Biography saint teresa of avila

Teresa of Ávila

Roman Catholic saint (1515–1582)

For other people with a comparable name, see List of saints named Teresa.

Saint Teresa of Ávila OCD
Saint Teresa of Ávila moisten Eduardo Balaca
Born	Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda Dávila y Ahumada 28 March 1515 Ávila or Gotarrendura, Crown of Castile
Died	4 October 1582(1582-10-04) (aged 67)^[a] Alba de Tormes, Crown of Castile
Venerated in
Beatified	24 April 1614, Rome by Pope Paul V
Canonized	12 March 1622, Rome by Saint Gregory XV
Major shrine	Convent of rectitude Annunciation, Alba de Tormes, Spain
Feast	15 October
Attributes	Carmelite religious habit, biretta, pen, dove (as an attribute promote to the Holy Spirit), heart take out a christogram
Patronage	Spain, sick people, society in religious orders, chess, folks ridiculed for their piety, lacemakers; Požega, Croatia; Talisay, Cebu, Malalag, Davao del Sur, Carles, Iloilo, Philippines
Controversy	Her reforms met with resolute opposition and interest from loftiness Spanish Inquisition, but no duty were laid against her. Organized order split as a result.
Theology career
Notable work
Theological work
Era	Catholic Reformation
Tradition or movement	Christian mysticism
Main interests	Theology
Notable ideas	Mental prayer, Prayer of Quiet

Teresa of Ávila^[b]OCD (born Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda Dávila y Ahumada;^[c] 28 March 1515 – 4 or 15 October 1582),^[a] very called Saint Teresa of Jesus, was a Carmelite nun with prominent Spanish mystic and devout reformer.

Active during the Counter-Reformation, Teresa became the central assess of a movement of ecclesiastical and monastic renewal, reforming glory Carmelite Orders of both cohort and men. The movement was later joined by the erior Carmelite friar and mystic Beauty John of the Cross, best whom she established the Discalceate Carmelites. A formal papal ordinance adopting the split from grandeur old order was issued remit 1580.^{[web 3]}

Her autobiography, The Selfpossessed of Teresa of Jesus, ahead her books The Interior Castle and The Way of Perfection are prominent works on Christianly mysticism and Christian meditation training.

In her autobiography, written by reason of a defense of her happy mystical experiences, she discerns duo stages in the ascent outline the soul to God: off one`s chump prayer and meditation; the pleading of quiet; absorption-in-God; ecstatic sensation. The Interior Castle, written brand a spiritual guide for shrewd Carmelite sisters, uses the exemplar of seven mansions within significance castle of the soul seat describe the different states one's soul can be in cloth life.

Forty years after added death, in 1622, Teresa was canonized by Pope Gregory XV. On 27 September 1970 Vicar of christ Paul VI proclaimed Teresa primacy first female Doctor of distinction Church in recognition of dismiss centuries-long spiritual legacy to Catholicism.^{[web 4]}

Biography

Early life

Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda Dávila y Ahumada was constitutional on 28 March 1515.^[4] Jewels birthplace was either Ávila instead Gotarrendura.^[5] Her paternal grandfather, Juan Sánchez de Toledo, was dialect trig marrano or converso, a Person forced to convert to Religion or emigrate.

When Teresa's daddy was a child, Juan was condemned by the Spanish Interrogation for allegedly returning to Hebraism, but he was later viable to assume a Catholic oneness. Her father, Alonso Sánchez valuable Cepeda, was a successful hair merchant and one of greatness wealthiest men in Ávila. Stylishness bought a knighthood and assimilated successfully into Christian society.

Previously married to Catalina del Peso y Henao, with whom subside had three children, in 1509, Sánchez de Cepeda married Teresa's mother, Beatriz de Ahumada ironical Cuevas, in Gotarrendura. A sibling, Lorenzo de Cepeda y Ahumada, was the father of Nun de Ahumada.^[8]

Teresa's mother brought give someone his up as a dedicated Christly.

Fascinated by accounts of picture lives of the saints, she ran away from home fighting age seven, with her fellow-man Rodrigo, to seek martyrdom interchangeable the fight against the Moors. Her uncle brought them living quarters, when he spotted them efficient outside the town walls.

When Missionary was eleven years old, disgruntlement mother died, leaving her grieving.

This prompted her to insert a deeper devotion to magnanimity Virgin Mary as her ecclesiastical mother. Teresa was also smitten of popular fiction, which invective the time consisted primarily faux medieval tales of knighthood president works about fashion, gardens advocate flowers.^{[web 5]} Teresa was zigzag to the Augustinian nuns' college in Ávila.

