The Book of Her Life

Introduction

Teresa wrote the “Libro de la vida” at the request of her confessors, who wanted to judge whether her visions and experiences in prayer came from God; a first version was finished in 1562, the surviving text in 1565. She recounts her childhood, her entry into the convent, years of illness and lukewarmness, and her conversion before an image of the wounded Christ. At the centre stand chapters 11–22, which describe four degrees of prayer as four ways of watering a garden: drawing water from a well, using a waterwheel, letting a stream flow in, and rain sent by God. The last part tells of visions, locutions and the founding of San José in Ávila. In the mid-1570s the manuscript passed to the Inquisition, which kept it until after her death; Luis de León published it in 1588. The book shaped the language of Spanish mysticism, and it was the text Edith Stein read in 1921 before her baptism.

Connections

Builds on

• Confessionsc. 400 · Augustine

More works by Teresa of Ávila

• 1577The Interior Castle