Teresa, My Love

by Julia Kristeva

  At this moment, he looked more like an Old Christian than a converso’s son. Pedro Sánchez de Cepeda somehow but unmistakably reminded the convent girl of her late mother, the woman whose pious black garb concealed a love of prowess and exploit, the kind that would be dubbed “quixotic” less than a century later, and which drew mother and daughter toward the martyrdoms of the saints, or was it the other way around? Meanwhile the patriarch, don Alonso, remarked sententiously over their bent heads that only “good books” deserved such absorption, and in general, it was best to avoid anything in Spanish. Teresa acquiesced meekly to her father, as she was bound to do, but it made no difference: she secretly devoured the abominable romances at night. Did she intuit, however vaguely, that true devotion lay in her mother’s impure purity, able to shed the same tears over the sweet pangs of courtly love and the agonies of decapitated martyrs? No man had ever seemed to live up to such completeness—not even Rodrigo, with his worthless vow of para siempre, still less the coveted cousin, and let’s not mention the others. But Uncle Pedro? Maybe. He was so unlike Alonso that Teresa would have taken him for her mother’s brother instead.

  A strange alchemy took place in Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada during those days of 1533, while she was staying with her uncle. Her senses recognized her host as a more modern, knowledgeable, audacious version of her mother; but in her memory, he was indissolubly linked to her father by virtue of their shared ordeal. Were senses and memory converging? To accelerate what impetuous decision?

  We have mentioned that the court case brought by the municipality of Manjabalago against the Sánchez de Cepeda brothers for their refusal to pay a modest tax (100 maravedís apiece) had outraged the whole family. Joseph Pérez disagrees: his research suggests that the affair was actually a put-up job engineered by the brothers themselves, to obtain legal validation of a status they already enjoyed in practice. Either way, the case was heard, and it can’t have been pleasant for the children. Castilian kids loved playing at Inquisitions in those days, even in the royal gardens. Avilan girls and boys piled up the logs for roasting heretics; one child once tried to strangle another who was playing the part of penitent, only with the noble aim of saving him from the stake! The town was abuzz with preposterous rumors, some branding the Sánchez brothers as criminals and apostates. The hearing was an alarming prospect in such an atmosphere. But what could it have meant to Teresa, aged between four and eight? Not a word was said at home, of course; the family honra was after all the highest value after God, if not on a par with Him. It was perfectly obvious that the Sánchez Cepedas were hidalgos, there could be no doubt about it, so the watchword must have been, walk tall and let tongues wag. Beatriz de Ahumada, a cristiana vieja by birth and proud of her lineage, would not have commented further, nor would the Sánchez de Cepeda brothers.

  In fact Teresa was kept in the dark about the whole business, especially at the time. Her paternal grandfather, Juan de Toledo, was a converso merchant who dealt in silk and wool before moving into finance, where he handled taxes and tributes for a considerably juicier profit than before. In 1485 he fell foul of the Inquisition. In “reconciliation,” and to avoid the stake, he had voluntarily presented himself on June 22 before the inquisitors of Toledo, confessing to “several instances of serious crimes and offences of heresy and apostasy against the Holy Catholic Faith.” Juan was a Marrano, a “dirty pig” in popular parlance. The Marranos made a public show of Catholicism, and practiced the old Mosaic religion secretly at home. The monarchy decided that such people threatened a social cohesion founded on unity of faith and must be persecuted or eradicated. Between 1486 and 1500, the drive to flush out clandestine Jewry led to thousands of death sentences being passed down by the courts in Toledo.

