Why did Teresa of Ávila found the convent of San José?
Teresa of Ávila founds San José
Santa Teresa funda San José de Ávila
1562. Teresa de Ahumada, born in Ávila in 1515, entered the Carmelite convent of the Encarnación in 1535 and, after years of illness and mystical experience, decided…
Where: Spain, Castile
What happened
Teresa de Ahumada, born in Ávila in 1515, entered the Carmelite convent of the Encarnación in 1535 and, after years of illness and mystical experience, decided to return her order to a stricter, poorer life. In 1562 she founded San José de Ávila, the first convent of the Discalced ('barefoot') Carmelites, and over the next twenty years, travelling by mule cart across Castile and Andalusia, she founded sixteen more, working with John of the Cross on the friars' reform. She wrote her Life, the Way of Perfection, the Book of the Foundations and, in 1577, the Interior Castle (Las moradas), in a direct, spoken Castilian. She died on 4 October 1582, was canonised in 1622 and in 1970 became the first woman Doctor of the Church.
Say it
Santa Teresa fundó diecisiete conventos en toda España.
Saint Teresa founded seventeen convents all over Spain.
Why it matters
Teresa is Spain's great woman writer of the sixteenth century; her natural prose is a model of Golden Age Castilian, and her reform spread the Carmelites across the Spanish world.
Connected
- The Siglo de Oro (c. 1492–1681)
- Philip II builds El Escorial (1563–1584)
Sources
- Cronología de Santa Teresa de Jesús — Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes