Teresa Of Avila

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Teresa of vila, born Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda, is also known as Saint Teresa of Jesus (28 March 1515 – 4 or 15 October 1582), was a Spanish noblewoman who lived in the Catholic Church.

A Carmelite nun, a leading Spanish mystic, religious reformer, scholar, and meditation on contemplative life and mental health, she received the distinction of being named a Doctor of the Church over four centuries after her death.

She reformed both women and men's Carmelite Orders during the Counter-Reformation and became very popular during the Counter-Reformation.

The movement she started was revived by John of the Cross, the younger Spanish Carmelite friar and mystic.

It culminated in the establishment of the Discalced Carmelites.

In 1580, the separation was annulled by a formal papal decree enforcing the split. Teteresa, a social celebrity in her home province, was dogged by early family divorces and poor health.

Early life

Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda was born in 1515 in vila, Spain. Juan Sánchez de Toledo, her paternal grandmother, was a marrano or converso, a Jew forced to convert to Christianity or emigrate. Juan was initially dismissed by the Spanish Inquisition for reportedly returning to the Jewish faith, but he was later able to claim a Catholic identity. Alonso Sánchez de Cepeda's mother was a successful wool merchant and one of the city's richest men. He acquired a knighthood and assimilated well into Christian life.

Beatriz de Ahumada y Cuevas, a native of Catalina del Peso, married Teresa de Cepeda in Gotarrena in 1509. He had three children with her mother, Beatriz de Ahumada y Cuevas.

Teresa's mother was raised as a devoted Christian. Fascinated by accounts of the saints' lives, she and her brother Rodrigo escaped from home at age seven to search martyrdom in the Moors. When she spotted them just outside the town walls, her uncle took them home.

Teresa's mother died when she was 11 years old, leaving her distraught. As her spiritual mother, this led her to a deeper devotion to the Virgin Mary. Teresa was also enamored of popular fiction, which at the time consisted mainly of medieval tales of knighthood and works about fashion, gardens, and flowers. Teresa was sent to vila's Augustinian nuns' academy.

She initially dismissed the possibility of a religious career after completing her education, but after a stay with her uncle and other relatives, she relented. In 1536, she was 20 years old, much to her pious and austere father's displeasure, she chose to enter the Incarnation's local, easy-going Carmelite Convent, which was partially built on a hill that had previously been used as a burial ground for Jews. She began reading on contemplative prayer, particularly Osuna's Third Spiritual Alphabet (1527). Her zeal for mortification led her to her illness and she spent almost a year in bed, causing a lot of anxiety in her community and family. She nearly died, but she recovered, owing to Saint Joseph's miraculous intercession. She began experiencing bouts of religious ecstasy.

Her medieval mystics' study consisted of books to investigate conscience and spiritual practices, as well as inner contemplation referred to in mystical terms as oratio recollectionis or oratio mentalis. She also fell into other sacred ascetical works, including Peter of Alcantara's Tractatus de orationet meditation.

She said she had progressed from the lowest stage of "recollection" to "devotions of silence" and even to "devotions of ecstasy," which was one of the "unique union with God" (see Mysticism). She remarked on the "blessing of tears" during this particular stage. She began to discover the dreadful horror of sin and the inherent sinfulness of original sin as the Catholic distinction between mortal and venial sin became abundantly clear to her. She became acutely aware of her own impotence in combating sin and the need for complete surrender to God.

Around the same time, she received a copy of Augustine of Hippo's complete Spanish translation, which inspired her to meditate and tend to her own bouts of religious tremblings. The text helped her believe that holiness was indeed possible, and she found solace in the fact that such a great saint had been an inveterate sinner. "I was very fond of St. Augustine [...] for he was a sinner too," she wrote in her autobiography.

Around 1556, friends suggested that her newfound knowledge may be diabolical rather than divine origins. She had started to inflict mortifications of the flesh on herself. However, her confessor, Jesuit Francis Borgia, reassured her of the divine inspiration she had for her thoughts. Teresa became firmly convinced that Jesus Christ had appeared to her in bodily form on St. Peter's Day in 1559, although invisible form. These visions lasted almost uninterruptedly for more than two years. In another sense, a seraph led the fiery point of a golden lance repeatedly through her heart, causing her to suffer with both spiritual and bodily pain.

The account of this journey inspired one of Bernini's most influential works, the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa at Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. Bernini's account of the event is viewed with skepticism, particularly in comparison to the entire Teresian tradition, although based in part on Teresa's description of her mystical transverberation in her autobiography.

"Last, either allow me suffer or let me die," the memory of this episode inspired her throughout her life and inspired her lifelong imitation of Jesus' life and death.

Teresa, a well-known celebrity in her hometown dispensing wisdom from behind the convent grille, was also known for her raptures, which sometimes required levitation. It was a point of shame for her, and she begged her sisters to hold her down when this occurred. History, neurologists, and psychiatrists, as well as others, including Peter Fenwick and Javier lvarez-Rodr, have expressed an interest in her illness. Given that she wrote down virtually every thing that happened to her during her religious life, an important and extremely rare medical record from the 16th century has been preserved. The investigation of this data has led to the speculation that she may have suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy.

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