La guirlande térésienne: A nineteenth-century “Teresian bard” sings the praises of Teresa of Avila

Abstract

This study presents and analyses a newly discovered French manuscript by the nineteenth-century Jesuit Marcel Bouix, a translator, scholar and devotee of Teresa of Avila. In the work, a remarkable series of 19 poems entitled La guirlande térésienne, Bouix praises Teresa and other important Carmelite figures, and displays an intimate familiarity with Teresian spirituality and history. It is a unique document whose equivalent has not been seen elsewhere, and in it Marcel Bouix, already the most productive Teresian scholar in France of his time or of any previous age, sought to make his the definitive French voice of Teresa of Avila.