Teresa de Cartagena

Born into a prominent religious and literary family in Burgos, Spain, the writer Teresa de Cartagena lost her hearing in childhood and had become a nun by 1453. She inadvertently became involved in the feminist debates of her time with her treatise, the Arboleda de los enfermos (Grove of the Infirm), a meditation on disability as a divine gift. The public reaction was vitriolic: assuming no woman possessed the intellect required to write such a text, critics accused her of plagiarism. Teresa responded with an erudite defense of her authorship, the Admiración operum Dey (Wonder at the Works of God)