Therese d' Ávila (March 15th 1515 - October 4th 1582), (in religion: Teresa de Jesús , baptized: Teresa de Cepeda Ahumada ) is there holy a catholic and reforming monastic of the 16th century. In addition to its talent to reform the convents, it was essential like a Master of Christian spirituality, remarkable fact at that time for a woman. She was born with Ávila (to 70 km in the North-West of Madrid), in Castille and died in Alba de Tormes (province of Salamanque) in the night from October 4th to 15th 1582, when Spain and the catholic world rocked of the Julien calendar to the Gregorian calendar. She is celebrated the October 15th.
Childhood
The pious ideal and the Holy edifying example of the life of the S and Martyr S were instilled to him as of its childhood by his/her parents, the knight Alonso Sánchez de Cepeda and Beatriz d' Ávila there Ahumada. Its paternal family came from Juifs converts of Tolède. The maternal branch was small Noblesse Castilian. It is the third child of a family which will count twelve of them. According to the description made in its writings intended for its confessor (collected in an autobiography: Emptied of Santa Teresa de Jesús ), Therese showed as of her tender childhood an impassioned nature and a fertile imagination. His/her father, amateur of reading, had some Romance S, whose study caused the awakening of the sensitivity of the six year old little girl.
Precociously introduced with the edifying stories of the life of the saints and the martyrs, she wished to live the martyrdom while going with her Rodrigue brother in the “grounds of the infidels”. I.e. to go in the zones of Spain under Moslem control to ask alms and to finish decapitated.
Convinced that their project was unrealizable, the brother and the sister decided to be made hermits. Therese written: “I made alms as I could, and I could little. I tested loneliness to request my devotions, which were numerous, and particularly the rosary… I liked much to make as if we were nuns in monasteries, when I with other little girls, and I played think that I wished the être."
In 1527), at the twelve years age, Therese lost her mother. Impassioned tales of chivalry (she wrote some in 1529), she forgot her plays of childhood. Here are its words: “I started to wear beautiful clothes, and to want to appear elegant, I looked after my hands, my hairstyle and my perfumes, and all vanities of this age, because I was very curious… I had some first cousins… they was about of my age, a little older than me; we were always together, they liked me much and each time something made them happy, we discuss and I listened to their joys and their childishness… All the evil came me from a relationship (a cousin seems it) who came often on our premises. I was frequently in his company to chatter, because it helped me in all the ideas of pastimes which came me to mind, and proposed even others of them to me; she also informed me of her frequentations and her futilities. It seems to me that it when I was put to attend it, at the fourteen years age, that the mortal sin moved away me from Dieu."
Only for three months, and with the complicity of the servants, she succumbed to the pastimes of the pleasant companies, thus making run a danger to itself and the honor of her father and her brothers. She had also taken the taste of the ornament with the desire to like. However itself declares " that she hated the things malhonnêtes". His/her father cut the evil to the root by sending Therese to the convent of Santa María de Gracia with Ávila in 1531. Therese supported her lack of freedom with difficulty. She did not want to become sister, and its admirers sent tickets to him, but as according to its own words “there was not place for all that, the thing ceased promptly”. Therese remained there until the autumn 1532, without deciding to embrace the religious career.
Religious vocation
Fallen seriously sick, it had to return in her father. After its convalescence, he entrusted it to his sister Marie de Cepeda who lived in Castellanos of Cañada with her husband, Don Martín de Guzmán there Barrientos. Fighting against itself, she managed to say to her father who she wished to enter the orders, while knowing that she would not reconsider her decision. His/her father answered him that it would never accept it alive sound. Therese fugua of the family home the November 2nd 1533 for the convent of the Incarnation of Ávila. This one was a monastery not cloister making it possible the nuns to leave and receive visits. It made its wishes there the November 3rd 1534. Therese spent twenty-seven years in this very many community, of medieval style still . These first years with the carmel occurred without very notable events. But, very critical with respect to the religious practices of the order, she wished to reform it.
After being entered with the convent its health worsened. She most probably suffered from crises of epilepsy, faindings, a nondefinite cardiopathy and others turbid; thus happened the first year. To cure it, his/her father took it along in 1535 to Castellanos of Cañada with his sister. Therese remained in this village, where it succeeds in converting a priest alive into cohabitation, until spring 1536, then was in Becedos. Of return to Ávila (Palm Sunday of the year 1537), it undergoes in July a four days relapse in her father. It remained paralyzed during more than two years. As well before after its relapse, its physical sufferings were extraordinary.
