In the middle of 1565, the Society of Jesus began its second General Congregation. The aim was to elect a new general after the death of Diego de Laínez in January. The one chosen to exercise the position was Francisco de Borja. This election had significant effects on the future of the order. The new general came under two important influences during his formative time as a Jesuit: on the one hand, that of the Jesuit Andres de Oviedo (leader of a spiritual group that emerged around Borja and lover of many hours of praying) and, on the other hand, that of Juan de Texeda and the Joachimist prophecies that he took to the circle of Gandía by Borja's invitation. Thus, the former Duke of Gandía adopted a vision of the society with a more private and contemplative spirituality, receptive to supernatural visions and carrying a prophetic conception of the Jesuit role in the whole of Christendom.Footnote 1 Once elected general, Borja was allowed to increase the time for prayer but taking into account the differences between regions and persons.Footnote 2 It should be noted that such an environment was prone to the formation of Jesuits willing to delve into the retired life and affective prayer, even without ignoring the missionary character of the order—an environment not all Jesuits shared. Some accused him of lacking an Ignatian spirit.Footnote 3 It was in that context that Francisco de Ribera (1537–1591) entered the Society of Jesus in 1570. After his admission as a novice, he went on to complete his formation in Medina del Campo, where Baltasar Álvarez—one of Teresa's first Jesuit confessors and a practitioner of contemplative prayer—was his teacher.Footnote 4
However, Ribera's first days as a Jesuit also correspond to a critical moment in the society's development. The order had had a strong Hispanic character since its inception. The first three generals were of Iberian origin: Ignatius Loyola (1541–1556), Diego de Laínez (1558–1565), and Borja (1565–1572). The Spanish monarchy attempted to make the Ignatian order a Spanish one during all these years. Therefore, when Francisco de Borja died in 1572, Pope Gregory XIII tried to make changes in the society's leadership. He indicated his preference for the new general to be from non-Iberian lands and even banned the election of another Spaniard. The agitation awakened by that restriction forced him to give up his objective. Nevertheless, he never ceased to express his preference for the Flemish Everard Mercurian (1514–1580) until the third General Congregation (1573) finally elected him. As the new general, Mercurian did not hesitate to foster a significant turn in the administrative network of the order. He sent many Spanish Jesuits who had held positions outside the Iberian Peninsula—especially in Italy—back to Spain, and Italian members occupied their positions. These changes had consequences when it came to governing the Iberian provinces. It became necessary to control the group of discontented Spanish Jesuits who had returned to their land. Especially during the Acquaviva generalate (1581–1615), the Jesuit authorities intervened in the superior positions in the kingdom of Castile with greater zeal, appointing Jesuits mainly from Aragon to those charges—most likely to obey the general because of Aragon's distance from the Castilian court.Footnote 5
There is another critical feature that marks the beginning of Mercurian's government as a crucial moment in the history of the society: namely the transformation that Italian historian Stefania Pastore has called “the anti-mystic turn” (svolta antimistica).Footnote 6 To understand this turnaround, it is necessary to go back a few years and observe how attacks on the order had existed since its early days. The negative comments focused on the association between Jesuits, alumbrados, and conversos.Footnote 7 Melchor Cano wrote the best example of such criticism.
