Teresa of Ávila

Saint Teresa of Jesus
Saint Teresa in a copy of an original by Fray Juan de la Miseria
Doctor of the Church proclaimed on 27 September 1970 by Pope Paul VI
Born	Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda Dávila y Ahumada 28 March 1515 Ávila, Spain
Died	15 October 1582 (aged 67) Alba de Tormes, Spain
Venerated in	Catholic Church
Beatified	24 April 1614 by Paul V
Canonized	12 March 1622 by Gregory XV
Feast	15 October 27 August Transverberation of St. Teresa (Vetus Ordo) 26 August Transverberation of St. Teresa (Novus Ordo)
Patronage	Of the Quartermaster Corps of the Spanish Army (ET): "Saint Teresa of Jesus, whose feast is celebrated on 15 October, has been the patroness of the Quartermaster Corps since the creation of the Corps in 1915, as a result of its strong ties to the city of Ávila, where its members were trained, and of the organizational qualities, prudence and austerity with which popular belief has always distinguished this Saint." Of writers Spain and Co-patroness of the Republic of Guatemala.

Saint Teresa of Jesus (Gotarrendura or Ávila, 28 March 1515 – Alba de Tormes, 4/15 October 1582) was a Spanish nun, founder of the Order of Discalced Carmelites —a branch of the Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel—, mystic and writer. She is also known simply as Saint Teresa of Ávila. Her secular name was Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda Dávila y Ahumada. She was beatified in 1614 (just over thirty years after her death), canonized in 1622 and proclaimed a Doctor of the Catholic Church in 1970 during the pontificate of Paul VI.

Together with Saint John of the Cross, she is considered the summit of Christian experiential mysticism and one of the great teachers of the spiritual life of the Church.

Family

Her name was Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda Dávila y Ahumada, although she generally used the name Teresa de Ahumada until she began the reform, at which point she changed her name to Teresa of Jesus. She was named after her grandmother, Teresa de las Cuevas, although at that time there was no saint with that name.

Remains of her mother's ancestral manor house in Gotarrendura, where Teresa spent part of her childhood.

Teresa's father was Alonso Sánchez de Cepeda, a hijodalgo a fuero de España, who was listed in the Suertes de los Fielazgos in the Cuadrilla of Blasco Jimeno, or of San Juan, of the City of Ávila. He was the son of Juan Sánchez of Toledo, of Jewish converso origin. From 1440, Juan Sánchez was a wealthy merchant of cloth and silks. In 1469 he married Inés de Cepeda, born in Tordesillas. In 1485, after the establishment of the Tribunal of the Inquisition in the city, Juan Sánchez voluntarily confessed before it and received a minor penalty. Juan Sánchez settled with his whole family in Ávila in 1493. Nevertheless, he continued to travel regularly to Toledo and also to Salamanca, where he had business dealings with Alonso de Fonseca, Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela. He set up a cloth shop on Calle Endrino in Toledo. He also engaged in collecting taxes for the Royal Treasury, the municipality and the ecclesiastical authorities. He bought land in Ortigosa de Rioalmar, in the municipality of Manjabálago. After the year 1500 he gave up his business as a merchant to live from agriculture. Later he was able to obtain recognition of his hidalguía with an ejecutoria by filing a lawsuit before the Real Chancillería of Ciudad Real (which in 1500 moved to that of Granada), obtaining its recognition in 1500. His children were Pero, Alonso, Ruy and Francisco. They dealt with fiscal matters and agricultural holdings. They married daughters of notables and even of regidores. In 1519 the municipality of Manjagábalo included the brothers on the list of taxpayers, and they appealed to the Chancillería of Valladolid. It recognized their exemption from taxes on grounds of hidalguía on 16 November 1520. After an appeal, they obtained another favorable ruling from the Audiencia on 26 August 1522. On 16 November 1523 the Chancillería of Valladolid granted them a document attesting to their hidalguía.

Alonso Sánchez de Cepeda married twice. In 1505 he married Catalina del Peso y Henao. At that time he had considerable financial resources and was able to give her jewels and costly clothing. For her part, Catalina received a dowry of 350 000 maravedís. In November 1505 they bought the old Casa de la Moneda (Mint), in the aristocratic quarter of Ávila, for 80 000 maravedís, to be their private residence. With her he had two children: María, in 1506; and Juan Vázquez de Cepeda, in 1507. His wife died of bubonic plague on 8 September 1507. After being widowed, he married Beatriz de Ahumada on 14 May 1509, and had another ten children: Hernando, in 1510; Rodrigo, in 1513; Teresa, in 1515; Juan (de Ahumada), in 1517; Lorenzo, in 1519; Antonio, in 1520; Pedro, in 1521; Jerónimo, in 1522; Agustín, in 1527; and Juana, in 1528. Alonso lived off his agricultural lands in Ortigosa de Rioalmar, province of Ávila, and Olmedo, province of Valladolid. Since he had twelve children in his care and those lands were not especially productive, his wealth diminished. Beatriz died in 1528, probably after the birth of her last daughter. Alonso was able to give a dowry of 200 000 maravedís to his daughter María in 1531 for her marriage to Martín de Guzmán y Barrientos, but he had to take out loans and mortgage some lands. María and Martín went to live in Castellanos de la Cañada, in the municipality of Zapardiel de la Cañada. Juana married Juan de Ovalle. Alonso died on 24 December 1543.

All the sons were soldiers. Juan Vázquez was an infantry Captain in north Africa and died in combat in Italy around 1528. Hernando was the first to go to America, on an unknown date. He died in the City of Pasto, New Kingdom of Granada, in 1570. He was a Regidor and Encomendero. Rodrigo joined the expedition of Pedro de Mendoza. He departed from Seville in August 1535 and reached the Río de la Plata. He died in a battle against the Mapuche on 10 August 1557 in Chile. Teresa considered him a martyr, because he had died fighting for the faith.

Jerónimo and Lorenzo set out in 1540 on the expedition of Cristóbal Vaca de Castro, sent by Charles I to remedy the civil war that had broken out in present-day Peru between Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro. Hernando, Lorenzo, Jerónimo and Antonio were among the troops who went to aid the Viceroy Blasco Núñez Vela and fought in the Battle of Iñaquito, Ecuador, on 18 January 1546, against Gonzalo Pizarro. The Viceroy died and the four brothers were wounded. Antonio died on 20 January from the wound he received in that battle. Later, Lorenzo and Jerónimo served the new viceroy sent by Charles I, Pedro de la Gasca, and received their brother Agustín in 1546. Agustín took part in the Battle of Jaquijahuana in 1548, where the rebels of Gonzalo Pizarro were definitively defeated. Shortly afterwards, Agustín returned to Spain. Lorenzo was Corregidor in several cities founded by the Spanish and fought against attacks by the Indians. He returned to Spain in 1575.

Pedro took part in the expeditions made from the islands of the Caribbean to Florida and other regions of North America.

Biography

Childhood

The Convent of Santa Teresa was built in the 17th century on the site where the saint's house stood in Ávila.

Statue of Saint Teresa of Jesus beside the Alcázar Gate of the walls of Ávila.

Teresa was born at around 5 in the morning on Wednesday, March 28, 1515. She is usually considered to have been born in the City of Ávila, but she may have been born in the country house in the municipality of Gotarrendura, in the Province of Ávila. In any case, she was baptized in the Church of San Juan in the City of Ávila. Her godparents were María del Águila, daughter of Francisco Pajares, a friend of the family, and a certain "Vela Núñez", who may have been related to Blasco Núñez Vela, first Viceroy of Peru.

As Teresa herself relates in the writings intended for her confessor and collected in the book Vida de santa Teresa de Jesús, from her earliest years she showed a vehement and passionate imagination. Her father, fond of reading, owned some romanceros; this reading and pious practices began to awaken the heart and intelligence of little Teresa at six or seven years of age.

Fond of reading chivalric romances, she wrote:

I began to wear finery and to wish to please by looking well, taking great care of my hands and hair and perfumes, and all the vanities I could have in this, which were plenty, as I was very fastidious... I had some first cousins... they were almost my age, a little older than me; we were always together, they had great love for me, and in all the things that pleased them, I kept up conversation with them and heard about their fancies and childish doings, none of them good... I took all the harm from a female relative (believed to be a cousin), who was often at our house... My conversation and talks were with her, because she helped me in all the pastimes I wanted, and even drew me into them, and shared her conversations and vanities with me. Until I dealt with her, which was at the age of fourteen... I do not think I had left God through mortal sin.

She also liked the lives of the saints. She was greatly impressed by the heroism of those who preferred to die rather than renounce their faith. She also meditated a great deal on hell and paradise being for all eternity. With her brother Rodrigo, two years older than her, she would repeat the words "Forever, ever, ever".

Her father was a man of a very enlightened faith and a lover of reading, who also taught these habits to his children. Some of the books he owned were Retablo de la vida de Cristo (Juan de Padilla, the Cartujano, 1505), the religious poems of Fernán Pérez de Guzmán, a treatise on the Mass and a book titled Siete pecados (by an unknown author and of unknown date). Teresa's uncle, whom she visited often, had the same literary tastes and lent the young girl books of religious contemplation such as the Tercer abecedario espiritual (Francisco de Osuna, 1527). In her biography she says that, as a child, she was always reading some book.

In the future, she would write in the constitutions of the convents:

Let the prioress see to it that there are good books, especially the Cartujanos, Flos Sanctorum, Contemptus Mundi [Contempt of the World], Oratorio de Religiosos, those of Friar Luis de Granada, and of Father Friar Pedro de Alcántara, because this sustenance is in part as necessary for the soul as eating is for the body.

Those first readings led her to fantasize and to undertake a childish escapade with Rodrigo to "the lands of the Moors", in order to be beheaded for the faith. They took some provisions and, for when these ran out, they planned to beg for alms. According to tradition, they were found by their uncle, Francisco Álvarez de Cepeda, when they were at the Cross of Los Cuatro Postes, and were taken back home, where they were reprimanded.

Convinced that their plan was unfeasible, the two siblings agreed to become hermits. The two siblings and their cousins built hermitages out of stones on the grounds of the country house in Gotarrendura. Teresa wrote:

In an orchard at our house, we tried as best we could to make hermitages, piling up little stones, which soon fell down on us, and so we found no remedy for our desire in anything... I gave alms as I could, and I could do little. I sought solitude to pray my devotions, which were many, especially the rosary... I greatly enjoyed, when I played with other girls, making monasteries, as if we were nuns.

Teresa of Ávila did not attend any school and did not know Latin, which excluded her from any secondary education. At that time, education was reserved for males.

Adolescence

Convent of Our Lady of Grace, in Ávila, where Teresa spent some time in her youth.

She lost her mother in November 1528 or in 1529, when she was thirteen or fourteen years old. She asked the Virgin Mary to be her mother from then on. After this family trauma, her brothers set out one by one for the West Indies, none of them remaining in the family home.

In addition to the amusements typical of their age, such as outings and family or local festivities, the young people of the family spent their time on parlor games, among which chess stood out. In her work Camino de perfección she makes a metaphor between chess and the spiritual life: one must capture the king, who would be the King of Heaven; the queen is capable of putting the other pieces in difficulty, but always in a timely manner, and plays the role of humility.

At fifty years of age she told a Carmelite:

Know, father, that in my youth I was paid three kinds of compliments; they said I was intelligent, that I was holy and that I was beautiful; as for beautiful, it is there for all to see; as for discreet, I never took myself for a fool; as for holy, only God knows.

Between May and September 1531, the Empress Isabella, wife of Charles I, and her son Philip were in Ávila. They were accompanied by the Duke of Gandía, Francisco de Borja, who later became one of the principal Jesuit saints. Festivities took place throughout the summer.

A woman from Ávila named Mencía López obtained a bull from Pope Julius II dated September 28, 1508, authorizing her to found the Convent of Our Lady of Grace. The nuns of the Order of Saint Augustine settled in 1510 next to the Alcázar. This convent had a boarding school where young girls were taught embroidery and religious practices while they waited to marry. In 1514 María de Briceño entered as a nun and came to be in charge of the novices and the pupils. At her father's urging, Teresa entered as a pupil in July 1531. The influence of María de Briceño was very positive in helping Teresa learn about prayer and the spiritual life. She spent eighteen months in this convent. She did not want to marry and, thanks to the example of María de Briceño, she decided to become a nun.

Physical and spiritual change

Afflicted by an illness about which there are few references, Teresa returned home. She then went to the country house of her sister María de Cepeda and her husband Martín de Guzmán y Barrientos in Castellanos de la Cañada, a farmstead on the estate of that name, today located in the municipal district of Zapardiel de la Cañada, Province of Ávila. She made the journey in a litter. Along the way she stopped for several days at her uncle's house in the small village of Ortigosa. Here she spent her time reading "good books" and the Epistles of Saint Jerome. Afterwards, Teresa spent fifteen days at her sister's house in Castellanos de la Cañada.

On her return to her father's home, she served as housekeeper for about three years. She informed her father that she wanted to become a nun. In strong opposition, her father replied that he would not consent to it while he lived. Given her personality, she was convinced that she would not go back on her decision.

Teresa persuaded her brother Juan de Ahumada to go with her to begin a religious life. On November 2, 1535, Teresa entered the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation in Ávila as a postulant, and Juan de Ahumada went to a Dominican convent. A few hours later, their father managed to bring Juan back.

The Carmelites are a contemplative religious order founded in the middle of the 12th century by hermits at the Chapel of Saint Mary on Mount Carmel, in the Holy Land, where the prophet Elijah demonstrated the power of the Lord before the priests of Baal in the 9th century BC. Our Lady of Mount Carmel is characterized by the scapular and is the patroness of sailors.

This Carmelite convent in Ávila was founded in 1512 by Beatriz Higuera. Previously there had been a beaterio on an adjoining plot, founded in 1479 by Elvira González de Medina. Teresa's decision was influenced by the fact that she had good friends there, such as Juana Suárez, and the Dominican Vicente Barrón gave his support to the plan.

On October 31, 1536, Alonso undertook to pay a dowry for his daughter's support and to deliver to the Carmel each year 25 fanegas of grain from his lands in Gotarrendura and, failing grain, two hundred ducats, as well as clothing, bedding, books, candles, a couple of collations and a lunch for the nuns and a coif for each nun.

Teresa began her novitiate on November 2, 1536. She professed as a nun on November 3, 1537.

Saint Teresa of Jesus, by José de Ribera, 1630, Museum of Fine Arts of Seville

After entering the convent her health worsened. She suffered fainting spells, an undefined heart condition and other ailments. Thus passed the first year. She was settled and content with the shared life in that community of almost 180 nuns, but her consecration to God was so radical that she exchanged the simple prayer of friendship she had practiced before entering the Order for a systematic prayer that followed the technique of the masters of that time. She lost her joviality, her cheerfulness in communication, and sadness overtook her, while bodily penances did not satisfy her search for love and intimacy with God. All this ended up producing a psychological imbalance, which had its physical counterpart.

The physicians of Ávila were unable to cure Teresa, and Alonso Sánchez was told of a healer who worked wonders in Becedas, province of Ávila. In the autumn of 1538 he decided to take her there. A small group was organized to accompany her on the journey: her father, a nun of the Convent of the Incarnation named Juana Suárez and some friends. They stopped in Ortigosa, where her uncle, Pedro de Cepeda, presented her with the Tercer abecedario espiritual (1527) by Francisco de Osuna, which taught the prayer of recollection and was of great benefit to Teresa. On the way to Becedas they were informed that the healer did not treat patients in winter, because she used plants that were only available in spring. They decided to wait until the spring of 1539 at the country house of her sister, María de Cepeda, in Castellanos de la Cañada. It was a period of spiritual freedom without the strict discipline of the convent, during which she attained the prayer of quiet, and even of union, and became convinced that prayer could not be programmed apart from the person and their needs. Later, Pedro de Cepeda entered the Monastery of San Jerónimo de Guisando.

