American Society of Church History

Negotiating Sanctity: Holy Women in Sixteenth-Century Spain Author(s): Gillian T. W. Ahlgren Reviewed work(s): Source: Church History, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Sep., 1995), pp. 373-388 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society of Church History Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3168945 . Accessed: 19/06/2012 19:18
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in Holy Women NegotiatingSanctity: Spain Sixteenth-Century

GILLIAN T. W. AHLGREN The past ten years have seen great strides in our understanding of the many forces at work in Counter-Reformation Spain. Historians and hispanists have demonstrated clearly that the Spanish religious landscape was complex and have elucidated several problems of interpretation. How readily did Spanish monarchs, religious leaders, and laity follow the decrees of the Council of Trent? How influential was the Spanish Inquisition in enforcing religious beliefs and behaviors?1 In what ways did religious reform involve assumptions about gender and differing religious roles for men and women?2 Finally, and more to my point, how did men and women respond to such assumptions and roles?3 Of course, these questions are broad and will continue to generate scholarly debate. Certainly not all can be addressed in one article. Yet in this essay, I would like to offer some analysis of the contemporary understanding of sanctity, since this appears to be a point at which many larger questions intersect. The focus of my inquiry revolves around women's struggle for religious authority, a theme which emerges in several recent studies of women in sixteenth-century Spain.4 As the prescriptions for appropriate, gendered behavior became more rigid, in what ways did women use traditional Christian virtues to establish religious authority?5How did the Spanish
1. See, for example, Angel Alcala et al., Inquisicidn espanola y mentalidad inquisitorial (Barcelona, Spain, 1984); Stephen Haliczer, ed., Inquisitionand Societyin Early Modem Europe (London, 1986); and Henry Kamen, The Phoenixand the Flame:Cataloniaand the CounterReformation(New Haven, Conn., 1993). 2. See Mary Elizabeth Perry, Genderand Disorderin Early Modern Seville (Princeton, N.J., 1990). 3. See Electa Arenal and Stacey Schlau, Untold Sisters:Hispanic Nuns in Their Own Works,

trans. Amanda Powell (Albuquerque,N.M., 1989); and Maril6 Vigil, La vida de las
includes Gillian T. W. Ahlgren, Teresaof Avila and the Politics of Sanctity (Ithaca, N.Y.:

4. Recentscholarshipon Teresa of Avilawhichexaminesher struggleto achieveauthority CornellUniversityPress,forthcoming); J. MaryLuti,"Teresaof Avila,'maestraespiri tual,'" Ph.D. diss., Boston College, 1988; and Alison Weber, Teresa of Avila and the
Rhetoricof Femininity(Princeton, N.J., 1990). See also Ronald Surtz, The Guitar of God: Gender,Power and Authorityin the VisionaryWorldof MotherJuana de la Cruz (1481-1534)

mujeresen los siglos XVIy XVII (Madrid, 1986).

(Philadelphia,Pa., 1990). 5. This questionis discussedin severalstudiesin AnneJ. Cruzand MaryElizabethPerry, overviewof the tensions inherent in the controlof culture and its effectsupon women,
see ibid., pp. ix-xxiii. Culture and Control in Counter-Reformation Spain (Minneapolis, Minn., 1992). For an

Ms. Ahlgren is assistant professor of theology at Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio.

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Inquisition construct female virtue, and what were the effects on real women? Finally, why did the church recognize with canonization so few of the women venerated by their contemporaries for their holiness? Answering these questions involves examining the challenges which Catholic institutional structures posed to women in sixteenth-century Spain. I will review specific virtues and behaviors associated with Christian holiness: humility and its handmaiden, obedience; asceticism or penitential practice; and special access to God. I suggest that these categories, while essential to establishing the credibility of a religious figure, were very ambiguous and could just as easily be used to generate suspicion about a woman's sanctity. The cases described in this paper testify both to the ambiguity of heresy and sanctity in sixteenth-century Spain and to the more stringent standards church officials used in recognizing the holiness of women as opposed to men. The reasons for the "gender gap" in canonizations are complex, and several deserve attention. First, theological definitions of womanhood often associated women with Eve, suggesting that they were unable to make moral decisions or give spiritual guidance. Theological assumptions about women's nature required holy women to overcome a certain "deficit"in their virtue. Second, women's religious roles and societal expectations of holy women shifted over the course of the century, making it difficult for them to conform to norms of religious virtue. Pursuing holiness-which also involved surviving scrutiny by the Inquisition when women achieved a public voice through their charismatic experience-hinged upon their willingness to balance being faithful to their own religious experience and conforming to established and evolving interpretations of virtue and special access to God. 1. The crisis of authority in the sixteenth century contributed to the particularly propagandistic orientation of the canonization process. After several decades during which Protestant theologians called into question the entire tradition of sanctity and Catholic piety, Rome had to consider carefully the messages it would send by endorsing the holiness of an individual's life. In fact, Peter Burke characterizes the mid-sixteenth century as "a crisis of canonization" during which, for sixty-five years, Rome refrained from making saints.6

6. See Peter Burke, "How To Be a Counter-Reformation Saint," in Kaspar von Greyerz, Religion and Societyin Early ModernEurope 1500-1800 (London, 1984), pp. 45-55. The first saint canonized after the 65-year hiatus was Diego of Alcala in 1588.