  Juan de Toledo escaped this fate. The merchant turned financier was treated with indulgence: he was nonetheless sentenced to do penance for seven consecutive Fridays through the city’s churches, clad in the tunic of shame—the dreaded sambenito that denoted conversos and recidivists. Goya, still appalled at this persecution in the nineteenth century, sketched in his Album a group of convicts wearing the sambenito under a coroza, or conical hat. His caption reads: “Por ser del linaje de judíos,” for being of Jewish descent.14

  However “lenient” the punishment, it was symbolically devastating. Juan de Toledo’s family had been stripped of its honra, and the disgrace was to weigh heavily on future generations. Juan had the good sense to leave Toledo and ignominy behind, settling in Avila around 1493. The sign above the shop now announced a new name, “Juan Sánchez.” He prospered again, enough to buy a fake certificate of hidalguía that related him to a knight of Alfonso XI and exempted him from taxes, sequestrations, prison, debt, and torture. Had Teresa heard talk of this false certificate when she lamented her skill at “dissembling”? Juan Sánchez’s sons took the name “de Cepeda” from their mother, who was of the petty nobility and a genuine cristiana vieja. They dropped the patronym Sánchez altogether when their father passed away in 1543. The statute of limpieza de sangre or “purity of blood,” discriminating against both Jews and Muslims, was promulgated in 1547. Had they seen it coming? After the expulsion of the Jews in 1492, it was safer to be discreet.

  At the hearing for nonpayment of taxes, held at the court of the first instance, the prosecution charged that the Cepeda brothers were not hidalgos but common taxpayers, or pecheros. The case was referred to the Ministry of Justice tribunal for disputes of hidalguía at Valladolid.

  A procession of witnesses came to the stand. One of them brought up the disgrace of Juan’s sambenito in Toledo: duly recorded, but irrelevant, for his conversion was sincere, and besides, he had married that unimpeachable Old Christian, Inés de Cepeda. All the rest testified that ever since they arrived in Avila, the Sánchez family had lived like hidalgos: it was common knowledge. They owned warhorses and weapons and were prepared to serve in the king’s armies. Don Alonso had already proved himself…When at last the ruling came down it was favorable, and the Sánchez de Cepedas were publicly recognized as hidalgos, that is, members of the tax-exempted class. This status, duly inscribed at the close of proceedings, had the binding authority of res judicata. It could never be challenged, and the family honra was restored. But could a “trial” like that, a “secret” like that, ever be erased?

  Ten years later, in 1559, the persecution turned brutal. In the wake of the discovery of pockets of Lutheranism, the Inquisition held two autos-da-fé, in Valladolid and in Seville, where thirty and twenty-four heretics, respectively, were burned at the stake. Lutherans, alumbrados, dejados, disciples of Erasmus, and nonjuring clerics were all thrown into the same bag, along with some prominent aristocrats; the penitents were paraded in the green and yellow sambenito Teresa’s grandfather had worn, plus miters decorated with devils and hellfire. The Carmelite nun, then embarking on her most prolific period of writings and foundations, would surely have been reminded of the court case endured by her family. If so, she never said a word.

  Teresa the writer associates “these miserable little rules of etiquette [points of honor: estos negros puntos de honra],” “this miserable honor”15 with the “merit” of a self given to overestimating itself, with the “calculation” of an ego which today we might call inflated, with upward social mobility (“it is a point of honor that [one] must ascend and not descend”),16 with fear of public opinion or criticism from others, and with degrees of “rank” supposedly based on “laws.” Against this she sets what real “honor consists in”: attachment to God on the Cross unmarred by subjective or social criteria, nothing but an empty-handed alliance whereby I seek myself in You. “Help us understand, my God, that we do not know ourselves and that we come to you with empty hands; and pardon us through Your mercy.”17 Echoes of Saint John’s Gospel: “and another shall gird thee” (21:18).

  To me, this stringent quest for “what honor consists in” is the effect of an equally violent loss of the other, false honra, the “miserable” kind that was alleged to
be lacking from the converso lineage named Sánchez, then Sánchez de Cepeda, and on down to the Cepeda y Ahumadas. In sixteenth-century Spain, the word honra meant something quite specific: families and individuals lived in fear of being stripped of that honor should it ever transpire that one of their ancestors belonged to the accursed race. The purity of blood statutes, though promulgated by religious and social bodies and not as strong as Crown legislation, still left your honor at the mercy of anyone who could produce evidence of your Jewish ancestry. Of course, you were free to preserve your honor by dishonorable means—such as bribing other witnesses who would swear to the contrary. Until 1524, the Inquisition was only interested in rooting out crypto-Jews; only afterward did it extend its remit to pursue all sorts of heretics, from Lutherans to Erasmists and Illuminati.

