St 1515-1582 Theresa

THERESA, ST. (1515-1582), or Teresa de Cepeda, Spanish nun, was born at Avila, in Old Castile, on March 28, 1515, and was educated iii an Augustinian convent in the town. At the age of eighteen she entered the Carmelite convent of the Incarnation. In 1554, when she was nearly forty, her conversion took place, and the second part of her life began. The death of her father roused her to serious reflection, and one day, as she entered the oratory, she was struck by the image of the wounded Christ, placed there for an approaching festival. She fell in tears at the feet of the figure, and felt every worldly emotion die within her. The shock threw her into a trance, and these trances, accom panied by visions, recurred frequently in the subsequent part of her life. The visions grew more and more vivid. The cross of her rosary was snatched from her hand one day, and when re turned it was made of jewels more brilliant than diamonds, visible, however, to her alone. She had often an acute pain in her side, and fancied that an angel came to her with a lance tipped with fire, which he struck into her heart. Aug. 27 is kept sacred in Spain to this mystery.

Foundation of the Descalzos.

Meanwhile, the spread of the Reformation exercised the minds of pious Catholics. Teresa sought the cause of the catastrophe in the relaxation of discipline within the religious orders. She determined to found a house in which all the original rules of the Carmelite order would be observed. In spite of great opposition from the authorities of the order, and in particular from the prioress and sisters of the Incarnation, she persevered with her scheme, and secured papal approval. On Aug. 24, 1562, mass was said in the little chapel of the house prepared for her at Avila and the new order con stituted. It was to be an order of Descalzos or Barefoots, in opposition to the relaxed parent body, the Calzados. The sisters were to wear sandals of rope; they were to sleep on straw, to eat no meat, to be strictly confined to the cloister, and to live on alms without regular endowment. Teresa encountered great opposition, but after six months a fresh bull arrived from Pius V., and the provincial of her order now gave her leave to remove

and take charge of her sisterhood. The number of thirteen, to which on grounds of discipline she had limited the foundation, was soon filled up, and Teresa spent here her five happiest years.

Her visions continued, and, by command of her ecclesiastical superiors, she wrote her autobiography containing an account of these experiences but she based no claim to holiness upon them.

The general of the order visited her at Avila, and gave her powers to found other houses of Descalzos, for men as well as women. The last fifteen years of her life were spent mainly in hard journeys with this end and in the continually growing labour of organization. Convents were founded at Medina, Malaga, Valladolid, Toledo, Segovia and Salamanca, and two at Alva under the patronage of the famous duke. Then she had three years of rest, as prioress of her old convent of the Incarnation. She next went to Seville to found a house, thus overstepping for the first time the boundaries of the Castiles, to which her authorization limited her. The latent hostility of the old order was aroused ; the general ordered the immediate suppression of the house at Seville, and procured a bull from Gregory XIII. prohibiting the further extension of the reformed houses (1575). But the movement against her came from Italy, and was resented by Philip and the Spanish authorities as undue interference; and after a fierce struggle, during which Teresa was two years under arrest at Toledo, the Carmelites were divided into two bodies in 158o, and the Descalzos obtained the right to elect their own provincial-generals. (See CARMELITES.) The few remaining years of Teresa's life were spent in the old way, organizing the order she had founded, and travelling about to open new convents. Sixteen convents and 14 monasteries were founded by her efforts; she wrote a history of her foundations, which forms a supple ment to her autobiography. Her last journey of inspection was cut short at Alva, where she died on Sept. 29, 1582.