In April 1539 the group set out for Becedas. They stopped over in Piedrahíta, where Teresa and Juana Suárez spent the night in the Carmel of that place. The next day they crossed the Tormes River in the municipality of El Barco de Ávila. On arriving in Becedas, Teresa lodged at an inn, where she would spend three months. There she struck up a friendship with the priest Pedro Hernández, who was better educated than most village priests of that time. However, he was living in concubinage, as he maintained a relationship with a woman. She made him wear a copper amulet to keep him under her control. Teresa managed to convince him to hand over the amulet and threw it into a stream. The priest broke with his lover, although he died a year later.

The healer began by subjecting her to a daily purge for a month with various kinds of herbs and also potions made from frog nails, fly wings and snake excrement. With this, Teresa grew worse. She was no longer able to stand or to eat anything solid.

In mid-July 1539, her father took her back to Ávila. Alonso again turned to the city's physicians, without result. They thought she had tuberculosis. On August 15, 1539 (the solemnity of the Assumption of Mary) she suffered a sudden and violent attack of her illness—which she called a "parajismo", that is, a paroxysm—a series of convulsions followed by loss of consciousness. She was given extreme unction and then they thought she was dead. They held a mirror to her mouth and there was no trace of breath. They put wax on her eyes so that, after death, they would not remain half open. They wrapped her in a shroud and put a funeral crepe on the door of the house. A Mass for the dead was said for her, probably in the convent of Carmelite friars of San Pablo de la Moraleja, where her uncle, Lorenzo de Cepeda, was a priest. They also dug her grave. Her father decided to wait several days before burying her. A couple of days later, when her brother Lorenzo was beside Teresa's bed, she regained consciousness. They removed the wax from her eyes.

It had been a level 3 deep coma that lasted four days.

After this she could only move one finger. To change her position, two people moved the sheet on which she lay. This handling caused her enormous pain. Her tongue was dry and wounded, because she had bitten it many times. For a time she could neither eat nor drink anything.

I was left after these four days of paroxysm in such a state that only the Lord can know the unbearable torments I felt within me: my tongue bitten to pieces; my throat, from not having swallowed anything and from the great weakness that choked me, so that not even water could pass; everything seemed to me dislocated; with the greatest confusion in my head; all huddled up, curled into a ball [...] unable to move, neither arm nor foot nor hand nor head, any more than if I were dead, unless they moved me; I seemed able to move only one finger of my right hand. [...] They moved me in a sheet, one at one end and another at the other.

— Teresa of Jesus, Vida 6,1

This was the most intense experience she had in her youth, and it would mark her for the rest of her life: she continually suffered from catarrhs, migraines and fever, with pains in the throat, liver, stomach, kidneys and heart and, in her own words, with a "fear of death" that only disappeared with mystical grace.

Despite everything, at the end of August 1539 she asked to be taken back to the Carmel, where she went to rest in the convent infirmary. From Easter Sunday, or Pascua Florida, she improved slightly, but she had to remain in bed for three more years. She would manage to resume conventual life in April 1542. Teresa attributed this improvement to the intercession of Saint Joseph. She then moved from the infirmary to an ordinary room.

Spiritual favors

Life in the Carmel was not rigorous as regards withdrawal from the world. Teresa's room was quite large and she sometimes lodged relatives who came to visit her for stays that were occasionally prolonged. The nuns could leave the convent with the superior's permission and spent periods with relatives or people connected to the order. Teresa left the convent for a time to care for her father, who was seriously ill and who died on December 24, 1543. Her sister Juana, who was 15, stayed with her for a time after their father's death.

Although she did not give up reading, she devoted less and less time to prayer and spent many hours in the convent parlor with visitors. According to her testimony, around 1543 Jesus Christ appeared to her, reproaching her so that she would stop seeing a person with whom she habitually met in the parlor to chat about worldly matters. Another day an enormous toad appeared to her, advancing towards her.

At first she was very skeptical about supernatural experiences. She knew those of Saint Bridget and paid no attention to them.

In 1544 she asked the Dominican Vicente Barrón, who had been her father's confessor, to be her spiritual director. Barrón accepted, though reluctantly, since the Carmel had its own confessors. Barrón advised her to resume regular prayer and she did so, but she continued to spend hours and hours in worldly conversations in the parlor.

In 1553 she was deeply moved by a painting of an Ecce Homo that had just been brought in, showing Jesus Christ covered with wounds:

On looking at it [the image of Christ], I was utterly distressed to see Him so, because it represented well what He suffered for us. So great was what I felt at how badly I had thanked Him for those wounds that my heart seemed to break, and I threw myself down beside Him with the greatest outpouring of tears, beseeching Him to strengthen me once and for all so that I would not offend Him.

— Teresa of Jesus, Vida 9, 1

During Lent of 1554 Teresa read the Confessions of Saint Augustine of Hippo, which greatly influenced her spirituality. After this, she resumed the spiritual exercises she had abandoned, such as meditation, on a regular basis. In 1555 she made the decision to lead a stricter spiritual life.

In 1555 a relapse of her illness led her to spend some time at the house of a relative, Mencía del Águila. That year she met Guiomar de Ulloa, the 28-year-old daughter of Captain Pedro de Ulloa. After the death of her husband, a landowner from Salobralejo named Francisco Dávila, around 1552, she became very religious. Guiomar offered Teresa a place in her house, and she stayed there for three years, until 1558.

In 1553 a college of the Society of Jesus was founded in Ávila. Teresa said:

Those of the Society of Jesus had come here [to Ávila], to whom I, without knowing any of them, was very devoted merely from knowing the manner of life and prayer they led.

— Vida. Chapter 23.

Teresa had dealings with several Jesuits considered exceptional. Diego de Cetina arrived in Ávila in 1555 and was her confessor for two months. The Jesuit Juan de Prádanos was Guiomar de Ulloa's confessor. She told Teresa about him, and he was her confessor and spiritual director between May 1555 and the end of 1558. Francisco de Borja went to Ávila in 1554 and preached in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. He returned during Holy Week of 1557 and she took the opportunity to visit him. Francisco de Borja told her that what was happening to her came from God and that she should not worry.

In 1558 she had her first rapture and the vision of hell. She speaks of the entrance as a cavity resembling a dark, dirty and foul-smelling oven with reptiles on the floor, leading to a place where the damned suffer their punishment in the fire.

In 1559 she took as her confessor Baltasar Álvarez, who was master of novices of the Jesuits. He was her confessor until 1562.

On June 29, 1559, while she was praying, she had the sensation that Christ was at her right side and speaking to her.

In April 1560, when she was at Guiomar de Ulloa's house, the Transverberation took place.

Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. Sculpture by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

I saw an angel close to me, towards my left side, in bodily form... He was not large, but small, very beautiful, his face so aflame that he seemed to be one of the highest angels, who seem to be all on fire... I saw in his hands a long golden dart, and at the end of the iron tip there seemed to be a little fire. This he seemed to thrust several times into my heart, and it reached my very entrails: when he drew it out, he seemed to take them with him, and left me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great that it made me utter those moans, and so excessive was the sweetness that this very great pain gives me that one cannot wish it to cease, nor is the soul content with anything less than God. It is not bodily pain, but spiritual, although the body does not fail to share in it somewhat, and even a great deal. It is so sweet a love-exchange that passes between the soul and God, that I beseech His goodness to give a taste of it to anyone who thinks I am lying... On the days this lasted I went about as if stupefied, wishing neither to see nor to speak, but to burn with my pain, which for me was a greater glory than all created things.

— Vida. Chapter 29.

This event, also known as the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, has had great importance in Catholic devotion and art. On March 26, 1726, Pope Benedict XIII established the feast of the Transverberation of the heart of Saint Teresa on August 25.

It is fitting here to quote the French biographer Pierre Boudot:

On every page (of the book of her life) one sees the traces of a lively passion, of a moving frankness, and of an illuminism consecrated by the faith of the faithful. All her revelations attest that she firmly believed in a spiritual union between herself and Jesus Christ; she saw God, the Virgin, the saints and the angels in all their splendor, and from on high she received inspirations which she used for the discipline of her inner life. In her youth the aspirations she had were rare and seem confused; only in her full maturity did they become more distinct, more numerous and also more extraordinary. She was past forty-three years of age when she experienced an ecstasy for the first time. Her intellectual visions followed one another without interruption for two and a half years, between 1559–1561. Whether out of distrust or to test her, her superiors forbade her to abandon herself to these fervors of mystical devotion, which were a second life for her, and ordered her to resist these raptures, in which her health was being consumed. She obeyed, but in spite of her efforts, her prayer was so continuous that not even sleep could interrupt its course. At the same time, burning with a violent desire to see God, she felt herself dying. In this singular state she had on several occasions the vision that gave rise to the establishment of a particular feast in the Carmelite Order.

The French biographer adds:

Until she breathed her last, Teresa enjoyed the happiness of conversing with the divine persons, who consoled her or revealed certain secrets of heaven to her; that of being transported to hell or to purgatory, and even that of foreseeing what was to come.

Foundation of the Convent of San José in Ávila and of the Order of Discalced Carmelites

The Convent of San José in Ávila.

In September 1560, when Teresa was with several nuns, they decided to found a new reformed convent that would observe the original rules of the Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. These had been drawn up by Saint Albert of Jerusalem in 1226 and approved by Honorius III, and were mitigated in 1247 by Innocent IV and in 1432 by Eugene IV. Teresa decided to reform the order to return to the austerity, poverty and enclosure that she considered the authentic Carmelite spirit.

Teresa's niece, María de Ocampo, could contribute a thousand ducats. Guiomar de Ulloa was also willing to contribute financially. Teresa sought advice from the Franciscan reformer Pedro de Alcántara, the Jesuit Francisco de Borja and the Dominican Luis Beltrán. All of them encouraged her in the foundation. In October, Teresa and Guiomar consulted the Dominican Pedro Ibáñez Díaz who, after eight days of study and prayer, gave his approval.

In 1560 Teresa went to see her confessor, Baltasar Álvarez, who told her that for this she should address the Carmelite provincial, Ángel de Salazar, who gave his approval. Those who were against the foundation told the provincial that the convent would not have sufficient financial resources and, when Teresa and Guiomar were about to buy a house for it, he told them that the convent would not have sufficient income, and Baltasar Álvarez advised Teresa to drop the matter. In December, Guiomar de Ulloa suffered a certain ostracism because of the project and had difficulty finding a priest willing to hear her confession.

In April 1561 Teresa consulted the new director of the Jesuit college, Gaspar de Salazar, who encouraged her to continue her efforts discreetly. Guiomar requested authorization for the foundation from the Pope. They had the support of Francisco de Borja, who had been summoned to Rome by Pope Pius IV. Teresa received the papal brief in August. However, this authorized her to found a new convent within the Carmelite province, but without the provincial's support a new authorization was required.

Teresa's sister, Juana de Ahumada, and her husband, Juan de Ovalle, who lived in Alba de Tormes, bought a house in Ávila and settled in it with their children, with the intention that it would serve in the future as the seat of the foundation.

Teresa counted on the dowry of her niece, Isabel de la Peña, which was 200 ducats, and on the dowry of another niece, probably Leonor de Cepeda. Guiomar de Ulloa handed over everything she had, plus 30 ducats sent to her by her mother. At the end of 1561 her brother Lorenzo sent her 200 ducats from Peru. In 1561 Teresa spent some time at Guiomar de Ulloa's house.

At Christmas 1561 the provincial ordered Teresa to travel to Toledo to keep company with an aristocrat named Luisa de la Cerda, who had just been widowed. Teresa spent six months with her and they became friends. During her stay in that city, her confessor was the Dominican García de Toledo.

María Jesús Yepes was a Carmelite novice in Granada. She decided to found a Carmelite convent based on absolute poverty, as in the original rule, and, after selling all her possessions, she took the money and went to Rome with other religious women to present her project to the Pope. He referred her to his penitentiary, Cardinal Rainuncio, who granted her the license. Princess Juana of Austria advised her to speak with the Jesuit Gaspar de Salazar, who was then in Granada, and he in turn recommended that she speak with Teresa in Toledo. She arrived at the end of March and spent some time with Luisa and Teresa.

When Teresa returned to Ávila, in July, she already had the Papal Brief for her foundation, dated February 7, 1562. This authorized them to found a Carmel dependent on the Bishop of Ávila. Álvaro de Mendoza had been in Ávila as bishop since July 1561. Pedro de Alcántara went to his country house in El Tiemblo and recommended that he speak with Teresa. The bishop went to the Convent of the Incarnation to speak with Teresa and was impressed by her. He contributed financially to the new convent and visited it frequently.

In 1562 she met the Dominican Domingo de Báñez, professor of Theology at the University of Salamanca, who was her confessor until 1568 and who advised her on various matters throughout her life.

The Convent of San José opened on August 24, 1562. The priest Gaspar Dávila said the first Mass and received the first four novices in the name of the bishop.

The municipal council believed that the city already had many convents and that there were no resources for yet another. The municipal corregidor sent some officials to evict the novices, who refused and said that they answered only to the bishop. On August 30 there was a meeting of the town council, representatives of the diocese and of the city's religious orders. Those from the municipality said that the Convent of San José was a threat to public order. The bishop's provisor read the Pope's brief authorizing the foundation and then left. A discussion followed. The Dominican Domingo Báñez took the floor to defend the nuns. They met again the next day. The bishop attended with the priest Gaspar Daza, who took the floor to defend the nuns. The town council appealed to the Council of State. The judges of the Council of State showed themselves favorable to the nuns and, to save face, the town council said that it did not mind the new convent as long as it had fixed income. Teresa, instead of backing down, wrote to Rome to ask for a rescript authorizing the convent to have no endowed income, which was granted to her on December 5. For some time the municipality continued to talk of appealing to the Council of State, but then the matter was forgotten.

During these events, the prioress of the Incarnation asked Teresa to return to the convent and she did so. The provincial, Ángel de Salazar, told her that she could return to the Convent of San José once the matter had been resolved. In mid-December 1562, the bishop spoke with the provincial and Teresa returned to the Convent of San José with four nuns from that place. She then changed her name to Teresa of Jesus. Teresa appointed as prioress Ana de San Juan, who came from the Incarnation. In 1563 Ana de San Juan returned to the Convent of the Incarnation and Teresa became prioress. That year she wrote the Constitutions, which were approved by the Bishop of Ávila, Álvaro de Mendoza, and by Pope Pius IV in 1565. Teresa spent four years in the convent, in great austerity.

They had to sleep on straw pallets. The fast consisted of having only one full meal a day. They devoted eight months of the year to the rigors of fasting, from the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, in September, until Easter Sunday, except on Sundays and except for nuns who cited reasons of health. They abstained completely from eating meat. However, she made an exception for the convent of Malagón and allowed it, because fish was scarce.

In the convent they devoted themselves to prayer, to reading religious books recommended by Teresa and to work, which included daily chores and sewing.

One innovation was the periods of recreation. For Teresa it was very important that the nuns be cheerful. There were two periods of recreation a day, in which they devoted themselves to things such as singing and organizing poetry contests.