In his Censura y parecer que dió el Padre Mtro: Fr. Melchor Cano, de la Orden de Predicadores, contra el Instituto de los Padres Jesuitas (Censorship and opinion given by Melchor Cano, of the Order of Preachers, against the Institute of the Jesuit Fathers, circa 1555), the Dominican built a profoundly negative image of both the pastoral ways of the society and its first members.Footnote 8 His writing specifically addresses an encounter that shaped his view about the new order: his meeting with Ignatius in Rome. After describing the seemingly unfair persecution he had suffered in Spain, the author of the Ejercicios espirituales (Spiritual Exercises) began to tell Cano the revelations he claimed to have received from God. The impression Cano formed of him could not have been more adverse: the Dominican described Ignatius discussing his inspired revelations as an act of vanity, automatically discrediting the visions he had heard.Footnote 9 Cano simply saw in the new order an old danger: that of the alumbrados.Footnote 10 He did not hesitate to make this association explicit in Censura y parecer. By looking at the supposedly beneficial effects the Jesuits produced on other people, he reminded readers of the capacity of the Fallen Angel—transfigured into an angel of light—to commit benevolent acts to help some while leading others to hell, like the “alumbrados and dejados who were cousins of these [the Jesuits].”Footnote 11 For Cano, the demon-alumbrado-Jesuit bond was an established kinship: they belonged to the same family. He also reminded the readers of the suspicion of alumbradismo that fell on Ignatius.Footnote 12 He distrusted the speed at which one supposedly became good and holy after entering the society and wrote incredulously that something that could take a lifetime for others only took a matter of months or days for them. Again, the demon-alumbrado-Jesuit triad shines under the reader's gaze: the Jesuits could be part of the alumbrados to whom the devil gives light and spiritual tastes to better weave his plot.Footnote 13 The rapidity to become holy in the Jesuit institution denotes the contrariety against the created order, since the order that God would have in spiritual things would go in accordance with the natural ones.Footnote 14 This order would mean that one first is a boy and then a man; one goes from the least perfect to the most perfect.Footnote 15 Finally, the association with the demon has a remarkably eschatological tone. Where Melchor Cano underlines the supposed beatification of everyone with whom the men of the society have contact, he sees the signs of the Apocalypse.Footnote 16
Cano saw the universality proposed by the Ejercicios espirituales as a danger. However, we know Ignatius's ideal was to limit its universality through the control exercised by those in charge of teaching the text. According to Ignatius's intentions, the curious eye of practitioners should not see the book: it was not meant to be read by all.Footnote 17 Instead, a mediator agent between general practitioners and the text should provide it. In various references to the book, a teaching role was assigned to those responsible for delivering the exercises.Footnote 18 Despite this, one cannot be surprised by Cano's interpretation. The Dominican believed that the theological corporation should have an exclusive role in such issues, as is clearly manifested in his later Censura a Carranza.Footnote 19 Cano could find enough material in Ignatius's ideas to arouse his fiercest fears. Such ideas included Ignatius's call to make his method available to all those who want to improve according to their disposition, his statement that knowledge in excess does not satisfy the soul but inner feelings do, his exhortation to let God communicate and act with his creatures, and, finally, his assumption that we make our choices thanks to the experiential knowledge acquired through spiritual consolations or desolations and the experience in discerning spirits.Footnote 20 Despite Ignatius's reiterated emphasis on his attachment to the Roman Church, Cano's view remained unfavorable. Not even the clamorous display of orthodoxy Ignatius made in the closing of his eighteen rules, which he included in anticipation of suspicions, could entice Cano to change his views. The rules were symptomatically entitled Para el sentido verdadero que en la Iglesia militante debemos tener (For the true meaning we must have in the militant church).Footnote 21
Cano reminded some of his postal correspondents of his controversial comments. In a letter dated September 21, 1557, he defined the Jesuits as the alumbrados, which the devil would have so often planted in the church.Footnote 22 A year earlier, he had taken an even more eschatological view, openly suggesting the diabolic character and apocalyptic significance of the society's members: “They are, then, novelties and without a doubt the separation the apostle predicted before the future coming of the Antichrist. Consequently, if we do not want to blind ourselves knowingly, it is evident in the divine scripture that in these times pseudo-apostles and pseudo-prophets will arise, and they will give many signs and wonders that will lead to error, even the chosen ones.”Footnote 23
In the epistle of October 5, 1558, Cano warns Friar Bernardo de Fresneda (1495–1577) about his unsuccessful attempt to inform the pope of what he considered the errors of the new order.Footnote 24 The Cano-Fresneda link is significant. Fresneda was Felipe II's confessor (1553–1571) and one of the greatest critics of the new society. He also highlighted the associative triad between Jesuits-alumbrados-conversos. This friar was the ideal confessor for a monarch who had always looked at Jesuits with suspicion.Footnote 25 With this adverse context in mind, we cannot avoid the following question: What effects did this have on the internal policies of the order toward the most personal and extraordinary forms of religious expression?
