Teresa Sampsonia
Teresa Sampsonia was a noblewoman of the Safavid Empire of Iran. She was the wife of Elizabethan English adventurer Robert Shirley, whom she accompanied on his travels and embassies across Europe. Teresa has been described as someone who subverted patriarchal gender roles common to the Muslim and Christian cultures of her time.
About Teresa Sampsonia in brief
Teresa Sampsonia was a noblewoman of the Safavid Empire of Iran. She was the wife of Elizabethan English adventurer Robert Shirley, whom she accompanied on his travels and embassies across Europe. Teresa was received by many of the royal houses of Europe, such as English prince Henry Frederick and Queen Anne. Following the death of her husband from dysentery in 1628, and due to impediments from grandees at the court, and the authorities, during the reign of Abbas’s successor and grandson Safi, Teresa decided to leave Iran. As a pious Christian, and because of her love for her husband, Teresa had Shirley’s remains transported to Rome from Isfahan and reburied. On the headstone of their mutual grave she mentions their travels and refers to her noble Circassian origins. Thanks to her exploits, Teresa has been described by Bernadette Andrea as someone who subverted patriarchal gender roles common to the Muslim and Christian cultures of her time. Due to their hybrid identities and adventures, Teresa and her husband became the subject of several contemporary literary and visual works. Nevertheless, the story of Teresa as an important woman of the 17th century has been largely overshadowed and obscured by the tale of herhusband Robert and his brothers. The travels of Teresa and Robert Shirley were recorded in many contemporaneous English, Italian, Latin and Spanish sources, including eyewitness accounts. Other sources that help create a modern scholarly account of Teresa include the only document she is known to have written in English, paintings, and to a lesser extent, official letters signed by King Abbas the Great.
Teresa was born in 1589 into a noble Orthodox Christian Circassian family in the Safavids. On 2 February 1608, with the approval of her aunt and Abbas, Teresa married Robert Shirley in Iran. At about the time of their wedding, she was baptised as a Roman Catholic by the Carmelites with the name Teresa. Her baptismal name derives from the founder of the Discalced Carmelite, Teresa of Ávila. Teresa accompanied Robert on his diplomatic missions for Shah Abbas to England and other royal houses in Europe. When they set off on their first embassy trip, Robert was captured by his enemies. Teresa reportedly managed to save him and put to flight the attackers; for this, the Carmalite records praised her as “a true Amazon”. For this, Teresa was awarded the title of Countatine by the Emperor Rudolph II of Poland in 1609. Teresa and Shirley left for the Dutch Republic and subsequently sailed from Florence to England, where they arrived around the beginning of August 1611. They then went to Valladolid and Madrid where Teresa came to know the Mother of Jesus, particularly Mother Beatrix de Jesus from whom she received a relic of Jesus. She also visited Prague, where her husband bestowed on her the title “Countatine” He arrived in Rome on 27 September 1609 and met Ali Qoli Beg Beg, the ambassador, with whom he had an audience with Pope Paul V.
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This page is based on the article Teresa Sampsonia published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 05, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
