Teresa of Avila: The Interior Castle

​Teresa of Avila: The Interior Castle. The Classics of Western Spirituality.
Translators: Kiernan Kavanaugh and Otillo Rodriguez.
Paulist Press International. 1979. ISBN: 9780809122547.
 
Teresa of Ávila’s The Interior Castle is a 16th‑century mystical treatise describing the soul’s journey to union with God using the image of a many‑roomed crystal castle. Teresa asks us to imagine the soul as a luminous crystal or diamond castle with many mansions or dwelling places, with God dwelling in the innermost centre.  The journey of the spiritual life is the movement from the outer rooms, closer to the castle walls, into the deepest interior mansion where intimate spiritual marriage with God takes place. She distinguishes seven main mansions, each of which in reality contains many rooms, indicating subtle gradations of experience and virtue.  The text was written in obedience to her superiors as a book on prayer, but prayer here means an entire way of living in continual relationship with God, not just verbal devotions.
 
Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD, and Otillo Rodriguez, OCD, are Discalced Carmelite scholars renowned for their acclaimed English translation of St. Teresa of Ávila’s The Interior Castle. Their 1979 Paulist Press edition (part of the Classics of Western Spirituality series) is widely praised for its accessibility and fidelity to Teresa’s 16th-century Spanish mysticism.