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Over time, however, the Roman church began to realize the pedagogical value of the canonization process.7 In 1622 Gregory XV canonized five saints often understood to be symbolic of Catholic identity in the Counter Reformation: Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, Philip Neri, Teresa of Jesus, and Isidore the Worker. There were just fifteen others canonized between 1622 and 1690.8 After reviewing the canonizations between 1588 and 1767, Peter Burke described the demographics of canonized sanctity during that period. He concluded, not surprisingly, that men had better chances than women, Italians and Spaniards had better chances than anyone else, nobles had better chances than commoners, and clerics had better chances than laity.9 Focusing on the increased recognition of men's holiness-male saints outnumbered female saints by nearly four to one in the Counter-Reformation and Baroque periods-leads to the conclusion that ecclesiasticalauthorities recognized certain religious roles more readily than others.10 Men had many more religious roles than women did and their roles were, generally speaking, more public than those of women. Men could be missionaries and educators (especially in the Society of Jesus),ll but for women the range of holy behavior narrowed as it was subjected to more scrutiny and institutional control. The Council of Trent (1545-1563) encouraged women religious to be enclosed in monasteries; as this became the religious norm for women, the public had little access to any demonstrations of their virtue. Additionally, officials of the Inquisition and local authorities (ecclesiastical and secular alike) indicated concern about the lifestyles of independent holy women venerated by their communities. In Spain the tradition of beatas,autonomous religious women who had been very influential throughout the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, threatened to disappear entirely as the Inquisition considered more and more cases against them.12 The Spanish Indices of Prohibited Books (Valdes in 1559 and Quiroga in 1583) temporarily halted the writing of mystical treatises and other spiritual texts.13 Over the course of the century, therefore, women could read fewer books which would teach them prayer techniques and had to depend more upon the spiritual direction of "lettered" men.14 Yet even prayer, the only real way for women to
7. See Pierre Delooz, Sociologieet canonisations (The Hague, The Netherlands, 1969), p. 237. 8. For a list of these saints, see Burke, pp. 49-50, and Delooz, pp. 445-446,460. 9. See Burke, p. 49. Delooz compares the number of Spanish, Italian, and French saints of the Counter Reformation in Sociologieet canonisations,pp. 237-238. 10. Burke, p. 49. 11. See John O'Malley, The FirstJesuits (Cambridge, Mass., 1993). 12. For an analysis of the declining status of the beata, see Mary Elizabeth Perry, "Beatas and the Inquisition in Early Modern Seville," in Stephen Haliczer, ed., Inquisitionand Societyin Early ModernEurope (London, 1986), pp. 147-168. 13. Thus, for example, the only mystical text published by the formerly humanist press of Juan Brocar at Alcala after 1559 was a 1570 edition of John Climacus. 14. This situation distressed Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), who began writing her mystical works primarily to provide women with the spiritual resources they needed to achieve

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gain theological credibility within Catholic institutions, was held up for close scrutiny. Suspicion of mental prayer or contemplation had grown after the discovery around 1525 of a group of Catholics meeting in the palace of the Mendozas in Guadalajara who gathered periodically for prayer and discussion of spiritual classics by such authors as Bernard of Clairvaux, Angela of Foligno, and Catherine of Siena. Members of this group were accused of emphasizing the importance of personal prayer at the expense of the sacramental life of the church.15 Claiming an inner illumination, these of whom were women-began alumbrados (or "illuminated ones")-several to preach publicly about their spiritual experiences. The group attracted the attention of the Inquisition, and many were tried and condemned for having been "falsely illumined."16 This early encounter between the Inquisition and the alumbradosexhibited the Inquisitors' growing suspicion toward nearly any experience of mental prayer, particularly one which involved signs of direct access to God. For Inquisitors, at least, mystical experience contained the seeds of dissent within the church. As one historian characterizes it, The phenomenon [of the alumbrados] ... had a particular importance in the first
half of the sixteenth century because ... it monopolized the attention of the

tribunals of Valladolid and Toledo between the years 1524 and 1539 and continued to carry weight in the minds of Inquisitors and theologians throughout in doctrines and the entire century, leading them to see signs of alumbradismo personalities who had nothing to do with it.17 This suspicion of interior religiosity was a particular problem for women in two ways. First, women lacked theological education. Religious experience led women to preach and to describe their experiences of God in language different from that of university-trained theologians.18 While this is also a a struggle bequestion of differing religious epistemologies-specifically tween letrados, or "learned men," and experimentados, or the "[spiritually] more limited theological vocabulary and their infreexperienced"-women's of classic citation theologians led some to conclude that women's words quent were imprecise or even inaccurate. For the most part excluded from impor-

15. 16. 17. 18.

mystical union. In her Vida she expresses quite clearly her discontent with the Valdes ed. Enrique Llamas et al. Index: see her Vida 26:5, in Teresade Jesus: ObrasCompletas, (Madrid, 1984). Teresa's works were the only mystical treatises by a woman published in Spain during the second half of the sixteenth century. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. For the text of the Edict of 1525, see Antonio Marquez, Losalumbrados: Origenes yfilosofia (1525-1559) (Madrid, 1980), pp. 229-238. For a more detailed analysis of this group, see Marquez, Losalumbrados. Jose Novalin, "La Inquisicion espafiola," in Ricardo Garcia-Villoslada, ed., Historiade la Iglesia en Espana, vol. 3:2: La Iglesia en la Espana de los siglos XVy XVI (Madrid, 1980), p. 147. A key question in future research is to what extent this difference in language indicates a difference in experience and a differing theological perspective.