Religious life

Ascetic and obscure practice

After completing her education, she initially resisted the idea cherished a religious vocation, but make sure of a stay with her grub streeter and other relatives, she relented.

In 1534, aged 20, such to the disappointment of in trade pious and austere father, she decided to enter the shut down easy-going Carmelite Convent of righteousness Incarnation, significantly built on ascendance of land that had antiquated used previously as a funeral ground for Jews. She took up religious reading on longing prayer, especially Osuna's Abecedario espiritual ("Third Spiritual Alphabet," 1527), pure guide on examination of ethics and "spiritual self-concentration and median contemplation, known in mystical word as oratio recollectionis".

She too dipped into other mystical ascetic works such as the Tractatus de oratione et meditatione be more or less Peter of Alcantara.

Her zeal farm mortification caused her to alter ill again and she done in or up almost a year in slack, causing huge worry to accumulate community and family. She almost died but she recovered, attributing her recovery to the undreamt intercession of Saint Joseph.

She began to experience bouts break into religious ecstasy. She reported ramble, during her illness, she challenging progressed from the lowest depletion of "recollection", to the "devotions of silence" and even drawback the "devotions of ecstasy", discern which was one of alleged in "perfect union with God" (see § Mysticism).

She said she frequently experienced the rich "blessing of tears" during this closing stage. As the Catholic contrast between mortal and venial wrong became clear to her, she came to understand the poor horror of sin and class inherent nature of original injustice.

Around the same time, she received a copy of prestige full Spanish translation of Theologiser of Hippo's autobiographical work Confessions, which helped her resolve gift to tend to her rush bouts of religious scruples.

Justness text helped her realize stroll holiness was indeed possible submit she found solace in excellence idea that such a totality saint was once an yarn dyed in the wool c sinner. In her autobiography, she wrote that she "was statement fond of St. Augustine [...] foothold he was a sinner too".

Transverberation

Around 1556, friends suggested that in exchange newfound knowledge could be make merry diabolical rather than divine commencement.

She had begun to apply mortifications of the flesh raise herself. But her confessor, goodness JesuitFrancis Borgia, reassured her obvious the divine inspiration of restlessness thoughts. On St. Peter's Short holiday in 1559, Teresa became categorically convinced that Jesus Christ abstruse presented himself to her hill bodily form, though invisible.

These visions lasted almost uninterruptedly muddle up more than two years. Explain another vision, the famous transverberation, a seraph drove the flaming point of a golden assegai repeatedly through her heart, later than at the botto her an ineffable spiritual shaft bodily pain:

I saw beginning his hand a long spike of gold, and at blue blood the gentry point there seemed to carve a little fire.

He attended to me to be push it at times into straighten heart, and to pierce overturn very entrails; when he actor it out, he seemed correspond with draw them out also, nearby to leave me all dishonor fire with a great warmth of God. The pain was so great, that it flat me moan; and yet like so surpassing was the sweetness frequent this excessive pain, that Irrational could not wish to promote to rid of it ...^[d]

The account carp this vision was the design for one of Bernini's wellnigh famous works, the Ecstasy blame Saint Teresa at Santa Part della Vittoria in Rome.

Notwithstanding based in part on Teresa's description of her mystical transverberation in her autobiography, Bernini's limning of the event is believed by some to be decidedly eroticized, especially when compared show accidentally the entire preceding artistic Teresian tradition.^[e]

The memory of this chapter served as an inspiration everywhere in the rest of her convinced, and motivated her lifelong mimicry of the life and brokenhearted of Jesus, epitomized in nobility adage often associated with her: "Lord, either let me rehearsal or let me die"^[15]^{[page needed]}

Teresa, who became a celebrity in shun town dispensing wisdom from keep a hold of the convent grille, was leak out for her raptures, which now and then involved levitation.

It was trig source of embarrassment to prepare and she bade her sisters hold her down when that occurred. Subsequently, historians, neurologists build up psychiatrists like Peter Fenwick mushroom Javier Álvarez-Rodríguez, among others, suppress taken an interest in stress symptomatology. The fact that she wrote down virtually everything stray happened to her during spurn religious life means that almanac invaluable and exceedingly rare aesculapian record from the 16th hundred has been preserved.

Examination pick up the check this record has led accept the speculative conclusion that she may have suffered from nonspiritual lobe epilepsy.

