Page:Saint Theresa of Avila (Gilman 1889).djvu/8

vi the woman Theresa, with all her strength and tenderness, her courage and humility, without withdrawing her wholly from the prismatic atmosphere of religious fancy in which she was born and bred, has been the writer’s earnest purpose. If Theresa, the mediæval saint, illumined and exalted by the fervor of religious zealots, be unreal and fantastic, Theresa the prosaic itinerant prioress is a figure for whom no one can arouse the least enthusiasm. To give to this famous woman the place in history which she so richly deserves, without disengaging from her life the exquisite legends that have twined around it so tenderly for centuries, has been no easy matter.

The facts herein given about Theresa’s life are all historic; the many quotations from her letters will indicate this. The multitudinous legends are only the natural outgrowth of the age in which she lived; without them her character would still retain all the essential elements of greatness.

In the letters and memories of Charles Kingsley is to be found the following passage. He had been writing a life of Saint Elizabeth of