Saint Teresa of Ávila

Spanish church reformer

• Born: March 28, 1515
• Birthplace: Ávila, Spain
• Died: October 4, 1582
• Place of death: Alba de Tormes, Spain

Teresa of Ávila, a patron saint of Spain and a doctor of the Church, was active in reforming monasticism in Spain. She also is known for her mystic writings, which describe how mental prayer can bring the soul through successive stages to union with God.

Early Life

Teresa of Ávila (tay-RAY-sah uhv AH-bee-lah) was born during a time of religious fervor, controversy, and fanaticism in Spain. The Inquisition was established to impose purity of thought on the peninsula. In this atmosphere of religious zeal, the Inquisition forced Teresa’s grandfather, Juan Sánchez, along with his two sons (including Teresa’s father) to accept public humiliation to prove that they were sincere converts to Christianity. Such demonstrations did not necessarily preserve converted Jews from future abuse, so Sánchez took his wife’s name, de Cepeda, and left his home in Toledo to begin a new life free from the scrutiny of the Inquisition. Teresa’s father, Alonso de Cepeda, settled in Ávila, where he worked as a merchant and tax collector. There he married his second wife, Beatriz Ahumada, Teresa’s mother.

Teresa was a cheerful, vivacious child who loved friends and conversation. She was very pretty, plump with white skin and curly black hair. Her looks and personality made her a favorite of her father and her nine siblings, and throughout her life she continued to charm all who knew her. As a child, she enjoyed reading, from her father’s serious books to her mother’s light romances.

The carefree childhood years ended when Teresa was thirteen and her mother died. For three years, Teresa indulged in behavior that could have damaged her reputation. Her father removed her from danger by sending her to study at the Augustinian convent. In 1536, she overcame her father’s objections and entered the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation in Ávila, where she took her vows the following year.

The Convent of the Incarnation observed a mitigated Rule of Mount Carmel, which meant that it was not very strict. For almost twenty years in the convent, Teresa was torn between her conflicting desires. She yearned for a spiritual life, reading mystic books and practicing mental prayer. At the same time, she desired a secular life, enjoying the admiration of her many visitors. In later years, Teresa wrote against lax convents that permitted nuns to indulge in such vanities, and her experience as a young nun shaped her reform movement. During this time, perhaps partly because of her internal turmoil, she became ill and suffered pain and temporary partial paralysis. For the rest of her life, she endured recurring illness. When she was thirty-nine years old, she had a vision of Christ and then began to have other mystic experiences that finally let her free herself from her worldly temptations and begin her spiritual life as a mystic and church reformer.

Life’s Work

Teresa’s first visible manifestations of spirituality were raptures, during which she became rigid and cold with no discernible pulse. During these raptures, Teresa also was reputed to have experienced levitation, floating up uncontrollably, much to her embarrassment. These external manifestations of her spiritual state did not end her struggles with the Spanish hierarchy. Her grandfather’s Jewish past was not forgotten, and it made some religious leaders look at her experiences with suspicion.

By 1557, the Catholic Reformation was well under way. The Council of Trent was meeting to defend doctrine against the challenge of Protestants. Spanish Catholics such as Teresa seemed to fear Lutherans as much as they feared appearances of the Devil. As part of the Church’s rigorous reform, Pope Paul IV issued a new Index librorum prohibitorum, or Index of Prohibited Books, that censored many of the mystical writings that had guided Teresa’s mental prayers. Religious authorities searched convents and confiscated books.

In 1559, the Inquisition increased its efforts to protect the peninsula from unorthodox thought, often focusing on converted Jews, whom they believed were susceptible to secret nonconformity often expressed through mystic theology. Church authorities assigned Teresa a series of confessors to examine her raptures, and her confessors’ doubts caused her much turmoil. In 1559, she received her most famous vision, seeing and feeling an angel piercing her heart with a spear. This vision settled her doubts; she no longer feared confessors or inquisitors. Thus spiritually at ease, she began her active life as a reformer of the Carmelite Order.