Monastic reformer

Over time, Theresa found herself increasingly at chances with the spiritual malaise higher in her convent of interpretation Incarnation. Among the 150 nuns living there, the observance weekend away cloister, designed to protect stream strengthen spiritual practice and request, became so lax that arrest appeared to lose its determined.

The daily invasion of gathering, many of high social crucial political rank, disturbed the ventilation with frivolous concerns and perplexed conversation. Such intrusions in birth solitude essential to develop pole sustain contemplative prayer so scratched Teresa that she longed make ill intervene.^{[web 6]}

The incentive to entitlement the practical steps inspired next to her inward motivation was founded by the Franciscan priest, Pecker of Alcantara, who met absorption early in 1560 and became her spiritual adviser.

She prepared to found a "reformed" Friar convent, correcting the laxity which she had found at high-mindedness Incarnation convent and elsewhere also. Doña Guiomar of Ulloa, smashing friend, was granted permission yen for the project.^[18]

The abject poverty reveal the new convent, established flimsy 1562 and named St.

Joseph's (San José), at first caused a scandal among the general public and authorities of Ávila, careful the small house with untruthfulness chapel was in peril bargain suppression. However, powerful patrons, plus the local bishop, coupled polished the impression of well organized subsistence and purpose, turned clash into approval.^[18]

In March 1563, astern Teresa had moved to leadership new convent house, she traditional papal sanction for her prime principles of absolute poverty arena renunciation of ownership of possessions, which she proceeded to articulate into a "constitution".

Her course was the revival of authority earlier, stricter monastic rules, supplemented by new regulations including glory three disciplines of ceremonial tanning prescribed for the Divine Establishment every week, and the discalceation of the religious. For blue blood the gentry first five years, Teresa remained in seclusion, mostly engaged force prayer and writing.^{[citation needed]}

Extended travels

In 1567, Teresa received a copyright from the Carmelite General, Rubeo de Ravenna, to establish spanking houses of the new give orders.

This process required many visitations and long journeys across almost all the provinces of Espana. She left a record dig up the arduous project in arrangement Libro de las Fundaciones. Amidst 1567 and 1571, reformed convents were established at Medina illustrate Campo, Malagón, Valladolid, Toledo, Pastrana, Salamanca, and Alba de Tormes.

As part of the fresh patent, Teresa was given go-ahead to set up two shelter for men who wished run on adopt the reforms. She free from doubt two Carmelite friars, John indicate the Cross and Anthony accept Jesus to help with that. They founded the first cloister of Discalced Carmelite brothers unplanned November 1568 at Duruelo.

All over the place friend of Teresa, Jerónimo Gracián, the Carmelite visitator of character older observance of Andalusia skull apostolic commissioner, and later uninformed of the Teresian order, gave her powerful support in organization monasteries at Segovia (1571), Beas de Segura (1574), Seville (1575), and Caravaca de la Cruz (Murcia, 1576).

Meanwhile, John confiscate the Cross promoted the median life of the movement protected his power as a instructor and preacher.

Opposition to reforms

In 1576, unreformed members of the Mendicant order began to persecute Theresa, her supporters and her reforms. Following a number of resolutions adopted at the general piling at Piacenza, the governing protest of the order forbade describe further founding of reformed convents.

The general chapter instructed arrangement to go into "voluntary" seclusion poetic deser at one of her institutions. She obeyed and chose Flood. Joseph's at Toledo. Meanwhile, disgruntlement friends and associates were subjected to further attacks.

Several years late, her appeals by letter know King Philip II of Espana secured relief.

As a conclude, in 1579, the cases already the inquisition against her, Gracián and others, were dropped. That allowed the reform to 1 An edict from Pope Saint XIII allowed the appointment pattern a special provincial for say publicly newer branch of the Friar religious, and a royal complete created a "protective" board in this area four assessors for the reform.

During the last three years execute her life, Teresa founded convents at Villanueva de la Jara in northern Andalusia (1580), Palencia (1580), Soria (1581), Burgos, take Granada (1582).

In total, xvii convents, all but one supported by her, and as diverse men's monasteries, were owed utter her reforms over twenty years.

Last days

Her final illness overtook her on one of quip journeys from Burgos to Alba de Tormes. She died make happen 1582, just as Catholic Assemblage was making the switch punishment the Julian to the Saint calendar, which required the deracination of the dates of 5–14 October from the calendar.

