TERE'SA, SAINT (1515-32). A famous Car melite nun and mystical writer. She was born at Avila, in Old Castile. In her eighteenth year she entered a convent of the Carmelite Order in her native city, making her solemn vow on November 3, 1534. In this convent she con tinued to reside for nearly thirty years. After a time her religious exercises reached a most extraordinary degree of asceticism. She began her work of reforming the Carmelite Order in concert with a few zealous members of her own sisterhood in the Convent of Avila, but afterwards obtained permission from the Holy See, under the direction of Peter of Alcantara, to remove with her little community to Saint Joseph's, a small and very humble convent in the same city, where she established in its full rigor the ancient Carmelite rule, with some ad ditional observances introduced by Teresa her self. • This new convent was established in 1502. The general of the Carmelite Order, J. B. Rossi, was so struck with the condition of the convent over which Teresa presided that he urged upon her the duty of extending throughout the Order the reforms thus successfully initiated. Teresa
entered upon the work with great energy, and succeeded in carrying out her reforms. (See CARMELITES.) She died at Alba, October 4, 1532, and was canonized by Gregory XV. in 1622, her feast being fixed on October 15. The third centenary of her death was celebrated with great splendor in 1332. Her works consist. besides her famous letters, mainly of ascetical and mystical treatises. Complete editions in Spanish were published at Madrid in 1877 and I8S1; an excellent French edition is that of Bouix (Paris, 1859). There are several biog raphies in English. by Mrs. Cunningham Gra ham (London. 1894) : Whyte (1S97) ; anony mous, with an introduction by Cardinal Manning (Dublin, 1872) ; the best is Coleridge, Life and Letters of Saint Teresa (London, 1881-96).