Another innovation was the hermitages within the convent. These could be small hermitages in the garden, if the convent was large enough, or spaces fitted out inside. A nun could go to them voluntarily to meditate and pray for a while. The Convent of San José had several hermitages. These were decorated with images of Christ and the saints.

On July 13, 1563, Teresa "took off her shoes": instead of the shoes that were used in the Carmel of the Incarnation, she began to wear hemp sandals. The other nuns did the same. This is why they came to be known as Discalced Carmelites.

In Ávila there was the Convent of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, of Calced Carmelites. Its prior was Antonio de Jesús Heredia. He helped Teresa at the Convent of the Incarnation, explaining the original rule.

On February 15, 1567, the superior general of the Carmelites, Juan Bautista Rossi, who was visiting the Spanish convents, visited the Convent of the Incarnation in Ávila. He returned to Ávila in March and Teresa invited him to visit the Convent of San José, of the Discalced Carmelites, even though it was not under his authority, as it depended on the bishop. Teresa's personality impressed him. On April 27, 1567, he authorized her in writing to found other convents of Discalced Carmelites in Castile that would depend directly on the superior general, although they had to have the authorization of the local provincial.

From the foundation of the Convent of San José in Ávila, Teresa had the regular help and company of the priest Julián de Ávila, who acted as her personal secretary.

Continuation of her work

In 1566 Baltasar Álvarez was appointed rector of the Jesuit college of Medina del Campo. At the provincial chapter of the Order of Mount Carmel held in Ávila on April 12, 1567, Antonio de Jesús Heredia was appointed prior of the Carmel of Medina del Campo. As these two collaborators of Teresa were in this nearby city, she wanted to found a convent there. The provincial authorized the foundation on July 29, 1567. In August, Teresa and six other nuns left Ávila and stopped over in Arévalo. They founded the Convent of San José of Medina del Campo on August 15, 1567.

The superior general Juan Bautista Rossi had authorized the foundation of female Discalced Carmels, and Teresa managed to convince him to allow male ones to be founded as well. On August 10, 1567, he authorized Alonso González, provincial of Castile, and Ángel de Salazar, prior of the Carmel of Ávila, to found two convents of Discalced Carmelite friars. Teresa spoke of the matter to Antonio Heredia, who had helped the Medina del Campo convent a great deal, and he wished to become a Discalced Carmelite, taking the name Antonio de Jesús. In Medina del Campo there was a Jesuit college, founded in 1551, which had among its pupils Saint Juan de Yepes Álvarez. He became a Carmelite and took the religious name Juan de Santo Matías. He was considering becoming a Carthusian, but Teresa convinced him to become a Discalced Carmelite, taking the name Juan de la Cruz.

Her friend María Jesús de Yepes had [founded] her reformed Carmelite convent in 1563 in Alcalá de Henares, one year after the Convent of San José in Ávila. In January 1568 she left Medina del Campo and went to Alcalá de Henares to visit María Jesús's convent.

In March she moved to Toledo. Luisa de la Cerda proposed that she found a convent in Malagón, where she had one of her properties. Luisa offered them a house, a church, an income of 50,000 maravedís, 128 fanegas of grain and 30,000 maravedís a year for a chaplaincy. Although this was not what she had hoped for with the reform, she accepted on condition that the convent take in at least two nuns without a dowry. Luisa asked the convent to accept lay sisters, and Teresa agreed but asked that a school be opened for the girls of the region, run by a Theatine who would give them catechesis and teach them to read and embroider. Teresa arrived in Malagón on April 1, 1568, with six nuns, a Jesuit and Luisa de la Cerda. The Convent of San José del Monte Carmelo was founded on Palm Sunday, April 11, 1568. Teresa left on May 19. She returned in 1576, finding that the building did not suit the nuns' needs. After this, she asked Luisa de la Cerda for another building, which was built over the following three years. In 1578 she returned to Malagón to help with the works. The nuns moved into the new convent on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8, 1579. In the cell of the monastery that Saint Teresa occupied there is an image of her seated, writing at a small table, which is displayed in that church only once every 100 years. Today, cloistered Discalced Carmelites live in the monastery.

On May 19, 1568, she left Malagón and passed through Toledo, Escalona, Ávila, Duruelo de Blascomillán and Medina del Campo.

On November 28, 1568, the Monastery of Duruelo was founded in the heart of the mountains, in the municipality of Blascomillán, with Antonio de Jesús, Saint John of the Cross and three other friars. After a year they had to move to Mancera. In 1600 they settled permanently in Ávila.

Convent of the Annunciation, Alba de Tormes

While she was busy with the Medina del Campo foundation, Bernardino de Mendoza, brother of the Bishop of Ávila, offered Teresa a property in Valladolid to found a convent of Discalced Carmelites. The donor died and Teresa had a vision that said the soul of the deceased would remain in purgatory until a Mass was said in the new foundation in Valladolid. She arrived in Valladolid on July 10, 1568. On August 15 the first Mass could be said in the Convent of the Conception of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. However, the site was unhealthy and they fell ill with malaria. The donor's sister, María de Mendoza, undertook to give them another seat and ceded them part of her own palace. The Discalced Carmelites settled in the permanent convent on February 3, 1569.

In February 1569 she left Valladolid. She passed through Medina del Campo and then visited the Monastery of Duruelo in Blascomillán, of Discalced Carmelite friars. Afterwards she was in Ávila.

While in Valladolid she received a letter informing her that a deceased merchant, Martín Ramírez, had decided to bequeath part of his fortune to the reformed Carmel. As she was occupied with the Valladolid foundation and was suffering from malaria, she asked her friend from Toledo, Luisa de la Cerda, to take charge of the permits. She arrived in Toledo on March 24, 1569, and stayed at Luisa's house. In the city they did not consider it proper that the founder was not a nobleman. Teresa went to speak with the then provisional administrator of the diocese, Gómez Tellez Girón, to obtain the permit, and argued to him how good her project was for the nuns who wished to take part in it. Gómez Tellez Girón granted her the permit on condition that neither patron nor founder appear in the convent. Teresa acquired a house and in a couple of days created a convent with a chapel. On May 14, 1569, the first Mass was said. The canons were enraged by the new convent and demanded to see a permit, and Teresa had only obtained a verbal permit. Finally, the administrator of the diocese appeared and confirmed his authorization. The heirs of Martín Ramírez offered to hand over to her the 12,000 escudos of the will on the sole condition that the executor of the will, Alonso Álvarez, and his family could be buried in the convent chapel. With this money they bought a new seat on May 18, 1570.

Ana de Mendoza, Princess of Éboli, proposed to her the foundation of a convent in Pastrana. She left Toledo on May 30. She stopped for eight days in Madrid, where she stayed at the Convent of Our Lady of the Angels, next to the Alcázar. This convent, of Poor Clare nuns, had been founded in 1564 by Leonor de Mascareñas, who had been governess of Philip II. During her stay in Madrid she met Leonor de Mascareñas and Juana of Austria. Juana of Austria had founded in 1559 the convent of Colettine Poor Clares known as the Convent of the Descalzas Reales, with the help of Saint Francisco de Borja and with Poor Clare nuns from Gandía.

Teresa founded the Convent of Our Lady of Consolation in Pastrana, of Discalced Carmelites, on June 23, 1569.

In 1569 the religious Ambrosio Mariano de San Benito and Juan de la Miseria, who had been in the Monastery of San Basilio del Tardón in Hornachuelos and in the Hermitage of San Onofre in Seville, passed through Madrid and stayed at the Convent of Our Lady of the Angels. Leonor Mascareñas told Teresa that they were very eager to meet her. Ambrosio and Juan proposed to her the foundation of a convent of Discalced Carmelite friars. For this, Teresa had a hermitage and some land ceded by Ruy Gómez in Pastrana. Teresa founded the Convent of San Pedro in this municipality on July 9, 1569.

Teresa returned to Toledo on July 21, 1569. During the lifetime of Ana de Mendoza's husband, Ruy Gómez, there were no notable incidents, and the nuns even received special attentions. However, Ruy Gómez died on July 29, 1573. Ana de Mendoza then entered the convent under the name Ana de la Madre de Dios and, as nun and patroness, began to commit a series of transgressions of the convent's rules. When the illustrious figures of the town came to offer her their condolences, the prioress led them to the parlor, but she decided to open the doors of the convent so that everyone could come in. She took every opportunity to show that the convent was under her patronage. Instead of a cell, she installed herself in an apartment inside the convent, where she was attended by several maids. She demanded that the nuns kneel to speak to her. In addition, she was five months pregnant. She then moved into another room and opened a door in the wall leading outside. Philip II told her to withdraw to her palace to look after her children and, after leaving, she stopped helping the nuns. In 1574, Teresa ordered the prioress to leave with all the nuns for the convent of Discalced Carmelites that Teresa had founded in Segovia. The nuns left in five carts, in the middle of the night, on April 1. In revenge, Ana de Mendoza denounced Teresa to the Inquisition.

In 1570 Pope Saint Pius V appointed the Dominicans Pedro Fernández and Francisco de Vargas apostolic visitors of the Carmelite reform.

On July 15, 1570, the Huguenot pirate Jacques de Sores attacked a ship near La Palma and killed 40 Jesuit missionaries. Among them was Francisco Pérez Godoy, who was Teresa's nephew. The Jesuit Baltasar Álvarez said that Teresa had reported having beheld these martyrs in Heaven.

Teresa wanted to found a convent of Discalced Carmelites in Salamanca, the great university city of the time, thinking that one day they might have a college. Bishop Pedro González de Mendoza gave his authorization in September 1570. Teresa arrived in Salamanca with another nun and two friars on October 31. Of this convent some remains of the cenobium survive, along with the 17th-century Church of Santa María del Monte Carmelo. In 1973 the nuns moved to another building in Cabrerizos, province of Salamanca.

In 1567 the Carmelite Francisco Espinet founded the College of El Carmen in Alcalá de Henares. In 1570 the Carmelites moved to another building and this one came to be used by the Discalced. In 1571 Saint John of the Cross was appointed rector of the college, although he traveled to Pastrana several times to help with the novitiate of the Convent of San Pedro. In 1581 it was renamed the College of San Cirilo, because a chapter of the order was held on that saint's day. In 1598 the College of San Cirilo moved to another building.

Teresa had to go to the Medina del Campo convent to resolve two problems. The first concerned a nun, Isabel de los Ángeles, niece of a rich merchant named Simón Ruiz, who before entering said that she was going to give her inheritance to the convent. Her parents had opposed her becoming a nun and then accepted in exchange for being patrons of the convent chapel, with the right to appoint its priests. Isabel was opposed, but the provincial, Ángel de Salazar, was in favor. Teresa of Ávila managed to persuade the family to give up their claims. The second problem was that Teresa asked that Inés de Jesús be re-elected as prioress and the nuns re-elected her, but the provincial wanted the prioress to be a Calced Carmelite from the Convent of the Incarnation. At the beginning of December the provincial, displeased, told Teresa to leave the Medina del Campo convent immediately. Teresa, who was then 55 years old, left and traveled all night on a little donkey until she reached the Convent of San José in Ávila.

A few days later, she left Ávila to found another convent in Alba de Tormes. This foundation was brought about by Teresa Layz, wife of Francisco Velázquez, who worked for the Duke of Alba. This couple could not have children. When they were living in Salamanca, Teresa Layz had a dream in which there appeared a house, a garden with a well, and everything surrounded by white flowers. A voice said to her: "These are the children you wanted to have". She thought that this dream meant she had to found a convent. When they returned to live in Alba de Tormes and she entered her new house and found a garden with a well, she thought it was like the one in her dream, and that she had to found it there. A Franciscan told her about Teresa. Two months after founding the Carmel of Salamanca, Teresa's sister Juana, wife of Juan de Ovalle, who lived with her family in Alba de Tormes, informed her that they wished to found a convent of Discalced nuns there. Teresa was reluctant, because Alba was too small a place to live on alms and she did not like founding convents with endowed income. The Dominican Domingo Báñez told her that the Council of Trent permitted the founding of convents with endowed income and that the nuns would not be perfect merely by being poor. Teresa accepted and on December 3, 1570, agreed on the convent's income with the patrons. The Carmelite provincial gave his license on December 20 and the Convent of Our Lady of the Annunciation was founded on January 24, 1571.

The apostolic visitor Pedro Fernández deposed the prioress placed by the provincial in the Medina del Campo convent and charged Teresa with being prioress, which she became in July 1571.

However, the provincial Ángel Salazar told the apostolic visitor that the Convent of the Incarnation, of Calced Carmelite nuns, was in need of improvement and proposed that Teresa be its prioress. On October 8, 1571, he announced in Medina del Campo that he had appointed Teresa prioress of the Incarnation. At the Incarnation they did not want her as prioress and, when she arrived on October 14, a small crowd with lay Carmelites tried to bar her entry, and they also said "very ugly words" to her. The corregidor had to intervene to remove the demonstrators.

Teresa sat in the place she had formerly occupied, when she was an ordinary nun. On the prioress's seat there was a painting of Saint Joseph. The next day she replaced it with a painting of the Virgin Mary, to indicate that she was the true prioress. The most urgent thing was to put the finances in order: the Duchess of Alba donated 100 ducats and Lorenzo, Teresa's brother, sent her money from America.

Teresa did not want anyone in the Convent of the Incarnation who did not lead a conventual life. There was a nun who lived with her niece, María Juárez, but the niece could not leave because she was an orphan. Teresa then allowed her to stay as her aunt's assistant. However, the nun did not want an exception made in her favor and managed to obtain a dowry for her niece, who thenceforth became one more nun of the convent.

Teresa wanted Saint John of the Cross to be confessor and spiritual director of the nuns of the Incarnation. With the approval of the visitor Pedro Fernández, in September 1572 Saint John of the Cross left the college of Alcalá de Henares to go and serve at the Incarnation in Ávila.

On November 18, 1572, during Mass at the Convent of the Incarnation, when Saint John of the Cross broke the Sacred Host in the Eucharist, she heard the Lord say to her: "Do not be afraid, daughter, for no one shall be able to take you away from me". This came to be called the spiritual marriage of Saint Teresa.

The Duchess of Alba felt very lonely since her husband had gone to the Low Countries, and Philip II intervened with the Pope so that he would authorize Teresa to spend a few days at the Duchess's palace in Alba de Tormes, at the beginning of February 1573.

Teresa was able to leave the Convent of the Incarnation between the end of July 1573 and January 1574 to find another location for the nuns of Salamanca. During her stays in Salamanca, Teresa lodged in the palace of the Counts of Monterrey and in a house that now bears her name. During this period in Salamanca, on the advice of her confessor, Jerónimo Martínez de Ripalda, she was writing her book on the foundations.

The religious ecstasy of Saint Teresa of Ávila.

Later, she returned to Salamanca that year. She was offered the foundation of a convent in Beas and another in Segovia. Teresa asked the visitor Pedro Fernández to found a convent in Segovia and he approved it. The bishop, Diego de Covarrubias Leyva, gave his authorization verbally. Teresa arrived in Segovia on March 18, 1574. They founded the convent in a house in the city on March 19. The provisor of the diocese asked for the license, but since they did not have it in writing and the bishop, who was president of the Council of Castile and of the Council of State, lived in Madrid, they had to close the convent. Days later, with all the formalities settled, the nuns occupied the convent again. In April, the nuns of the Pastrana convent moved to this one.