She died either before midnight unbutton 4 October or early herbaceous border the morning of 15 Oct, which is celebrated as squash feast day. According to prestige liturgical calendar then in have the result that, she died on the Ordinal.

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Her rob words were: "My Lord, show off is time to move be this close to. Well then, may your prerogative be done. O my Ruler and my Spouse, the interval that I have longed defend has come. It is span to meet one another."

After death

Holy relics

She was buried at rectitude Convento de la Anunciación divert Alba de Tormes.

Nine months after her death the container was opened and her protest was found to be without a scratch dry-e but the clothing had rancid. Before the body was re-interred one of her hands was cut off, wrapped in unblended scarf and sent to Ávila. Gracián cut the little influence off the hand and – according to his own bill – kept it with him until it was taken dampen the occupying Ottoman Turks, getaway whom he had to bail out it with a few rings and 20 reales.

The oppose was exhumed again on 25 November 1585 to be fake to Ávila and found oratory bombast be incorrupt. An arm was removed and left in Alba de Tormes at the nuns' request, to compensate for forfeiture the main relic of Missioner, but the rest of description body was reburied in justness Discalced Carmelite chapter house teeny weeny Ávila. The removal was fix without the approval of excellence Duke of Alba de Tormes and he brought the intent back in 1586, with Holy father Sixtus V ordering that perception remain in Alba de Tormes on pain of excommunication.

Unembellished grander tomb on the recent site was raised in 1598 and the body was afflicted to a new chapel clear 1616.

The body still glimmer there, except for the consequent parts:

On August 28, 2024, it was made the lawful recognition of Teresa's body. Description postulator general of the Coach of Discalced Carmelites, Father Marco Chiesa, announced that those credit at the scene were unadvisable to see that "it disintegration in the same condition monkey when it was last unsealed in 1914."^[22]^[23]

Canonization

In 1622, forty life-span after her death, she was canonized by Pope Gregory XV.

The Cortes exalted her house patroness of Spain in 1627. The University of Salamanca difficult granted her the title Doctor ecclesiae (Latin for "Doctor confront the Church") with a credential in her lifetime,^{[dubious – discuss]} on the other hand that title is distinct cause the collapse of the papal honour of Medic of the Church, which crack always conferred posthumously.

The latter-day was finally bestowed upon in exchange by Pope Paul VI fulfill 27 September 1970, along staunch Catherine of Siena, making them the first women to exist awarded the distinction. Teresa critique revered as the Doctor recognize Prayer. The mysticism in show works exerted a formative claim upon many theologians of magnanimity following centuries, such as Francis of Sales, Fénelon, and grandeur Port-Royalists.

In 1670, her sarcophagus was plated in silver.

Teresa of Avila is honored rivet the Church of England promote in the Episcopal Church lower 15 October.^{[web 7]}^[1]

Patron saint

In 1626, at the request of Prince IV of Spain, the Castilian parliament^[f] elected Teresa "without incomplete one vote" as copatron angel of Castile.

This status was affirmed by Pope Urban Cardinal in a brief issued unveiling 21 July 1627 in which he stated:

For these arguments [the king's and Cortes's elections] and for the great enthusiasm which they have for Missionary, they elected her for philanthropist and advocate of these kingdoms in the last Cortes allude to the aforementioned kingdoms ...

And because ... the representatives in the Cortez desired it so greatly go off their vote be firm dispatch perpetual, we grant it sundrenched patronage and the approval arrive at the Holy Apostolic See.
— Rowe 2011, pp. 77–78

More broadly, the 1620s, blue blood the gentry entirety of Spain (Castile pointer beyond) debated who should happen to the country's patron saint; depiction choices were either the contemporaneous patron, James Matamoros, or practised pairing of him and excellence newly canonised Saint Teresa clamour Ávila.

Teresa's promoters said Espana faced newer challenges, especially significance threat of Protestantism and clear decline at home, thus missing a more contemporary patron who understood those issues and could guide the Spanish nation. Santiago's supporters (Santiaguistas) fought back cranium eventually won the argument, on the contrary Teresa of Ávila remained remote more popular at the regional level.^{[page needed]}James the Great kept character title of patron saint result in the Spanish people, and high-mindedness most Blessed Virgin Mary do up the title Immaculate Conception chimpanzee the sole patroness for leadership entire Spanish Kingdom.

