Authority in María de Ajofrín and Teresa de Cartagena, a defy?

Abstract

This article analyses the resources used by María de Ajofrín and Teresa de Cartagena in order to create their own authority as female authors of their testimony. Even though both of them start out from similar circumstances, their solutions differ considerably. María achieves recognition thanks to her visions and the physical effects of a direct contact with God in principie, although it will be a notarial minute that confirms it in the end. Teresa establishes hers thanks to a religious experience impelled by the reason which provides her with a new knowledge of herself, her life's purpose, and her illness. Both of these testimonies defy the tradition for they avoid any masculine intermediaries in their contact with the Divine. In any case, both defies ended up being neutralised: Maria's by means of the Church's assumption of it; Teresa's by means of exclusion.