of Avila." Elsewhere Father Banez says: [14] "Of one of her
books, namely, the one in which she recorded her life and the
manner of prayer whereby God had led her, I can say that she
composed it to the end that her confessors might know her the
better and instruct her, and also that it might encourage and
animate those who learn from it the great mercy God had shown
her, a great sinner as she humbly acknowledged herself to be.
This book was already written when I made her acquaintance, her
previous confessors having given her permission to that effect.
Among these was a licentiate of the Dominican Order, the Reverend
Father Pedro Ibanez, reader of Divinity at Avila. She afterwards
completed and recast this book." These two passages of Banez
have led the biographers of the Saint to think that she wrote her
Life twice, first in 1561 and the following year, completing it
in the house of Dona Luisa de la Cerda at Toledo, in the month of
June; and secondly between 1563 and 1565 at St. Joseph's Convent
of Avila. They have been at pains to point out a number of
places which could not have been in the "first" Life, but must
have been added in the second; [15] and they took it for granted
that the letter with which the book as we now have it concludes,
was addressed to Father Ibanez in 1562, when the Saint sent him
the "first" Life. It bears neither address nor date, but from
its contents I am bound to conclude that it was written in 1565,
that it refers to the "second" Life, and that whomsoever it was
addressed to, it cannot have been to Father Ibanez, who was
already dead at the time. [16] Saint Teresa asks the writer to
send a copy of the book to Father Juan de Avila. Now we know
from her letters that as late as 1568 this request had not been
complied with, and that St. Teresa had to write twice to Dona
Luisa for this purpose; [17] but if she had already given these