In 1560, Teresa and a small group of nuns at the Convent of the Incarnation made a vow to follow the more rigorous unmitigated rule of the original Carmelites. Her desire to move out of her unreformed convent into a new one in Ávila raised an outcry. Many monks and nuns objected to Teresa’s dedication, because such a reform represented an implicit criticism of their own lives. Further objection came from the population of Ávila. In the mid-sixteenth century, almost one-fourth of the population in Spain was ecclesiastical, either clerical or monastic. The lay public had to finance this religious population, and the people of Ávila were reluctant to support another convent within their city walls. Opposition from both of these groups, monastic and lay, plagued the reform movement that represented much of Teresa’s life’s work.

Two years after Teresa began her efforts at reform, she received permission to establish a new convent in Ávila. In August of 1562, she founded the reform convent of San José, and became its prioress the following year. As a symbolic gesture of her new reform, she and the novices removed their shoes to wear rough sandals. This act gave her reform movement the name Discalced (without shoes), and writers describe the subsequent struggles within the Carmelite movement as between the Calced and Discalced groups.

Teresa’s notoriety brought her again to the attention of the Inquisition, which ordered her to write an account of her life for its review. In 1562, Teresa completed the first version of her autobiography, which she later expanded. The Inquisition found this Libro de su vida (wr. 1565, pb. 1611; The Life of the Mother Teresa of Jesus , 1611) acceptable. This work is a major source of information about the saint’s early life. It also opens a new and influential side of Teresa’s active life: her writings. In addition to her autobiography, Teresa wrote four books, six shorter works (including a collection of verses), and many letters, of which 458 survive. Her most famous mystical works are El camino de perfección (wr. 1565, pb. 1583; The Way of Perfection , 1852), written to guide the nuns in her newly reformed convents, and El castillo interior: O, Tratado de las moradas (wr. 1577, pb. 1588; The Interior Castle: Or, The Mansions , 1852). In these and other works, Teresa described her techniques of mental prayer, which had been so important in her own spiritual growth.

From 1567 to 1576, Teresa expanded the Discalced Reform by establishing new convents throughout most of Spain. Teresa, frequently ill, traveled throughout the countryside to bring enclosed convents, erected in poverty, to many parts of the kingdom. The indefatigable founder overcame problems of opposition and financing to found seventeen reform convents for women. During her travels, Teresa met John of the Cross, a Carmelite and priest, who became her confessor, friend, and supporter in establishing two Discalced monasteries for men.

Between 1576 and 1578, the expansion of the reform movement was stopped by increasing pressure from the opposition. The Calced Carmelites kidnapped leaders of the Discalceds to force them back into observance of the Mitigated Rule of Carmel. Calced monks imprisoned John of the Cross in Toledo for eight months during these times of troubles. The turmoil reached Teresa herself; once again, the Inquisition summoned her to respond to its interrogations. Throughout this period, Teresa wrote many letters to gather support for her movement and was able to win the support of influential patrons, including King Philip II of Spain.

Finally, in 1580, her reform movement was victorious. Pope Gregory XIII officially separated the Calced from the Discalced Carmelites, sanctioning the reform and creating its independent administration. Teresa’s favorite, Jerome Gracián, was made the first leader of the Discalceds, and John of the Cross became an administrator of the movement. Teresa was content that papal authority had safeguarded her reform, and she spent the last two years of her life establishing three more foundations and writing many letters. She became ill as she journeyed to the reform convent in Alba and died there on October 4, 1582. (The day after her death, the Gregorian reform calendar was adopted, and her feast day is celebrated on October 15 because of the changed calendar.)

Significance

Nine months after Teresa of Ávila’s death, her followers exhumed her body and allegedly found that it had not decayed. Her supporters used this discovery to forward her cause for sanctity, and her immediate popularity led to repeated dismemberments of the body and distribution of her relics to many churches. In 1614, Pope Paul V declared her blessed, and the Spanish parliament proclaimed her the patroness of Spain in 1617. In 1622, Pope Gregory XV pronounced Teresa a saint.