I. A Time of Standardization: The Prayer and the Jesuits since Mercurian
It was these suspicious comments about the Ignatian Order, together with the new revival of the alumbrados in the 1570s, which finally led Mercurian to start a process of redefinition. This change involved attempting to establish a single standard for the whole Jesuit institute, denying the plurality that had characterized the society in its first years. Mercurian tried to promote oblivion of the contemplative dimension, to break some of the first alliances (such as the one with the Discalced Carmelites or the group gathered around Juan de Ávila), and to realign with the discriminatory policy toward conversos. Along with some of his fellows, the new superior saw the prophetic-visionary orientation and pro-converso openness that Borja had facilitated in the order as extremely risky and unattractive. With this in mind, the Belgian general sought to regulate and control the access of the members to the spiritual readings at least from 1575 onward.Footnote 26 This initiative coincided with his interest in standardizing prayer. Unlike his predecessor, he tied every development of prayer within the society to the Ejercicios espirituales, making the path laid out in this book the only licit avenue for prayer. In addition, he presented the prayer of Ejercicios espirituales fundamentally as a preparation time for pastoral activities.Footnote 27 One of his most important aims was to avoid any attempts at reform or partition inside the order. It is true that Mercurian did not prevent his subordinates from having contemplative experiences; however, his internal policy resulted in the implementation of a firmly institutionalized and systematized way of praying and an emphasis on the ministerial exercises as the main purposes of the order.Footnote 28 He stressed the instrumental nature of prayer, focusing its practice on its ministerial effects. The best-known examples of this advance against alternative forms of communication with God within the Jesuits are the attacks on Antonio Cordeses (1574) and Baltasar Álvarez (1578).Footnote 29 The “anti-mystic turn” had begun.
Let us briefly consider the case of Baltasar Álvarez, Teresa of Ávila's confessor and Francisco de Ribera's teacher.Footnote 30 Despite his rigorous initial guidance of the nun, Álvarez experienced a breaking point in that encounter after which he aligned himself with meditative and contemplative prayer.Footnote 31 In the context of Borja's government— Álvarez met Borja in 1555—he was able to develop the idea and practice of what he called the prayer of silence (oración de silencio). Álvarez held a notion of prayer that firmly established interiority as the binding axis with God. In his Relación acerca del modo de oración (Declaration about the mode of prayer, circa 1578) he states:
The mode of this prayer is the souls fleeing the noise of the creatures to withdraw to the inmost heart to worship God in spirit as He wishes to be worshipped, placing themselves in His presence with a loving attitude, without any image or physical figure . . . or taking it if God gives it, and with it, one will find oneself better, and staying still in it, to be formed, conforming oneself to the affections that, according to the ecclesiastical and saints’ rules, we understand to be inspired by the Holy Spirit, which is the principal teacher of this faculty.Footnote 32
Although Álvarez recognized imaginative support, the nondiscursive dimension predominated in his approach to the subject. A few pages after the passage quoted above, he is critical of those who receive God during meditation and, instead of remaining still in his presence, go on with their thoughts. For Álvarez, this was a poor way of praying because discourse is only meant to search God, and when one finds him, one must remain silent.Footnote 33 However, he adds that the time of prayer should be subject to as much as charity, obedience, and health allow it.Footnote 34 Moreover, he actively links this method of prayer to its teaching function, in harmony with the nodal weight Ignatius granted to those in charge of delivering the Ejercicios espirituales. Álvarez argues that it is greatly consoling for the disciples to receive the teacher's feedback on their praying practice. Furthermore, in Álvarez's conceptualization, the masters can aid their disciples in understanding what happens to them as well as help them to verbalize what they wish to say but do not know how.Footnote 35 Although speculation can be useful, he warns that this kind of prayer requires more experience and practical science because it is experience that produces teachers.Footnote 36 It seems that his spiritual education was extensive, as shown by the ample number of quotations from ancient and scholastic authorities that embellish his text. Indeed, Ribera recalled that while speaking with Álvarez about spiritual books, his teacher would tell him, in a quantitively surprising sense: “I have read all these books to understand Teresa of Jesus.”Footnote 37
It is necessary to underline that by defending his prayer technique, Álvarez was also protecting his teaching role, thus becoming the voice supporting an alternative method within the society. Far from unifying prayer in a single style, Álvarez defended the multiplicity of paths with which the uncreated being may guide the souls of his creatures in the same way as the Franciscan school of recollection, Teresa of Ávila, and Ignatius himself did. This support for variety is the first principle of his approach to prayer, so that the souls will not decline the path God has given them nor will anyone separate them from it.Footnote 38 If the confrontation with the guidelines of the new general seems clear, the statement that adorns the same paragraph makes this confrontation absolutely diaphanous: since God gives everyone a particular path, to expect a single road for everyone is to pervert the order of God, who guides in a thousand ways.Footnote 39 While Álvarez maintains it is right to accept rules and warnings, he tries not to tie those who wish to pursue the path of quiet and silence to a single mode. Thus, in his portrayal, the advance of the authorities appears as a perversion against the divine project.
