Saint of Gottarendura?

The Spanish town of Avila (pop. 24,400) was in an uproar last week. "Sacrilegious!" muttered the patrons of the coffee houses on the Plaza de Santa Teresa. "Blundering lie!" thundered the head of the tourist committee. Mayor Jose Maria Martis wrote furious letters to the Bishop of Salamanca, the Cardinal Primate of Spain, the Superior General of the Discalced Carmelites in Rome and the Spanish government. He, and almost everyone else in Avila, wanted a book suppressed and its author reprimanded-- if not shot at dawn.

The book in question was Volume One of a scholarly biography of the great 16th Century mystic, St. Teresa of Avila. Its author was the learned father superior of Saragossa's monastery of the Discalced Carmelites, which had been St. Teresa's own order.

The crime of Fray Efren de la Madre de Dios, in the eyes of Avila, had been to state flatly that St. Teresa was not born in Avila (where tourists are shown the very room she first opened her eyes in) but at her family's winter place in Gottarendura, some eight miles away. And, as if this were not enough, Fray Efren claimed that Teresa's grandfather had lived under a cloud for having converted himself and his family to Judaism (probably for business reasons), though later, under the urgings of the Inquisition, he repented and rejoined the church.

Thus Spain last week was treated to the rare spectacle of laymen trying to suppress a religious book. The hierarchy, having given its imprimatur, was not likely to withdraw it. Historic truth must be placed before petty local susceptibilities, editorialized Madrid's Catholic daily, Ya, adding that the behavior of the saint's grandfather proved that divine grace is not a hereditary privilege.

In Gottarendura, meanwhile, citizens were discussing which house to pick as St. Teresa's "real birthplace."

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