One of Teresa’s enduring accomplishments was her reform of Spanish monasticism, which was part of the Catholic Reformation’s response to the growth of Protestantism. The Discalced Reform she began continued and spread after her death to remain a force in Spanish life. Teresa is probably most widely remembered for her mystical experiences and for her written articulation of spiritual doctrine. The sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini popularized the piercing of Teresa’s heart in his statue The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, made in 1645 for the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. Reverence for this ecstasy grew in the eighteenth century, when churchmen examined Teresa’s heart and reported that it bore a hole as evidence of the angel’s piercing arrow. In 1726, Pope Benedict XIII instituted the Feast of the Transverberation of Teresa’s heart to commemorate this mystical event.

In 1970, Pope Paul VI declared Teresa to be a doctor of the church and her works worthy of study. All Teresa’s major spiritual writings include discussions of her mystic theology, but the most sophisticated expression of her theology is found in The Interior Castle. Teresa wrote this book while in a trance, and it discusses the soul’s capacity to move progressively through the rooms of itself to reach God, who dwells at the center. By locating God at the center of the soul, Teresa expressed God’s presence and accessibility to searching believers.

The Interior Castle mirrors the life of the saint herself. Teresa had to cut herself off from her past, which in Counter-Reformation Spain marked her as a converted Jew; she called herself Teresa of Jesus, renouncing her family name. She had to transcend the temptations that bound her for twenty years in feelings of sin, and she fought against a monastic system that she believed had grown too lax for spiritual safety. She did all these things by retreating to a strength inside herself, where she found God. Through this strength, she changed her world and wrote to tell others how to change theirs.

Bibliography

Clissold, Stephen. St. Teresa of Ávila. New York: Harper & Row, 1982. A fine, easy-to-read short biography that brings Teresa’s world and accomplishments to life. Provides a sensitive balance between the reputation of the saint, with her raptures and levitations, and the woman, who worked hard in her reform movement. Contains an index.

Howells, Edward. John of the Cross and Teresa of Ávila: Mystical Knowing and Selfhood. New York: Crossroad, 2002. Study of the theology and philosophy of mind put forward by John and Teresa, demonstrating and analyzing their notion that the dynamic nature of the Holy Trinity bridges the gap between interior subjective experience and exterior objective reality. Includes bibliographic references and index.

Lincoln, Victoria. Teresa: A Woman. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984. A thorough, well-researched, and readable biography of Teresa with details on all aspects of her life and work. Stresses the woman rather than the saint. Contains a useful index and a brief bibliography.

May, Gerald G. The Dark Night of the Soul: A Psychiatrist Explores the Connection Between Darkness and Spiritual Growth. New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004. Psychological study of Saint John of the Cross and Teresa of Ávila, illuminating the positive and transformative aspects of spiritual darkness. Includes map, bibliographic references, and index.

O’Brien, Kate. Teresa of Ávila. London: Max Parrish, 1951. A short book describing Teresa’s life and work. Rambling at times, but provides background on the Carmelite Order and Teresa’s reform work.

Peers, E. Allison. Saint Teresa of Jesus, and Other Essays and Addresses. London: Faber & Faber, 1953. A collection of essays by the preeminent Teresan scholar. Contains an index.

Sackville-West, Victoria. The Eagle and the Dove. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran, 1944. A comparison of the life of Saint Teresa with that of Thérèse de Lisieux. The section on Teresa of Ávila offers a short account of her mystic experiences, written from within the Catholic tradition.

Whalen, James. The Spiritual Teachings of Teresa of Ávila and Adrian Van Kaam: Formative Spirituality. New York: University Press of America, 1984. Offers a sophisticated description of Teresa’s theology and compares it with a twentieth century existential philosopher. Useful especially for those who want to explore the complexities of Teresa’s thought and its relevance for modern times. Contains a full annotated bibliography.

Williams, Rowan. Teresa of Ávila. New York: Continuum, 2000. Written by an archbishop, this biography of Teresa emphasizes her belief that Christianity is defined by the belief in a God who sacrificed dignity and status to become incarnated for the sake of humanity. Traces the theme of incarnation in all of Teresa’s major writings. Includes bibliographic references and index.