In the investigations prior to the beatification process, which began in 1595, several testimonies were gathered that Teresa levitated in some of her mystical states. One testimony indicates that one day, when a priest was giving communion to the nuns through an opening in the wall of a convent choir, Teresa went into ecstasy and rose so far above the opening that she could not receive communion. The nun Ana de los Ángeles related that she sometimes went into ecstasy and that "with the efficacy of the divine spirit" she rose above the ground. The nun Ana de la Encarnación recounted that one day in 1574, in the Segovia convent, Saint Teresa levitated for half an hour:

Mother came in and knelt for about a quarter of an hour. And as I watched her very closely, she rose from the ground about half a vara, her feet not touching it, at which I was very frightened, and her body trembled. And going to where she was, I put my hands under her feet, at which I remained weeping for about the half hour that she stayed like that. And then she came down and stood on her feet; and turning her face towards me, she asked me who I was and whether I had been there, and I answered yes; then she ordered me to say nothing of what I had seen.

— Ana de la Encarnación.

Sometimes, so as not to levitate, she would hold on to the grille of the chapel.

She ceased to be prioress of the Convent of the Incarnation in Ávila on October 6, 1574.

In the autumn of 1574 Teresa went to Salamanca again to settle a property matter. There she received a letter from Catalina Godínez telling her that they had a house ready in Beas de Segura (Jaén) for a foundation. The town was a lordship of the Order of Santiago. The King, after an audience with Catalina Godínez, and the Council of the Military Orders gave their approval. The apostolic visitor Pedro Fernández instructed Teresa to go to Beas. Teresa, nine nuns and the priests Julián de Ávila and Antonio Gaitán set out. Along the way they passed through Toledo, Malagón, Manzanares and Torre de Juan Abad, where, on February 16, they received the ashes of that Ash Wednesday in the Church of Nuestra Señora de los Olmos. On the way they got lost in the Sierra Morena, but managed to get back on the right path after asking for the intercession of Saint Joseph. In Beas de Segura they received a cordial welcome from a crowd that included the local nobility, the clergy and all the inhabitants. The crowd accompanied them in procession to the building where they founded the convent. They founded the Convent of San José in this municipality on February 24, 1575. Catalina Godínez and her sister María de Sandoval took the habit as Catalina de Jesús and María de Jesús.

Jerónimo Gracián became a Discalced Carmelite in Pastrana on April 25, 1573. He took the name Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios. In August the visitor of the order in Andalusia, Francisco de Vargas, delegated his own faculties to Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios. He later appointed him provincial vicar of the Carmelites. In Beas, Jerónimo gave the habit to a new Discalced Carmelite, with the religious name Gregorio Nacianceno.

Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios was in Seville as visitor of the order in Andalusia. In 1574 he founded in that city the Convent of Our Lady of Los Remedios, of Discalced Carmelite friars.

Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios set out for the Court and, learning that Teresa was in Beas de Segura, passed through there. It was a gratifying meeting for both. In fact, in 2018, two unpublished letters from Saint Teresa to him were found.

Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios proposed to her the foundation of a convent of Discalced Carmelites in Seville. Teresa did not want to, for unknown reasons, but ended up allowing herself to be persuaded. She set out on May 18 with six nuns and three friars, all in four carts. They spent the night in a hermitage in the Sierra Morena and then headed towards Linares. They passed through Espeluy. On May 22 the group reached Córdoba. On May 23 they reached Écija. They stayed at the Hermitage of Santa Ana until May 25. On this site, the Franciscan Tertiaries established a convent in 1625 and the hermitage was converted into the conventual church. The present appearance of the Church of Santa Ana is due to works carried out in the 18th century. They passed through Mairena del Alcor and arrived in Seville on May 26.

Nothing had been prepared to receive the nuns. They settled in a house without any comforts, without furniture and without food. Nor did they have any money. The archbishop, Cristóbal Rojas Sandoval, did not want a Carmel without endowed income to be founded, on the pretext that there were already too many convents in the city. Teresa was determined to leave without founding anything. She did not understand why, in a rich city, there were more difficulties in founding a convent than in any other city she had been in. Then the archbishop changed his mind and sent them alms. What saved the situation was that, on August 12, 1575, Teresa's brother Lorenzo, the conquistador, disembarked. He had made his fortune in America and was eager to see his sister, after 34 years. Thanks to him, the nuns bought a house suited to their needs. Teresa set a solemn inauguration for June 3, 1576. The archbishop organized a procession in which the clergy and the confraternities took part. The streets were covered with flowers and there was music and religious singing. The archbishop installed the Blessed Sacrament in the chapel of the Convent of San José. Before leaving he blessed Teresa and then, to the general astonishment, asked Teresa to bless him.

The convent was on Calle Zaragoza in Seville from 1575. In 1586 Saint John of the Cross, then vicar of the Discalced, gave authorization, preserved in the Archive of Notarial Protocols of Seville, to Pedro Cerezo and the prioress to buy some houses from Pedro de Morga. The nuns moved to their new seat that year. Saint John of the Cross came for the inauguration and, in June 1586, wrote to the prioress of the convent of Caravaca de la Cruz:

I am now in Seville, for the transfer of our nuns, who have bought some most splendid houses, which, although they cost almost fourteen thousand ducats, are worth more than twenty thousand. They are now in them and, on Saint Bartholomew's day, the cardinal will place the Blessed Sacrament with great solemnity.

— Saint John of the Cross. June 1586.

The Convent of San José in Seville preserves a stone slab from the convent on Calle Zaragoza.

Three maidens of good family from Caravaca de la Cruz, Region of Murcia, wished to enter a cloistered convent, but there was none in the place. The Jesuits, who had opened some schools in Caravaca, recommended that they turn to Teresa. As Caravaca was not far from Beas de Segura, while she was there she sent Julián de Ávila and Antonio Gaitán to that town to find out whether it was suitable for a foundation. They came back enthusiastic. As the town was a lordship of the Order of Santiago, they had to request a license from the Council of the Military Orders. It granted it, but with clauses unacceptable to Teresa: the convent would be under the jurisdiction of the commander of the Order of Santiago and the nuns would owe him obedience. Teresa wrote to Philip II and he annulled these conditions. The Convent of San José of Caravaca de la Cruz was inaugurated on January 1, 1576.

In 1574 Ana de Mendoza, after her disagreements with Teresa at the Pastrana convent, sent a copy of the autobiography to the Inquisitor General Gaspar de Quiroga y Vela, who found nothing wrong in it and expressed his admiration. In 1575 a tribunal of the Inquisition of Valladolid investigated Teresa for the visions she had had, as there had been cases of impostors. The Bishop of Ávila, Álvaro de Mendoza, provided the Council of the Supreme Inquisition with a copy of the saint's autobiography on February 27, 1575. Teresa was informed while she was in Beas de Segura. On July 7, 1575, the Dominican Domingo Báñez presented to the Council of the Suprema a report entirely favorable to Teresa's autobiography. Afterwards they asked the Dominican Hernando del Castillo for another report, and he reached the same conclusions. When Ana de Jesús wished to publish the saint's life in 1588, Quiroga himself gave it to her. In the Seville convent a forty-year-old novice named María del Corro had a series of conflicts and decided to leave in 1576. After this, she denounced Teresa and a nun named Isabel de San Jerónimo for an alleged heterodox spirituality. Teresa and Isabel de San Jerónimo gave statements before the Inquisition of Seville, which closed the case in April. Apparently, Isabel de San Jerónimo was not well and suffered from melancholy. Teresa resolved the case by exempting her from fasting for a few days. Moreover, the work of Saint Teresa was never censored by the Inquisition. On August 26, 1589, the Dominican Alonso de la Fuente, inquisitor in Llerena, wrote to the Council of the Suprema accusing Teresa of a heterodox spirituality and demanding that her books be banned. The Council answered that he should state which passages of her work were heretical, although it did not pay much attention to the accusations. Nor did the Council take any notice when, later, Teresa was accused by the Dominican Juan de Lorenzana, the Augustinian Antonio Sosa and, in 1598, by the canon Francisco de Pisa.

In May 1575 the general chapter of the Order of Mount Carmel, held in Piacenza, decided to suppress all the foundations of the Discalced Carmelites made without the authorization of the superior general, that is, those in Andalusia. They removed Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios from his post as visitor. They appointed Jerónimo Tostado visitor general of all the Carmels of Spain, although in March 1576 he was elected provincial of Catalonia. After this, some Calced Carmelites, such as Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios, were confined in Pastrana or in Alcalá de Henares.

Saint John of the Cross was seized by the Calced in Medina del Campo in 1575, but was released a few days later through the intervention of the nuncio, Nicolò Ormaneto, who was favorable to the Discalced.

Her brother Lorenzo, a widower since the death of his wife in Quito in 1567, had arrived in Seville in 1575 with his three children: Francisco, fifteen, Lorenzo, thirteen, and Teresa, nine. The girl spent some time in the convent with Teresa. On May 28, 1576, Teresa left Seville with her brother Lorenzo and his children. They stopped over in Almodóvar del Campo and Malagón. They arrived in Toledo on June 23, 1576.

The priest Alonso de Velázquez, a university professor, was appointed lectoral canon of the Cathedral of Santa María in Toledo. There he met Teresa of Jesus, and he was her confessor from the summer of 1576 until 1578, when he was appointed Bishop of Osma on June 13, 1578. On his advice and that of Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios, she wrote the book Las moradas del castillo interior between July and November 1578. In the prologue, Teresa describes Alonso de Velázquez and Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios as very learned persons. When Alonso de Velázquez was Bishop of Osma, he received a letter from Teresa which is considered a treatise on the necessity of prayer.

After leaving, she received news that Isabel de San Jerónimo and Beatriz de la Madre de Dios were causing problems because they believed they enjoyed a special spirituality. Teresa believed they must be unwell and, in a letter of October 23, 1576, ordered that they eat meat and not fast. This solution gave good results. Between October 1576 and December 1577 Isabel de San Jerónimo was prioress of the convent of Calced Carmelites of Paterna. When Isabel de San Jerónimo returned, both she and Beatriz de la Madre de Dios again stirred up controversy, over some alleged apparitions and prophecies. They wanted to put in writing what was happening to them, but Teresa opposed it. The two spent many hours in confession with the priest Garciálvarez. The prioress, María de San José, wanted to put things in order, but the confessor was indignant, thinking she wanted to meddle in the confessions. The prioress dismissed the confessor. The provincial, a Calced friar, annulled the decision at the end of 1578, came to investigate in the Carmel and dismissed the prioress. Finally, Beatriz de la Madre de Dios retracted, María de San José was appointed prioress again and García Álvarez was ordered never again to hear the confessions of the Carmelite nuns.

Some Calced friars tried to harm the reform by inventing that Teresa and Jerónimo were responsible for everything that was going badly and that their relationship was not merely religious. They also insinuated the slander that Teresa had had several children and had contrived to send them to America.

In July 1577 she went from Toledo to Ávila, to place the Convent of San José, previously subject to the ordinary, under the Carmelite Order. Miguel de la Columna and Baltasar de Jesús, deserters from the reform, spread slanders against the Discalced and, above all, against Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios, whom they accused of a non-religious relationship with the Marchioness of Évora and her granddaughter, taking advantage of the fact that he had spent a night in Évora with them talking about spiritual matters. On August 29 the new nuncio, Felipe (Filippo) Sega, arrived in Madrid; he was a supporter of the Calced. The Discalced Carmelite Antonio de Jesús Heredia hid in the attic of the Tavera Hospital in Toledo, but ended up being seized, although he was released a short time later. Between December 3 and 4, 1577, in Ávila, Saint John of the Cross was seized by the Calced with the nuncio's permission and the collaboration of the civil authorities. The next day Teresa had this recorded before a notary. John of the Cross was held incommunicado in the Calced Carmel of Toledo. During the Octave of the Assumption of 1578 he managed to escape and found refuge in the convent of the Discalced Carmelite nuns of Toledo.

In 1577 Teresa turned to King Philip II of Spain, who took the matter into his own hands. On October 8 Miguel de la Columna retracted his insults against the Discalced. In 1577 the 55 Calced Carmelite nuns of the Convent of the Incarnation wanted to elect Teresa as prioress. The prior of the Calced Carmelites of Ávila, Alonso Valdemoro, opposed it and the provincial Jerónimo Tostado threatened them with excommunication. Finally, Teresa was able to be chosen prioress of the Incarnation.

On December 24, 1577, Teresa fell down a staircase and dislocated her left arm, leaving it incapacitated for a time. In May 1578 the prioress of the Medina del Campo convent sent for a healer who reset her arm, and she was able to move it again.

Teresa spent the year 1578 in Ávila, and it was one of her saddest. In one of her letters written from Ávila in 1577 or 1578, she went so far as to say to Friar Ambrosio Mariano: "all the demons are making war on us, and we must hope for protection from God alone, and this must be by obeying and suffering, and then He takes matters in hand".

At the beginning of February 1579 the Count of Tendilla, a defender of the Discalced, argued with the nuncio. Felipe Sega complained to Philip II, who told him to concern himself with "favoring virtue". The Archbishop of Toledo, several bishops and the ambassador, by order of the King, complained to the Pope about the nuncio.

The Jesuit Salazar wanted to become a Discalced Carmelite. For this reason, Teresa had a dispute at the end of February 1578 with Suárez, provincial of the Jesuits.

On April 1, 1579, the nuncio Felipe Sega deprived the Carmelite provincials of authority over the Discalced friars and nuns and made Ángel Salazar vicar general of the Carmelites.

After the chapter of Almodóvar of October 1578, the nuncio Felipe Sega, in an attempt to put an end to the reform, decided to banish the principal Discalced and confined Teresa to Toledo, whom he described as:

[...] a restless, gadabout female.

In 1579 the friars Juan de Jesús and Diego de la Trinidad decided to go to the Holy See to obtain a separate province for the Discalced Carmelites. They left Ávila dressed as laymen and in May embarked at Alicante bound for Naples.

Philip II was very displeased by what had happened, because he wanted the reform and did not want interference in the affairs of Spain. A commission was formed with the nuncio and some assistants, which concluded on July 15, 1579. It proposed as a solution that the King ask the Pope for a separate province for the Discalced Carmelites. Philip II requested an independent province for the Discalced Carmelites and Gregory XIII granted it with the Brief of June 22, 1580.

In 1579 things began to improve for the Discalced. Teresa left Ávila on June 25 to visit the convents she had founded. She spent a few days in Medina del Campo. She arrived in Valladolid on July 3. She wrote letters to her brother, to the prioress of Seville, to the Archbishop of Évora and to Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios. On July 30 she left Valladolid and went to Medina del Campo, where she stayed some three or four days. Then she went to Alba de Tormes, where she stayed about eight days. Around the Feast of the Assumption, August 15, she arrived in Salamanca, where she stayed two and a half months, during which she devoted herself to the purchase of a house. She was elected prioress of the Malagón convent. Ángel de Salazar relieved her of the post but ordered her to visit the convent. At the beginning of November she arrived in Ávila. Then, despite being ill and the bad weather, she set out for Malagón. Five days later she reached Toledo, where on November 19 she wrote to Isabel de Ossorio. She arrived in Malagón on November 25. There she was present at the transfer of the community to its new seat on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8.

In 1571, the widow Catalina de Cardona, devoted to a life of prayer and penance, visited her friend Ruy Gómez in Pastrana and was fascinated by the Discalced Carmelites. She then withdrew to a hermitage in Villanueva de la Jara. In 1574 some young women joined her in her eremitic life. Catalina de Cardona died in 1577. In 1580 there were eight women in the hermitage. The town council wanted them to have the rule of the Discalced Carmel and proposed to Teresa that she found a convent there. Teresa left Malagón on February 13. She founded the convent of Villanueva de la Jara in that place with those women on February 25.

