. Among other things, it instituted
monasteries and convents, both for men and women, in which they sought
to escape the contaminating influences which had degraded them. If
Paganism glorified the body, monasticism despised it. In the fierce
protests against the peculiar sins which had marked Pagan
life,--gluttony, wine-drinking, unchastity, ostentatious vanities, and
turbulent mirth,--monasticism decreed abstinence, perpetual virginity,
the humblest dress, the entire disuse of ornaments, silence, and
meditation. These were supposed to disarm the demons who led into foul
temptation. Moreover, monasticism encouraged whatever it thought would
make the soul triumphant over the body, almost independent of it.
Whatever would feed the soul, it said, should be sought, and whatever
would pamper the body should be avoided.
As a natural consequence of all this, piety gradually came to seek its
most congenial home in monastic retreats, and to take on a dreamy,
visionary, and introspective mood. The "saints" saw visions of both
angels and devils, and a superstitious age believed in their
revelations. The angels appeared to comfort and sustain the soul in
temptations and trials, and the devils came to pervert and torment it.
Good judgment and severe criticism were lost to the Church; and,
moreover, the gloomy theology of the Middle Ages, all based on the fears
of endless physical torments,--for the wretched body was the source of
all evil, and therefore must be punished,--gave sometimes a repulsive
form to piety itself. Intellectually, that piety now excites our
contempt, because it was so much mixed up with dreams and ecstasies and
visions and hallucinations. It produces a moral aversion also, because
it was austere, inhuman, and sometimes cruel. Both monks and nuns, when
they conformed to the rules of their order, were sad, solitary,
dreary-looking people, although their faces shone occasionally in the
light of ecstatic visions of heaven and the angels.
But whatever mistakes monasticism made, however repulsive the religious
life of the Middle Ages,--in fact, all its social life,--still it must
be admitted that the aim of the time was high. Men and women were
enslaved by superstitions, but they were not Pagan. Our own age is, in
some respects, more Pagan than were the darkest times of mediaeval
violence and priestly despotism, since we are reviving the very things
against which Christianity protested as dangerous and false,--the
pomps, the banquets, the ornaments, the arts of the old Pagan world.
Now, all this is preliminary to what I have to say of Saint Theresa. We
cannot do justice to this remarkable woman without considering the
sentiments of her day, and those circumstances that controlled her. We
cannot properly estimate her piety--that for which she was made a saint
in the Roman calendar--without being reminded of the different estimate
which Paganism and Christianity placed upon the soul, and consequently
the superior condition of women in our modern times. Nor must we treat
lightly or sneeringly that institution which was certainly one of the
steps by which women rose in the scale both of religious and social
progress. For several ages nuns were the only charitable women, except
queens and princesses, of whom we have record. But they were drawn to
their calm retreats, not merely to serve God more effectually, nor
merely to perform deeds of charity, but to study. As we have elsewhere
said, the convents in those days were schools no less than asylums and
hospitals, and were especially valued for female education. However, in
these retreats religion especially became a passion. There was a fervor
in it which in our times is unknown. It was not a matter of opinion, but
of faith. In these times there may be more wisdom, but in the Middle
Ages there was more zeal and more unselfishness and more intensity,--all
which is illustrated by the sainted woman I propose to speak of.
Saint Theresa was born at Avila, in Castile, in the year 1515, at the
close of the Middle Ages; but she really belonged to the Middle Ages,
since all the habits, customs, and opinions of Spain at that time were
mediaeval. The Reformation never gained a foothold in Spain. None of its
doctrines penetrated that country, still less modified or changed its
religious customs, institutions, or opinions. And hence Saint Theresa
virtually belonged to the age of Bernard, and Anselm, and Elizabeth of
Hungary. She was of a good family as much distinguished for virtues as
for birth. Both her father and mother were very religious and studious,
reading good books, and practising the virtues which Catholicism ever
enjoined,--alms-giving to the poor, and kindness to the sick and
infirm,--truthful, chaste, temperate, and God-fearing. They had twelve
children, all good, though Theresa seems to have been the favorite, from
her natural sprightliness and enthusiasm. Among the favorite books of
the Middle Ages were the lives of saints and martyrs; and the history of
these martyrs made so great an impression on the mind of the youthful
Theresa that she and one of her brothers meditated a flight into Africa
that they might be put to death by the Moors, and thus earn the crown
of martyrdom, as well as the eternal rewards in heaven which martyrdom
was supposed to secure. This scheme being defeated by their parents,
they sought to be hermits in the garden which belonged to their house,
playing the part of monks and nuns.
At eleven, Theresa lost her mother, and took to reading romances, which,
it seems, were books of knight-errantry, at the close of the chivalric
period. These romances were innumerable, and very extravagant and
absurd, and were ridiculed by Cervantes, half-a-century afterwards, in
his immortal "Don Quixote." Although Spain was mediaeval in its piety in
the sixteenth century, this was the period of its highest intellectual
culture, especially in the drama. De Vega and Cervantes were enough of
themselves to redeem Spain from any charges of intellectual stupidity.