About the middle of the year 1539, Therese recovered health, according to it thanks to Saint-Joseph. With health returned the tastes society men, easy to satisfy, because the cloîtrée life was imposed on all the nuns only in 1563. Therese lived again with the convent, where it received frequent visits.
According to it its spirit was alanguissait, at the point to make him give up the prayer (1541). She affirms that in 1542 Jesus-Christ appeared to him in the visiting room; the courroucé face, it reproached him its familiar relations with the people living in the century. Therese however preserved this behavior during several years, until it ceased attending these people after having seen an image of Jesus on the cross.
The last words of his/her father (deceased in 1541) had deeply impressed it. The priest who had given him the last sacraments (Dominican Vicente Barón) became the spiritual adviser of Therese, who until there, knowing her faults, did not want to correct herself some. The reading of the Confessions of Saint Augustin encouraged it in his conversion. In 1555, the Jesuits Juan de Padranos and Baltasar Alvarez founded a college with Avila. Padranos became the confessor of Therese; the following year (1556), this one started to feel intense spiritual favors, and shortly after (1557) she saw herself encouraged by Saint-François Borgia. In 1558 it had its first appearance as well as the hellish vision; in 1559 it took for confessor Baltasar Alvarez, who directed his conscience during six years, and accepted, says she, of great celestial favors, among which vision of Jesus ressuscity. In 1560 it made the wish always aspire to greatest perfection; saint Pierre d' Alcántara approved this frame of mind, and Beltrán San Luis encouraged it to implement its reform project about Carmel, which it had conceived towards this date: she wanted to found in Ávila a monastery observing the rule of the Order strictly, who included the obligation of poverty, loneliness and silence. Its confessor, Dominican Pedro Ibáñez, ordered to him to write his life, work which was going to last of 1561 at June 1562; finally, advised by Soto, it rewrote its life in 1566.
According to the biographer Pierre Boudot: “In all the pages (of the book of its life) are seen the marks of a sharp passion, an absolute frankness and a illuminism of the faith of the faithful ones. All its revelations testify to its major belief in a spiritual union between it and Christ. She saw God, the Virgin, the saints and the Ange S in all their splendor and she received from in-high inspirations made profitable to discipline her interior life. In its youth, its aspirations were very few and seem confused; it was only in full ripe age that they became more precise, more frequent and also more extraordinary. It had more than forty three years when it lived its first extase. Its visions followed one another without interruption during two years and half (1559 - 1561). Either by mistrust, or to put it to the test, its superiors prohibited to him to be given up with this burning leaning for the mystical devotions, which were for it like one second life, and ordered to him to resist these extases, in which its health was consumed. She obeys, but in spite of its efforts, its prayer was so continuous that even the sleep did not manage to stop the course of them. At the same time, set ablaze of a violent one desire to see God, it felt to die. This singular state on several occasions started the vision which would be at the origin of a particular festival in the order of Carmel. ”
This allusion is evoked in its French biography of 1559: “ I live an angel close to me left side… It was not large but rather small, very beautiful, with a face if empourpré, that it resembled these angels with the colors if sharp that they seem to ignite… I saw in its hands a gold blade, and with the end, there seemed to be a flame. It seemed to me to insert it several times in my heart and to reach my entrails: when it withdrew it, it seemed to me to carry them with him, and left me very set ablaze of a great love of god. The pain was so large that it tore off me sighs, and the sweetness which this very great pain gave me, was so excessive that one could only wish that it continues, and that the heart is satisfied with less only God. It is not a pain body, but spiritual, even if the body takes part in it a little, and even very extremely. It is an exchange of love if suave which occurs between the heart and God, that me I beg his kindness to reveal it with those which would think that I lie… The days when I lived that, I went as dumb-founded, I wished neither to see nor speaking with anybody, but setting me ablaze in my sorrow, which for me was one of greatest glories, of those that knew his serviteurs ” ( Life of Holy Therese , chap. XXIX).
To perpetuate the memory of this mysterious wound, the Pope Benoit XIII, at the request of the Carmelite nuns of Spain and Italy, establishes in (1726) the festival of the Transverberation of the heart of Holy Therese. The French biographer adds: “ Until her last sigh, Therese had the privilege to converse with the divine people, who comforted it or certain secrecies of the sky revealed to him; that to be transported in hell or to the purgatory, and still that to envisage the avenir. ”
Physical characteristics
Francisco de Rivera, the confessor of holy described it as follows: “ It was of good stature, and at the time of its youth, beautiful, and still at the time of its old age, it supported well its tiredness, the thick body and very white, the round and full face, of good size and proportion; the dye of color white and incarnated, and when it was in prayer, it ignited and it became very beautiful, all this clear and peaceful dye; the hair, black and crisp, the broad, equal and beautiful face; eyebrows of color clear and drawing a little on the black, large and a little thick, not in arc, but a little flat.