She returned to Toledo on March 25, 1580. There she suffered an attack of palsy and heart trouble that brought her close to death. During her convalescence she wrote many letters, among others to the Duchess of Alba. The Duke of Alba, who was then in Uceda, read Teresa's Vida, from a copy given to him by Friar Bartolomé de Medina, and liked it very much. On May 6 she met with Gaspar de Quiroga, who had been appointed Archbishop of Toledo in 1577, to discuss the foundation of a Carmel in Madrid, and he was very glad to meet her, told her that her doctrine was good and gave her every kind of facility.

By order of Ángel Salazar, she left on June 6 for Valladolid and passed through Segovia, a city she reached on June 13. However, on June 28 her brother, Lorenzo de Cepeda, died, and she had to go to Ávila to settle the affairs of his will. Then she left Ávila with a nephew and with Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios. She passed through Medina del Campo in mid-August. When she reached Valladolid she fell seriously ill, thought she was going to die and was left very weak. During her convalescence she wrote several letters.

She was offered the foundation of a Carmel in Palencia. She was told that the city was very humble, and she thought they would not be able to live on donations, and she did not like founding convents with endowed income. The Jesuit Jerónimo de Ripalda, who passed through the city, encouraged her to accept. She set out on December 28, 1580. On December 29 she founded the Palencia convent in a sublet house and the first Mass was celebrated in it. Although the convent had no fixed income, the bishop, Álvaro de Mendoza, assured her that he would take care of the convent and that it would lack nothing. For the permanent seat, Teresa bought a house. The new convent was inaugurated on May 26, 1581, with a procession with music and religious singing.

The first general chapter of the Discalced Carmelites met at the College of San Cirilo in Alcalá de Henares on March 3, 1581. Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios was elected provincial. On March 13, 1581, Constitutions were approved. Teresa asked the provincial to bring out an edition of those Constitutions, which were printed in December.

The noblewoman Beatriz de Beamonte wanted to found a convent of nuns in Soria and discussed the matter with the bishop of her diocese, Alonso Velázquez, who told her about Teresa. Teresa agreed to found the convent. She left Palencia at the end of May and arrived in Soria at the beginning of June. She founded the convent on June 3, 1581, and left as prioress a nun named Catalina de Cristo, who could barely read. Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios was astonished at this, but Teresa said that Catalina de Cristo was a holy woman and that she would be as good a prioress as the others.

She set out for Ávila on August 16. She passed through Burgo de Osma, where on August 18 she met the Hieronymite Diego de Yepes, who gave her the Eucharist. On August 23 she was in Segovia. On September 4 she reached Villacastín. On September 5 she arrived in Ávila. She found the Convent of San José in great decline. The prioress resigned and the nuns wanted to elect their foundress as prioress. Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios encouraged her in this and she accepted. During this period she wrote many letters.

Some Jesuits wanted to found a Carmel in Burgos. Teresa accepted the foundation, despite her poor health. She left Ávila on January 2, 1582. On January 4 she reached Medina del Campo. On January 9 she left for Valladolid, where she stayed four days. Then she passed through Palencia. On January 16 she wrote from there to Catalina de Tolosa. She arrived in Burgos on January 26. On February 23 Teresa and her companions settled in a room of the Hospital of La Concepción. On March 16 she bought a house. The archbishop granted a license for the foundation on April 18.

On January 21, 1582, Saint John of the Cross and the Discalced Carmelite nun Ana de Jesús arrived in Granada, where they founded another convent of Discalced Carmelite nuns.

On February 19, 1582, the Convent of San Alberto, of Discalced Carmelite friars, was founded in Lisbon.

Teresa left Burgos at the end of July 1582 with her nurse, the nun Ana de San Bartolomé, and her niece Teresa. On August 3 she wrote from Palencia to the prioress of Burgos. Then she passed through Valladolid. Here she had to listen to the recriminations of Beatriz de Castilla y Mendoza. The mother-in-law of her nephew, Francisco de Cepeda, demanded that he receive part of the inheritance that Lorenzo had bequeathed to the Carmel of Ávila. Teresa could not get her to see reason. She arrived in Medina del Campo on September 16. There Antonio de Jesús told her to go to Alba de Tormes to keep company with the Duchess of Alba, who was about to have a child. He would travel with her and they would elect a new prioress in the convent of Alba de Tormes. The prioress of the Medina del Campo convent took offense at a remark of Teresa's and the two parted on bad terms. In Aldeaseca de la Frontera she stopped because she felt unwell. They sent a muleteer to look for something to eat, but he found nothing. Teresa had to make do with some dried figs. Then someone came to inform them that the Duchess had given birth to a boy.

She arrived in Alba de Tormes on September 20. She was ill, went to the Carmel and lay down. Against the doctors' opinion, she got up to go to Mass and to inspect the Carmel. She dealt with the problems of this convent and also with another matter concerning the Salamanca convent. The Duchess went to see her on several occasions. On the 29th Teresa was confined to bed. On October 2 she made her confession, received communion and gave some recommendations to the Carmelite nuns. She told Ana de San Bartolomé that, if she improved, she would go to Ávila. Antonio de San José asked her whether she wanted her body to be taken to Ávila when she died. She said she did not mind being buried in Alba. On October 3 a barber bled her and applied cupping glasses. At nine at night, she received extreme unction. She died, in the arms of Ana de San Bartolomé, at nine at night on October 4, 1582 (the following day the Julian calendar was replaced by the Gregorian calendar in Spain, so the day of her death was followed by Friday, October 15).

Burial and relics

Stained-glass window of the convent of Saint Teresa.

Relic of the heart of Saint Teresa. Carmelites of Alba de Tormes.

The body, which was not embalmed, was wrapped in a cloth embroidered with gold, a gift from the Dukes of Alba, and placed in a wooden coffin. The coffin lay in state in the chapel of the Convent of the Annunciation until the funeral Mass, which was celebrated, according to the new calendar, on October 15. The convent's patroness, Teresa Layz, the prioress, Antonio de Jesús and the Dukes of Alba decided that the saint's body, of great value, should remain there, and hastened the burial. A bricklayer and a carpenter made a niche in the wall separating the chapel from the nuns' choir, and she was buried on October 15. They put earth and stones into the niche, pressed the mortar down with a mallet and broke the lid of the coffin. The nuns protested at her being buried in this way, but their protests were in vain. Nine months later, in July 1583, the then provincial, Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios, arrived. He, with the help of the Discalced Carmelite Cristóbal de San Alberto and the nuns of the convent, who wanted to see the saint's body, went to exhume the body. They began on July 4 and took 4 days to remove the stones covering the coffin. They thought that the body had not decomposed, because a gentle fragrance came from the tomb. On opening the coffin they discovered that the body was intact, as if she had just been buried.

To have relics, Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios cut off the left hand and the little finger. He wrapped the hand in a handkerchief and then in paper, put it in a casket and gave it to the Discalced Carmelite nuns of Ávila. Jerónimo kept the little finger. He said that, from the time he had it, he did not suffer any notable illness. In 1593, during a journey from Messina to Rome, he was captured by Muslim corsairs, who took this relic from him, and he remained captive in Tunis for two years. He managed to have the relic returned to him upon payment of 20 reales and some gold rings.

After the exhumation, the nuns removed the earth, washed the body and dressed it in new clothes. They placed her in an easy-to-open chest in the choir so as to display her on special occasions.

Álvaro de Mendoza wished to finance a chapel in the Convent of San José in Ávila and to place two tombs there, one for Saint Teresa and the other for himself. The chapter of the order in Pastrana, on October 18, 1585, decided to move the saint's body to the Convent of San José, which was the first of the Discalced Carmelite nuns.

Canon Juan Carrillo, treasurer of the Cathedral of Ávila, and Julián de Ávila traveled to Alba, where they were received by Friar Gregorio Nacianceno. Shortly afterwards Jerónimo Gracián de la Madre de Dios arrived. On November 24 Friar Gregorio informed the nuns of the decision of the Pastrana chapter. However, he told them that they could keep as a relic the left arm, from which Friar Jerónimo had already removed the hand. Friar Gregorio undertook to cut off the saint's left arm, and the nuns of Alba kept that relic.

They wrapped the saint's body in sackcloth, placed it on a mule between two bales of straw and took it to Ávila. In the Convent of San José, the nuns placed the body in the chapter house, with curtains that allowed it to be shown and hidden. Then they had a chest made for the body. It was lined inside with violet taffeta and covered outside with black velvet with ornaments of gold and silk. There was a shield of gold and another of silver, one with the symbols of the order and the other with the name of Jesus. It also had a cloth on which was embroidered: Mother Teresa of Jesus.

In Ávila the pleasant fragrance given off by the saint's body was interpreted as a miracle, and they asked for theologians to come to determine this. On December 31, 1585, there arrived from Madrid Friar Diego de Yepes, prior of the Hieronymite convent of Madrid, the licentiate Laguna, of the Council of State, and Francisco Contreras, of the Chancery of Granada. They congratulated the then Bishop of Ávila, Pedro Fernández de Temiño, on having the saint's body in his city. The next day, January 1, 1586, a group of twenty people, including the bishop, senior officials, two physicians and some notables of the city, arrived at the Carmel. The body was carried to the entrance gallery. The physicians examined it and verified that it gave off a pleasant fragrance and that, although three years had passed, it had not undergone any decomposition. They certified that this was a miracle, because the body had not been embalmed, nor did it have any balm or anything similar.

When the Discalced Carmelites took the body from the Convent of the Annunciation, neither the then Duke, Antonio de Toledo, nor his uncle, Hernando de Toledo, prior of the Order of Saint John, were in Alba de Tormes. Hernando de Toledo took it very badly because he greatly admired the saint and knew that her body was of great value. He appealed to the Holy See and Sixtus V ruled in his favor. The body was moved back to Alba in August:

On August 23 (1586), at about eight in the morning, the holy body was already with the nuns of Alba (Fr. Silverio).

It was installed in the lower choir of the convent in the presence of the Duke, his mother and a crowd.

For more than a year, the Convent of San José in Ávila and that of the Assumption in Alba de Tormes were in litigation over the body. In December 1588 the nuncio, Cesare Speciano, stated that the body would remain in Alba de Tormes, and on July 10 the Pope confirmed the nuncio's ruling.

The body was examined on March 25, 1588, at the request of the Bishop of Salamanca, Jerónimo Manrique. The Jesuit Francisco de Ribera was present at that inspection and wrote about the state of the body and of the arm relic at that time. The arm was wrapped in a cloth that was changed from time to time and given to visitors as an object of devotion.

In 1588 some physicians removed the heart. It is kept in a reliquary from 1671 in the convent of Alba de Tormes.

The tomb of Teresa of Jesus is guarded by nine keys, three of which are in the possession of the House of Alba.

Her tomb was raised in 1598; her body was placed in the New Chapel in 1616, and in 1670, still incorrupt, in a silver casket.

Friar Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios took the hand of Saint Teresa to Ávila in 1582 and in 1585 gave it to the Carmelites of the Convent of San Alberto in Lisbon. It was later taken to the Carmelite convent of Olivais. After the anticlerical Portuguese revolution of 1910, the nuns took the relic to Spain. In 1924 they took it to the convent of Discalced Carmelite nuns of Ronda. In 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, the nuns hid the hand from the anticlerical Popular Front. Its members demanded that it be handed over to them and ended up confiscating it, arguing that they wanted to protect it from desecration. In 1937, when the troops of the Nationalist side took Málaga, they found it in the luggage of the Republican José Villalba Rubio. The military gave it to Francisco Franco and told the nuns of Ronda that it would guide him in his work of regenerating Spain. Franco kept the hand in his bedroom and took it on all his travels. After Franco's death, in 1975, Carmen Polo handed it over to the Archbishop of Toledo on December 9, 1975. He handed it over to the Carmel of Ronda on January 21, 1976.

The Ronda convent also preserves the saint's left eye.

Today there are relics of the saint's body in various places. The Convent of San José in Ávila has a collarbone and the Convent of Santa Teresa in Ávila has a ring finger. In 1614, the year of her beatification, the right foot was sent to Rome, where it is kept in the Church of Santa Maria della Scala. In the Basilica of San Pancrazio in Rome there is a piece of the upper jaw.

The Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela has molars of Saint Teresa as a relic. A convent in Puebla de Zaragoza, Mexico, also has molars of the saint.

The Convent of San José in Toledo has a reliquary with a molar.

The Convent of San José in Seville preserves as relics part of a finger and part of a rib. The Brotherhood of Our Lady of Mount Carmel of San Juan de Aznalfarache, province of Seville, also has a relic of the saint.

The Lázaro Galdiano Museum in Madrid preserves a bust of Saint Teresa with a reliquary.

There is a finger of the saint in Sanlúcar de Barrameda and another in the Church of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette in Paris.

Belongings preserved as relics

The Convent of San José in Toledo holds a drum and a tambourine with which she sang carols, two paintings of the Passion of Christ that she bought at a street market, the sheet on which she died in Alba de Tormes, a habit and two images of the Child Jesus that belonged to her.

The Convent of San José in Seville preserves several objects belonging to the saint, displayed in the sacristy. There is an image of the Child Jesus brought from Quito by her niece, Teresa de Cepeda, which is known as the "Quitito". There is also a bell, a drum, and reliquaries with pieces of her veil. They also keep a cape in which she died in Alba de Tormes and with which some pregnant women pray for a good delivery.

Walking stick of Teresa of Jesus at the fifth centenary of her birth

Left, the walking stick of Saint Teresa. Center, detail of the handle. Right, the Argentine cardinal Mario Aurelio Poli blesses the people with the walking stick during a Mass celebrated at the Monastery of Saint Teresa of Jesus on the occasion of the staff's passage through Buenos Aires as part of the pilgrimage called the "Way of Light".

The walking stick or staff of Teresa of Jesus is a relic that became a symbol of the spiritual journey of Saint Teresa herself. In preparation for the celebration of the fifth centenary of the birth of Saint Teresa of Jesus, the walking stick, protected by a glass case, was carried on a pilgrimage known as the "Way of Light", which began in Ávila, Spain, on October 15, 2014 (her feast day), and stopped at the main centers of the Discalced Carmelite nuns in twenty-nine countries on five continents. In March 2015 the walking stick was kissed at the Vatican by Pope Francis. In an audience, the Pope invited the faithful to look to the life of this saint in order to live in Christ. The route of the pilgrimage, organized by the Order itself, ended in Ávila on March 28 (the saint's birthday), 2015.

Recognitions

Saint Teresa of Jesus. Oil painting by Alonso del Arco, 17th century.

The Bishop of Salamanca, Jerónimo Manrique de Lara, in whose diocese Alba de Tormes lies, began the proceedings for her beatification in 1591. Philip II supported these proceedings diplomatically. Pope Paul V read a biography of the saint published in Latin in Rome in 1609 and corrected by Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios. The Pope promulgated the papal brief of beatification on April 24, 1614. This was the occasion for celebrations throughout Spain. The festivities were compiled by Fray Diego de San José in the Compendium of the Solemn Festivities Held Throughout Spain for the Beatification of Our Blessed Mother Teresa of Jesus, Foundress of the Reform of the Discalced Friars and Nuns of Our Lady of Carmel, published in Madrid in 1615, of more than 300 pages. There were Masses, processions and popular festivals.