Following the Vita Ignatii Loiolae (circa 1572) written by Pedro de Ribadeneyra, Álvarez argued that Ignatius himself would have experienced this inner progress of the soul. For Álvarez, Ignatius had left the instructions he himself followed well, reaching as a result a different and higher spiritual position, a position that sometimes God gives others from the beginning. This presence of God is, Álvarez adds, the path of silence.Footnote 40 Thus, Álvarez also struggled to control the memory of the founder in his dispute against the corporate homogeneity that the top of the Jesuit institution was attempting to establish: Ignatius was not only a methodical ascetic tied to the Ejercicios espirituales, he was also a practitioner of the prayer of silence.
It is not strange, then, that the disciplinary and homogenizing advance of Mercurian's reforms should fall on Álvarez. Sent by the general, the visitor Diego de Avellaneda imposed on Álvarez the prohibition against teaching his style of prayer in favor of the exclusive use of the Ejercicios espirituales.Footnote 41 The promoter of the prayer of silence was, paradoxically, silenced. The methodology of prayer defended by Álvarez became an object of struggle between opposing views: one emphasizing the plurality of contemplative prayers and the other emphasizing the ascetic practice exclusively linked to Ignatius's book and pastoral exercises.Footnote 42
During the first years of Acquaviva's governance, a stormy struggle of great vitality ensued between—in the terms used by historian Silvia Mostaccio—a mystical society and an ascetic society identified with the new authorities that directed it.Footnote 43 In the end, the Jesuit institution turned toward the centrally active and ascetic option favored by its generals. This was a shift accompanied by a reconstruction of the founder's image, which emphasized its institutional and pastoral aspects over the supernatural ones. For this reason, the authorities sought to replace the vita written by Ribadeneyra—quoted by Álvarez—with the one written by Gian Pietro Maffei: De vita et moribus Ignatii Loiolae, qui Societatis Iesu fundavit (1585).Footnote 44 This episode is quite significant because it shows how the representation of Ignatius (as a mystic or an institutional leader) varied across the distinct groups that struggled over the order's direction after the death of Ignatius. In fact, Borja was no less audacious in his attempt to shape the image of the ex-soldier.
In 1567, Borja commissioned Pedro de Ribadeneyra to write the aforementioned biography of Ignatius. Meanwhile, the third general decided to remove the Acta P. Ignatii (Ignatius's autobiography) from circulation in order to eliminate the diversity of opinion available on his life. Borja thus limited the flow of readings and prepared a portrait of the founder according to the criteria of the Counter-Reformation's militant church: a good religious man who constituted the antithesis of Luther.Footnote 45 However, this image also portrayed Ribadeneyra's Ignatius as a champion of contemplative prayer. Álvarez's appropriation of it shows us that. Thus, when Mercurian sponsored Maffei's vita (published during the Acquaviva generalate), he was attempting to minimize this interpretation.Footnote 46
A prominent landmark in my account is the letter about prayer written by General Claudio Acquaviva in 1590 entitled Qvis sit orationis et poenitentiarvm vsvs in Societate, iuxta nostrum Institutum (What is the use of prayer and penance in the society, according to our institute). The letter served as a device to dispel doubts about the understanding and practice of prayer within the society. It did not wholly nullify contemplation, but it did reduce its importance insofar as it emerged as an exercise that should not hinder one's actions in the world for self and others’ salvation under any circumstances.Footnote 47 The missive questioned any attempt to make a branch within the order which could assimilate its link with contemplation to those of other religious families that had a clear contemplative tendency. It also emphasized the mainly active character of the society, its pastoral ministries, and obedience to the confessor and the general. It must be noted that the letter was dated 1590, the same year that Ribera published his book.
Despite all these policies, internal conflicts never ceased to rise from sectors that exalted the contemplative path within the organization.Footnote 48 For example, the “little saints” of Aquitaine agitated the waters of the society around 1625–1635. This group from southern France yearned for a contemplative and more retired spirituality. They demanded an internal reform in the face of the strong emphasis on external occupations that characterized the society at the beginning of the seventeenth century. General Muzio Vitelleschi (1615–1645) saw them as a danger to the unity of the order. Eventually, the hardening of the authorities ended up suffocating their effervescence.Footnote 49
Another example of the survival of this contemplative current within the Jesuit institution is the resistance expressed in the biographical prose of Francisco de Ribera. Álvarez left a lasting impression on his apprentice; Ribera, a remarkable scholar and doctor of Salamanca, apparently demonstrated not only bookish knowledge but also commitment to the prayer of silence and the meditative withdrawal to solve complex questions triggered by his speculative knowledge, both of which accompanied him throughout his life.Footnote 50 Ribera continued the unfinished path opened by Álvarez in Borja's time in a subtle and more constricted way. This path connected the text of the Spanish Jesuit with his Gallic fellows: his book, in the French translation of Jean de Brétigny (1556–1634), would be a source of inspiration for the “little saints” who would have read it during their formative years.Footnote 51
II. Prayer as the Main Source of the Supernatural
What did Ribera think about prayer? What did he see as the link between prayer, Teresa, and all the believers? Is there a link between his conception of prayer and the contemporaneous events that shook the society?
