Teresa of Avila, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
I say both things in the same breath, and I did not think them opposed. In the Life I tell my confessor that it is enough that I am a woman to make my sails droop, and how much more a woman and a wicked one.1 I wrote that knowing who would read it and what they could do with it, and I handed the whole account over to be burned at once if it did not square with the truths of our holy Catholic faith.1
A woman who did not understand her position would not have written so. But a woman who wrote only to placate would not have gone on to say what I say next: that I had laboured always to find those who could give me light, and that I discussed it all with men of great learning and with persons who had lived spiritual lives many years.1 I wanted learning in others.
I never despised it. As to fact: it is true. For many years I read much and understood nothing, and when God did give me understanding I could not utter a word to explain it to others.2 Those who sought to make me understand what our Lord was giving me taught me nothing, so great was my dulness.2 Do not take that for rhetoric. It was a trouble to me, and I say so plainly.
But there is a third thing that the first two do not reach. When His Majesty pleases, He teaches everything in a moment, and gives the words to say it, so that my confessors were astonished and I more than they, because I knew my own dulness better.2 When they took away our books in Spanish, which I could not read in Latin, the Lord said, "Be not troubled; I will give thee a living book." And so it proved, for I had little need of books afterward; He was Himself a Book in which I saw all truth, and one that leaves its impression so that it cannot be forgotten.3
That is not a pose before the Inquisition. It is what happened, and I set it down as it happened. Nor was this a license to dispense with the learned. Whatever the Lord commanded me in prayer, if my confessor forbade it, He Himself told me to obey my confessor.3 I learned that I ought never to hide anything from my confessor, for there is great security in telling everything, and the contrary opens the door to delusion.3
What I suffered was not too much learning but too little experience in those who judged me. Good servants of God, holy men whom I esteemed greatly, took my careless answers for pride and concluded I wished to teach them and thought myself a learned woman.4 That was among the heaviest trials of my life, to find no one who knew this way of the spirit by experience.4
The one who had never been over the road could not tell me whether I was on it. So I will not have it said that I was merely humble for show, nor that my ignorance was the whole of it. I was ignorant, and I was taught, and I submitted what I was taught to the learned. Whoever has had the experience will understand me at once; to him who has not, I should not be surprised if it all seemed folly.3 It is enough for him that it is I who say it, to be free from blame, and I blame no one who speaks so.3
She is a woman and unlearned, she has a bad memory and a worse head, she writes at command and will be glad if they burn it; and she knows more about what happens in prayer than the learned men who examine her, because she has been there and they have not. Both are true and she says both in the same chapter. Learning is to be honoured and confessors should have it, because a half-learned man did her more harm than any ignorance; but God teaches the soul in prayer things no book has, and He did not despise women when He was on earth.56789
For the rest, it is enough that I am a woman to make my sails droop: how much more, then, when I am a woman, and a wicked one?The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus
For many years I read much, and understood nothing; and for a long time, too, though God gave me understanding herein, I never could utter a word by which I might explain it to others.The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus
Be not troubled; I will give thee a living book.The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus
They looked upon me as deficient in humility; and when they detected any of my faults--they might have detected many--they condemned me at once.The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus
Many prayers were offered and Masses were said so that God would lead her by another road, because her fear was very great when she was not in prayer, although in all things touching the service of God a clear improvement was seen, and no vainglory or pride; rather she was ashamed before those who knew of it, and she felt more distress in speaking of it than if they had been sins, because it seemed to her they would…Spiritual Testimonies, Relaciones I-LXVII
When I purposed to write this, I had just communicated, and had risen from the very prayer of which I am speaking. I am thinking of what the soul was then doing. Our Lord said to me: It undoes itself utterly, My daughter, in order that it may give itself more and more to Me: it is not itself that then lives, it is I. As it cannot comprehend what it understands, it understands by not understanding. 19.The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus
Generally she forgot all about herself and only thought of God when she did any meritorious action. 6. The time which has been spent in reading or writing on this subject will not have been lost if it has taught us these two truths; for though learned, clever men know them perfectly, women's wits are dull and need help in every way.The Interior Castle, or The Mansions
I entreat him, for the love of our Lord, to publish abroad what I have thus far said of my wretched life, and of my sins. I give him leave to do so; and to all my confessors, also,--of whom he is one--to whom this is to be sent, if it be their pleasure, even during my life, so that I may no longer deceive people who think there must be some good in me.The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus
I am amused at what you say about the defeats inFray Bartolome's sisters, which would be unbearable, even if the candidates could buy the house with their dowries. On no account take either of them Vol. HI. 6 if they have not their wits about them; it is against our Constitutions and an incurable evil. The other girl of thirteen is very young; the mind is constantly changing at that age.The Letters of Saint Teresa Vol 3
The question that decides how every sentence of hers is read; the modern scholarship has made the strategic reading standard and the texts keep the conviction underneath it.