The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila: A Biography

Description

The life and many afterlives of one of the most enduring mystical testaments ever written The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila is among the most remarkable accounts ever written of the human encounter with the divine. The Life is not really an autobiography at all, but rather a confession written for inquisitors by a nun whose raptures and mystical

Carlos Eire is the T. L. Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University. His many books include the bestselling memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana, which won the National Book Award for nonfiction; Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450-1650; and A Very Brief History of Eternity (Princeton). He lives in Guilford, Connecticut.

"A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year" "Eire provides an enthralling exploration of the life and influence of an important historical work." * Publishers Weekly * "[An] admirable book."---Lavinia Byrne, Church Times "Carlos Eire relates this story with commendable lightness of touch. In his hands there is nothing suspicious or frightening about Teresa's interior life with angels and demons, and the reader is given a quasi-divine reassurance that it really doesn't matter if those modern theoretical interpretations are too abstruse to be readily understood."---Stella Fletcher, Times Literary Supplement "This is an important . . . tribute to a great saint by an intelligent, erudite and humane author."---Alexander Jolliffe, Catholic Herald "The Vida is Teresa's attempt to come to grips with her visionary experiences, mainly between 1554 and 1565, but within the context of an apologetic or forced confession so that the authorities could examine her writings for fraud, challenge to authority and orthodoxy. The challenge to readers then, and even more so now, is her unquestioning assumption and experience that 'human beings can transcend the sensory material world and have intimate relations with the Creator of the universe.'" * Paradigm Explorer * "Carlos Eire has written an excellent introduction to The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila. Written in his clear, accessible and lively prose, Eire places the sixteenth-century Spanish nun's life into each of the contexts a reader would need to engage her mystical writings."---Marc R. Forster, Journal of Ecclesiastical History