But for the Inquisition, and the Dominican monks, and the Jesuits, and
the demoralization which followed the conquests of Cortés and Pizarro,
Spain might have rivalled Germany, France, and England in the greatness
of her literature. At this time there must have been considerable
cultivation among the class to which Theresa belonged.
Although she never was sullied by what are called mortal sins, it would
appear that as a girl of fourteen Theresa was, like most other girls,
fond of dress and perfumes and ornaments, elaborate hair-dressing, and
of anything which would make the person attractive. Her companions also
were gay young ladies of rank, as fond of finery as she was, whose
conversation was not particularly edifying, but whose morals were above
reproach. Theresa was sent to a convent in her native town by her
father, that she might be removed from the influence of gay companions,
especially her male cousins, who could not be denied the house. At first
she was quite unhappy, finding the convent dull, _triste_, and strict. I
cannot conceive of a convent being a very pleasant place for a worldly
young lady, in any country or in any age of the world. Its monotony and
routine and mechanical duties must ever have been irksome. The pleasing
manners and bright conversation of Theresa caused the nuns to take an
unusual interest in her; and one of them in particular exercised a great
influence upon her, so that she was inclined at times to become a nun
herself, though not of a very strict order, since she was still fond of
the pleasures of the world.
At sixteen, Theresa's poor health made it necessary for her to return to
her father's house. When she recovered she spent some time with her
uncle, afterwards a monk, who made her read good books, and impressed
upon her the vanity of the world. In a few months she resolved to become
a nun,--out of servile fear rather than love, as she avers. The whole
religious life of the Middle Ages was based on fear,--the fear of being
tortured forever by devils and hell. So universal and powerful was this
fear that it became the leading idea of the age, from which very few
were ever emancipated. On this idea were based the excommunications, the
interdicts, and all the spiritual weapons by which the clergy ruled the
minds of the people. On this their ascendency rested; they would have
had but little power without it. It was therefore their interest to
perpetuate it. And as they ruled by exciting fears, so they themselves
were objects of fear rather than of love.
All this tended to make the Middle Ages gloomy, funereal, repulsive,
austere. There was a time when I felt a sort of poetic interest in these
dark times, and called them ages of faith; but the older I grow, and the
more I read and reflect, the more dreary do those ages seem to me. Think
of a state of society when everything suggested wrath and vengeance,
even in the character of God, and when this world was supposed to be
under the dominion of devils! Think of an education which impressed on
the minds of interesting young girls that the trifling sins which they
committed every day, and which proceeded from the exuberance of animal
spirits, justly doomed them to everlasting burnings, without
expiations,--a creed so cruel as to undermine the health, and make life
itself a misery! Think of a spiritual despotism so complete that
confessors and spiritual fathers could impose or remove these
expiations, and thus open the door to heaven or hell!
And yet this despotism was the logical result of a generally accepted
idea, instead of the idea being an outgrowth of the despotism, since the
clergy, who controlled society by working on its fears, were themselves
as complete victims and slaves as the people whom they led. This idea
was that the soul would be lost unless sins were expiated, and expiated
by self-inflicted torments on the body. Paul taught a more cheerful
doctrine of forgiveness, based on divine and infinite love,--on faith
and repentance. The Middle Ages also believed in repentance, but taught
that repentance and penance were synonymous. The asceticism of the
Church in its conflict with Paganism led to this perversion of apostolic
theology. The very idea that Christianity was sent to subvert,--that is,
the old Oriental idea of self-expiation, seen among the fakirs and sofis
and Brahmins alike, and in a less repulsive form among the
Pharisees,--became once again the ruling idea of theologians. The
theologians of the Middle Ages taught this doctrine of penance and
self-expiation with peculiar zeal and sincerity; and fear rather than
love ruled the Christian world. Hence the austerity of convent life. Its
piety centred in the perpetual crucifixion of the body, in the
suppression of desires and pleasures which are perfectly innocent. The
highest ideal of Christian life, according to convent rules, was a
living and protracted martyrdom, and in some cases even the degradation
of our common humanity. Christianity nowhere enjoins the eradication of
passions and appetites, but the control of them. It would not mutilate
and disfigure the body, for it is a sacred temple, to be made beautiful
and attractive. On the other hand the Middle Ages strove to make the
body appear repulsive, and the most loathsome forms of misery and
disease to be hailed as favorite modes of penance. And as Christ
suffered agonies on the cross, so the imitation of Christ was supposed
to be a cheerful and ready acceptance of voluntary humiliation and
bodily torments,--the more dreadful to bear, the more acceptable to
Deity as a propitiation for sin. Is this statement denied? Read the
biographies of the saints of the Middle Ages. See how penance, and
voluntary suffering, and unnecessary exposure of the health, and eager
attention to the sick in loathsome and contagious diseases, and the
severest and most protracted fastings and vigils, enter into their
piety; and how these extorted popular admiration, and received the
applause and rewards of the rulers of the Church. I never read a book
which left on my mind such repulsive impressions of mediaeval piety as
the Life of Catherine of Sienna, by her confessor,--himself one of the
great ecclesiastical dignitaries of the age. I never read anything so
debasing and degrading to our humanity. One turns with disgust from the
narration of her lauded penances.