Since 1560, Pierre d' Alcantara inspired Therese in her determination into practice to put its faith and its mystical call. He became his spiritual Master and his adviser. This moral support enabled him to undertake the creation of a Carmel different from the laxism which had shocked it in many cloisters of which that of the Incarnation. The company was financed by Guimara de Ullon, a rich person donor and friend of the holy one.
End 1561, Therese accepted an amount of money sent by one of his/her brothers from Peru. It financed its project of foundation of the Saint-Joseph convent. For this project, it accepted the assistance of her Jeanne sister, whose son would have been ressuscity by the holy one. To the beginning of the year 1562, Therese left in Tolède at Doña Luisa Cerda, at which her place remained until June. The same year, it became acquainted with the Báñez father, which became then its principal director, and of the brother García de Toledo, both Dominican.
Dissatisfied with the “ relâchement ” on the rules, which had been softened in 1432 per Eugene IV, Therese decided to reform the order to return to the austerity, the poverty and the insulation which formed part for it of the authentic Carmelite nun spirit. She asked council Francisco de Borja and Pedro de Alcántara which approved its line of thought and its doctrines.
After two years of combat, the bubble of Pie IV for the construction of the Saint-Joseph convent was given to him by order of brother García de Toledo with Ávila. It inaugurated the August 24th 1562, creating a new type of community, better at the time adapted and more faithful to the tradition of the Carmelite friar: according to it, the monks must live in poverty. They give up the shoes and are thus renamed the exposed Carmes or the déchaux Carmes. Four beginners of the new order of the Carmelite nuns exposed of Saint-Joseph moved in there.
The absolute examination of the Saint-Joseph convent, caused critical and hostility among the Avilans of all edges and municipal officials of the city. Quickly the new institution was threatened of closing. But the support of powerful prescribers, whose bishop and successes of subsistence thwarted animosity. Little by little, the experiment became a model.
In March 1563, it received the papal sanction for its principles of absolute poverty and renouncement of the property formulated in a " Constitution." Its goal was the return to the strict monastic rules such as:
Rubeo de Ravenna, the main thing of the Carmelite friars, published a letter patent in 1567, authorizing the creation of other convents. This swarming in all the Provinces of Spain generated many voyages for the sainte.qui founded 17 convents (the Livre of the foundations (published, Madrid, 1880)). From 1567 to 1571, reformed convents were thus established with Medina del Campo, Malagon, Valladolid, Tolède, Pastrana, Salamanque and Alba de Tormes.
It causes the same dash at the Carme S, of which one of the first was Jean of the Cross.
Riots with Ávila obliged the holy one to turn over to the convent of the Incarnation, and, once the calmed spirits, Therese lived four years with the convent of Saint-Joseph in a great austerity. The nuns faithful to her reform slept on a straw mattress, carried wood or leather sandals; they devoted eight month per annum to the rigors of the fast and completely abstained from eating meat. Therese did not wish any distinction for itself and lived same manner as the other nuns.
The reform progressed quickly, in spite of the limited resources its instigator had. The father Turned pink, higher general of Carmel, visited in 1567 the convent of San Jose, and gave to Therese the permission to found other convents of women, and two convents of man. It went to Madrid and Alcalá de Henares (founded by his/her Marie friend of Jesus), to reform new convents Then the reform became extensive in the convents of men: a new monastery was founded in Malagón. Therese went then to Tolède, where it fell sick, and passing by Escalona, it returned in Ávila, before setting out again for Valladolid where it founded a new convent.
She came then in Alba (1574), before going, in spite of her deplorable health condition with Medina del Campo, Ávila and Segovia. In this city it created a new convent which was used for the driven out nuns of their cloister by Anna de Mendoza of Cerda, princess of Éboli, having decided to convert itself into nun under the name of Anna sister of Veined of Dios, under an order different from that of the Carmelite friars.