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tant contemporary theological debates, women's writings suffered a marked decline in theological authority.19Second, contemporaries feared that women were morally weaker and more easily deluded by the devil.20 Indeed, the but also as ilusas, those Inquisition tried many women not just as alumbrados those who had been either deluded who pretended to be holy; as demoniacas, or possessed by the devil; or as actual conjurers.21 Such accusations of witchcraft or alumbradismo suggest that Inquisitors believed women were unable to negotiate their own spiritual paths, whether because they were ignorant, deceived, or truly malicious. Despite such misogynistic assumptions, holy women gathered large followings. In Avila, the Jesuit Baltasar Alvarez often invoked the example of the beataMari Diaz in sermons.22 Philip II asked for the blessing of the stigmatic Mariade la Visitacion before the Spanish Armada left the port of Lisbon.23In Seville, Catalina de Jesuiswas called madre,and followers who met her on the street knelt to kiss her hand.24 Evidence of this sort suggests that, within certain limits, holy women could serve as living witnesses-and, in fact, mediators-of God's presence on earth. Sixteenth-century Spanish women faced numerous obstacles in their pursuit of holiness, especially the lack of mystical texts in the vernacular, the growing emphasis on doctrinal theology, doubts about women's ability to discern spirits, and a general decline in their religious authority. Faced with a

19. See Jodi Bilinkoff, The Avila of Saint Teresa:Religious Reformin a Sixteenth-Century City also encountered opposition. In (Ithaca, N.Y., 1989), pp. 142-143. Male experimentados his early years Ignatius Loyola was called before the Inquisition on three occasions. Juan de Avila, a noted spiritual expert with many female disciples, had his book Audi, filia placed on the 1559 Valdes Index. 20. Assumptions of the moral inferiority of women and their need for clear spiritual guidance are found in many sixteenth-century theological treatises including, for example, Clemente Sanchez de Vercial, Librode los exemplos por A.B.C., ed. John Easton Keller (Madrid, 1986), esp. pp. 235-239; Martin de Castafiega, Tratadode las supersticionesy hechicerias(1529; Madrid, 1946); Juan de Horozco y Covarruvias, Tratadode la verdadera y falsa prophecia (Segovia, 1588); Pedro de Rivadeneyra, "Tratado de la Tribulaci6n" in BAE, vol. 60 (Madrid, 1868); Pedro Navarro, Favores del rey del cielo (Madrid, 1622); Sor Magdalena de San Ger6nimo, Razon y forma de la galera, y casa real, que el Rey N.S. manda hazer en estosreinos para castigo de las mugeresvagrantesy ladronas, alcahuetas, hechizeras, y otrassemejantes(Salamanca, 1608); and Jer6nimo de Sepulveda, "Historia de varios sucesos del reino de Felipe II, 1584-1603," Ciudad de Dios 115 (1918). 21. There are 148 cases of female witchcraft (of varying types and degrees) from Castile during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries recorded in A. Paz y Melia, Papeles de Inquisicion.Catdlogoy extractos(Madrid, 1947). 22. Luis de la Puente, Vidadel Padre BaltasarAlvarez (Madrid, 1615). 23. This occurred on 27 May 1588, when the Invincible Armada assembled on the coast outside the convent. See Ram6n Robres and Jose Ram6n Ortola, La monja de Lisboa: Epistolarioinedito entre Fr. Luis de Granada y el Patriarca Ribera (Castello6nde la Plana, Spain, 1947), p. 19. See also Horatio Brown, Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts Relating to English Affairs (London, 1894) 8:794-795. 24. See Perry, "Beatas and the Inquisition in Early Modern Seville," pp. 147-148.

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shrinking number of paths of religious expression and deepening institutional scrutiny as they walked those paths, women found a growing bifurcation between their private religious experiences and their public expression of them. They struggled to maintain some spiritual autonomy while appearing to conform to growing institutional strictures. Many of their contemporaries admired their struggles and perceived them as holy, yet the institutional church was reluctant to give them any formal recognition as role models. 2. Recognizing sanctity, a many-staged process, consisted chiefly of two parts: a community venerated a woman for her holiness, and the church canonized her as a saint.25Traditionally, this process included an assessment of heroic virtue and a determination that the person had found favor with God. As Richard Kieckhefer explains, Christian saintliness consisted of moral elements (asceticism, contemplation, and action) and extraordinary manifestations of power (miracles and visions).26Kieckhefer'sreview of saintly qualities parallels in many ways the research of Donald Weinstein and Rudolph Bell, who identified the following categories as critical in demonstrating sanctity: (1) evidence of special access to God (miracles, ecstasy and supernatural experiences of prayer, or prophecy); (2) devotion to asceticism (rigorous fasting, sleep deprivation, withdrawal from society, patience through serious illness, the use of ascetic devices like hairshirts or the discipline [selfflagellation]); (3) humility (expressed through obedience, self-discipline, and lack of regard for one's self); and (4) acts of charity.27These saintly qualities are intertwined. For example, ascetic discipline was thought to bear fruit in a richer prayer life; humility and charity worked together when saints accepted humble service.28 Sanctity was not defined solely by clergy, theologians, or church officials. While Christian tradition established patterns of holy behavior and disseminated them through sermons, the ever-popular Flos sanctorum,and other hagiographical collections, ordinary people had firm and clear opinions about what made people holy and why they considered some women to be religious models. In some cases veneration by the community bore fruit in an

