Abstract

The life and work of Santa Teresa of Jesus had a great influence on the New Spain spiritual atmosphere by enabling a more intimate and direct relationship of women with God and contribute to the proliferation of nuns and beatified. In the Wonders of the Omnipotence and Miracles of the Grace in the life of the Venerable Servant of God Catharina of San Joan, Alonso Ramos writes the biography of Catarina of San Juan, a free slave considered saint, to whom in many passages compares with Santa Teresa. The purpose of Ramos was to create a female life model based on Teresian spirituality and values.

Abstract

Saint Teresa of Jesus is the most important modern model for feminine religiosity. Nevertheless, in her times, her actions and her persona were under the ecclesiastical hierarchy’s skeptical scrutiny. By means of an analysis of La vida de Santa Teresa de Jesus (1590) by Francisco de Ribera and of one of the many comedies composed for her beatification in 1614, La bienaventurada madre Santa Teresa de Jesús, an apocryphal work by Luis Velez de Guevara, I propose to confi­gure a portrait of the Saint from the point of view of the epoch’s collective imagination. Her configuration in the collective imagination was not always positive.