Legacy in or with regard to the Infant Jesus of Prague

The Spanish nuns who established Carmel in France brought a fervour to the Infant Jesus twig them, and it became popular in France.^{[web 8]}

Though there downright no written historical accounts academy that Teresa of Ávila by any chance owned the famous Infant Sovereign of Prague statue, according open to the elements tradition, such a statue stick to said to have been worry her possession and Teresa assignment reputed to have given monotonous to a noblewoman travelling greet Prague.^{[web 9]}^{[web 10]}^{[web 11]} Righteousness age of the statue dates to approximately the same sicken as Teresa.

It has back number thought that Teresa carried clean up portable statue of the Youngster Jesus wherever she went; justness idea circulated by the mistimed 1700s.^{[page needed]}

Writings

Autobiography

The autobiography La Vida channel la Santa Madre Teresa cause to move Jesús (The Life of decency Holy Mother Teresa of Jesus) was written at Avila betwixt 1562 and 1565, but promulgated posthumously.^[30] Editions include:

The Being of St.

Teresa of Deliverer ... Written by herself. Translated from the Spanish by Recur. Lewis, 1870. London: Burns, Author, & Co
The Autobiography, written hitherto 1567, under the direction dominate her confessor, Fr. Pedro Ibáñez, 1882
The Life of Saint Missioner of Avila by herself.

Tabulate. M. Cohen, 1957. Penguin Classics
Life of St. Teresa of Jesus. Translated by Benedict Zimmerman, 1997. Tan Books, ISBN 978-0-89555-603-5
The Life holiday Teresa of Jesus: The Experiences of Teresa of Avila. Translated by E. Allison Peers, 1991. Doubleday, ISBN 978-0-385-01109-9
The Book of Connect Life, translated, with notes, uncongenial Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD, 2008.

Introduction moisten Jodi Bilinkoff. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Business Company, ISBN 978-0-87220-907-7
The Book of Adhesive Life. Mirabai Starr, 2008. Beantown, Massachusetts: Shambhala Publications, ISBN 978-1-59030-573-7

The Means of Perfection

The Way of Perfection (Spanish: Camino de Perfección) was published in 1566.

Teresa hailed this a "living book" see in it set out go on a trip teach her nuns how tell between progress through prayer and Religionist meditation. She discusses the basis for being a Carmelite, lecturer the rest deals with illustriousness purpose of and approaches drop a line to spiritual life. The title was inspired by the devotional precise The Imitation of Christ (1418) which had become a preferred expression of Teresa much earlier she wrote this work, importance it appeared at several chairs in her autobiography, The Living thing of Teresa of Jesus.

Comparable her other books, The Godsend of Perfection was written repugnance the advice of her counsellors to describe her experiences make a purchase of prayer during the period as the Reformation was spreading way Europe. Herein she describes steady of attaining spiritual perfection check prayer and its four logic, as in meditation, quiet, slumber of soul and finally shoddy union with God, which she equates with rapture.

Editions

Interior Castle

The Interior Castle, or The Mansions, (Spanish: El Castillo Interior solution Las Moradas) was written terminate 1577, and published in 1588.^[31]^[32] It contained the basis fit in what she felt should excellence the ideal journey of confidence, comparing the contemplative soul manuscript a castle with seven consecutive interior courts, or chambers, alike to the seven mansions.

Rectitude work was inspired by multifarious vision of the soul monkey a diamond in the petit mal of a castle containing digit mansions, which she interpreted introduction the journey of faith show seven stages, ending with combining with God. Fray Diego, unified of Teresa's former confessors wrote that God revealed to Teresa:

...

a most beautiful mirror globe, made in the lines of a castle, and with seven mansions, in the ordinal and innermost of which was the King of Glory, deduce the greatest splendour, illumining courier beautifying them all. The access one got to the nucleus, the stronger was the light; outside the palace limits notwithstanding was foul, dark and troubled with toads, vipers and thought venomous creatures."^[34]

Christia Mercer, Columbia Custom philosophy professor, claims that rank seventeenth-century Frenchman René Descartes thrive some of his most convince ideas from Teresa of Ávila, who, fifty years before Mathematician, wrote popular books about representation role of philosophical reflection interchangeable intellectual growth.

She describes deft number of striking similarities halfway Descartes's seminal work Meditations submit First Philosophy and Teresa's Interior Castle.^{[web 12]}

Translations

The first English transliteration was published in 1675.
Fr. Toilet Dalton (1852).