Miguel de Cervantes wrote the sonnet The Ecstasies of the Blessed Mother of Jesus, which was read at the castle of the Dukes of Alba de Tormes, and Luis de Góngora wrote the ballad Of the Fallen Seed, under the pseudonym of the "Vicar of Trassierra", which was presented at a literary contest held in Córdoba in October 1614. Between 1604 and 1618 Lope de Vega wrote a work titled Mother Teresa of Jesus, mentioned by him in 1618, which has not survived. There is another work titled Life and Death of Saint Teresa of Jesus, attributed to Lope de Vega and rediscovered in 1889 by Antonio Paz y Meliá. There is a third work, also titled Life and Death of Saint Teresa of Jesus, of which manuscript fragments exist in the National Library of Spain, in Madrid, and in the Palatine Library of Parma, studied by Antonio Restori. There is another work, titled The Blessed Mother Saint Teresa of Jesus, attributed to Luis Vélez de Guevara and dated 1638, of which there are also manuscripts in the National Library of Spain and in the Library of Parma.

On March 12, 1622, Pope Gregory XV canonized the Spaniards Teresa of Jesus, Ignatius of Loyola, Isidore the Laborer and Francis Xavier, and the Florentine Philip Neri. This too was the occasion for celebrations in Spain.

Teresa was popular in France, and her canonization in 1622 was also celebrated in Paris.

The cult of Saint Teresa was so important in America that in 1640 King Philip IV, by royal decree, proclaimed her co-patroness of the Captaincy General Kingdom of Guatemala, requesting that her feast be celebrated as one of the four principal ones (together with those of the Immaculate Conception, Saint James and Saint Cecilia) in the City, head and heart of the viceregal Central American people. With the relocation of the City, independence and the founding of the Republic, Saint Teresa became co-patroness of the Republic and Church of Guatemala.

In 1609 the French nun Angélique, of the Abbey of Port Royal des Champs, of the Cistercian Order, who was familiar with the work of Saint Teresa of Ávila, restored the primitive rule of that order. She had the work The Way of Perfection studied in the convent, and prayer was done according to the methods of Saint Teresa. She was called the "Teresa of the order". In Paris she had the opportunity to spend a day with the Spanish Discalced Carmelite nuns who had gone to found a convent in that city. The Spanish nuns were delighted with her presence and called Angélique "Mother Teresa". In 1616 the nun Angélique read the saint's life, which comforted her. Antoine Arnauld, brother of the nun Angélique, cited Saint Teresa of Ávila, Saint John of Ávila and Fray Luis de Granada in his work On Frequent Communion (1641).

The French scientist Blaise Pascal wrote a work titled Thoughts on Religion and Other Subjects (1670). In this work he says that there are ample reasons to admire Saint Teresa, but that it is not enough to imitate her discourses; rather, one must love what in her pleases God, which is "her profound humility in her revelations". He says that it is there that the greatness of Saint Teresa lies. Elsewhere in the work clear influences of Saint Teresa's thought can be seen. He also mentioned her explicitly in three other preparatory texts for this book which ultimately did not appear in the publication.

Benedict XIII, in his bull of canonization of Saint John of the Cross of January 27, 1726, also mentioned Saint Teresa.

In September 1763 Anna Maria Redi, who led a devout life, received a visit from a friend who later entered the Discalced Carmelites under the name of Teresa of Jesus Crucified. Later, she had a revelation in which Saint Teresa told her that she wanted her in her order and, after receiving communion, she had another in which she was told that in a short time she would be a Discalced Carmelite. In 1764 she entered the monastery of the Discalced Carmelite nuns of Florence with the religious name of Teresa Margaret of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Pius XI beatified her in 1929 and canonized her in 1934.

José María Gabriel y Galán wrote a poem titled To Teresa of Jesus and another poem titled The Sublime Ones dedicated to Saint Teresa of Ávila and to Isabella the Catholic.

Saint Pius X praised her in his letter Ex quo nostrae of March 7, 1914, on the third centenary of the Discalced Carmelites.

On March 4, 1922, she was named the first female doctor honoris causa of the University of Salamanca by a faculty assembly that included the then vice-rector Miguel de Unamuno.

Nevertheless, the Catholic Church as an institution did not officially recognize the teaching on the spiritual life carried out by Saint Teresa of Jesus, nor her doctorate in the Church. Several attempts were made in this regard, the last in 1923. The reason given for the refusal was always the same: "obstat sexus".

Pius XII praised Saint Teresa and Saint John of the Cross in a speech of September 23, 1951, to the students of a college of the Discalced Carmelites.

Saint John XXIII also addressed praise to these two doctors in a speech to a general chapter of the Discalced Carmelites on April 29, 1961.

In 1963 commemorative events for the fourth centenary of the Teresian reform were held in Spain. The cardinal and jurist Arcadio María Larraona Saralegui took part in the closing session of these events, which took place in Alba de Tormes. On August 9, 1963, the reliquary with the saint's hand was carried in procession to the Town Hall of Alba de Tormes, where Saint Teresa was proclaimed perpetual honorary mayor.

Saint Paul VI praised Saint Teresa and Saint John of the Cross in the letter Carmeli Montis of May 3, 1965. With the document Lumen Hispaniae, of September 18, 1965, he proclaimed her patroness of Spanish writers "not only for having crowned the summits of holiness and, most fruitful in spirit, for having been mother of the Carmelites, men and women, who practice the primitive rule of her Order, but also because she wrote various books full of admirable wisdom". He also praised Saint Teresa and Saint John of the Cross in the speech Chi siete voi given at a general chapter of the Discalced Carmelites on June 22, 1967.

On September 27, 1970, Saint Paul VI proclaimed Saint Teresa of Ávila the first woman Doctor of the Church in history. This proclamation was followed, on October 3, 1970, by the same supreme pontiff's proclamation of Saint Catherine of Siena as Doctor of the Church.

In 1976 Cardinal Albino Luciani, who two years later would become Pope John Paul I, published the book Illustrissimi, with laudatory letters dedicated to great figures of history. Among these texts there is one dedicated to Saint Teresa of Ávila.

Saint John Paul II came to Spain in 1982 to close the commemorative events for the fourth centenary of the death of Saint Teresa of Jesus. When he arrived at Madrid Airport on October 31, he gave a speech at the welcome ceremony mentioning the saint and her virtues. On November 1, All Saints' Day, the supreme pontiff was in Ávila and visited the Convent of San José, met with cloistered nuns at the Convent of the Incarnation, where he gave a speech on Saint Teresa of Jesus and the contemplative life, and celebrated a massive open-air Mass in front of the north side of the city walls, with a homily dedicated to the saint. That same day he was in Alba de Tormes. Before a crowd of more than 300,000 people, he gave a speech dedicated to this town and to the Diocese of Salamanca, mentioning the saint's work in that place. He then visited the Convent of the Annunciation, where he prayed before her tomb and gave another speech. Finally, on that same November 1, he was at the Pontifical University of Salamanca, where he gave another speech to the professors of theology mentioning the work of Saint Teresa of Jesus and Saint John of the Cross.

The Catholic Church celebrates her feast on October 15.

In 2015 she was named doctor honoris causa of the Catholic University of Ávila.

Teresa of Ávila was the first saint to bear that name. Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin Guérin entered the convent of the Discalced Carmelite nuns of Lisieux in 1888. In her religious life, she took the name of Teresa of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face (Thérèse de l'Enfant-Jésus et de la Sainte-Face). Pius XI beatified her in 1923 and canonized her in 1925. She was named patroness of missionaries for her love of that apostolate. Despite her youth, she developed a theology influenced by the work of Saint Teresa of Ávila. Teresa of the Child Jesus was also named Doctor of the Church by Saint John Paul II in 1997. Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, in turn, chose the religious name of Teresa in 1931 after Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, patroness of missionaries. She carried out her missionary and charitable work in Calcutta. Saint John Paul II beatified her in 2003 and Francis canonized her in 2016.

In 1919 the blessed Discalced Carmelite Teresa de Los Andes also took her name from Saint Teresa of Jesus.

Edith Stein, a Jew, read a text by Saint Ignatius of Loyola and the Life of Saint Teresa in 1921. She was baptized in 1922. She became a Discalced Carmelite in 1933 with the name of Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She was executed at Auschwitz in 1944. Saint John Paul II beatified her in 1987 and canonized her in 1999.

Saint Teresa of Ávila influenced the literary work of Saint John of the Cross, who was named Doctor of the Church by Pius XI in 1926.

The Doctor of the Church Saint Francis de Sales mentioned the saint in many of his letters. In Introduction to the Devout Life (1608) he mentions the saint four times. In the Treatise on the Love of God (1616) this saint is his main reference. In the work Spiritual Conferences, addressed to the nuns of the Order of the Visitation and published by the nuns in 1626, texts from the saint's work Foundations are also mentioned.

The Doctor of the Church Saint Alphonsus Liguori read her works, meditated on her life and was very devoted to this saint. He wrote a prayer to Saint Teresa in which he called her "the great mistress of perfection". Every day he said a prayer in which he told her: "I choose you this day, after Most Holy Mary, as my mother, my lady and special advocate". He also wrote Vow of Various Mortifications in Honor of Saint Teresa, Considerations on the Virtue and Merits of Saint Teresa of Jesus, Novena in Honor of Saint Teresa (1745) and Brief Practice for Perfection Gathered from the Doctrines of Saint Teresa (1752). He also dedicated one of his poems to her. He cited Saint Teresa in Way of Conversing Continually, at Home, with God, Tranquility for Scrupulous Souls in Obeying Their Director, Act of Thanksgiving for After Communion and Of the Great Means of Prayer.

There are a multitude of cities and towns named after this saint, among others: Santa Teresa del Tuy (Venezuela), Santa Teresa (Nicaragua), Santa Teresa (Santa Fe, Argentina), Santa Teresa (La Pampa, Argentina), Santa Teresa (Bacanora, Mexico), Santa Teresa (Motul, Mexico) and Santa Teresa (United States). In Peru there is a region called Santa Teresa.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, approved by Saint John Paul II in 1997, cites Saint Teresa of Jesus in paragraphs 227, 1011, 1821 and 2704. Paragraph 227 cites one of Saint Teresa's poems:

Let nothing disturb you,

let nothing frighten you,

all things pass,

God does not change,

patience

obtains all things;

whoever has God

lacks nothing.

God alone suffices.

Patronage of Spain

On October 24, 1617, the Cortes of Castile, meeting in Madrid, decided to name Teresa "patroness of all the kingdoms of Spain", which included the Indies. Philip III approved this on August 4, 1618. She would thus share the patronage with the Apostle James the Great, patron of Spain, as was specified by the Cortes.

That Spain should have another patron besides Saint James was a matter of controversy among some clergy of the time, such as the archbishops of Seville and Granada and, above all, in Santiago de Compostela. In the autumn of 1627, Francisco de Quevedo, a knight of the Order of Santiago, wrote His Sword for Saint James, Sole and Only Patron of the Spains, which was published in 1628 in Madrid and Barcelona. According to this poet, the Cortes should not have meddled in what was none of their business, since it had been God who had made Saint James patron of Spain when he helped in the Reconquista. A niece of Teresa, named Beatriz de Jesús, said that the saints did not care about the honors of this world and that the controversy seemed vain and regrettable to her. Philip IV and his favorite, the Count-Duke of Olivares, who was very devoted to this saint, were also supporters of the co-patronage. Urban VIII established the co-patronage of Saint James and Saint Teresa on July 21, 1627, although on January 8, 1630, he distanced himself from the controversy and mentioned only Saint James as patron. However, Spain has had two patrons ever since.

On June 28, 1812, the Cortes of Cádiz named Saint James and Saint Teresa as patron saints of Spain.

Spain was always a country very devoted to the Immaculate Conception. On August 12, 1617, Pope Paul V published a decree on the Immaculate Conception. In the 18th century, Charles III asked the Pope to name the Most Holy Virgin of the Immaculate Conception patroness of Spain and of its territories in the Indies. Pope Clement XIII proclaimed her patroness in 1760. For this reason, the Most Holy Virgin of the Immaculate Conception would also be patroness of Spain. She is also patroness of the Spanish Infantry, on account of the Miracle of Empel of 1585.

Literary work

In the 19th century the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles was created, with 71 volumes of the best authors in the history of Spain, from the Middle Ages up to that time. The work of Saint Teresa occupied volumes 53 (1861) and 55 (1862).

The name of Saint Teresa of Jesus appears in the Catalog of Authorities of the Language published by the Royal Spanish Academy in 2002.

The work of Saint Teresa of Ávila has been translated, wholly or partially, into practically every language. The first to translate the work of Saint Teresa into French was the priest Jean de Quintanadoine, at the beginning of the 17th century. For the academic Joseph Pérez, the most beautiful French translations of Saint Teresa's work were made by Fray Cyprien de la Nativité de la Vierge, who had become a Discalced Carmelite in 1633. These were published in 1644. The Councillor of State Robert Arnauld d'Andilly also translated her works, which were published in 1659 and 1670.

Life of Mother Teresa of Jesus

Pedro Ibáñez also recommended to Teresa that she write her autobiography around 1560. It must have been written between 1561 and June 1562. In 1564 Francisco de Soto y Salazar recommended that she take up the account of her life again and send it to the priest Juan de Ávila. It narrates events up to the summer of 1565. In April 1568 Teresa handed the manuscript to her friend Luisa de la Cerda, who withdrew to Fuente de Piedra, Province of Málaga. Juan de Ávila lived in Montilla, Province of Córdoba. Luisa delivered the book to Juan de Ávila on June 23. On September 12 Juan de Ávila sent Teresa a favorable letter about this work.

In this book Teresa does not speak only about her life. It has a total of 40 chapters. Chapters 1 to 10 deal with her biography and her interior life from childhood until her entry into the convent, chapters 11 to 22 with the degrees of prayer, chapters 23 to 31 with mystical union, and chapters 37 to 40 with the favors God has granted her.

Some copies of the work were made, as it was much sought after by convents and scholars. In 1580 María of Austria became a Colettine Poor Clare at the Convent of las Descalzas Reales in Madrid. In 1586 she read it and commissioned Ana de Jesús to publish it, which had the support of Saint John of the Cross. The definitory of the Discalced Carmelites granted license for this on September 1, 1586. Following the denunciation by the Princess of Éboli, the original manuscript was in an office of the Council of the Supreme Inquisition. Ana de Jesús requested the manuscript from Quiroga, who had no objection to handing it over. In 1586 the Royal Council commissioned the Augustinian Fray Luis de León, professor at the University of Salamanca, to produce a publication with the works of the saint.

In 1587 these nuns handed the manuscript to Fray Luis de León. Since Saint Teresa had not given it a title, Fray Luis de León titled it: The Life of Mother Teresa of Jesus and Some of the Favors That God Granted Her, Written by Herself by Order of Her Confessor, to Whom She Sends and Addresses It.

Fray Luis de León produced an edition in 1588, at the press of Guillermo Focquel in Salamanca, with Life of Mother Teresa of Jesus, The Way of Perfection, The Dwellings of the Interior Castle, Counsels of Mother Teresa of Jesus, Accounts and Favors, and Exclamations or Meditations of the Soul to Its God.

Philip II requested that the original manuscript with the saint's life be kept in the Royal Library of the Monastery of San Lorenzo of El Escorial, where it is currently kept. When it was placed in this library it was given the title by which it has been known since: Life of Mother Teresa of Jesus, Written in Her Own Hand, with an Approval by Father Master Fray Domingo Báñez, Her Confessor and Holder of the Chair of Prime in Salamanca.