Already in chapter 1 of book 1 of La vida de la Madre Teresa de Iesus, Ribera states that prayer is the way to achieve divine communication, writing:
Who cannot see the difference between those who give themselves to prayer and consideration of divine things and those who do not? What truth does God teach in prayer, what light does he communicate, how does he disabuse? Those who do not exercise prayer have little of this. . . . The more they [who pray] lift up, the more he communicates to them, and the more he reveals to them, they can serve him so faithfully, that he shows himself to them so familiarly, that he talks to them many times like a friend to another, as he did to Moses.Footnote 52
With these statements, how can we not expect these effusive signs of grace to give birth to the revelations defended with great force in his book? How can Teresa not be the intercessory and miraculous reference among the believers, as he describes her in his devout writings? How can one not discern in her the first cause from which all existence would emanate? Thus, in Ribera's text, prayer appears as the source of the supernatural and the place where he locates the origin of all the spectacular samples of the fantastic.
It is, therefore, vital in Ribera's eyes that prayer have a central role in religious life. He asserts that this is the first virtue, the “mother of all of them,” and hence the source of any other grace received.Footnote 53 It is not strange, then, that at the beginning of book 4 which is on the virtues, after an initial chapter dedicated to describing both Teresa's excellent natural condition as well as her spiritual disposition, he dedicates at least four chapters (2, 3, 4, and 8) to this important subject. The Jesuit reveals here the cautious but accurate position he has on this controversial issue within the order. First, he gives some necessary clarifications. He says that the reader must learn the steps by which Teresa ascended in order to praise God rather than seek revelations or ecstasies.Footnote 54 This was a usual warning because searching for these mystical experiences would be seen as constituting the sin of arrogance as it demanded from God something that he only gives by way of his mercy and love. Although Ribera states that these illustrations of the Teresian prayer are not meant to teach prayer to the reader, he does clarify that they will be of benefit to those who pray.Footnote 55 This clarification is preceded by approximately eight pages of direct reference to a source in which Teresa briefly describes her degrees of prayer.Footnote 56 Ribera adapts himself clearly to the turn the order is taking in his own time. We can observe the same adaptation a few pages later when Ribera points out that Teresa's books should be read with devotion, giving the correct meaning to words that lack theological rigor. He also ranks the books between those he considers destined for all (Camino de perfección [Way of Perfection]) and those destined for a few (Libro de la Vida [Book of Her Life] and Moradas del castillo interior [Interior Castle]).Footnote 57 Nonetheless, this conciliatory position carries the air of caution against what is imposed as a rule. Silvia Mostaccio has warned that Jesuits constructed their obedience from the principle of accommodatio: the capacity to adapt to each specific time and place in which a member or a group of members of the order must perform their roles. Any act of obedience or any act seeking obedience would imply a political position and a discreet adaptation of the general rule. Moreover, this would be applicable for both individuals and institutions.Footnote 58
As a result, Ribera applies the principle of accommodatio in his text. On the one hand, the extensive transcription of the nun's words reveals an intention to publicize a Teresian model. On the other hand, it should not go unnoticed that, by placing prayer as the mother of all virtues, he encourages the reader to imitate her as a role model of perfection. Finally, Ribera's transcriptions, paraphrases, and synthesis suggest that the book may have been meant as a prayer manual to replace Teresa's texts. This design can be seen in practice, for example, in chapter 26 of book 4 where he transcribes a source written by her as a corollary of the work on virtues. The transcription occupies approximately eighteen pages. In this case, Ribera sought to direct the reading, summarizing beside each paragraph what he considered the salient features of the Teresian virtues. The most obvious case of this intentional direction is point eleven, in which Ribera emphasizes Teresa's obedience. However, the same paragraph is a clear sign of the ambiguity she felt toward her confessors.Footnote 59 In addition, Ribera includes an extended copy of Teresa's text in chapter 8 of book 4, where he summarizes what he considers the recommendations about prayer offered by her. He says her precepts cannot fail to be very fruitful, Teresa being such a wise and experienced teacher, taught by God, and chosen by him to guide others.Footnote 60 We can see how the Teresian magisterium is amplified to benefit all those who read her, not only the nuns. The chapter covers thirteen pages. He warns at the end that these recommendations are very fruitful for all those trying or wishing to try prayer. Ribera adds that many other pieces of advice were excluded from the book because they deal with particular modes of prayer and are thus meant only for a few people. Those who need them can read them in the Libro de la Vida and Moradas del castillo interior.Footnote 61 Here again, the concession is merely cautious. There are few people, he says, who deal with more specific prayer matters. Perhaps his book, so interested in showing Teresa as a model, encourages the readers to be curious about those specific prayer styles, thus covertly aiming at a multiplying effect. The spiritual warnings that Ribera draws end up being a veiled invitation to deepen the knowledge of the Teresian prose itself without any mediation but always under the attentive eye of the spiritual director—a prayer open to all the believers, as Teresa and the Franciscans she read wished for.
