Fifteenth-century Castilian mystic Teresa de Cartagena understood intimately the role of suffering in sacrifice. As a deaf nun in the sonically-fluent liturgical context of a Cistercian monastery, she wrote Arboleda de los Enfermos (Grove of the Infirm), which outlines her theology of suffering via her experience of deafness. When men of her day doubted that a woman could write such formidable theology, she wrote Admiraçión operum Dey (Wonder at the Works of God), her second and final book in defense of her first work. Thinking with the Modalities of Sacrifice call, this paper will turn to Teresa's Grove of the Infirm as a theological work that demonstrates how contemplative participation in Christ's sacrifice transforms creaturely consumptive appetites. In an era when our excessive consumption impinges on the flourishing of creaturely life, Teresa understands sacrifice as both costly and nourishing; as profoundly ascetic and feastly.
More specifically, my paper will examine Teresa’s vision of sacrifice through her Eucharistic portrayal of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb and the Lukan Great Feast. Using aesthetically rich language, Teresa pictures Christ as sacrifice and feast alike, and she posits that those who suffer become foremost guests at Christ’s banquet. Importantly, Teresa does not glorify or demand suffering.[i] Rather, she suggests Christ’s banquet especially nourishes and invites as “first guests” those who are “the poor, and the feeble, and the blind, and the lame.”[ii] In other words, Teresa avers that Christ’s banquet beckons as special guests those whose are marginalized in their suffering. Teresa thus argues that the contemplative is not satisfied by over-consumption of material goods, but by consuming the generosity of Christ’s sacrifice. In this participation, she believes Christ’s wounded patience meets our own, providing people with palpable nourishment in their pain.
For Teresa, to taste Christ is to reorient our sense of taste, and to allow his sacrifice to orient our own sacrifices. Teresa argues that the ritual of consuming Christ will give the contemplative a new diet composed of these six dishes: “grievous sadness, enduring patience, bitter contrition, frequent and heartfelt confession, devout prayer, perseverance in virtuous works.”[iii] This language of asceticism is not immediately palatable, for it seems to threaten the glorification of suffering. Yet, Teresa argues that this ascetic diet does not end with sadness or affliction. Instead, this newfound nourishment ends with “fervent desire” and fulfillment.[iv] In using sacrifice to reconfigure consumption, Teresa urges her audience to ask what might be gained in the giving of asceticism. How can the bitter taste of sacrifice transform into ecstatic sweetness? How can the food of contrition become ecstasy? What does it look like for Christ’s sacrifice to nourish our wounds with a sweet banquet? Teresa affords a theology that finds feasting in sacrifice and prompts us to ask what banquets we might find in our own rituals of asceticism. Her work opens questions of how ascetic restraint can spark a desirous communion with God and with others.
Through a close analysis of Teresa’s deployment of ascetic feasting, my essay aims to articulate how her theology of the Eucharist offers an understanding of sacrifice as paradoxical abundance. While scholars have explored Teresa through themes such as disability theology[v], gender, food, and technologies of the self[vi], to my knowledge there is little extant scholarship on Teresa as a Eucharistic thinker. My work, then, aims to bring Teresa’s Eucharistic contribution to the fore. This research builds on the contributions of scholars like Sallie McFague and Kyle Galbraith, who help evince the ecological significance of the Eucharist.[vii] My paper dialogues with Ann Astell, who examines the Eucharistic interrelation of the physical and spiritual senses.[viii] In conversation with scholars of medieval theology and the Eucharist, this paper will highlight how Grove of the Infirm presents this sacrament as a sacrifice that transforms creaturely desires toward communion with God, even amid the suffering and pain that life holds.
In sum, this essay proposes that Teresa de Cartagena's Eucharistic imagination lends an important framework for understanding the asceticism and abundance of Christ's sacrifice. I suggest that, in taking her claims seriously, we see how consuming Christ's sacrifice shapes the contours of our creaturely consumption. In a time when our over-consumption and waste impose suffering on other creatures, Grove of the Infirm teaches readers to taste the sufficiency of Christ's nourishment. In so doing, Teresa argues that participation in Christ's sacrifice alters our appetites and desires, allowing us to find fortitude in bitterness and ecstatic feasting amid contrition. Through an examination of her Eucharistic depictions and her spiritual recalibration of creaturely appetite, this essay will argue that Teresa’s Grove of the Infirm imparts significant contributions for understanding the paradox of asceticism and abundance today.
[i] Through Delores Williams’s Sisters in the Wilderness, for example, we see more clearly the dangers of glorifying suffering, including the suffering of Christ’s crucifixion.
[ii] Teresa de Cartagena, The Writings of Teresa de Cartagena, trans. Dayle Seidenspinner Núñez (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer, 1998), 39.
[iii] Teresa de Cartagena, The Writings of Teresa de Cartagena, 46.
[iv] Teresa de Cartagena, The Writings of Teresa de Cartagena, 46-47.
[v] Connie Scarborough, Viewing Disability in Medieval Spanish Texts: Disgraced or Graced (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018), 102.
[vi] Laura S. Muñoz Pérez, "Teresa De Cartagena y Las Estrategias Confesionales De La Arboleda De Los Enfermos," Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 89, no. 7 (2012): 700.
[vii] Kyle L. Galbraith, “Broken Bodies of God: The Christian Eucharist as a Locus for Ecological Reflection,” Worldviews 13, no. 3 (2009): 283–304.
[viii] Ann Astell, Eating Beauty: The Eucharist and the Spiritual Arts of the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2016), 4.
This paper explores how fifteenth-century Castilian mystic Teresa de Cartagena understands the Eucharist as a sacrifice of asceticism and abundance. As a nun in the sonically-fluent liturgical context of a Cistercian convent, she wrote Grove of the Infirm, which outlines her theology of suffering via her experience of deafness. In conversation with scholars of medieval theology and the Eucharist, this paper will: 1) examine Teresa’s theological deployment of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb and the Lukan Great Feast, and 2) demonstrate how this sacramentality argues for a transformation of creaturely consumption. In an era when our excessive consumption impinges on the flourishing of creaturely life, Teresa understands sacrifice as both costly and nourishing; as profoundly ascetic and feastly. Ultimately, this essay proposes that Teresa’s Eucharistic imagination lends an important framework for participating in the asceticism and abundance of Christ's sacrifice, which compels communion with God and with one another.