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WorkTeresa of Ávila

Meditations on the Song of Songs

Burned at a confessor's order, her commentary on the Bible's love poem survived only in copies.

by Teresa of Ávila85 passages held

  • Spanish, the original language
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Original title
Conceptos del amor de Dios
First published
(aged 52)
Original language
Spanish

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Overview

Diego de Yanguas, a Dominican theologian and one of Teresa of Ávila's confessors, judged it unfitting for a woman to explain the Song of Songs, and at his order she burned her manuscript. What she had written for her nuns meditates on a few lines of that poem, starting with the bride's request for a kiss, and argues that words a reader cannot fully understand may still carry her toward God. Teresa says in the prologue that she had no Latin, yet the verses moved her more than the devotional books she could follow. Women, she argues, should not be kept from enjoying Scripture; what they should not do is dispute and teach it without showing their thoughts to learned men. She compares herself to a shepherd boy staring at a king's brocade, wondering how it was made. The 1559 Index drawn up by Fernando de Valdés, the Inquisitor General, had banned Scripture in Spanish, and in 1572 the Inquisition jailed Luis de León, the Salamanca professor, in Valladolid for more than four years, partly over his Spanish version of the same poem. When she wrote the book is disputed: some date it to about 1567, others to her years as prioress of the Incarnation convent in Ávila, from 1571 to 1574. Copies outlived the burning. On 10 June 1575, in Valladolid, one was approved by Domingo Báñez, the Dominican theologian who examined her Life that same year, and in 1611 Jerónimo Gracián, her close collaborator in the Carmelite reform, printed the text in Brussels under the title Conceptos del amor de Dios (Thoughts on the Love of God), a name Teresa had never given it.

Key concepts

Why does Teresa read the bride's kiss as a plea for peace?

Because a kiss is the sign of peace and great friendship between two people. When the Song opens with 'Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth', Teresa hears the soul asking God for that peace. She ties it to the friendship God made with humankind by becoming human, and asks why souls should not dare to request it for themselves, however bold the words sound.

What does Teresa mean by false peace?

A calm that comes from the world, the flesh or the devil rather than from God. Her examples are concrete: a sinner so at ease in his vices that his conscience never stirs, the rich who avoid grave sins and feel all is done, nuns lulled by praise or bodily comfort, small faults allowed to pass. Such peace, she warns, is really a road to perpetual war.

What does 'your breasts are better than wine' mean for Teresa?

It describes a soul nourished by God without understanding how. In the highest prayer, Teresa writes, the soul rests in God's arms, sustained by divine milk. It is like an infant who does not know how it grows, or even how it feeds, since the milk is often put into its mouth without any effort of its own. The mind contributes nothing; the gift is simply received.

What are the flowers the bride asks for?

Works of service to God and to one's neighbour. Fainting with love, the bride says 'Sustain me with flowers', and Teresa reads this as a request to do great works, even at the cost of the delight of prayer. Martha and Mary then work almost together, because the outward deed springs from the inward love, and flowers grown on that tree spread their scent to many.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Words beyond understanding

Can words a reader cannot fully construe still carry her toward God? Teresa, who had no Latin, stakes her little book on the answer yes.

The verses of the Song of Songs moved Teresa more than the devotional books she could follow, though she understood neither the Latin nor, often, the Spanish. One word of God, she reasons, holds a thousand mysteries, so failing to grasp it is no reason to stop delighting in it. She pictures herself as a shepherd boy gazing at a king's brocade. Women should not be kept from that pleasure, she argues. What they must not do is dispute and teach Scripture without showing their thoughts to learned men.

  • scriptural interpretation
  • faith
  • humility
  • obedience
  • praise
  • mysticism

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True peace and false

What if the calm a person feels is the most dangerous thing about them? Reading the kiss as a sign of peace, Teresa sets out to tell God's peace from its counterfeits.

A sinner at ease in his vices, Teresa warns, has a peace that shows he and the devil are friends. For her nuns she lists the world's counterfeits: riches that make an occasional alms feel like enough, praise that calls them saints, the body's love of comfort, small faults allowed to pass until they no longer register. There has to be war in this life, she concludes. A soul that is always quiet worries her more than one beset by temptation, because the souls who struggle advance further.

  • conscience
  • self-deception
  • sin
  • courage
  • poverty
  • religious life
  • detachment
  • virtue

Enter a dialogue

Sustain me with flowers

When a soul overwhelmed by God's love can bear no more, what does it ask for? In Teresa's reading, the bride's surprising answer is work for others.

At God's breast the soul is fed like an infant who does not know how it grows. In the wine cellar it falls into a blessed drunkenness in which the mind sleeps and love stays awake, and it rests in the shade of the one it longed for. Then, fainting with love, it asks to be sustained with flowers, which Teresa reads as works of service. Her example is the Samaritan woman, who left the Lord himself to bring her townspeople to him.

  • divine love
  • divine grace
  • grace
  • contemplation
  • ecstasy
  • divine union
  • service
  • charity
  • spiritual transformation
  • spiritual growth
  • love
  • suffering

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held
85
distinct concepts
149
by passages held, corpus-wide
#542

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “divine love” and “mysticism”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 20 pairings. 73 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
divine lovemysticism7
contemplationdivine love5
divine lovereligious experience5
contemplationreligious experience4
contemplationservice3
divine gracehumility3
divine loveservice3
faithhumility3
divine gracedivine love2
divine gracemysticism2
divine lovehumility2
humilityservice2
mysticismreligious experience2
contemplationdivine grace1
divine gracefaith1
divine gracereligious experience1
divine graceservice1
divine lovefaith1
faithservice1
mysticismservice1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1565 The Book of Her Life (Libro de la vida)

    The earliest of her books sets an account of her prayer inside the story of her life; its later chapters tell of founding San José in Ávila, the first convent of her reform, in 1562.

     ES
  2. 1567 Meditations on the Song of Songs (Conceptos del amor de Dios) you are here ES
  3. 1577 The Interior Castle (Las moradas del castillo interior)

    Meant to replace the confiscated Life, it returns to that book's ground a dozen years on, now laid out as seven stages and addressed to the nuns of her reform.

     ES
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