III. Prayer as a Weapon against Heresy
For Ribera, prayer is not only the pathway to a unique closeness with God. It is also a weapon against the confessional enemy. For this reason, Teresa appears to face the “damned” Luther. She was born a few years before the beginning of the Reformation. For Ribera, this timing was providential because while Luther was removing nuns from sacred confinement, many women came to be cloistered and consecrated to God through Teresa's example.Footnote 62 This interconfessional conflict is the reason why she appears in Ribera's book using prayer as her primary weapon, considering her institutional inability to practice preaching. Ribera explains:
Because religious women are not ordained to teach or preach, those who are ordained to help with their prayers and penances will excel and so will help the teachers or preachers who defend the church. . . . And no women's religious order can have a higher purpose than to be always praying and fasting and leading a harsh life for the preservation and defense of the Catholic Church, and health of the souls. . . . They have not fulfilled their calling, or what God wants from them, unless they are particularly careful to straighten their prayers and fasts, and the harshness that we have mentioned, to help those who walk in the field sweating and fighting for the glory of God our Lord.Footnote 63
A quote from chapter 1 of Camino de Perfección where Teresa introduces the religious conflicts in France precedes this passage, bringing this interconfessional struggle to light. For Ribera, the nuns play their role: their apostolic prayer requests the intercession of divine grace for those who exercise the ministry of the public word in defense of the church. This anti-Protestant aspect manifests itself with even greater clarity in other passages of Ribera's exposition of the Teresian virtues, such as those which are catalogued as devotion to the holy sacrament of the altar and the saints.
In the first example—devotion to the holy sacrament—Ribera reminds us that Teresa wept over the blindness of the heretics. He also points out a detonating link between the Eucharist and her visions: she received many revelations during or after the Eucharist.Footnote 64 Ribera's defense of the dogma of transubstantiation is explicit: “She saw many times in the consecrated host the Lord himself who truly is underneath those accidents of bread.”Footnote 65 In this account, the role of the ordained man not only seems to be intact for Teresa but even reinforced because through this devotion she would acquire a greater reverence for the only people able to “consecrate it [the host].”Footnote 66 I must underline that in both passages, while he writes the references to Teresa in the past tense, Ribera links these aspects to the ritual using the present tense (for example, he used language such as “is underneath” and “consecrate it”). In this way, although Teresa herself left the world of the living, it is clear that for Ribera the consecratory and distinctive act of Catholicism persists endlessly.
Ribera also represents another other aspect of worship—the cult of saints—as a divine gift and a transparent element of the path to salvation.Footnote 67 This presentation is thus an explicit defense of a religious practice that he intends to promote. Encompassed in the narrative context proposed by Ribera, these introductions of the virtuous qualities of Teresa highlight that devotion to the Eucharist and the saints is a condition of the Catholic saint. What interests me here is that prayer is not only a means of communication with the sacred but also an indispensable tool to fight against heresy. Thus, there was no reason for the society to deprive itself of contemplative prayer or to eliminate a relationship with those who practice it—that is, the Discalced Carmelites.