So we see in the Church of the Middle Ages--the Church of Saint
Theresa--two great ideas struggling for the mastery, yet both obscured
and perverted: faith in a crucified Redeemer, which gave consolation and
hope; and penance, rather than repentance, which sought to impose the
fetters of the ancient spiritual despotisms. In the early Church, faith
and repentance went hand in hand together to conquer the world, and to
introduce joy and peace and hope among believers. In the Middle Ages,
faith was divorced from repentance, and took penance instead as a
companion,--an old enemy; so that there was discord in the Christian
camp, and fears returned, and joys were clouded. Sometimes faith
prevailed over penance, as in the monastery of Bec, where Anselm taught
a cheerful philosophy,--or in the monastery of Clairvaux, where Bernard
lived in seraphic ecstasies, his soul going out in love and joy; and
then again penance prevailed, as in those grim retreats where hard
inquisitors inflicted their cruel torments. But penance, on the whole,
was the ruling power, and cast over society its funereal veil of
dreariness and fear. Yet penance, enslaving as it was, still clung to
the infinite value of the soul, the grandest fact in all revelations,
and hence society did not relax into Paganism. Penance would save the
soul, though surrounding it with gloom, maceration, heavy labors, bitter
tears, terrible anxieties. The wearied pilgrim, the isolated monk, the
weeping nun, the groaning peasant, the penitent baron, were not thrown
into absolute despair, since there was a possibility of appeasing divine
wrath, and since they all knew that Christ had died in order to save
some,--yea, all who conformed to the direction of those spiritual guides
which the Church and the age imposed.
Such was Catholic theology when Theresa--an enthusiastic, amiable, and
virtuous girl of sixteen, but at one time giddy and worldly--wished to
enter a convent for the salvation of her soul. She says she was
influenced _by servile fear_, and not by love. It is now my purpose to
show how this servile fear was gradually subdued by divine grace, and
how she became radiant with _love_,--in short, an emancipated woman, in
all the glorious liberty of the gospel of Christ; although it was not
until she had passed through a most melancholy experience of bondage to
the leading ideas of her Church and age. It is this emancipation which
made her one of the great women of history, not complete and entire, but
still remarkable, especially for a Spanish woman. It was love
casting out fear.
After a mental struggle of three months, Theresa resolved to become a
nun. But her father objected, partly out of his great love for her, and
partly on account of her delicate and fragile body. Her health had
always been poor: she was subject to fainting fits and burning fevers.
Whether her father, at last, consented to her final retirement from the
world I do not discover from her biography; but, with his consent or
without it, she entered the convent and assumed the religious
habit,--not without bitter pangs on leaving her home, for she did
violence to her feelings, having no strong desire for monastic
seclusion, and being warmly attached to her father. Neither love to God
nor a yearning after monastic life impelled the sacrifice, as she
admits, but a perverted conscience. She felt herself in danger of
damnation for her sins, and wished to save her soul, and knew no other
way than to enter upon the austerities of the convent, which she endured
with remarkable patience and submission, suffering not merely from
severities to which she was unaccustomed, but great illness in
consequence of them. A year was passed in protracted miseries, amounting
to martyrdom, from fainting fits, heart palpitations, and other
infirmities of the body. The doctors could do nothing for her, and her
father was obliged to order her removal to a more healthful monastery,
where no vows of enclosure were taken.
And there she remained a year, with no relief to her sufferings for
three months. Her only recreation was books, which fortified her
courage. She sought instruction, but found no one who could instruct her
so as to give repose to her struggling soul. She endeavored to draw her
thoughts from herself by reading. She could not even pray without a
book. She was afraid to be left alone with herself. Her situation was
made still worse by the fact that her superiors did not understand her.
When they noticed that she sought solitude, and shed tears for her sins,
they fancied she had a discontented disposition, and added to her
unhappiness by telling her so. But she conformed to all the rules,
irksome or not, and endured every mortification, and even performed acts
of devotion which were not required. She envied the patience of a poor
woman who died of the most painful ulcers, and thought it would be a
blessing if she could be afflicted in the same way, in order, as she
said, to purchase eternal good. And this strange desire was fulfilled,
for a severe and painful malady afflicted her for three years.