Revelations and Suspicion
Teresa described her mystical insights in simple words. One day, she writes, while she was at prayer, she was allowed to grasp in a single moment how all things are at once hidden in God and revealed. She counted this among the highest favors God had given her. In another passage she says that the Savior showed her how one God can exist in three persons, and made this mystery so clear to her mind that she felt as much calm as wonder. Whenever she thought of the Trinity afterward, she was filled with a happiness she could not put into words.
Not everyone around her believed in these experiences. The nuns of her convent took her waking visions to be the product of her nervous attacks and of the phantoms of her illness. Her confessors leaned the same way and told her bluntly that the devil had deceived her senses. The townspeople, who thought her possessed, asked the Inquisition to examine her and suggested that a priest drive the demons out with prayers and exorcism. A friend advised her to send the Inquisition an account of her life and her spiritual experiences, and she set about writing her Life. The inquisitors studied the book and recognized it as a sacred document that would strengthen the faith of its readers.
The Convent of San José
That judgment secured Teresa's position. According to the source she was then fifty-seven years old, and she set herself to reform the Carmelite nuns. Rather than restore the old austerity inside the Convent of the Incarnation, she decided to found another convent that would accept only novices and nuns willing to live in complete poverty. The original Carmelites wore coarse sacking, always went barefoot, ate with great restraint and fasted most of the time. Teresa asked her "Discalced Carmelites" to return to nearly that same discipline. She did not regard it as an end in itself. She saw it as a sign of inner humility and of turning one's back on a tempting world.
Thousands of obstacles stood in her way. The citizens of Avila protested that the plan was a deliberate attempt to cut every tie between the nuns and their relatives, and the local superior of the Carmelites refused permission for a new convent. Teresa appealed to the pope, Pius V according to the source, and obtained his consent. She won four nuns over to her cause and founded the new convent of San José in one of the narrow streets of Avila, which the pope sanctioned in 1562. The sisters wore sandals woven from rope, slept on straw, abstained from meat and lived entirely within their enclosure.
Opposition
The one hundred and eighty nuns of the Incarnation were unhappy that, by comparison, the ease of their own way of life was being exposed. Their prioress, arguing that Teresa had sworn her loyalty and obedience, ordered her to put her old white habit and shoes back on and return to the Incarnation. Teresa obeyed. The court of that convent found her guilty of self-conceit and confined her to her cell. Meanwhile the city council voted to close San José and sent four strong men to dispossess and expel its leaderless nuns. But the frail young women in their sandals said, "God has willed that we remain here, and we shall remain," and the stern enforcers did not dare to drive them out by force.
Teresa warned the local superior of the Carmelites that obstructing her plans would be like deliberately profaning the Holy Spirit, and he frightened enough to order her release. Four nuns went with her, and the five made their way on foot through the snow to their new home. The four original members of San José welcomed Teresa joyfully and called her "Mother." By now nearly all of Spain knew her as Teresa of Jesus, a confidante of God. She was a kind, cheerful and at the same time strict superior.
The house stayed closed to the world. No visitor was allowed inside, the windows were covered with cloth, and the brick floor of the rooms served in place of beds, tables and chairs. A large revolving drum was set into the outer wall, and the food and supplies that people placed in its outer half were gratefully received by the sisters, though the nuns were not allowed to beg. They supported themselves by spinning and needlework: they put the products of their labor outside the entrance, and each buyer took what he liked and left whatever he chose in its place. Despite these hardships new members came, among them the most beautiful and most courted woman of Avila.
Founding More Convents
The great leader of the Carmelite order was deeply impressed when he visited these houses, and he asked Teresa to found similar ones elsewhere in Spain. In 1567 she took several of her nuns and traveled 110 kilometers, according to the source, over rough roads in an uncomfortable cart to found a convent at Medina del Campo for women who wished to join the Discalced Carmelites. The only house given to her was an abandoned ruin with broken walls and a hole in the roof. When the townspeople saw the nuns' efforts to repair it, they came to help. Carpenters and roofers worked without pay, restored the house and added some plain furnishings.
The prior of the Carmelite friary at Medina del Campo, who wished to bring his own friars under a new discipline, came to Teresa to learn about her convent's rules. He was a tall man, but the young man who came with him was so short and slight that after they left, Teresa remarked with the dry humor that sometimes lightened her stern and dignified manner, "Thank God, I now have a friar and a half for my new foundation." That "half a friar", Juan de Yepes y Álvarez, was destined to become famous as St. John of the Cross and to be a source of strength and pride for the Discalced Carmelites.
Her troubles were not over. The local superior of the Carmelites, perhaps to test her strength and courage, appointed her prioress of the Convent of the Incarnation itself. The nuns there, who had earlier been hostile to her, now feared that she would take revenge and humiliate them. But she treated them with such humility and kindness that every one of them was won over, and little by little the new strict discipline took hold in that convent as well. After this victory Teresa went on to found a new convent at Seville.
Accusations and the King's Intervention
The friars who favored a laxer rule decided to block her plan of reform. Some of them sent a woman who acted for them, dressed as a Discalced nun, to the Seville convent. Soon afterward the woman spread the report everywhere that Teresa mistreated the nuns of her convent and heard their confessions like a priest. The Inquisition again set about examining Teresa, summoned her to its dreaded court, heard her testimony and delivered its verdict: "You are free of every charge. Go and continue your service." But her enemies had won over the papal nuncio in Seville. He denounced Teresa as a disobedient and rebellious woman who, under a show of piety, preached harmful opinions, who had left her convent against the orders of her superiors, and who, as if she were one of the Church's doctors, taught theology in defiance of the apostle Paul, who expressly forbade women to teach. He ordered her to give up her work for good and to withdraw into seclusion in a convent at Toledo (1575).
Not knowing where to turn in this new trouble, Teresa wrote to the king of Spain. Philip II had read her Life and liked it very much. He summoned her to his presence by special courier, heard her appeal and became convinced of her innocence. The nuncio, after a royal rebuke, revoked her sentence and declared that false reports had been made to him.
Writings, Last Illness and Canonization
Amid her travels and troubles Teresa published books on her mystical experiences and beliefs: The Way of Perfection (1567) and The Interior Castle (1577). In the latter she describes the return of her bodily pains: it was as though several swollen rivers were pouring down from a cliff into her head, and at the same time, drowned in the noise of falling water, she heard songs and the trilling of birds; her head grew more worn and her headaches more intense. Her heart attacks became more frequent and her stomach refused to keep food down. Even so, in all her pain and sickness she went on traveling to visit her newly founded convents. At Malaga she suffered a paralytic attack, which passed after a while and let her walk again; at Toledo another attack struck, but she soon resumed her journey, passing through Segovia, Valladolid, Palencia and Burgos to reach Alba. There an internal hemorrhage of the lungs put her to bed.
Teresa accepted death with open arms and complete joy, confident that she was leaving the world of pain and ruin to join Christ forever. After the two cities of Alba and Avila entered a shameful rivalry and more than once snatched her body from each other, she was finally buried in her native Avila.
Her devout followers claimed that her body did not decay, and many attributed miracles to her tomb. In 1593 the Discalced Carmelites were recognized by the pope as a separate order. The Spanish asked the pope to canonize Teresa, and figures as prominent as Cervantes and Lope de Vega joined the campaign. Their wish was granted (1614), and eight years later Teresa, together with the apostle James, was named one of the two patron saints of Spain.
In those same years a figure greater than Teresa arose in Spain, one who would reform the Church and shake the world.