IV. The Defense of a Necessary Bond for the Society of Jesus
By associating the order with a figure with the potential for holiness, Ribera's biographical account constructs a shared project between himself and Teresa, as well as between the Discalced Carmelites and the society. Linking the order to the inner development of a saint gave it an air of legitimacy against the fierce criticism it had received for so many years. Ribera accomplished this linkage through connecting Teresa with Ignatius's work and spiritual practice and by presenting Teresa having visionary experiences which divinely associate the Discalced Carmelites with the Jesuits.
In the first place, Ribera reinforces this link through the alleged practice of the Ejercicios espirituales that Ribera says Teresa executed at the behest of a Jesuit father—probably Diego de Cetina—who also gave her confidence that the spirit visiting her was clearly from God. Moreover, Teresa and this member of the society met through God's providence: He put the Jesuit in Teresa's way.Footnote 68 So, God appears to be acting from beyond since the Discalced origins unified Teresa's sons and daughters with Ignatius's followers. In this unity, the Ejercicios espirituales plays a central role: it is through this book that the Christian Creator tangibly manifests his support for this relationship.
In writing his book, Ribera strategically invoked Teresa in ways which subtly reinforced his argument about the connection between her and the society. As Nicolas Mollard points out, Ribera recalls the bond that linked the nun with the society by titling two chapters of the first book with an explicit reference to that relationship. The French scholar warns that the vita was the ideal way to support and affirm the order to which Ribera belonged.Footnote 69 Additionally, in the chapter dedicated to the prophetic virtue of Teresa, the Jesuit calls attention to a supposed prophetic vision discussed in chapter 38 of the Libro de la Vida in which the religious woman saw many Jesuits in heaven with white flags in their hands.Footnote 70 Ribera indicates that the name of his religious family did not appear in the printed edition of Teresa's books, but it was in a manuscript version that he consulted. In the eye of the attentive reader, this documental contrast questions the textual purity sought by Luis de León in his edition of Teresa's works (1588). Indeed, Luis had suppressed the name of the society.Footnote 71 However, Ribera states that in chapter 40 of her Libro de la Vida, Teresa included a divine locution in which the God-man informed her that the members of the society would greatly help the church in the times to come.Footnote 72 Actually, this imaginary speech does not mention the members.Footnote 73 In addition, Jerónimo Gracián wrote in the margin of a copy that the nun was referring to the Dominicans.Footnote 74 This is why Ribera, disputing the prophetic sense of the Teresian prose, wished to direct the reading of her text. Although the name does not appear there, he says: “Everything I have said is very true and known from her mouth.”Footnote 75
Ribera wanted to emphasize the existence of confirmation from God about the high value of the order to which he belonged. This recognition, in turn, enhances the significance of the unmediated communicative channel that Teresa and her contemplative technique held for the society. The link between Discalced nuns and Jesuits was not only a necessary bond. It was also a divinely inspired one which needs to be reinforced. Ribera tried to show it to his fellows.
V. A Vita as a Platform for Debate within an Order in Definition: Toward the Defense of a Contemplative Alternative Inside the Society of Jesus
At this point, it is legitimate to ask: What kind of order did Ribera aspire to associate Teresa with? The mystic or the ascetic society? In this regard, Mollard underlines a passage in which Ribera, based on Thomas Aquinas, establishes a hierarchy of religious orders in which he places those ordered to teach and preach above those occupied in contemplation.Footnote 76 However, by focusing his excellent analysis on the appropriation of Teresa's books through the 1882–1982 period, Mollard loses sight of the internal debate and process of redefinition that the society was enduring. The period he chose to study led him to overlook the fact that this Thomistic expression is related to the passages mentioned above that sought to delimit the role assigned to female convents as an apostolic prayer space. There was, as Mollard suggests, an attempt to subordinate the contemplative to the pastoral activities, but this purpose is also anchored in the intention of subjecting the feminine to the masculine. Thus, the emphasis Ribera placed on preaching, rather than reflecting total acceptance of its strict role for the society, appears to have been a literary strategy that Ribera used to try to ensure the ruling role of the order over potentially suspicious groups—that is, the contemplative women. Ribera was drawing attention to the fact that the dreaded danger was unfounded and was aiming to produce a shift in the direction the institution had taken after Borja's death. Far from distancing himself from the Discalced Carmelites and the restriction of the contemplative path toward the inside of the order, Ribera wished to reopen the doors for a reunion with the heirs of Teresa and with the source of contemplative prayer that his teacher Álvarez proclaimed. This desired redirection can also explain the fervent defense of the Teresian Constitutions: to defend those organizational principles within the feminine Carmel was indirectly to fight for contemplative prayer in his order in the subtlest possible way. Thus, the ascetic-pastoral activity could coexist with the mystical one.