According to its example and its spirit Jean of the Cross initiated a movement of monastic reform similar. The foundations of convents of Segovia (1571), Vegas de Segura (1574), Seville (1575), and of Caravaca of Cruz (Murcie, 1576) were supported by Géronimo Grecian, visitor of the old observance Carmelite nun and apostolic vicar. But the charismatic one and mystical Jean, the USA of his capacity of preaching and teaching to give its heart to the movement.
The same year was subjected, for the first time at the Inquisition the autobiography of Therese, who of return to Ávila, after having finished her priory with the Incarnation it (October 6th) was turned over to her convent of Saint-Joseph. Then it went to Valladolid at the end of the year.
At the beginning of January 1575 it came in Avila while passing by Medina. After a short halt it set out again for Veas, Tolède, Malagón and Almodóvar. In this last locality, it made elegiac prophecies of happy Juan Bautista of Concepción, reformer of Trinitains.
After the foundation of the tenth carmel in Veas on February 24th, and that of Almodóvar del Campo, it continued the March 7th, patient and tested by the voyage, towards Seville. It undergoes many contradictions there, but managed to open a convent, its last, in this city.
In 1576 a series of persecutions was launched by the order Carmelite nun of the old observance against the reformers, Therese and her disciples.
While following decrees adopted during the general meeting of the chapter to Pleasure, the " définisseurs" order froze all new opening of convents. Therese was assigned to remain in one of her convents. She obeys and chooses Saint-Joseph with Tolède. His/her friends and disciples were subjected to decisions even more severe.
After (1582), it was in Medina LED campo, Valladolid, Palencia and Burgos, almost always sick. It knew that the sixteenth convent Carmelite nun had been created with Grenade and one of exposed with Lisbon. The seventeenth carmel was created with Burgos, where it initiated its last foundation. After Burgos, it carried on its road while passing by Palencia, Valladolid, Medina del Campo and Peñaranda.
On its arrival with Alba de Tormes (the September 20th) its state worsened. She died in the night of the 4 with the October 15th 1582, when Spain and the catholic world rocked of the Calendrier Julien with the Gregorian Calendrier. Its skin was buried in the convent of the Annunciation of the city, a hand having been divided and preserved in a reliquary of Avila (the Gracián father cut the little finger from there).
With its exhumation the November 25th 1585, discovered incorrompue whereas clothing had rotted, one left there an arm and the remainder of the body was sent to Avila, in the chapter room of the convent of Saint-Joseph. The transfer was made one Saturday of November of 1585, almost in secrecy. The nuns of the convent of Alba de Tormes asked to preserve an arm like relic. When the duke of Alba realized of the transfer, he complained in Rome and started negotiations to recover it. The body was returned again to Alba de Tormes, by papal order (1586).
In 1598, a sepulchre was built. One transferred his body, always intact to it, in a new vault in 1616, then in 1670, in a money hunting.
After these events, one did not make any more other attacks with his remainders. They are from now on in several places:
The pope Paul VI proclaims it, with Catherine of His, Doctors of the Church in 1970. The mysticism of its work influenced the theologists of the following centuries durably, in particular holy François Dirty, Fénelon, and the Janséniste S of Port-Royal.
It deeply inspired Paul Verlaine in his work of reconversion, and in particular for the collection " Sagesse" (" O my God me wounded you amour"). It was for him the example even of " the woman of génie" (" Travel to France by Français").
Animated by her enthusiasm, Therese could return in writing her faith through poems to the easy worms. The burning and impassioned style is pilot of this ideal of love embraced by the choice of the monastic life.
There exists also an important correspondence, more than 400 letters having been preserved.
"If Satan could like, it would stop being mauvais."
" That nothing is disturbed
That nothing frightens you
Any master key
God does not change
Patience allows all
Who as a God has faith
Nothing will miss
Only God suffit"
Convents founded in all Spain
The first five years, Therese remained recluse, committed in her project of writing.
Reforming
Last foundations
Death and relics
Posthumous titles
Therese was béatifiée in 1614 by Paul V, and included among the saints by Gregoire XV the March 12th 1622 then was indicated (1627) like sponsors of Spain by Urbain VIII.
Literary work
Mystical works with didactic range
It left several writings treating of spirituality, in particular:
Works of organization and prayer
Other contributions
Therese wrote also many poems, charts. Its writings were the translation object in much of languages. Its name appears among the Catalog of the authorities of the language (Spanish) published by the Real Academia Española.
Quotations
" nada you turbe,
nada you espante,
todo occurred,
Dios No muda
The paciencia todo lo alcanza
quien has Dios holds
nada the falta
solo Dios basta."
References
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