  Your writings, Teresa, are silent on the subject of your ancestors’ conversion and their stealthy Judaism or Erasmism; we find nothing about the court cases that stained the family honor. You never conceded that the dread of disrepute that haunted your family was less a feature of the old feudal aristocracy (indeed, Spanish nobles and royals thought nothing of frequenting Jews and converts) than an effect of the egalitarian sentiments of an Old Christian people eager to denounce the nonconformist ideas and conduct of those with “tainted blood.” You operated under caution from the Inquisition, which by 1560 suspected your own foundational labors of Illuminism. Only the obsessive harping on the word honor—honor lost, but yet desired—shows up, like a scar, the pain that racked you for so long, Teresa, my love, the pain of being on both sides at once: being the wound as much as the knife. Judged and judging. Harder on yourself than all the suspicions of the purifiers, bloodier inside than the wound inflicted on your kin by the trial. “The fear of losing my honor was stronger in me,” you say of the confused fourteen-year-old that you were.18

  When I read the word honra, I decode as follows: here lies the accusation of marranismo. The cult of honor worked together with your upbringing to instill that fierce moral sense, that perpetual surveillance of oneself, of others, and of others in oneself. And you, Teresa, took advantage of this to transcend yourself. To escape from your origins but also from the society of those who would denigrate and persecute them. To the point of defying their world, the world, exiling yourself beyond “all things,” which are but “nothingness.” And finally—like a last flourish of honor that abolishes honor—by defying the Beyond itself, locating it inside you, where the Other resides. Is this a display of perfect humility, or of boundless audacity?

  The fear of losing my honor was stronger in me. This sense of honor gave me the strength not to completely lose my reputation.…Would that I had had the fortitude not to do anything against the honor of God just as my natural bent gave me fortitude not to lose anything of what I thought belonged to the honor of the world.…

  I was extreme in my vain desire for my reputation…I only had the fear of losing my reputation, and such fear brought me torment in everything I did. With the thought that my deeds would not be known, I dared to do many things truly against my honor and against God.19

  Bizarrely then, but necessarily, the name of a great Hebrew expert, the scholar-saint Jerome, became associated with the quest for honor: as though to indicate that what was commonly judged dishonorable might become the very fount of honor, differently defined. The revision of tradition undertaken by the Erasmists (including Uncle Pedro, it seems), which led them to the rediscovery of Judaism, was a fillip for the supreme, unimpeachable honor constituted by the monastic life, or “taking the habit.” “Reading the Letters of Saint Jerome so encouraged me that I decided to tell my father about my decision to take the habit, for I was so persistent in points of honor that I don’t think I would have turned back for anything once I had told him.”20

  That confounded quest for honor! “Let any person who wants to advance and yet feels concerned about some point of honor believe me and strive to overcome this attachment”;21 “God deliver us from persons who are concerned about honor while trying to serve Him. Consider it an evil gain, and, as I said, honor is itself lost by desiring it, especially in matters of rank. For there is no toxin in the world that kills perfection as do these things.”22 That quest will now be replaced by self-exile in the Other, whom ultimately you will tuck deep inside your being. Does greater honor come with greater bliss? The interior castle in lieu and place of the hoarding of honor: a protected intimacy yet not a withdrawn one, an inwardness coiled in the Other, an impregnable space conquered and held in full view. Is this the revenge of those whose honor was impugned?

