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About the manuscripts The autograph of the
Interior Castle is to be found in the convent of the
Discalced Carmelite nuns of Seville. When the book
was first written its author's intention was to
divide it only into seven main sections, or
"Mansions", and not to make any subdivision of these
into chapters. But by the time the manuscript was
completed she had changed her mind, and, utilizing
her margins, she was able to subdivide each of the
seven parts of the book as she thought best. The
titles of these sub-divisions she wrote on a separate
sheet and they have unfortunately been lost. During
her own lifetime, however, the nuns of her Toledo
convent made a copy of the book, including these
titles, which me so Teresan in style that their
authenticity cannot for a moment be doubted.[7]
From the note already referred to written by Graci�n
in Ribera's biography of St. Teresa we learn that the
Interior Castle, on its completion, was submitted to
the closest scrutiny by himself and a Dominican
theologian, P. Yanguas, in the presence of the
author. The picture which he draws of these sessions
is a memorable one.
I would take up numerous phrases in the book, saying
that they did not sound well to me, and Fray Diego
would reply, while she (St. Teresa) would tell us to
expunge them. And we did expunge a few, not because
there was any erroneous teaching in them, but because
many would find them too advanced and too difficult
to understand; for such was the zeal of my affection
for her that I tried to make certain that there
should be nothing in her writings which could cause
anyone to stumble.
These meetings took place in the parlour of the
Discalced Carmelite convent at Segovia during June
and July 1580. It is regrettable that Graci�n should
not have described them in greater detail, for, as
she knew both her critics well enough to be quite
frank with them, and as her command of mystical
theology was stronger than theirs on the experiential
side and weaker only on the theoretical, many of her
comments must have been well worthy of preservation.
Few corrections, in actual fact, were made in the
autograph and none of them has any great doctrinal
significance. It is a striking thing that, at a time
when such care had perforce to be taken by writers on
mystical theology, when false mystics of all kinds
were springing up continually and when the
Inquisition was therefore maintaining a greatly
increased vigilance, so important and so ambitious a
work as this should need modifying only here and
there, merely to avoid the risk of misinterpretation
by the ill-informed or the hypercritical.
A few of the corrections, together with some erasures
and marginal additions, are in the hand of St. Teresa
herself; the remainder, including a few which have
been incorrectly attributed to P. Yanguas, were made
by P. Graci�n. It would seem that Graci�n, besides
being the critic at these Segovian sessions, was also
the committee's secretary: that is to say, when the
three had come to an agreement about some alteration
that had to be made, it was he who would actually
make it.
Some years later, the work of this committee was
examined by another critic, who took objection to
many of the corrections, including all those made by
Graci�n, and restored the original readings, adding
to the first page of St. Teresa's manuscript a short
note which will be found on the corresponding page of
this edition.[8] Both early and recent editors,
without exception, have believed this critic to have
been Fray Luis de Le�n: its style and content could
not be more like that of St. Teresa's first editor as
we have it, for example, in the famous letter to the
Carmelite nuns of Madrid which he prefixed to his
edition, but the handwriting is certainly not that of
Fray Luis. The note and the additions are in fact the
work of St. Teresa's biographer P. Francisco de
Ribera, whose concern for the fidelity with which her
writings should be reproduced we learn from the
letter which he wrote to M. Mar�a de Cristo, Vicaress
of the Carmelite nuns at Valladolid. As we have
already said, Ribera had himself projected a
collected edition of St. Teresa's works, for which
purpose he borrowed the autographs of the Way of
perfection and the Interior Castle. There would
therefore be no improbability in the assumption of
his having made these corrections; and a comparison
of them with manuscripts known to be his at the
University of Salamanca, the Royal Academy of History
and elsewhere seems to put the matter beyond doubt.
St. Teresa began the Interior Castle, as she herself
tells us, on Trinity Sunday (June 2), 1577. She was
then in Toledo, where she had been staying for nearly
a year, but in July she left for St. Jos�ph's, Avila,
and it was there that she completed the book on
November 29 of the same year. When we remember the
difficult times through which the Reform was passing,
the preoccupations of a practical kind with which the
Mother Foundress was continually being assailed, and
the large amount of time taken up by other
activities, and by the daily observance of her Rule,
we may well marvel at the serenity of mind which in
so short a period could produce a work of this
length, containing some of the very finest pages she
ever wrote.
