"Un gusano tan vil": Christological Humility and the Affirmation of the Self in the Works of Teresa de Jesús

Abstract: Readers of Teresa de Jesús (1515–82) are often confounded by her frequent self-disparaging remarks. Following Alison Weber's Teresa of Avila and the Rhetoric of Femininity (1990), many critics have regarded these utterances of wretchedness and humility as rhetorical legerdemain, which Teresa employed to navigate the patriarchal atmosphere of the Spanish Inquisition after Trent. Yet, in this view, Teresa did a disservice to women by reinforcing feminine stereotypes and ideologies of women's subordination. In this article, however, I argue that Teresa's humility is Christological and, therefore, subverted those ideologies by theologically leveling hierarchies of spirituality. For Teresa, human ontology is eternal, created in the image of God. Its telos is Christ. Yet, because the post-Edenic self is fallen, it is incapable of teleological fulfillment. As a Christological virtue, humility (as spiritual poverty) becomes vital to Christian soteriology, reconstituting the self, reorienting it to God, and restoring the relationship for which it was created. As such, Teresa's humility is not feminine, it is Christian. Spiritual poverty applies to all and salvation is available to all. Her theology, therefore, recognizes an ontological equality of all humanity that negates a merely feminine spiritual inadequacy and, thus, represents a subversion of ideologies of subordination rather than a reinforcement of them.