25. For an accessible, popularly-written view of the canonization process, see Kenneth Woodward, Making Saints, esp. pp. 50-86. 26. See Richard Kieckhefer, "Imitators of Christ: Sainthood in the Christian Tradition," in Richard Kieckhefer and George D. Bond, eds., Sainthood:Its Manifestationsin World Religions (Berkeley, Calif., 1988), pp. 1-42. For his comments on asceticism, see pp. 12-15. 27. See discussion in Donald Weinstein and Rudolph M. Bell, Saints and Society:The Two 1100-1700 (Chicago, 1982), pp. 141-164. Worldsof Western Christendom, 28. In fact, through charity coupled with asceticism saints were thought to learn empathy for the poor and thus true humility. See Kieckhefer, p. 19.

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organized effort to have a candidate canonized. Many of these procedures, even when popular, never went farther institutionally than the collection of testimonials on behalf of the person in question. Eventually a two-tiered system emerged of formally and informally recognized saints, existing side by side.29 While it was helpful for a saint's cause to have the support of a religious order, royal patronage, episcopal approval, or widespread attention beyond the local level, in the post-Tridentine church papal and curial endorsement was all the more critical to the success of a canonization procedure. The creation of the Congregation of Rites under Sixtus V in 1588 established clear papal control over the entire canonization procedure.30 Under Urban VIII saint-making procedures were made increasingly strict and formal.31 The revival of saint-making, begun in 1588, reflected a new orientation in the tradition of canonization. As Peter Burke characterized it, "There was . . . an increase in the central control of the sacred, at the expense of local, unofficial, or 'wildcat' devotions. A papal monopoly of saint-making had effectively been declared. At a time of centralizing monarchies, the next world was remade in the image of this one."32 Institutional concerns about authority in the sixteenth century had clear and precise effects on the canonization process. For her case to succeed, the candidate had to embody Tridentine principles, maintain an apparent attitude of obedience toward religious superiors, and reflect the catechetical orthodoxy that emerged after Trent. Canonization was a stamp of approval on the embodiment of a religious ideal which the hierarchical church wanted to promulgate; it established religious credibility and authority. On the other hand, a person's religious authority could be discredited by accusations of heresy. Indeed, in the official canonization process, one of the early steps in establishing sanctity was a determination of orthodoxy by Roman officials.33In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain, however, such judgments of orthodoxy or heterodoxy did not have to wait for Rome to investigate a case fifty years after the candidate's death. Many people of holy repute were investigated by the Spanish Inquisition during their lifetime.34 For Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), the only successful case of a canonized

29. See Burke, p. 45. 30. See discussion in Eric Waldram Kemp, Canonizationand Authorityin the WesternChurch (Oxford, 1948), pp. 141-150. 31. Urban VIII instituted the beatification procedure and introduced a fifty-year pause between the death of the candidate and the beginning of the canonization procedure. See Burke, pp. 46-47. 32. Burke, p. 47. 33. See Woodward, pp. 80-81. 34. Examples of sixteenth-century religious figures investigated by the Spanish Inquisition include: Bartolome de Carranza, Luis de Le6n, Ignatius Loyola, Teresa of Avila, and most of the women discussed in this paper.

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sixteenth-century Spanish woman, canonized in 1622, the road to canonization was fraught with difficulties. The Inquisition opened cases against Teresa at least five times, each one initiated because someone was suspicious of her orthodoxy and religious behavior.35Indeed, when supporters began to gather testimony for her canonization procedure, theological consultants for the Inquisition were still disputing the orthodoxy of her mystical doctrine.36Several theologians argued forcefully that Teresa had been deceived by the devil and that her mystical doctrine should not be allowed to circulate. Her canonization succeeded, nonetheless, for three reasons. The Spanish crown and several nobles waged a dogged campaign on her behalf. Her supporters successfully represented her as a female role model who embodied most of the virtues associated with femininity and overcame the characteristics associated with womanhood. And the Roman Catholic Church eventually endorsed the mystical way as an important part of Counter-Reformation Catholic identity. Opposition to holy women's desire for autonomy and spiritual perfection became an ecclesiastical norm in sixteenth-century Spain. Libraries and archives in Spain are full of unpublished spiritual treatises written by women demonstrating that, despite the fact that Teresa achieved canonization, the lives and writings of many spiritual women were forgotten as early as a generation after their death. Teresa's case shows that no woman-not even the one chosen by the institutional church as theCounter-Reformation female role model-could gain credibility with the authorities without tremendous struggle. 3. Before we can examine specific religious virtues in the lives of women, we need to consider briefly whether women, because of their sex, could be considered virtuous at all. Theorist Martin de Castafiega represented many of the pejorative attitudes about the nature of women when, trying to explain "why among these diabolical ministers there are more women than men," he suggested that women "are cowards and weaker at heart . .. more subject to their passions, weaker under temptation."37Thus holy women often proved their heroic virtue at the expense of their gender. In other words, those women who were accepted as holy by confessors, members of their religious orders, and the larger Christian community were understood to have "over-

35. For a review of Teresa's troubles with the Inquisition see Ahlgren, Teresaof Avila; and Enrique Llamas Martinez, Santa TeresadeJesis y la Inquisicidnespanola (Madrid, 1972). 36. Testimonials on behalf of Teresa were gathered as early as 1591, while the Inquisition's tribunal received criticisms of Teresa's mystical doctrine through 1593. 37. Martin de Castafiega, Tratado de las supersticiones y hechicerias(Madrid, 1946), pp. 37, 147-148.