During the space of less than six months which
elapsed between the beginning of the book and its
completion took place that change of Nuncios which
was so disastrous for the Reform, the transference of
St. Jos�ph's, Avila, from the jurisdiction of the
Ordinary to that of the Order and that stormy scene
at the Incarnation when the nuns endeavoured vainly
to elect St. Teresa as their Prioress. So it is not
surprising that, as we learn from the fourth chapter
of the Fifth Mansions, "almost five months"[9] out of
the six had gone by before she reached that chapter.
As a Toledo nun copied the book while the Saint wrote
it, and had reached the second chapter of the Fifth
Mansions before she left for Avila, she would seem to
have worked hard at the book for the month or six
weeks which she spent at Toledo after beginning it
and then to have done nothing further unto late in
October. This meant that the time actually spent in
writing was not six months, but less than three.
There is ample evidence as to the intensity with
which St. Teresa worked at the Interior Castle. It
will suffice to quote one witness. "At the time when
our holy Mother was writing the book of the Mansions
at Toledo," deposed M. Mar�a del Nacimiento, "I often
saw her as she wrote, which was generally after
Communion. She was very radiant and wrote with great
rapidity, and as a rule she was so absorbed in her
work that even if we made a noise she would never
stop, or so much as say that we were disturbing
her."[10] The same nun, according to M. Mariana de
los Angeles, once saw St. Teresa caught in a rapture
while she was writing the book and is reported as
asserting that she wrote a portion of it while in
this condition.[11] This, however, is second-hand
evidence, though it tends to confirm the direct
evidence. Not that even this can always be trusted.
Ana de la Encarnaci�n, for example, declares that she
saw St. Teresa writing the Interior Castle at
Segovia, which is next to impossible, for we know a
great deal about the Saint's movements during these
years and there is no record of her having been at
Segovia in 1577.
When the book was written, St. Teresa entrusted it to
the keeping of P. Graci�n, who in his turn gave it
for a time to M. Mar�a de San Jos�, Prioress of the
Sevilian convent and a close friend of the writer. In
November 1581, we find her authorizing M. Mar�a to
read the chapters on the Seventh Mansions, under the
seal of confession, to a former confessor of her own,
P. Rodrigo Alvarez. "Read him the last Mansion," the
letter runs, "and tell him that that person (i.e.,
herself) has reached that point and has the peace
which goes with it".[12] As we shall see, P. Alvarez
left a note on the manuscript attesting that the
chapters in question had been duly read to him and
declaring that they were entirely orthodox and in
conformity with the teaching of the Saints.
Eventually P. Graci�n took back the manuscript, and,
except for short periods when it was lent to V. Ana
de Jes�s for the preparation of Luis de Le�n's
edition, and, as already related, to P. Ribera, he
retained it for long after St. Teresa's death,
presenting it finally to a Sevilian gentleman who had
been a great benefactor of the Reform, Don Pedro
Cerezo Pardo. When, in 1617, this gentleman's
daughter Catalina took the habit in the Sevilian
convent of the Reform, she brought the highly-prized
manuscript as part of her dowry. Thus by a strange
concatenation of events the autograph returned to the
Sevilian house, where it has remained ever since.
A few words may be added on the copies and editions
of the Interior Castle. The Toledo copy seems to be
the oldest. It bears the date 1577 -- which may refer
to the year of the book's composition but is
generally supposed to indicate the year in which the
copy was made. The copyists were four nuns, one of
whom, as has been said, went as far as the second
chapter of the Fifth Mansions, the remainder of the
work being shared by the other three. The title given
to the book by St. Teresa is placed at the end of the
fourth chapter and the copy ends with the table of
chapters and the summary of the contents of each
chapter of which the original is now lost. It is
noteworthy that the first amanuensis made no
chapter-divisions, presumably because at that time
the autograph had none. Some of St. Teresa's
additions are not included and none of the
corrections and glosses made by P. Graci�n -- again,
it must be supposed, because they were not then in
the autographs. All these facts point to the
conclusion that this copy was made as St. Teresa
wrote, and that, when she left Toledo for Avila,
taking the unfinished autograph with her, she left
behind her an unfinished copy which was completed
only at a later date. As the corrections in Graci�n's
hand were made in 1580 (Introduction, above), this
date may be taken as falling between 1578 and 1580.
