The Spanish Minerva: Imagining Teresa of Avila as Patron Saint in Seventeenth-Century Spain

Abstract

In the early seventeenth-century, a movement began to elevate Teresa of Avila to co-patron saint of Spain (alongside the traditional patron, Santiago); this movement changed the ways in which the saint was imagined in both visual images and metaphors. Through a close reading of treatises and sermons, this article examines how Teresa's elevation to national patron saint required a distinctive symbolism that reflected national, rather than ecclesiastical, concerns. She was therefore transformed from author and founder into the "Spanish Minerva." By exploring this transformation, the article investigates the continual process of construction that saints' cults underwent and the roles played by conflict and gender in this process.