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come their womanhood": they had escaped the tendency toward deception which women had inherited from Eve and therefore had achieved a status of respect and religious authority.38Free to pursue virtue on a heroic level, such women were "manly."39 The "manly" woman appears to be a construction both of women's contemporaries and of some women themselves. On several occasions, Teresa of Avila, for instance, urges her nuns to be "strong" and "manly" in pursuing the discipline of the monastic rule with vigor. In her Caminode she writes: "I would not want you, my daughters, to be womanly in perfeccion any way nor to seem so, but [to be] strong men; for if you do what is in you, the Lord will make you so manly that men will be shocked."40 Many of Teresa's contemporaries judged her to have become as authoritative as any man. In the canonization procedure, for example, one of Teresa's confessors recalls a conversation with another of her confessors. In response to the question "What do you think of Teresa of Jesus?" one confessor answered, "Oh, you fooled me by saying that she was a woman; by faith she isn't, but rather a masculine man and of the most manly [bearded]."41 Other women were also described as "masculine." The early visionary Juana de la Cruz (died 1534), in the Life written by Antonio Daza, was described as having been conceived male, God having intervened in the womb to make her a woman. A sign of this miraculous event was Juana's prominent Adam's apple, "the emblem of a divinely determined androgyny."42 Mari Diaz, a beata in Avila and Teresa's contemporary, was described as "manlike"by male contemporaries.43 Calling these women "manly"was an attempt by their followers to address the issue of women's lack of religious authority. Theological convictions
38. See Margaret Miles, Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West (New York, 1989), p. 66: "transcending gender effectively meant that

both sexualityand socialization were simultaneously rejected."

39. The "manly" woman is an established ideal within early Christianity, but there is not much literature on its manifestations in sixteenth-century Spain. One resource is Melveena McKendrick, Theatre in Spain: 1490-1700 (Cambridge, U.K., 1989), pp. 84-131. For more on the evolution of the type see Kerstin Aspegren, The Male Woman:A FeminineIdeal in the Early Church,ed. Rene Kieffer (Uppsala, Sweden, 1990) and Miles, Carnal Knowing, pp. 53-80. See also Barbara Newman, From Virile Womanto WomanChrist: Studiesin Medieval Religion and Literature(Philadelphia, Pa., 1995). 40. Teresa de Jesuis, Caminodeperfeccion(Valladolid edition) 7.8: "No querria yo, hijas mias, lo fueseis en nada ni lo parecieseis, sino varones fuertes; que si ellas hacen lo que es en si, el Sefior las hara tan varoniles que espanten a los hombres." In the El Escorial version, Teresa had written the entire passage in the third person. When she rewrote the Camino, placing much of it in the second and first person, she seems to have neglected to change the second part of the sentence. 41. The confessor in question was Juan de Salinas, provincial of the Dominican order. See testimony of Domingo Banfiez,Procesode Salamanca (1591), in P. Silverio, ed. Biblioteca Mistica Carmelitana(BMC) 35 vols. (Burgos, Spain, 1934-1949) 18:9. 42. See Surtz, The Guitarof God, pp. 6-7. 43. See Bilinkoff, TheAvila of Saint Teresa,p. 100.

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about women's inferiority could not be applied to them since they had overcome the negative aspects of "womanhood." The demonstration of "heroic virtue" or a "manly"determination to overcome vice and to advance spiritually was critical in proving a woman's sanctity. Ambivalent feelings about masculinity and femininity in the lives of holy women are most likely related to several attitudes toward the female body: (1) that it was the locus of sexual activity and therefore sexual temptation, which had to be denied within the context of celibacy; (2) that it was of no positive use when it did not provide the social function of reproduction and childraising; and (3) that it was more vulnerable to seduction by the devil than the male body.44Proving a woman's virtue entailed demonstrating that she had separated from her body or from her will, or conversely, that God possessed her body in ecstasy. "Becoming male" was a theological construct which enabled women to overcome their specific burden in the Fall, yet their pursuit of virtue was still gendered. Women who exhibited the key attributes of holiness-humility, penitential practice, and special access to God-continued to face narrow circumscriptions in their pursuit of religious perfection. I will now examine each of these virtues to see how women were judged to have achieved these virtues to a heroic degree, if recognized as saints, or, as in so many other cases, were determined to have failed in achieving them. As a religious virtue, humility is sometimes difficult to demonstrate. Evidence of developed humility in mystical texts involves one's dissociation from one's own will, a gradual stripping away of one's sense of being "special,"and a sincere presentation of one's naked self to God. Humility was difficult to measure, however, unless proven by obedience, which becomes a yardstickfor the rejection of one's own will. A woman's obedience was a test of how genuine her humility was. Obedience to church officials demonstrated allegiance to correct Catholic beliefs and practices. Obedience to confessors meant that women did not allow personal religious experience to lead them away from Roman Catholic doctrine or practice. Obedient women did not value their own experience more than the advice and counsel of church officials.45 Humility established a woman's good intentions, which was important because of the common accusations of fraudulent spiritual experiences. An important example of a woman accused of "deceit" was Magdalena de la