  While staying with Pedro Sánchez de Cepeda at Hortigosa, Teresa was not sure of the path, but dimly felt her future taking shape. Did she have a notion that her father Alonso’s fortunes would dwindle steadily over the years, as if to disavow his own father, the canny merchant Juan Sánchez—that father who always came out on top no matter what and shamed his son? Did she foresee that don Alonso would cling to the hidalgo lifestyle at all costs, neglecting his store, his trade, his taxes, all unworthy of the coveted status that had finally been legitimized—but lacking the land and property supposed to bring in income for men of that rank; and all this para sustentar la honra, for the sake of keeping his good name? Uncle Pedro would snub the old Marrano patriarch in his own way, by devoting himself to the Christian faith as a Hieronymite monk, no less, this being an order that welcomed converts, even if they were known to perform Jewish rituals. Among all the Old Christians of Teresa’s acquaintance, she could not think of any more devout than this relative with his elegant synthesis of Saint Jerome and Jorge Manrique. Apart from her mother, of course; but she was a woman, an excellent custodian of honor in the admirable, terrible, female way: by the commitment of her womb and the illness that killed her. Teresa herself had the loathing of honra that we’ve seen, and the future nun would always make fun of those who spend their time “pretending” so as to hang on to it, instead of seeking another life, a loving life, a divine life, a life of divine love, a life divine with love, it’s all one.

  But is it possible? At this moment, reading Saint Jerome aloud to her learned uncle, Teresa’s mind is made up. Here and now, beside don Pedro, with don Pedro, she has taken the habit already: she has entered the cloister, or claustro. In Spanish the womb is sometimes called claustro materno. Don Pedro has reconciled, for her, the monastic claustro with the maternal one.

  Teresa was now ready to cloister herself in the maternal hollow, settle into the infantilism of faith, sink into the dream of dreams: the dream of love. Thanks to Uncle Pedro, or is it to Saint Jerome, reading would replace the weary alternation of pleasures and lonely regrets. “Audi, Filia…” (Ps. 45:10). She would not forget those words. As though the God-fearing scholar were authorizing her separation from the mother, that bond of love entwined with hate, and launching her search for sublimation—a paternal one, true, but as spiritual as it was sensual. Audi is Shema in Hebrew. Hearken to Israel and to Jesus, my daughter! They came together in Uncle Pedro. Did she know it? She could feel it. “Hearken, O my daughter, so shall the king greatly desire thy beauty; for he is thy Lord…” “All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad.” She closed the Poem for the Wedding of the King, no longer crying, smiling broadly.

  It wouldn’t be easy. The tormented wanderer kept a strict eye on her wanderings: How was she to follow the path shown by don Pedro without betraying don Alonso? Because that’s what it would mean: leaving home, leaving her younger siblings Agustín and Juana, to whom she had been like a mother, and renouncing “dangerous opportunities” and worldly “vices” from then on. Yes, vices: whether pious rhetoric or considered judgment, that’s how Teresa defined her youthful longings in The Book of Her Life! Nor would she cave in any longer to her father’s blandishments. She would “dissemble” once again, she’d try to bargain. Anything to secure the assent of a patriarch who didn’t want to let his daughter go…

/>   Until entering the Carmelite order, Teresa attracted quite some attention in Avila. Nobody would have predicted the nunnery for this fashionable young woman, gliding from one reception to the next, attending the festivities for the Empress Isabella in 1531, then those for Charles V when he stops over at the Dominican monastery in the spring of 1534. Both María de Briceño, her old schoolmistress, and Juana Suárez, happily ensconced in the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation, urge her on at every opportunity. Is don Alonso holding her back, or is it her own weakness? It takes guts to announce the resolve to withdraw from the world to a father who used to impose godly reading lists upon the whole family (has he forgotten?), but has let himself go since the death of his wife, so that the business goes to rack and ruin and the family falls into penury, while still he refuses to give an inch.

  Teresa knows she can’t renege on her decision. “I was so persistent in points of honor that I don’t think I would have turned back for anything once I had told him.” But it’s no good, his response is inflexible: “When I’m gone, you may do as you please. But not before.”

  She wonders whether her father has a genuine faith in God. Does he even believe that she does? A joust: point of honor against point of honor, daughter’s honor against father’s honor! Fortified by the loyalty of her Uncle Pedro, María de Briceño, and Juana Suárez, confident of the support of her father’s confessor, Fr. Vicente Barrón, Teresa stands her ground throughout the mortal struggle with her beloved father. Two years later she persuades her brother Juan (he is thirteen, she is twenty) to join the Dominicans the same day as she became a Carmelite. They will run away together, para siempre, like she did with Rodrigo to the land of the Moors…