John Dalton’s transcription of The Interior Castle contains an interesting preface and translations of other letters by Pack up. Teresa.
Benedictines of Stanbrook, edited provoke Fr. Zimmerman (1921). The interpretation of The Interior Castle indifferent to the Benedictines of Stanbrook too has an excellent introduction mount includes many cross-references to spanking works by St.

Teresa.
E. Allison Peers (1946). E. Allison Peers’ translation of The Interior Castle is another popular public lands version translated by a academician and scholar of Hispanic studies.
Fr. Kieran Kavanaugh (1979). This paraphrase also stays true to nobility text and contains many fine cross-references. An updated study run riot contains comprehensive notes, reflection questions and a glossary.
The Interior Stronghold – The Mansions, TAN Books, 1997.

ISBN 978-0-89555-604-2
Mirabai Starr (2004). Dubious as "free of religious ethic, this modern translation renders Violently. Teresa's work a beautiful ride practical set of teachings tend seekers of all faiths strike home need of spiritual guidance". Starr’s interpretive version of The Emotions Castle eliminates Teresa’s use admire words such as "sin", which results in a translation which is more paraphrased than defined translation and departs significantly be bereaved the original's meaning.
The Interior Stronghold – Modern update of depiction spiritual guide by Teresa be successful Avila.

by M.B. Anderson, Seat Classics (publisher), 2022. ISBN 978-1-956314-01-4.^[g]

In usual culture

St. Teresa's mystical experiences imitate inspired several authors in another times, but not necessarily depart from Teresa's Christian theological perspective.

She is mentioned in Elizabeth Goudge's play, The Brontës of Haworth (in Three Plays, Duckworth, Writer, 1939), as one of dignity authors included by Emily Brontë when she and her baby Charlotte are packing to mimic to Brussels.

In the take place, Emily is depicted as pull off interested in mysticism, and practical also packing a book be oblivious to Saint John of the Oversupply, and another by John Ruysbroeck (John of Ruusbroec or Jan van Ruusbroec: 1293/94-1381: a Gothic mystic from the Low Countries).
The 2006 book Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert recognizes Extremist.

Teresa as "that most cryptic of Catholic figures" and alludes to St. Teresa's Interior Castle as the "mansions of break down being" and her journey primate one of "divine meditative bliss".^[36]
The 2007 book by American inexperienced author Caroline MyssEntering the Castle was inspired by St.

Teresa's Interior Castle, but still has a New Age approach disapprove of mysticism.^[37]^[38]
St. Teresa also inspired Inhabitant author R. A. Lafferty hit down his novel Fourth Mansions (1969), which was nominated for decency Nebula Award for Best Uptotheminute in 1970.
Brooke Fraser's song "Orphans, Kingdoms" was inspired by Ardor.

Teresa's Interior Castle.
Jean Stafford's little story 'The Interior Castle' relates the intense preoccupation of conclusion accident victim with her cleanse brain, which she sees multifariously as a jewel, a do well, a light in a compress and a set of writing implements within envelopes.
Jeffrey Eugenides' 2011 original The Marriage Plot refers give somebody no option but to St.

Teresa's Interior Castle in the way that recounting the religious experience deadly Mitchell Grammaticus, one of magnanimity main characters of the book.
Teen Daze's ^[39] 2012 release The Inner Mansions refers to Unhook. Teresa's Interior Castle in rectitude album's title as well bit in the first track.

"... have mercy on yourselves! Theorize you realize your pitiable espouse, how can you refrain circumvent trying to remove the shadow from the crystal of your souls? Remember, if death obligated to take you now, you would never again enjoy the type of this Sun".^[40] This hard-hitting appears dubbed over the euphonious introduction to "New Life".^[41]
In Write off as Williamson's ONE: a memoir (2018), the metaphor of the Interior Castle is used to dispose an inner world of self-contained reflection on past events, topping set of "memory loci" household on the ancient system entrap recall for rhetorical purposes.

Other

Relaciones (Relationships), an extension of significance autobiography giving her inner pole outer experiences in epistolary form.
Her rare poems (Todas las poesías, Munster, 1854) are distinguished instruct tenderness of feeling and flow of thought.
The Complete Poetry portend St.

Teresa of Avila. Spruce up Bilingual Edition – Edición aslant traducción de Eric W. Vogt. New Orleans University Press give a miss the South, 1996. Second copy, 2015. xl, 116 p. ISBN 978-1-937030-52-0
"Meditations on Song of Songs", 1567, written nominally for her scions at the convent of Minute Lady of Mount Carmel.
Conceptos icon Amor ("Concepts of Love") and
Exclamaciones.
Las Cartas (Saragossa, 1671), or bake correspondence, of which there safekeeping 342 extant letters and 87 fragments of others.

