Joana Serrado

Iberian mysticism is usually synonymous with the life and work of saints as Teresa
of Ávila and John of the Cross. Notwithstanding the spiritual production in the end sixteenth and seventeenth-century, Portuguese mystics have been still rendered merely as pious or ascetic, being relegated as an epiphenomenon of recollection mysticism and other Spanish Franciscan modalities.
My paper intends to show the work of Portuguese women mystics, by showing their unique contribution to the field of mysticism. I will focus on the novel notion of anxiousness (the English translation of Portuguese ancias) by showing how this concept is on the fringes of mystical theology and philosophy of emotions. Whereas the famous mystic Teresa of Avila warns against the state of melancholia, her Portuguese disciple, Joana de Jesus, considers it as a necessary way to achieve consciousness of the Divine

This chapter describes the context in which Teresa of Avila and other religious women inspired the women to strive. It discusses the close reading of the sources, showing how these Portuguese religious women rendered a notion of will based on an interior visionary knowledge that enabled them into public action and examines its impact on their emerging, self-perceived political identity. Searching for God can been considered an inner process that requires self-knowledge and a will to act when choosing the best ways to reach the ultimate goal. When considering the Portuguese seventeenth century, where many religious women become subjects and characters in an unrestricted search for God and their humanity, the notion of willfullness becomes crucial.

Of the many attributes the Christian tradition could ascribe to God—omnipotence, omniscience, perfect goodness—the ability to play (and enjoy) cards is scarcely the most common. This trait is first attributed to him in the texts of the seventeenth-century visionary mystic, Mariana da Purificação. The Portuguese nun, who was born in the Lisbon

Does fear enable or unable action? Could the writings of a 17th century Portuguese religious woman contribute to the emergence of a subjectivity that empowers women and intellectual production?

In my PhD thesis I conducted a multilayered study on Joana de Jesus, a Cistercian nun who lived in Portugal in two convents and wrote about her daily life, the divine encounters she had with Christ and the knowledge she acquired through those mystical contacts. Joana de Jesus’s teachings were deeply influenced by Rhine mysticism, Modern Devotio and Spanish Golden mystics such as Luis de Granada and Teresa de Ávila. From these traditions she developed the notion of ‘ancias’, which I translated as ‘anxiousness’. A close reading of Joana de Jesus’ shows how anxiousness is a source of intellectual empowerment and religious leadership in her community.
Her anxiousness is a human and divine attribute: it is a yearning for true imitation of Christ, physically and spiritually. Joana’s anxiousness leads to a true, scriptural and devotional knowledge of life and community, sharing in God’s divine wisdom, which allows her emergence of a subject – usually seen as an anomaly in Western philosophy. In the thesis I confront Joana’s notion of anxiousness with two schools of contemporary philosophy, first canonic feministphilosophy (De Beauvoir and Irigaray) about the design of a female subject and secondly to the Portuguese philosophy of saudade, which like Joana de Jesus’s concentrates on yearning as a constituent of subjectivity.

Filósofas na Idade Média. Beguinas e amar sagrado

Apesar de serem continuamente excluídas dos currículos académicos e silenciadas no cânone da história da filosofia, a Idade Média ocidental cristã assistiu a uma explosão de vozes femininas místicas em vernáculo, em especial a partir do século XIII, com indagações de cariz teológico e filosófico, instituindo uma verdadeira concorrência ao pensamento monástico e especulativo masculinista vigente na época.

2018 é o ano em que se celebra o centenário da morte de Beatriz de Nazaré, prioresa Cisterciense flamenga, autora do tratado, Sete Maneiras de Amor Sagrado, obra que se traduz agora para o português.
Amy Hollywood apresentará duas sessões sobre a filosofia das beguinas, em que discutirá temas como subjetividade, agência, homoerotismo, performatividade, retórica e patentes na filosofia das beguinas e feminismo contemporâneo.

5 de Junho, 14h30, Amy Hollywood, “Philosophy of the Beguines” Apresentação de José Francisco Meirinhos,  Sala do Departamento de Filosofia, FLUP (Torre B).

6 de Junho, 18h, Palacete Visconde de Balsemão, Pr. Carlos Alberto, Porto.
Amy Hollywood apresenta o livro Beatriz de Nazaré, Sete maneiras de amor sagrado, traduzido por Arie Pos, introduções de Arie Pos, Joana Serrado e Maria Pinho.
Amy Hollwood é professora de Harvard Divinity School, autora de The Soul as Virgin Wife: Mechthild of Magdeburg, Margerite of Porete and Meister Eckhart (1998), Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference and the Demands of History (2002);  Cambridge  Companion to Christian Mysticism (2012) e Acute Melancholia: Mysticism, History and the Study of Religion

Arie Pos, PhD em Literatura Comparada, Tradutor de literatura neerlandesa e portuguesa, Joana Serrado, PhD em Teologia e Religão. Postdoc no Instituto de Filosofia, Porto, Maria Pinho, Mestranda em Estudos Medievais, Porto.

Iberian mysticism is usually synonymous with the life and work of saints as Teresa
of Ávila and John of the Cross. Notwithstanding the spiritual production in the end sixteenth and seventeenth-century, Portuguese mystics have been still rendered merely as pious or ascetic, being relegated as an epiphenomenon of recollection mysticism and other Spanish Franciscan modalities.
My paper intends to show the work of Portuguese women mystics, by showing their unique contribution to the field of mysticism. I will focus on the novel notion of anxiousness (the English translation of Portuguese ancias) by showing how this concept is on the fringes of mystical theology and philosophy of emotions. Whereas the famous mystic Teresa of Avila warns against the state of melancholia, her Portuguese disciple, Joana de Jesus, considers it as a necessary way to achieve consciousness of the Divine.

Joana Serrado ‘Sequedades espirituais em Teresa de Ávila e na sua discípula portuguesa de Joana de Jesus’.pp.89-96.  in Joaquim Teixeira, Coord. in  ‘A Reforma Teresina em Portugal’. Congresso Internacional. Ordem dos Carmelitas Descalços. Fátima: Edições dos Carmelitas Descalços. 2015.

Course Description: The interdependence of philosophy and religion has already revealed the privileged influence that speculative mysticism (Meister Eckhart) and negative theology (Dionysius) has had on Western philosophers (Hegel, William James, Heidegger, Derrida  et al). However, these links have stressed apophatic and abstract categories and neglected therefore the role of the sensorial in the gendering of subjectivity.
Recently, in new efforts to rethink the place of women in European History of Philosophy, Christian visionary women mystics have appeared as major influences and inspirations for shaping new configurations of experiences of embodiment, especially in the contemporary Continental (French) tradition. This course will analyse a set of medieval and baroque texts (Beatrice of Nazareth, Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Margarite of Porete, Angela Foligno, Joan of Arc, Teresa of Avila, Jeanne Guyon) and their contemporary philosophical readers (Jacques Lacan, George Bataille, Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray, and Michel de Certeau) about those ties, bonds and influences between mystics and philosophers, and how they shed light on the making of an ecstatic philosophy. Each 2 hour class is divided by an introductory lecture and a lively discussion of the assigned reading text for that session. Course Readings This course is inspired by Amy Hollywood's book Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference, and the Demands of History. University of Chicago Press, 2002, which is recommended to be read in full. Students are expected to read articles fully and thoroughly (Week 1) but during other weeks, the students have the freedom to skim through the books, familiarise themselves with the topics, and choose the chapters they are most interested in for discussion in class, and later chose a topic for a presentation. On Week 4, each group of students will watch a different cinematographic rendition of the life of Joan of Arc.