Some critics believe that among the corrections in
this copy are a number made by St. Teresa herself.
[P. Silverio, however, does not share their opinion.]
An interesting copy, which belongs to the Discalced
nuns of C�rdoba, is that which was made by P. Graci�n
before he disposed of the autograph. The work is
beautifully done in red and black ink and nowhere is
Graci�n's exquisite hand seen to better advantage:
indeed, the calligraphy rivals that of any
professional monastic copyist of the Middle Ages. The
prologue and the epilogue are omitted, the former
possibly because of its allusive reference to Graci�n
himself. The titles given to the chapters by St.
Teresa are included. The copy makes a good many
alterations, mainly verbal, in the text, due probably
to the repeated requests of St. Teresa that, if it
should ever be decided to print her writings, he
would polish and revise them.
The copy now in the University of Salamanca was made
in 1588 by P. Ribera and a Brother Antonio Arias at
the College of the Society of Jesus in that city. The
date suggests that the autograph was passed on to him
after Luis de Le�n had finished with it. Of the
numerous other copies to be found in Carmelite houses
the most noteworthy are two which were made from the
autograph by a Discalced Carmelite, P. Tom�s de
Aquino, in the eighteenth century. One of these, used
by La Fuente for his edition of 1861, in the "Biblioteca
de Autores Espa�oles", contains a critical study from
which the editor quotes.
Two editions -- one early and one comparatively
recent -- merit remark.
The earliest of all the editions, Luis de Le�n's
(1588), rejects Graci�n's emendations and respects
only those in the handwriting of St. Teresa. It
makes, however a great many changes of its own,
mainly of a verbal kind, though such an omission as
the reference in Mansions V, iv to St. Ignatius of
Loyola and the Society of Jesus is a striking
exception to this rule. The majority of Luis de
Le�n's modifications have not been adopted in this
edition; a few are referred to in the notes. Until La
Fuente went to P. Tom�s de Aquino's copy, the text of
1588 was followed by later editors with but few
modifications.
In commemoration of the third centenary of St.
Teresa's death, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Seville, a
Carmelite of the Observance, Fray Joaqu�n Lluch,
published a photo-lithography edition of the
autograph which did a good deal to restore the
respect due to it. [P. Silverio's edition, however,
is based on the autograph itself, which he was able
to study at Seville, so that past neglect of it is
now fully atoned for.]
List of Abreviations A.V. -- Authorized Version of the Bible (1611).
D.V. -- Douai Version of the Bible (1609).
Letters -- Letters of St. Teresa. Unless otherwise
stated, the numbering of the Letters follows Vols.
VII-IX of P. Silverio. Letters (St.) indicates the
translation of the Benedictines of Stanbrook (London,
1919-24, 4 vols.).
Lewis -- The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus, etc.,
translated by David Lewis, 5th ed., with notes and
introductions by the Very Rev. Benedict Zimmerman,
O.C.D., London, 1916.
P. Silverio -- Obras de Santa Teresa de Jes�s,
editadas y anotadas por el P. Silverio de Santa
Teresa, C.D., Durgos, 1915-24, 9 vols.
Ribera -- Francisco de Ribera, Vida de Santa Teresa
de Jes�s, Nueva ed. aumentada, con introducci�n,
etc., por el P. Jaime Pons, Barcelona, 1908.
S.S.M. -- E. Allison Peers, Studies of the Spanish
Mystics, London, 1927-30, 2 vols.
St. John of the Cross -- The Complete Works of Saint
John of the Cross, Doctor of the Church, translated
from the critical edition of P. Silverio de Santa
Teresa, C.D., and edited by E. Allison Peers, London,
1934-35, 3 vols.
Yepes -- Diego de Yepes, Vida de Santa Teresa,
Madrid, 1615.
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