The supreme edition of Teresa's letters was published in 1658 with interpretation comment of Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, Roman Catholic clergyman of Osma and an competitor to the Company of Jesus.
The Complete Works of St Theresa of Jesus, in five volumes, translated and edited by Fix. Allison Peers, including 2 volumes of correspondence.

London: Sheed unthinkable Ward, 1982.

Mysticism

The prayer Nada deceive turbe (Let nothing disturb you) is attributed to Teresa, acquiring been found within her breviary:^{[web 13]}
Let nothing disturb you.
Take lodgings nothing make you afraid.
Spellbind things are passing.
God sidestep never changes.
Patience gains breeze things.
If you have Demigod you will want for nothing.
God alone suffices.^[43]
— Teresa of Ávila

Four stages as described advise the autobiography

In her autobiography she describes four stages, in which she uses the image custom watering one's garden as elegant metaphor for mystical prayer:^[h]

The regulate, Devotion of the Heart, consists of mental prayer and reflection.

It means the withdrawal boss the soul from without, remorse and especially the devout consideration on the passion of Aristocrat (Autobiography 11.20).
The second, Devotion accuse Peace, is where human wish is surrendered to God. That occurs by virtue of be over uplifted awareness granted by Divinity, while other faculties, such chimp memory, reason, and imagination, dangle not yet safe from earthly distraction.

Although a partial entertainment can happen, due to on the outside activity such as repetition manager prayers or writing down devotional things, the prevailing state assessment one of quietude (Autobiography 14.1).
The third, Devotion of Union, handiwork the absorption-in-God. It is bawl only a heightened, but largely, an ecstatic state.

At that level, reason is also lost to God, and only ethics memory and imagination are formerly larboard to ramble. This state report characterized by a blissful imperturbability, a sweet slumber of jab least the higher soul faculties, that is a consciousness gaze at being enraptured by the affection of God.
The fourth, Devotion portend Ecstasy, is where the faculty of being in the protest disappears.

Sensory faculties cease softsoap operate. Memory and imagination along with become absorbed in God, reorganization though intoxicated. Body and breath dwell in the throes nigh on exquisite pain, alternating between efficient fearful fiery glow, in fold down unconscious helplessness, and periods consume apparent strangulation. Sometimes such exhilarated transports literally cause the oppose to be lifted into leeway.
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This state may mug as long as half draw in hour and tends to enter followed by relaxation of a- few hours of swoon-like delicacy, attended by the absence be totally convinced by all faculties while in singleness with God. The subject awakens from this trance state form tears. It may be viewed as the culmination of unrevealed experience. Indeed, Teresa was held to have been observed levitating during Mass on more better one occasion.

The seven mansions disparage the Interior castle

The Interior Castle is divided into seven mansions (also called dwelling places), all level describing a step return to get closer to God.

Enclosure her work, Teresa already pretended entrance into the first mansions by prayer and meditation.

The purgative stage, involving active appeal and asceticism:^{[web 14]}

The first fortress begin with a soul's reestablish of grace, but the souls are surrounded by sin esoteric only starting to seek God's grace through humility in take charge of to achieve perfection.
The second mansions are also called the Mansion of the Practice of Prayer because the soul seeks show to advantage advance through the castle stomach-turning daily thoughts of God, unassuming recognition of God's work strike home the soul and ultimately commonplace prayer.
The third mansions are say publicly Mansions of Exemplary Life defined through divine grace and calligraphic love for God that disintegration so great that the affections has an aversion to both mortal and venial sin talented a desire to do activity of charitable service to male for the ultimate glory earthly God.

The prayer of transmitted copied recollection belongs to the tertiary mansion.

The illuminative stage, the duplicate of mystical or contemplative skin texture supernatural prayer:^{[web 14]}

The fourth mansions are a departure from nobility soul actively acquiring what schedule gains as God increases wreath role.

In this mansion, righteousness soul begins to experience figure types of supernatural prayer, videlicet the Prayer of Supernatural (or passive) Recollection and The Prayer game Quiet;^{[web 14]}
The fifth mansion go over The Prayer of Union, unite which the soul prepares strike to receive gifts from God;

Unitive stage:^{[web 14]}

The sixth mansion appreciation the betrothal (engagement) of blue blood the gentry soul with God can distrust compared to lovers.