Briefly, in his hagiography, Ribera projected not only a defense of the visionary nun but also of contemplative prayer, which was increasingly rejected by the Jesuit authorities. For this purpose, he expressed his ideas and disputed the orientation of the order with one of the most far-reaching devices in the religious culture of the Counter-Reformation: the vita. Therefore, the hagiographic narrative constitutes a text loaded with strongly conflicting elements both inside and outside the Catholic world. It is not just an edifying or apologetic text. It is also a device for the struggle within the society and Roman Catholicism itself.
In this context, Ribera turns into a custodian of prayer within his order and a promoter of the reunion of the society with the heirs of Teresa. This link would follow the crystallized hierarchy of the epoch, which subordinated the feminine to the masculine, turning the followers of Ignatius into guardians and controllers of those suspicious women. Thus, the disciple of Álvarez promoted a contemplative alternative within the Society of Jesus, implicitly suggesting a return to the open environment toward the supernatural visions from the time of Borja's generalate. The Jesuits were invited to persist on the path of affective prayer through the practice of accommodatio: a source of friendly communication with God, praiseworthy virtues, and healing miracles. The Jesuit apostolic mission should not dispense with the most effective method to access the encounter with their God. Instead, they should, as the founder claimed, “permit the Creator to deal directly with the creature, and the creature directly with his Creator and Lord.”Footnote 77 It is thanks to that ineffable contact, as expressed in the passage already quoted, that “so faithfully they can serve him [God].”Footnote 78
Ribera did not advocate abandoning the intervention of the Jesuits in the world and making the order a distinctly monastic one. What he intended was to ensure a higher place for contemplative prayer within the institution to fulfill the Jesuit ideal of a contemplative-in-action organization. The Jesuit Constituciones (Constitutions) resulted in clamors of that type. Concerning prayer and penance, it states as follows: “Only this will be said in general: they should take care that the excessive use of these practices not weaken their bodily strength and take up so much time that they are rendered incapable of helping the neighbor spiritually according to our Institute; nor, on the contrary, these practices should be relaxed to such an extent that the spirit grows cold and the human and lower passions grow warm.”Footnote 79 While this idea is similar to the letter written by Acquaviva in 1590, the tone is radically different. The Neapolitan general sought in a strongly prescriptive way to cut off any instance such as the one Ribera promoted. On the other hand, the Constituciones only warned about the extremes. Therefore, in no way did it necessarily suppress the possibility of exercising the affective and withdrawn prayer within the order. In those times of definition, Ribera found implicit support in one of the normative texts of the institute and in the vita the means to promote his ideas.
Although his role as the producer of Teresa's fama sanctitatis (fame of sanctity) was successful—as the various mentions of his book in the processes initiated for her potential canonization show—we cannot say the same about his defense of contemplative prayer within the society. We have already noted that Jesuit authorities installed the ascetic turn as the licit path inside the order. Nevertheless, Ribera's book did impact future fights and defeats. We have already mentioned the “little saints” of Aquitaine, but there is another interesting example. In 1672 another Jesuit, Antonio Morando (1592–1678), wrote a biography of his subservient Brigida Morello di Gesù (1610–1679) to resolve the tension between the charismatic sanctity and the ascetic-moral sort promoted by the church. He would find his solution in the central role granted to the spiritual director as a mediator between the church and the visionary woman. Through this attempt, according to Guido Mongini, Morando's work was nourished by a disguised spiritualist perspective that defended the value of mystical experience. In this regard, it is important to highlight two facts. First, eighty-two years after Ribera's publication of his Teresian biography, another Jesuit tried to use the biographical narration of a woman who claimed to live heavenly illuminations as a platform to defend a contemplative style of prayer. Second, Morando used two of the central elements of Ribera's proposal: contemplative prayer as the first virtue and foundation of all others and the character of a prejuridical sanctity—that is, a sanctity divinely granted and only waiting for future institutional ratification.Footnote 80 Morando had Teresa's example in mind. He established a symmetrical parallel between her and Brigida Morello. Nevertheless, the text of this seventeenth-century Jesuit remained unpublished, in the shadows of the distrust of the church's authorities toward any mystical expression.Footnote 81 Despite this, one thing is sure: there is a clear line of continuity between Ribera's hagiography and that written by Morando. The first established a defense and a strategic promotion whose echoes still resonated almost a century later.
