Master Class on "The Life of Teresa of Avila"
Carlos EireYale University
This program was made possible in part by a grant from the Our Sunday Visitor Institute.
The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila is one of the most remarkable accounts ever written of the human encounter with the divine. This text is not really an autobiography at all, despite the fact that it is widely regarded as such, but rather a confession written for inquisitors by a nun whose raptures and mystical claims had aroused suspicion. Despite its troubled origins, and despite the fact that some clergy continued to condemn it after it was published, the book has had a profound impact on Christian spirituality for five centuries, attracting admiration from readers as diverse as mystics, philosophers, artists, psychoanalysts, and neurologists. How and why did a manuscript once kept under lock and key by the Spanish Inquisition become an iconic text of the Counter-Reformation and an enduring influence on Western culture?
This master class will examine the historical and theological content of Saint Teresa’s audacious mystical theology.
REQUIRED READING
- The Life of Teresa of Avila (Penguin Classics, 1988) Chs. 1-2, 7-14, 20-22, 28-40.
RECOMMENDED READING
- Eire, Carlos, The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2019).
SCHEDULE
1:30pm Coffee, tea, and pastries
2:00pm Introduction, Session I
3:20pm Break
3:40pm Session II
5:00pm End, wine and cheese reception
Professor Eire will also participate in a symposium on his new book The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila: A Biography on October 24.
Carlos Eire is the T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History & Religious Studies at Yale University. He holds a PhD from Yale University, specializing in the social, intellectual, religious, and cultural history of late medieval and early modern Europe, with a strong focus on both the Protestant and Catholic Reformations; the history of popular piety; and the history of the supernatural, and the history of death. He is the author many books, including War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship From Erasmus to Calvin; From Madrid to Purgatory: The Art and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth Century Spain; and A Very Brief History of Eternity. Prof. Eire also wrote the National Book Award-winning memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana (2004) about his exile from his native Cuba.