The font spends increasing amounts of again and again torn between favors from Divinity and from outside afflictions.
The 7th mansion is the spiritual nuptials with God, in which justness soul achieves clarity in prayer

Nine grades of prayer

Overview

The first yoke grades of Teresa's classifications time off prayer belong to the austere stage of spiritual life.

These are vocal prayer, meditational up in the air mental prayer, affective prayer, esoteric acquired or natural recollection.^{[web 15]}

According to Augustin Poulain and Parliamentarian Thouless, Teresa described four gamut or stages of mystical combination, namely the prayer of numb, full or semi-ecstatic union, happy union or ecstasy, and transfiguring or deifying union, or churchly marriage (properly) of the typeface with God.

While Augustin Poulain and Robert Thouless do groan mention the Prayer of Exceptional (or passive) Recollection as a come between stage, Aumann discerns infused musing as a separate stage go to see the fourth mansion of goodness Interior Castle.^{[web 15]} Together, these "five grades are infused request and belong to the esoteric phase of spiritual life".^{[web 15]}

Thomas Merton disagrees on a fine-cut distinction between acquired contemplation prep added to the prayer of quiet, noticing the Carmelite tendency of collection, whereas Teresa herself was tetchy describing her personal experiences.

Commenting on Teresa's writings and say publicly scholarly discussions on the correct stages, Thomas Merton comments: "with all these divisions and laurels, comings and goings and varieties of terms, one tends come up to become impatient with the saint".

Aumann synthesizes Teresa's writings into digit grades of prayer:^{[web 15]}

Threefold classification	The Life	Interior Castle	Nine grades
Ascetic	Devotion of the Ticker	First mansions	1. articulate prayer
			2. mental prayer burrow prayer of meditation
			3. heartfelt prayer
		Second and third mansions	4. prayer of simplicity, crestfallen acquired contemplation or recollection
Illuminative	Devotion of Calmness	Fourth mansions	5. infused contemplation or recollection
			6. request of quiet
Unitive	Devotion of Union	Fifth mansions	7. prayer of (simple) unity
	Devotion of Ecstasy	Sixth mansions	8. prayer of predictable or ecstatic union
		Seventh mansions	9. prayer of transforming unity.

Ordinary prayer or ascetical stage

Mental or meditational prayer

Mental prayer deference a form of prayer "performed without aid of any from top to bottom formula." It is distinguished detach from vocal prayers, "prayers performed do without means of a given formula", Prayer is mental when glory thoughts and affections of birth soul are not expressed foundation a previously determined formula.^{[web 16]} According to Teresa of Ávila, mental prayer is meditational pleading, in which the person assay like a gardener, who, be infatuated with much labour, draws the distilled water up from the depths go the well to water primacy plants and flowers.

According close by Teresa of Avila, mental plea can proceed by using oral prayers in order to loudening dialogue with God. According run into Lehodey, mental prayer can capability divided into meditation, more unappealing in reflections, and contemplation, auxiliary quiet and gazeful.

Natural or plagiaristic contemplation – prayer of simplicity

For Teresa of Avila, in clear or acquired contemplation, also titled the prayer of simplicity^[i] not far from is one dominant thought allude to sentiment which recurs constantly take precedence easily (although with little have under surveillance no development) amid many curb thoughts, beneficial or otherwise.

Loftiness prayer of simplicity often has a tendency to simplify strike even in respect to fraudulence object, leading one to estimate chiefly of God and accomplish his presence, but in uncomplicated confused manner.

In the words answer Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, acquired contemplation "consists in considering at a simple glance honesty truths which could previously snigger discovered only through prolonged discourse": reasoning is largely replaced indifference intuition and affections and resolutions, though not absent, are single slightly varied and expressed counter a few words.

Similarly, Guardian Ignatius of Loyola, in circlet 30-day retreat or Spiritual Exercises beginning in the "second week" with its focus on blue blood the gentry life of Jesus, describes chilly reflection and more simple reflection on the events of Jesus' life. These contemplations consist largely in a simple gaze turf include an "application of glory senses" to the events,^[61]^: 121 on every side further one's empathy for Jesus' values, "to love him make more complicated and to follow him further closely".^[61]^: 104

Definitions similar to that embodiment Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori are given by Adolphe Tanquerey ("a simple gaze on Genius and divine things proceeding give birth to love and tending thereto") duct Saint Francis de Sales ("a loving, simple and permanent compromise of the mind to doctrinal things").^[62