The year 1997 saw the centenary of the death of St Therese of Lisieux, and the events associated with this centenary are worthy of analysis on several counts. Not only did a new and scholarly centenary edition of her complete works appear, but she was also proclaimed a Doctor of the Church. The centenary volumes contain, in addition to the work for which she is best known—Histoire d'une âme ('Story of a Soul')—her poems, plays, and corres pondence. This article considers the discrepancies which may arise between the 'authorised version' of a saint's life, and his or her 'meaning' as perceived by other responding constituencies. It examines the official Vatican summary of Therese's life (in the 1997 Apostolic Letter Divini Amoris Scientia), in terms both of what it includes and of what it omits. It argues that the Theresian profile is in fact more complex and more potentially subversive than her curriculum vitae as cited by the magisterium might suggest. These alternative conceptions of Therese are explored in the second section of this article, where the Vatican representation of Therese is counterpointed by assessments of three contemporary 'literary' treatments of her life—two plays and a film—which appeared in the decade leading up to the centenary. On 19 October 1997, Pope John Paul II solemnly proclaimed Therese of Lisieux a Doctor of the Church. It was the centenary year of her death, at the age of twenty-four. Therese is only the third woman to be accorded this recognition, and is the youngest of all Doctors of the Church—male or female. She had been declared patroness of France exactly fifty years earlier, in 1947. Her canonisation, in 1925, had occurred less than thirty years after her death. The speediness of this process may be adjudged by comparison with that applied to Therese's great heroine, Joan of Arc, who died in 1431 but was not canonized until 1920. Therese Martin was born in 1873, the youngest of five surviving daughters of Louis and Zelie Martin. Both parents had attempted unsuccessfully in their youth to join religious orders. Yet all five of their daughters were to become nuns. In 1888, at the early age of fifteen, Therese joined two of her older sisters in the enclosed Carmelite community of Lisieux, Normandy. She was © Oxford University Press 1999 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.211 on Mon, 08 Aug 2016 06:26:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 2 THERESE OF LISIEUX to spend only nine years in the Carmel. During that time, she fulfilled various offices, such as sacristan and novice mistress. Photographs of her in the white veil of the novice show a chubby-cheeked girl, apparently healthy and contented. Yet in 1896 she began to show definitive signs of tuberculosis, including haemorrhaging and exhaustion. The illness developed lengthily and painfully. She spent her last weeks in the convent infirmary, subject to many of the well-meaning but barbaric therapies of the day, and died on 30 September 1897. An apparently unremarkable life was rendered remarkable by Therese's autobiography, Histoire d'une âme ('Story of a Soul'), which was published in 1898, the year after her death. Composed at the behest of her superiors, the narrative, written in three separate manuscript notebooks, describes Therese's spiritual development from childhood until some ten weeks before her death. An immediate success, it was rapidly translated into some fifty languages, earning widespread recognition for its author. In the Apostolic Letter marking the award of the doctorate,1 Pope John Paul II characterises the reception accorded Therese as 'quick, universal and constant' (DHS, 1). The Letter proceeds to examine the background to her life, and to lay out the basis on which her status is deemed to rest. These justifications will be considered within this article, since they have an import ant bearing upon 'authorised' concepts of sainthood in the modern world. It is the contention of this article, however, that post-hoc rationalisation may create a gap between the official mandate of a saint, as established by pontifical decree, and his or her 'meaning' as perceived by other responding constituencies.