Saint Teresa of Avila: spiritual Greatness and Influence of her female Mastership on Church and Society

This interdisciplinary paper (economics and philosophy) conceives charism like a spiritual force which can innovate Church, society and even economic systems. Many studies (Zamagni, Bruni, Todeschini, etc.) have already found in the institutions created by some charismatic figures of western catholic monachism (St.Francis of Assisi and St.Benedict of Norcia) the fundamentals of the birth of capitalism. In this same interpretative frame the role of female monachism to the development of Church and society has been investigated in this paper, starting from Saint Teresa of Avila who bravely reformed the monastic Carmelitans’ Order. The New Rule of Carmelo, inspired to poverty and purity, and the correlated foundation of the first monastery of St.Joseph (and of many others too), in addition to her admirable example of female emancipation and freedom very unusual at that time (and still valid for its exemplariness in the present), is the institutional precipitate of Saint Teresa’s charism and of her attitude to “thinking in a great manner”, though women at that time did not have power, were not in the ecclesiastic hierarchy and were banished to non apostolic duties. She can be rightly considered, as this paper shows, a “charismatic” person, perfectly responding to the requisites on which a Charismatic can be identified (Bruni and Smerilli). And, moreover, the innovative context of the monastery created by Saint Teresa of Avila was based on a female symbolic order (centrality of female authority based on trustful relations among women both essential for its foundation and functioning and on a female model of governance of the monastery which was very different from the management of other male monastic institutions). Other aspects can be further developed from a spiritualistic and philosophical point of view. Teresa d’Avila began her spiritual journey knowing the common social weakness concerning all women. In spite of this, through her mystical experience that emerged in the writing and through the foundation of the barefoot Carmelite order, she was able to transform the element of weakness into an example of innovative strength for all monasticism (Macola, Muraro, Sartori). Teresa’s intention was to find a rigorous method of perfection that took place in solitude, but shared with other nuns. Teresa D’Avila’s mystic experience did not concentrate upon martyrdom or the mortification of the body, but found its central point in a complete link between the inner life of the individual nun and life experienced together with her co-sisters, expressing the complementary character between Martha and Maria (active and contemplative life). Saint Teresa coined the double metaphor of the interior Castle and the exterior Castle. The interior Castle is the beautiful space within everyone, the dwelling where many rooms need to be lived in to understand, in depth, the stepping away from our personal will and to welcome the Truth that is the will of God (Sartori). In this way the subjectivity of the woman also acquires the possibility of saying an authoritative word, as a linguistic mediation between God’s Truth and the humanity of his existence. But in order to be able to perform perfectly God’s will, word and action need to be united, with a subjective commitment carried out together with other nuns. In this way people can also enter the dimension of the exterior Castle, which is the physical place of personal relations and therefore the convent, where it is possible to develop fully the path to perfection.