44. Miles documents the development of some of these attitudes in Carnal Knowing;see, for example, p. 77. 45. Or it seemed to mean such things to officials of the Inquisition. Obedience was a somewhat pliable virtue; depending on their relationships with their confessors, astute women could make confessors order them to do things they actually wanted to do. See Jodi Bilinkoff, "Confessors, Penitents, and the Construction of Identities in Early Modern Avila," in Barbara Diefendorf and Carla Hesse, eds., Culture and Identityin Early ModernEurope(1500-1800) (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1993) pp. 83-100.

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Cruz, who was tried by the inquisitorial tribunal of Cordoba in 1546 for making a pact with demons. Magdalena was the abbess at Santa Isabel Francisca in Cordoba. She was a model of sanctity for many in her community because of her ascetical practices and her extraordinary experiences of prayer: "She would go without eating or drinking for many days; she slept on the floor on a hard mat; ... she wore a perpetual cilicio;she was observed levitating in prayer; she bilocated from time to time; she knew who came to see her and where they were from."46Magdalena's religious community took these signs of holiness in good faith, and they were shocked by her confession during an inquisitorial investigation that she had "entered into a pact with the devil at the age of twelve, and that he had promised to sustain her for a long time with great honors, and this devil brought her a naked black man who invited her to carnal sins."47After she confessed to having faked her religious experiences, Magdalena was sentenced to reclusion in her convent as the lowest-ranking member of her religious community. Magdalena's lack of humility was punished by forcing her into humbler circumstances. For John of the Cross, humility was the key to religious credibility. In one case, when asked to evaluate the religious experience of a Carmelite nun, he wrote: "She has too much confidence and too little caution about erring internally.... She seems to want to persuade people to believe that what she has [experienced] is good and abundant; but that is not the sign of a good spirit, since, on the contrary, it wants people to make little of it and to belittle it."48Because of the nun's lack of humility, John of the Cross determined that her mystical experience was not genuine. He prescribed that the nun be humbled by her confessor and community in order to stimulate true virtue: "What I would suggest is that they do not order or even allow her to write anything about this, nor should her confessor give her any sign of wanting to hear about it, but rather should belittle it and put it down; and they should test her harshly in the exercise of virtues, primarily in self-contempt, humility
and obedience ... and the tests must be good ones, since there is no devil who, for the sake of his honor, will not suffer anything."49 In Teresa's case, recent scholarship demonstrates that a politically astute use of the virtue of obedience was in order. The key to Teresa's survival and success as a writer and religious reformer of the Carmelite order was to

46. See the testimony of Luis de Zapata in Jesus Imirizaldu, Monjasy Beatas Embaucadores (Madrid, 1977), p. 33. Because cilicio can refer both to hairshirts or metal penitential devices worn as belts or bracelets, I leave the term in its original Spanish. In this case, however, it is probably safe to translate the term as "hairshirt." 47. Imirizaldu, p. 47. According to Imirizaldu, this description was written by another member of the religious community at Isabel Francisca in January of 1544. 48. John of the Cross, "Censura y parecer que dio el beato Padre sobre el espiritu y modo de proceder en la oraci6n de una religiosa de nuestra Orden, y es como sigue" inJuan de la Cruz:Obrascompletas,ed. Jucinio Ruano de la Iglesia (Madrid, 1982), p. 896. 49. Ibid.

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demonstrate her obedience on two levels: not only obedience to her confessors, to theologians, and to representatives of the hierarchical church, but also obedience to God (claiming divine revelation), which could justify such activities as theological writing and reform activities traditionally understood as male prerogatives. Teresa's claim of obedience to God allowed her greater independence in the church. Related to Teresa's institutional allegiance was the role of humility in her self-representation. Teresa's humility was a rhetorical strategy for presenting herself in a non-threatening way to institutional officials. Alison Weber suggests that "Teresa's rhetoric of feminine subordination-all the paradoxes, the self-deprecation, the feigned ignorance and incompetence, the deliberate obfuscation and ironic humor-produced the desired perlocutionary effect."50 For some readers humility underscored Teresa's sincerity. Convincing her readers of her sincerity was important for Teresa because it who deceived others and were themselves separated her from the alumbrados deceived. Other inquisitorial calificadores considered Teresa arrogant for taking on a teaching role. Although not all her readers were taken in by Teresa's rhetoric of humility, her style certainly contributed to her exoneration by the Inquisition.51 The test of obedience, applied to women to measure whether they were truly humble, should be seen as the conflict of different types of authority. The faith of women like Magdalena in their inner spiritual experiences was set against their allegiance to the verdict (often negative) of representatives of the institutional church. Thus for women the dilemma was often whether one acknowledged the authority of experience or the authority of institutional figures. Another concrete way to pursue holiness was through asceticism and the eremitical tradition. The practice of penance among sixteenth-century women is poorly documented.52 Most women do not describe their own penitential activity, although they will describe in glowing terms the penitential practice of other women whom they considered holy. Teresa of Avila, for instance, rarely mentions penance, but in her canonization process others testified that "she so loved penitence that nothing gave her more pleasure than the martyrdom of her body for God. Early in her life she practiced great penitence, disciplining herself until the blood ran, wearing harsh silicios[sic],