The Way of Perfection

Main article: The Way of Perfection

She began writing it at the end of 1564 in the Convent of San José in Ávila, finished it in 1567 and made it available to the nuns of that convent. This manuscript is in the Royal Library of San Lorenzo de El Escorial. The other convents of Discalced Carmelite nuns wanted to have a copy. So, while in Toledo in 1569, she made corrections to the text and wrote it in a more elaborate form, divided into 42 chapters. This new version is in the convent of Valladolid. Copies of it soon began to circulate. Teresa then wanted there to be a first printed edition. Teresa prepared the printing in 1579, but in the end it did not take place. Teresa died in 1582. There were retouched editions in 1583, 1585 and 1587. However, these were still not Teresa's original texts. Fray Luis de León produced a new edition, following the one written by Teresa in Toledo, in 1588.

At the beginning of her work The Way of Perfection there is a set of counsels from Teresa to her nuns. On June 6, 1679, she wrote in Ávila the "four counsels" that she said she had received from God himself for the growth and preservation of her order. The "four counsels" were published in the 16th century by: Teotónio de Bragança, Bishop of Évora, in 1583, with the title Counsels of Mother Teresa of Jesus, with all the headings in the masculine; Fray Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios, in 1585, with the title Counsels of Mother Teresa of Jesus for Her Nuns, with all the statements in the feminine; and Fray Luis de León, who included them at the end of the saint's autobiography that he published in 1588. In the 17th century some "counsels" that the saint had given from Heaven, with commentary by Jaime de Palafox y Cardona, were widely circulated.

The Dwellings of the Interior Castle

Main article: The Interior Castle

On May 28, 1577, in Toledo, Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios recommended that Teresa write a new book of spirituality. Teresa began on June 2, 1577. Teresa stopped writing for several weeks after chapter 5 of the fifth dwelling, but resumed the work in October. She finished writing it on November 29, 1577. Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios kept the manuscript for a time and then deposited it in the Convent of San José in Seville. In 1587 Ana de Jesús gave the manuscript to Fray Luis de León for the Salamanca edition of 1588. However, for some unknown reason, Fray Luis de León had a corrected version of the original text printed at the press of Guillermo Foquel in Salamanca. There was a new edition in 1589, identical to the previous one. At the beginning of the 17th century a new edition of Teresa's works was made, including The Dwellings, for which the superior general of the Discalced Carmelites asked that they be checked against the autograph originals. Those charged with revising the edition of The Dwellings on the basis of the original were the Discalced Carmelites Juan de San José and Antonio de San José, of the Convent of the Holy Angel in Seville. This edition of the works of Saint Teresa was produced in 1630 in Antwerp, at the Plantin press, owned by Balthasar Moretus. There was another edition in Madrid, at the press of Josef Fernández de Buendía, in 1661, of which another edition was made in 1670.

In 1588 Ana de Jesús handed the manuscript back to Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios, who gave it to Pedro Cerezo Pardo, a wealthy merchant of Seville and protector of the Discalced Carmel. He kept it until 1617. Then his daughter, Catalina Cerezo, became a novice at the Convent of San José. He donated the manuscript to the convent together with the nun's dowry.

Foundations

While she was in Salamanca, in 1573, her confessor, the Jesuit Jerónimo Martínez de Ripalda, told her to write about all the foundations of convents she had carried out. She began writing the Foundations on August 24, Saint Bartholomew's Day, 1573. She wrote about this until she left the city in January 1574. In 1577, in Toledo, Jerónimo Gracián asked her to continue writing about it, and she asked her brother Lorenzo to send her some documents about the foundations that she had left in Ávila. On November 14, 1579, she finished writing chapter 17. She wrote the last part of the book in Burgos in 1582. This book contains a great deal of biographical material, such as her travels through Castile and Andalusia, but it also speaks of conventual life and Christian mysticism.

The original manuscript is in the Royal Library of the Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial.

Teresa did not give this book a title. Ana de Jesús and Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios were the ones who sent the book to be published in Brussels in 1610, with the title: Book of the Foundations of the Discalced Carmelite Sisters, Written by the Mother Foundress Teresa of Jesus. This edition lacks part of chapter 10 and chapter 11. Teresa had written these parts about Casilda Manrique de Padilla, a young daughter of the nobleman Juan de Padilla y Manrique, who was betrothed to her uncle and who decided to become a nun. She became a Discalced Carmelite in Valladolid, which was accompanied by litigation with her uncle and her parents. In the end, her family forced her to stop being a Discalced nun and become a nun in the Convent of Nuestra Señora del Espino, of the Poor Clares, which had been founded by the Padilla family itself in the 15th century, considering that this was more in keeping with her status. Regarding this, Teresa wrote on September 17, 1581, that one should expect nothing from the great of this world and that one should look to the poor.

Later editions were similar to that of 1610. In 1880 Vicente de la Fuente published the complete version of this work in Madrid.

Other works

In 1588 Fray Luis de León also published the Accounts and Favors. These are biographical notes by Saint Teresa written at the end of 1560 and intended for the priest Pedro Ibáñez. This book was published in Madrid in 1861 with the title Book of the Spiritual Accounts of Saint Teresa of Jesus, Written by Herself to Several of Her Directors. This work has also been titled Spiritual Testimonies.

In 1588 in Salamanca Fray Luis de León published the Exclamations or Meditations of the Soul to Its God, Written by Mother Teresa of Jesus on Different Days, According to the Spirit That Our Lord Communicated to Her After Receiving Communion, in the Year Fifteen Hundred and Sixty-Nine. As the title indicates, they were written in 1569. They are similar to ejaculatory prayers addressed to Jesus.

These two works were reissued several times in Spain, especially in Madrid in 1597. They were also published in Naples in 1604, preceded by a dedication to the Countess of Benavente, wife of the Viceroy. On the title page of the Neapolitan edition Teresa is called "blessed", thus anticipating the beatification of 1614.

In September 1572 she wrote a book called Spiritual Challenge.

There are 470 known letters of Saint Teresa, counting the letters and fragments of letters that have been preserved. Of these, 245 are autographs and the rest are relatively reliable copies. The first letter, not counting a receipt of August 12, 1546, for the delivery of wheat for an estate in Gotarrendura, is dated December 23, 1561, and is addressed to her brother Lorenzo, who was in Quito. On February 6, 1573, she wrote a letter to the Bishop of Ávila that has been called the "Vejamen", in which she speaks of Francisco de Salcedo and Julián de Ávila. This was a 16th-century literary genre, common in student circles and among religious, in which some things were exaggeratedly praised and others were criticized in a lighthearted way. Teresa's last letter is dated September 15, 1582.

A first book with letters of the saint was published in Zaragoza in 1658, in two volumes that included 41 and 24 letters respectively, with commentary by Juan de Palafox. The priest Pedro de la Purificación continued the publication in Brussels in 1674 with another volume containing 107 new letters. In Madrid, the priest Antonio San José published two new volumes of correspondence in 1771. The 1674 volume was reissued in 1778 by the priest Antonio de San José, with new commentary. Vicente de la Fuente published 405 letters in number 55 of the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles in 1868.

Teresa wrote a book titled Meditations on the Song of Songs, commenting on some verses of the Song of Songs. The Dominican Domingo Báñez approved this work of Teresa's on June 10, 1575, shortly before also approving the book of her life, on July 7, 1575. Some copies were made and circulated among the nuns. Around 1580 her confessor, the Dominican Diego de Yanguas, told her to burn the work and all its copies because it was liable to be condemned by the Inquisition. Despite everything, some copies survived. Ana de Jesús and Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios sent this work to the Brussels press of Roger Velpius and Hubert Anthoine, where it was printed in 1611, with the title: Concepts of the Love of God. Written by the Blessed Mother Teresa of Jesus, on Some Words of the Song of Solomon. With Some Annotations by Father Master Fray Jerónimo Gracián de la Madre de Dios, Carmelite. This title also calls her "blessed", before the official beatification of 1614.

Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios asked Teresa to draw up a brief explanation of how to carry out the inspection of convents and the main aspects to be evaluated. Teresa wrote this work in August 1576 in Toledo. It was published with the title Method (Treatise) for Visiting the Convents of Discalced Nuns, Written by the Holy Mother Teresa of Jesus, by Order of Her Provincial Superior, Fray Jerónimo Gracián de la Madre de Dios, in Madrid in 1613. Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios used this guide when he visited the convents. This title calls her "saint" before the beatification of 1614 and the canonization of 1622.

About thirty poems have survived. They are of various genres: lyric poems, carols, works in honor of some saints, such as Saint Andrew, Saint Hilarion and Saint Catherine of Alexandria, and others on everyday events of conventual life, such as a nun's taking of the habit. The first editors were not interested in her poems. It was in the 19th century that they began to be more highly valued.

After the exclaustration of 1835, a volume with several texts by Saint Teresa, copied by hand from the original in the 16th century and with commentary by Francisco Ribera, ended up in the Library of the Congress of Deputies. From there, it passed in 1850 to the Library of the Royal Academy of History. Fidel Fita published an article about this in 1915 with the title Teresian Notes, Unpublished and Autograph, of Fr. Francisco de Ribera. There is also a manuscript copy of The Dwellings from 1588 made by Francisco de Ribera and Antonio Arias at the University of Salamanca.

Original writings preserved as relics

When the convent of the Discalced Carmelite nuns of Lima was founded in 1643, the Bishop of Arequipa, Agustín de Ugarte y Sarabia, donated a letter of Saint Teresa, which was preserved as a relic. It is a letter written in Seville on August 28, 1575, and addressed to the prioress of the convent of Valladolid, María Bautista.

In the convent of Discalced Carmelite nuns on Ponzano Street in Madrid there is a 16th-century copy of an original manuscript of The Way of Perfection, with annotations by Saint Teresa herself. It is believed that the document was brought in 1591 by the nun María de San Jerónimo from the Convent of San José in Ávila to the Convent of Santa Ana in Madrid, which had been founded by Saint John of the Cross and Ana de Jesús in 1586. In 1595 it passed to the convent of Discalced Carmelite nuns of Ocaña, founded that year. From there it passed to the Royal Convent of Santa Teresa in Madrid, founded in 1683.

The Convent of the Concepción del Carmen in Valladolid holds the second manuscript that Saint Teresa made of The Way of Perfection.

The Convent of San José in Toledo preserves a copy of The Way of Perfection with annotations by the saint and several letters.

The Convent of San José in Seville preserves the original manuscript of The Dwellings of the Interior Castle. It was donated to the convent by the merchant Pedro Cerezo Pardo, protector of the Discalced Carmelites, in 1617, together with the dowry of his daughter, Catalina Cerezo, who became a novice. A facsimile is displayed in the sacristy, since the original is stored away for its better preservation. This convent also preserves nine letters of the saint.

Biographies

The Jesuit historian Pedro de Ribadeneyra, who wrote biographies of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Saint Francis Borgia and Diego Laynez, published a biography of Saint Teresa in 1590.

The Jesuit Francisco de Ribera, professor of Sacred Literature at the University of Salamanca, wrote a biography of the saint in 1587, which was published in 1590. It was reissued in 1602 and 1607. The Discalced Carmelite Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios had an annotated copy of this work and later wrote Scholia and Additions to the Book of the Life of Mother Teresa of Jesus, in reference to this biography.

There is a biographical text written by the Augustinian Fray Luis de León, at the request of María of Austria, with the title Of the Life, Death, Virtues and Miracles of the Holy Mother Teresa of Jesus. Book One. This work was not finished because Fray Luis de León died in 1591. It is only thirteen pages long. Manuscript copies circulated. It was first published in 1885, in a compendium of the author's works.

In 1606 the Hieronymite Diego de Yepes published Life, Virtues and Miracles of the Blessed Virgin Teresa of Jesus, which became a success.

In 1609 an author named Juan de Jesús María published in Rome a biography in Latin titled Compendium of the Blessed Virgin Teresa of Jesus (Compendium vitae B. Theresiae Virginis a Jesu).

In 1611 Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios published in Brussels a biography titled Declamation Dealing with the Perfect Life and Heroic Virtues of the Blessed Mother Teresa of Jesus and with the Foundations of Her Monasteries.

In 2007 the Hispanist Joseph Pérez, president of the Michel de Montaigne University of Bordeaux between 1978 and 1996, published Teresa of Ávila and the Spain of Her Time. In 2014 he won the Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences.

Physical characteristics

Saint Teresa, by François Gérard.

The most faithful portrait of Teresa's appearance is a copy of an original painted of her by the lay friar Juan de la Miseria in 1576 in the convent of San José in Seville, when she was sixty-one years old (the main portrait of the article). The one who proposed that this portrait be made was Fray Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios. In 1909 the portrait was the subject of a brief study by the art historians Manuel de Torres y Torres, dean of the cathedral, Juan Francisco Muñoz y Pavón, canon of the cathedral, and Joaquín Bilbao, sculptor. It is painted in oil on canvas. According to this study, the dove, the ribbon with the inscription and the rest of the background of the painting are later additions and probably not by Fray Juan de la Miseria.

The prioress of the Seville convent, María de San José, describes her as follows:

This Saint was of medium height, rather tall than short; in her youth she had the reputation of being very beautiful, and even in her last years she showed it; her face was not at all common, but extraordinary, and such that it cannot be called round or aquiline; its thirds equal, the forehead broad and even, and very beautiful; the eyebrows of a dark blond color with little resemblance to black, broad and somewhat arched; the eyes black, lively and round, not very large, but very well set; the nose rounded and, from the line of the tear ducts upward, diminishing until level with the eyebrows, forming a pleasant space between the brows, the tip round and slightly inclined downward, the nostrils slightly arched and small, and the whole of it not far set out from the face. It is hard to paint with a pen the perfection that she had in everything: the mouth of a very good size, the upper lip thin and straight, the lower one full and slightly drooping, of very lovely grace and color; and so she had it in her face, for even though she was already of advanced age and with many illnesses, it gave great pleasure to look at her and listen to her, because she was very pleasant and gracious in all her words and actions; she was plump rather than thin and well proportioned in everything; she had very lovely hands, though small; on her face, on the left side, she had three raised moles like small warts, in line with one another, beginning below the mouth with the largest, and the next between the mouth and the nose, the last on the nose, closer to the bottom than to the top [...] She was perfect in everything, as can be seen from a portrait that Fray Juan de la Miseria made of her from life

— María de San José.

Her confessor, the Jesuit Francisco de Ribera, drew this portrait of Teresa:

She was of very good height, and beautiful in her youth, and even after she was old she looked quite well: her body full-figured and very white, her face round and full, of good size and proportion; her complexion white and rosy, and when she was in prayer it would flush and she became most beautiful, all of it clean and pleasant; her hair black and curly, and her forehead broad, even and beautiful; her eyebrows of a blond color tending somewhat to black, large and somewhat thick, not very arched but rather somewhat flat; her eyes black and round and a little fleshy; not large, but very well set, lively and charming, so that when she laughed they all laughed and showed joy, and on the other hand very grave when she wished to show gravity in her face; her nose small and not very raised in the middle, the tip round and slightly inclined downward; its nostrils arched and small; her mouth neither large nor small; the upper lip thin and straight, and the lower one full and slightly drooping, of very good grace and color; her teeth very good; her chin well formed; her ears neither small nor large; her throat broad and not high, but rather a little sunken; her hands small and very lovely. On her face she had three small moles on the left side, which gave her much grace, one below the middle of the nose, another between the nose and the mouth, and the third below the mouth. Altogether she looked very well and had a very fine bearing in her walk, and she was so amiable and pleasant that she generally greatly pleased all the persons who looked at her.

