The Negotiation of Fear in Sixteenth-Century Discalced Carmelite Women Religious' Literature in Spain

The negotiation of fear is a persistent theme in St. Teresa of Avila’s (1515-1582) Libro de la vida (1565), in Sor Ana de San Bartolomé’s (1549-1626) Autobiografía de Amberes (c. 1624), and in Sor María de San José Salazar’s (1548-1603) Libro de Recreaciones (1585). The fear of death and damnation was endemic in sixteenth-century Spain, especially during the Counter-Reformation. By focusing on this fear, and fear of transgressing socially imposed “limitations” of the female intellect (which applied to women religious in Counter-Reformation Spain), I brought together a literary corpus that included two spiritual autobiographies (vidas) and one Renaissance dialogue. This corpus also included Sor Ana de San Bartolomé’s coplas, “Si ves mi pastor,” featured in her vida. While these works have received a fair amount of critical attention (and Libro de la vida more so than the others), this dissertation brings them together in such a way that allows twenty-first century Hispanists to probe how the authors managed fears brought on by post-Tridentine Spain’s culture of strict religious conformity. In the three main chapters of this dissertation, I explore how each author negotiates her fears. Libro de la vida sheds light on the age of the Cisnerian reform (1495-1517), the Council of Trent (1545-1563), the Discalced Carmelite Reform (1562- c. 1592) and post-Tridentine Spain (after 1563). Autobiografía de Amberes and Libro de Recreaciones illuminate the three eras following the age of the Cisnerian reform, and all three primary source-texts show how each of these historical eras contributed to what became an increasingly fearful climate in Spain as the long sixteenth-century neared its end. Studying the negotiation of fear in three representative sixteenth-century peninsular primary source-texts raised a wide range of topics relevant to sixteenth-century Spain including: fear of death, suffering and martyrdom, the history of Galenic medicine, (the treatment of) melancholy, demonic possession, widespread skepticism and distrust in medics, physicians and confessors, as well as contemporary cultural stereotypes about the female body and the female intellect.