Santa Teresa de Ávila

Saint Teresa is Ávila's most famous citizen, and she left a major mark on her hometown. The most obvious is the church (right) built over her original convent (or over her birthplace of 1515, depending on your source).

Teresa was a mystic and an ecstatic. She entered the Carmelite Convent of Ávila when she was of marrying age. Apparently she was a sickly girl, because most of her early visions are associated with illness. These episodes became the subject of much of her writing, in which she the joy of direct connection with God, and a renewed understanding of and fear for the power of sin in human life. This last idea, which formed the core of much of her work, made her an important inspirational figure in the Counter-Reformation. The importance of the intercession of the saints to help ameliorate sin, and the power of the Church to assign pennance, were some of the ideas which the Protestants challenged most aggressively. She also wrote extensively on meditative prayer.

Her experiences made her an avid reformer. She set out to return the Carmelite nunneries to stricter observances of their rules, and ended up founding the Discalced (shoeless, though sandals are OK) Carmelite Order, originally for women, and then for men too with the help of her friend Saint John of the Cross. As often happens with charismatic reformers, there was a backlash against her from within her own order. The Inquisition became involved; Teresa was arrested, as were several of her friends. She spent much of her 60s defending herself and her new order, and finally won the support of King Philip II and the Pope. In her later years, the Discalced Carmelites flourished. Teresa died while travelling between some of her convents in 1582.

Fittingly, Teresa became a saint in the seventeenth century. Her relics are split between the active Carmelite Convent outside of Ávila and the Convent/Church over her birthplace (and no doubt a million other places, in good Catholic tradition). I got to see her desicatted finger, still wearing a ring. It is not nearly as incorrupt as the propaganda suggests. Also there were her sandals, her walking stick, some of her writings, and the scapula of John of the Cross.