The Discalced Carmelite Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios said that she was a beautiful woman, but that she was also beautiful in soul and that she had a great power to draw people together.

Teachings

In The Dwellings of the Interior Castle, Saint Teresa describes the soul as a castle of diamond or pure crystal. In this castle there are several rooms, as in Heaven. Prayer is the door of that castle. The first three dwellings serve as preparation. This is the period of ascesis. The fourth dwelling consists of the first two degrees of prayer: the prayer of recollection and the prayer of quiet. The fifth dwelling is the prayer of union, the union of the will and the understanding. In the sixth dwelling the soul celebrates its betrothal with God. The seventh dwelling is the spiritual marriage, where the soul unites and becomes one with God.

Saint Teresa does not propose an initiatory process. These different places are related to one another. Renunciation, which characterizes the first dwelling, presupposes a certain degree of contemplation and a beginning of union. Contemplation is characterized by the light of God which, in union, purifies and illuminates. Passing through these rooms is not gradual, in the sense that setbacks are common. Moreover, whoever goes through these dwellings is not dispensed from praying or from doing things done before, which in an initiatory process are considered to belong to lower degrees.

In The Way of Perfection she explains that humility is fundamental, but that believing oneself worse than one is amounts to falling into a trap of the devil, who leads us to take our desires to improve for pride and convinces us that we are not capable of achieving what we want. We are all called to be saints, with the help of God.

Teresa insists on persevering in prayer with humility before God without demanding or seeking supernatural experiences: "[…] it matters a great deal to understand that God does not lead everyone by one path; and perhaps the one who seems to be going by the lowest is the highest […]" (Way of Perfection 27,2).

Or, put another way: "the truly humble person must go content along the path the Lord leads him" (Way of Perfection 15, 2).

She told the nuns that God also helped in everyday tasks. Hence her famous phrase, in the book of the Foundations, that "the Lord walks among the pots and pans" too.

In the book of her life, in a part written around 1562, she recounts two apparitions of demons. She said that they fled from the Cross but returned, and that to drive them away for good holy water had to be used.

Degrees of prayer

Water is what is used for baptism. When Jesus, dead on the Cross, was pierced with a lance, blood and water came out (John 19:31-37). The First Letter of John says "This is Jesus Christ, who came by water and blood; not by water only, but by water and blood" (1 John 5:6). Moreover, Saint Teresa liked to explain spiritual things with water.

In chapter XIX of The Way of Perfection she says that water has three properties: it cools the temperature and can put out fire, it allows what is dirty to be washed, and it quenches thirst. The contemplative life calms the passions, purifies the soul and brings it peace.

Another of Saint Teresa's parables with water is that of the fountains. If a fountain is built far from the spring, ditches must be dug to bring the water, which takes time and work. If there is a fountain at the spring, the water flows without effort. Meditation is like the fountain that is far from the spring; it involves labor. The prayer of quiet is the fountain that is at the spring, where God gives without anything in return.

Between chapters 11 and 18 of the book of her life Teresa explains another parable. A gardener has to grow flowers on completely arid ground. The ground is the soul. First he has to pull out the weeds. This is done when one begins with prayer. Then he has to plant the seeds, so that they give flowers, which are the virtues. Then those plants must be watered regularly. There would be four ways of doing so:

• 1. Watering by carrying water in buckets from a well.

This corresponds to mental, interior or meditative prayer, which is an intellectual discourse without the repetition of learned prayers. It consists of gathering one's thoughts in silence and avoiding continual distractions. Teresa's definition of mental prayer is included in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: "[…] for mental prayer is nothing else, in my opinion, but an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with him who we know loves us" (Life, 8, 5). It is the stage that requires the most personal effort to make the decision to begin this path.

• 2. Watering by drawing it with a waterwheel.

Prayer of quiet: also called contemplative prayer. Memory, imagination and reason experience a great recollection; although distractions persist, concentration and serenity deepen. The effort is still personal; one begins to enjoy the fruits of prayer, which encourages us to persevere.

• 3. Watering with channels from an acequia.

Prayer of union: the personal effort of the one praying is now very small: memory, imagination and reason are absorbed by an intense feeling of love and peace: "the delight and sweetness and joy are incomparably greater than before" (Life, 16,1).

• 4. Watering with the rain that comes from the sky.

Ecstasy or rapture: contact with the world through the senses is lost. "Here there is no feeling, but only rejoicing without understanding what one is rejoicing in" (Life, 18, 1); one loses even the sensation of being in the body and any possible control over what happens to us. These correspond to the descriptions of levitation.

In popular culture

Film

The first film was Escenas de la vida de santa Teresa (Scenes from the Life of Saint Teresa), shot in Ávila in 1925 and premiered in that city on June 1, 1926. It is a silent feature film directed by Arturo Beringola and Francisco Beringola. The first to see the film was the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain Enrique Reig Casanova, in order to give his approval. The next film was Teresa de Ávila, from 1958. It is a short film directed by Joaquín Hualde and José López Clemente. It won the Silver Labarum Award at the 4th International Religious Film Week of Valladolid in 1959 for its religious merits and "for the eloquent simplicity with which it evokes the footsteps of Saint Teresa in the reflection of the settings in which she lived". The film Teresa de Jesús, directed in 1961 by Juan de Orduña, dealt with the life of the saint, played by Aurora Bautista.

In 1964 Teresa de la Hispanidad (Teresa of the Hispanic World), directed by Enrique Cahen Salaberry, was released. It is a short film from a series titled Corresponsal en España (Correspondent in Spain).

In 1970 the film Santa Teresa Da Avila was made in the Philippines.

In 1982 the director César Fernández Ardavín made a series of short films about the saint with the titles: Castillo interior, A trochas y mochas, Un poquito de manjar and Las sendas de Teresa.

In 1984 the series Teresa de Jesús was made by Televisión Española. It was directed by Josefina Molina. Carmen Martín Gaite wrote the screenplay. It starred Concha Velasco. The historical adviser was Víctor García de la Concha. It consists of eight episodes of approximately one hour each. The first episode aired on March 8, 1984. It is probably the best-known series about the saint. This series was very important in the actress's professional career. In 2013 Concha Velasco won the Honorary Goya Award for her entire career. In 2019 Josefina Molina won the National Film Award.

In 2007 Teresa: el cuerpo de Cristo was released, directed by Ray Loriga and starring Paz Vega. It is a coproduction of Spain, France and the United Kingdom.

Television

In 1967 Ávila mística de santa Teresa (Mystical Ávila of Saint Teresa) was made for Televisión Española. It is a short film directed by Jesús Fernández Santos and Juan García Atienza.

On October 19, 1973, the film Teresa de Jesús premiered on Televisión Española's program Estudio 1. It is a feature film directed by Pedro Amalio López.

The saint also appears in the episode "Gone Maggie Gone" (2009) of the twentieth season of The Simpsons.

In 2014 the documentary Santa Teresa de Jesús en Malagón, una huella inolvidable (Saint Teresa of Jesus in Malagón, an Unforgettable Mark) was made, produced and directed by Sergio Palomares.

In 2015 Televisión Española premiered the film Teresa, directed by Jorge Dorado and starring Marian Álvarez. Teresa offers a new view of the figure of the saint through the eyes of a young woman of our day who reads the book of the Life that she wrote.

Also in 2015 the documentary Teresa de Jesús: una vida de experiencia mística (Teresa of Jesus: A Life of Mystical Experience) was made, written and directed by Francisco Rodríguez, by independent production companies together with Televisión Española.

In 2015 También entre los pucheros anda el Señor (The Lord Walks Among the Pots and Pans Too) was made. It is a seven-episode documentary series directed by Belén Molinero that aired on La 2 of Televisión Española.

Theater

Throughout history, several Spanish playwrights have devoted pieces to the life and work of Saint Teresa of Jesus or Teresa of Ávila.

• 1982 – Teresa de Ávila (by José María Rodríguez Méndez): Monologue. A journey through the life of Teresa of Ávila, told by herself, in five moments.
• 2011 – La lengua en pedazos (The Tongue in Pieces) (by Juan Mayorga): recreates an imaginary dialogue between Saint Teresa of Jesus and an inquisitor. It premiered, directed by the author himself, on February 24, 2012, in Avilés.
• 2014 – Teresa, la jardinera de la luz (Teresa, the Gardener of Light) (by Denis Rafter). An ensemble work.
• 2015 – Entre los pucheros... (Santa Teresa) (Among the Pots and Pans... (Saint Teresa)) (by Rafael Negrete-Portillo): presents a Carmelite postulant peeling potatoes for the Christmas dinner with the convent cook. Significant texts by and about Saint Teresa are mentioned, for example the poem Nada te turbe.

Confectionery

There is a sweet called Yemas de Santa Teresa, which is typical of Ávila.

Others

There is a Venezuelan brand of rum called Santa Teresa. In 1796 Count Martín Tovar Ponte acquired an estate that he called Santa Teresa. Gustav Julius Vollmer Ribas bought the estate and began producing the first rum of Venezuela in 1896.

See also

• Saint John of the Cross
• Fray Luis de León
• Fray Luis de Granada
• Carmelites
• Discalced Carmelite nuns
• Francisco Palau y Quer
• Footsteps of Saint Teresa
• Guiomar de Ulloa

Bibliography

• Boudot, Pierre (2005) [1979]. La jouissance de Dieu: ou Le roman courtois de Thérèse d'Avila. Préface du Xavier Tilliette [The Enjoyment of God: or The Courtly Novel of Teresa of Ávila. Preface by Xavier Tilliette]. Colección La sœur de l'ange. Les classiques méconnus [The Sister of the Angel. The Unknown Classics] (in français). Cluny: A contrario. ISBN 2-7534-0032-6.
• Etxeberri, Xabier (1955). Vida y obra de Santa Teresa de Ávila (in español). Barcelona: Cartes.
• García Valdés, Olvido (2001). Santa Teresa de Jesús (in español). Barcelona: Ediciones Omega S. A. ISBN 84-282-1235-X.
• Lope de Vega, Félix (2005). Santa Teresa de Jesús (in español). Barcelona: Linkgua Ediciones. ISBN 84-96428-91-5.
• Martínez-Blat, Vicente (2005). La andariega: Biografía íntima de Santa Teresa de Jesús (in español). Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos. ISBN 84-7914-779-2.
• Ribera, Francisco (2005). La vida de la madre Teresa de Jesús: fundadora de las descalzas y descalzos carmelitas (in español). Madrid: Edibesa. ISBN 84-8407-427-7.
• Karahasan, Dževad (2005). Der entrückte Engel [The Ecstatic Angel] (in Deutsch). Vienna, Salzburg and Klagenfurt: Arbos.
• Pérez, Joseph (2015) [2007]. Teresa de Ávila y la España de su tiempo (in español) (4th ed.). EDAF. ISBN 9788496107809.
• Pardo, Enrique Jorge (1964). Estudios teresianos (in español). Vol. 1. Universidad Pontificia de Comillas.
• Auclair, Marcelle (2014). La vida de Santa Teresa de Jesús (in español). Madrid: Ediciones Palabra. ISBN 978-84-9061-083-1.
• De Lamano y Beneite, José (2014) [1914]. Santa Teresa de Jesús en Alba de Tormes (in español). Maxtor. ISBN 978-84-9001-437-0.
• García Campos, María Isabel (1970). Geografía turística de España (in español). Editora Nacional.
• Muñoz Garnica, Manuel (1875). San Juan de la Cruz: ensayo histórico (in español). Jaén.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• De Yepes, Diego (1776). Vida, virtudes y milagros de la bienaventurada Virgen Teresa de Jesús (in español). Madrid.
• Montoto, Santiago (2005) [1973]. Esquinas y conventos de Sevilla (in español). Secretariado de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Sevilla. ISBN 84-7405-671-3.
• Auclair, Marcelle (2014). La vida de Santa Teresa de Jesús (in español). Palabra. ISBN 9788490610831.
• Lazcano González, Rafael (1994). Fray Luis de León: bibliografía (in español). Revista Agustiniana. ISBN 84-86898-27-7.
• María del Carmen Azaustre Serrano and Pilar Pazos Tomás, ed. (2016). "Mirad que convida el Señor a todos": Jornadas internacionales en el V Centenario del Nacimiento de Teresa de Jesús (in español). Narcea S. A. Ediciones. ISBN 978-84-277-2140-1.
• De la Fuente, Vicente (1882). El Tercer Centenario de Santa Teresa de Jesús: manual del peregrino (in español). El Ángel Guardián.
• Pérez Jiménez, Manuel (1998). El teatro de la transición política (1975-1982) (in español). Kassel. Edition Reichenberg. ISBN 3-931887-22-7.
• Renault, Emmanuel (2011). Influencia de Santa Teresa de Ávila en Santa Teresa de Lisieux (in español). Karmel. ISBN 978-84-8353-403-8.
• Zolfanelli, Loredana (2018). Santa Teresa de Lisieux. Maestros de la Fe. Los grandes propagadores del cristianismo (in español). EMSE.
• Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene (2006). From the Sacred Heart to the Trinity: The Spiritual Itinerary of St. Teresa Margaret (Redi) of the Sacred Heart, O. C. D. ISBN 0935216375.
• Catecismo de la Iglesia Católica (in español). Bilbao: Asociación de Editores del Catecismo. 2012 [1997]. ISBN 84-7129-514-8.

Editions of the work of Saint Teresa of Jesus

• Santa Teresa de Jesús (1861). Vicente de la Fuente (ed.). Escritos de Santa Teresa. Biblioteca de autores españoles (in español). Vol. 1. Madrid: Rivadeneyra.
• Santa Teresa de Jesús (1862). Vicente de la Fuente (ed.). Escritos de Santa Teresa. Biblioteca de autores españoles (in español). Vol. 2. Madrid: Rivadeneyra.
• Santa Teresa de Jesús (1957). Castillo interior: o Las moradas (in español). Madrid: Aguilar.
• Santa Teresa de Jesús (1957). Exclamaciones del alma a su Dios. Colección Crisol (in español). Madrid: Aguilar.
• Santa Teresa de Jesús (1957). Poesías. Colección Crisol (in español). Madrid: Aguilar.
• Santa Teresa de Jesús (2015). Guillermo Suazo Pascual (ed.). Las moradas del castillo interior (in español). Edaf. ISBN 978-84-414-3555-1.
• Santa Teresa de Jesús (prologue by Joseph Pérez) (2014). María de los Hitos Hurtado (ed.). Libro de la vida (in español). Edaf. ISBN 978-84-414-3497-4.
• Santa Teresa de Jesús (2014). Fidel Sebastián Mediavilla (ed.). Santa Teresa de Jesús. Libro de la vida (PDF) (in español). Real Academia Española y La Caixa. ISBN 978-84-672-6145-5.
• Santa Teresa de Jesús (1961). Antonio Comas (ed.). Obras completas (in español). Barcelona: Vergara.
• Santa Teresa de Jesús (1985). Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodríguez (ed.). Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila. Vol. 3. ISBN 0960087605.

Additional bibliography

• Lorenz, Erika (2004). Teresa de Ávila: las tres vidas de una mujer (in español). Herder. ISBN 9788425423901.

External links

• Digitized works of Saint Teresa of Jesus in the Hispanic Digital Library of the National Library of Spain
• Saint Teresa in the Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library
• Meditaciones sobre Los cantares