50. Weber, TeresaofAvila and the Rhetoricof Femininity,p. 159. 51. See Ahlgren, Teresaof Avila, chapter 5. On the effects of Teresa's rhetoric of humility, see Weber, pp. 4-5, 164-165. 52. But see Alain Saint-Saens's study of the reappropriation of early penitential models (especially Mary Magdalene and Jerome) in sixteenth-century Spain: La nostalgie du en Castilleau Siecled'Or (San Francisco, Calif., 1993). desert:L'idealeremitique

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fasting, and many other types of penances . . . and [she did] this throughout her life insofar as her health permitted."53 Teresa observed with what was perhaps a mixture of respect and horror the penances of her contemporaries Pedro de Alcantara and Catalina de Cardona (died 1577).54Teresa described Catalina in her Bookof the Foundations as a woman of "terrible" penances, writing: "She said that she spent eight years in that cave, and many days eating nothing but herbs and roots from the countryside. ... She disciplined herself with a great chain, and many times they lasted an hour and a half or two hours. And her cilicioswere so severe that a woman told me that returning from a pilgrimage she spent the night with her, and having lain down to sleep, she saw [Catalina]take off the cilicios full of blood and clean them off."55Although Catalina's severe penitential practice was impressive, it was also considered suspect because it was not contained within the convent but was pursued independently as a hermit. Pressured to align herself with a religious order, she finally assumed a Carmelite lay habit, but she would not submit to claustration. Catalina was not opposed to living in community-her cave became the meeting place for a small school of spiritual disciples-but she objected to cutting off regular contact with outsiders. The growing need to control female religiosity led the Spanish Inquisition to try Catalina on at least one occasion. Catalina was probably considered prideful because she would not become a fully professed nun and appeared overly committed to her disciplines. Catalina's penitential practice and the eremitical lifestyle were consistent with a long tradition of Spanish beatas,yet her independence and autonomy disturbed Inquisitors and local church officials trying to enforce Tridentine decrees on women and the religious life.

53. Testimony of Ana de la Trinidad, Proceso de Salamanca (1591) in BMC 18:44. In her penitential practice Teresa took seriously the example of Mary Magdalene, describing her experience before a statue of Christ as taking over the Magdalene's place at the foot of the cross; see her Vida 9:2. Interpreting Teresa's penitential practices is difficult. Some would argue that Teresa was, in fact, quite moderate about penitential practice, citing, for example, Teresa's comment, "As you know, I deprecate [other severe and] excessive penances, which, if practised indiscreetly, may injure the health." See Teresa, The Wayof Perfection,trans. and ed. by E. Allison Peers (New York, 1991), p. 112. I tend to agree with Alain Saint-Saens's assessment in La nostalgie, p. 174. Although Teresa herself may well have been less severe about her penitential practices over the course of her life, the fact remains that many eyewitnesses could testify to her rigorous ascetic discipline, considered more than what the "average" nun would practice. Because all witnesses were asked about Teresa's penitential practice as part of the series of questions designed to solicit testimony about her, such information is perhaps skewed by the process itself and the ideals of sanctity already in circulation. 54. Teresa probably represented the esteem of many when she claimed to have seen in divinely-inspired visions both Pedro and Catalina ascend to heaven after their deaths. See Vida 38:32 and Librode lasfundaciones 28:21, in ObrasCompletas.For more on Pedro de Alcantara see Vida 27:16-20. 55. Teresa de Jesuis, Librode lasfundaciones 28:27.

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Although Catalina's vita was written and testimonials about her life were gathered, a formal investigation of Catalina'ssanctity never materialized.56 The third component in determining sanctity was a demonstration of special access to God. For women the primary and most obvious way of showing this access was through prayer (especially when that prayer involved ecstasy) and prophecy.57 Ecstatic prayer underscored the divine source of women's spiritual teachings, justifying public circulation of their doctrine. It also promoted an image of female sanctity in which women served as instruments or vehicles of divine power. According to this model, any power or authority which women embodied was not theirs but God's, and it overcame or supplemented their own natural weakness. Women could thus assert religious authority while conforming to contemporary standards of humility. At the same time, when women's claims to authority rested solely on prophecy they were vulnerable to attack if any of their prophetic utterances failed to materialize. Further, the instrumental model of authority allowed some male contemporaries to view holy women as exceptions to the general rule that women should not be allowed authority to teach (see 1 Timothy 2:12-14). During the earlier part of the sixteenth century ecclesiastical officials appeared to be more sympathetic to ecstatic experience. Juana de la Cruz (died 1534) was accorded special license to preach in the diocese of Toledo while in a state of ecstasy. She was revered as God's messenger, a true preacher of God's word, because God spoke through her inert body. By the became more frequent and Inquisitors 1570s, however, reports of alumbradas held suspect most forms of embodied prayer. The religious inspiration of women was increasingly subjected to scrutiny and repression. This was particularlytrue when women's prayer was physical or ecstatic, a characteristic which earlier in the century had enabled people like Juana de la Cruz access to the pulpit and the role of public preaching. Ecstasywas not always thought to be a reliable measure of sanctity because women were considered particularly susceptible to deception and so had to prove that their revelation and ecstatic experience proceeded from God. Teresa's emphasis on being "manly"is relevant here; by encouraging "manliness," Teresa hoped to dissociate herself and her nuns from the suspicion that the devil would deceive them. A "manly" woman would not be as vulnerable to being deceived. Contemporary prejudice against women's prayer is exemplified by Teresa's confessor, Domingo Bafiez. When he reviewed Teresa's Life for the
56. Information on Catalina de Cardona, including Tomas de Jesus's vita, is available in BN ms. 3537. 57. Few men displayed ecstatic behavior; in sixteenth-century Spain this category was nearly exclusively confined to women because of their need to establish charismatic authority.

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Inquisition, Banfiezadmitted he found "nothing which in my judgment is unsound doctrine," but he said he was troubled by the book's "many revelations and visions, which should always be feared, especially in women, who are more likely to believe that they are from God and to view them as [a sign of] holiness.... However, they should be viewed as troublesome by those who wish to arrive at perfection, because Satan often transforms himself into an angel of light to fool curious souls who lack humility, as we have seen in our times."58Ironically, Teresa's experience of prayer was what most people found the most impressive aspect of her sanctity, yet it also emerged in inquisitorial proceedings as a source of suspicion about her and the general orthodoxy. Because of the problems with the alumbrados suspicion of mysticism, the Inquisition accepted a woman's ecstatic experience as an indicator of intense religiosity only with reluctance. 4. In his study of late medieval sanctity, Aviad Kleinberg astutely noted: "The status of saint was conferred upon a person in a gradual process that involved disagreement and negotiation, as well as collaboration and even collusion."59 While many women had negotiated positions of influence and authority within the social structures of sixteenth-century Spain, the increasingly clericalizedreligious structures made it nearly impossible for them to "collaborate and collude" with letrados, Inquisitors, bishops, or papal representatives. What Margaret Miles has written about women in early Christianity seems as appropriate in the Counter-Reformation period: "The absence of the conditions essential for effective self-definition-access to the public sphere and the construction of a collective voice-suggests that [women's] alternatives were more circumscribed than those of male Christians."60 Women struggled with prevailing theological convictions that they lacked virtue and the ability to develop spiritually on their own. Additionally, they had to find ways to develop religious virtues under increasingly controlled circumstances. There were many difficulties to negotiate. Because women's bodies were considered their point of weakness, they had to demonstrate some kind of special relationship to their bodies. One strategy was to show that God had overcome their bodies in "special"states of levitation, stigmatization, or ecstasy. Women who made these claims, however, were universally subject to some kind of inquisitorial inquiry about their experience. The second strategy was to control their bodies, subduing them by means of physical penance and self-denial. Yet penitential practice could be overdone
58. "Censura del P. Banfiez" in Teresa de Jesus, Obrascompletas(Madrid, 1984), p. 306. 59. Aviad M. Kleinberg, Prophets in Their Own Country: Living Saints and the Making of Sainthoodin the LaterMiddleAges (Chicago, 1992), p. 4. 60. Miles, Carnal Knowing, p. 77.

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and did not in itself guarantee a woman's canonization: Teresa's esteem of her contemporary Catalina de Cardona did not bear fruit in any official recognition of Catalina'ssanctity. The shifting standards for female holiness made it more likely that the Inquisition would try to control religious practices. In fact, the Spanish Inquisition enforced a gendered orthopraxy, establishing and maintaining boundaries for the pursuit of female virtue. This control, in turn, had a direct influence on the number of sixteenth-century Spanish women who succeeded as public religious figures and eventually were canonized. The gathered testimonials on such holy women as Mari Diaz, Catalina de Cardona, and others prove that, although they acquired significant charismatic authority during their lifetimes, on official levels religious women were not understood to have a significant role in the Counter-Reformation agenda. Tighter papal control over the canonization process meant that formal (or institutional) determinations of sanctity were made by people who had never known the candidate. Such procedures could evaluate only the ways in which a woman had influenced her contemporaries and the ways in which they remembered and reconstructed her life. In their lifetimes women had to conform-superficially at least-to social and theological expressions of gender roles, obedience to the commands of their confessors, and fidelity to their own experience of God in prayer-although these demands often came into conflict with one another. After their death, if their lives could not be reconstructed by others to make them useful role models for Roman definitions of Catholic piety, the tightrope they had walked during their lives led to eventual anonymity. Negotiating sanctity on these two levels worked for only one woman in sixteenth-century Spain: Teresa's canonization was possible because she had achieved widespread popular support without unduly challenging sixteenth-century gender ideologies and ecclesiasticalstructures. The experience of holy women in sixteenth-century Spain suggests that, even though many survived inquisitorial scrutiny and achieved influence at the popular level, Rome was reluctant to recognize officially their contributions to the church. The greater separation between popular perceptions of holiness and institutional recognition of the vox populi, reinforced by postTridentine popes and patrolled in Spain by the Inquisition, worked in particular against holy women, many of whom, while able to avoid condemnation by the Inquisition, were not considered holy enough to be recognized for their spiritual accomplishments.