AVILA.

AVILA.Mira tu muro dichosoQue te rodea y corona,Pues de tantos victorioso!Merece (en triumpho glorioso),Cada almena su corona.—Ariz grandezas de Avila.Itwas on the 31st of January, 1876, we left the Escorial to visit themuy leal, muy magnifica, y muy noblecity of Avila—Avila de los Caballeros, once famed for its valiant knights, and their daring exploits against the Moors, but whose chief glory now is that it is the birthplace ofSt.Teresa, whom all Christendom admires for her genius and venerates for her sanctity.Keeping along the southern base of the Guadarrama Mountains, whose snowy summits and gray, rock-strewn sides wore a wild, lonely aspect that was inexpressibly melancholy, we came at length to a lower plateau that advances like a promontory between two broad valleys opening to the north and south. On this eminence stands the picturesque city of Avila, the Pearl of Old Castile, very much as it was in the twelfth century. It is full of historic mansions and interesting old churches that have a solemn architectural grandeur. One is astonished to find so small a place inland, inactive, and with no apparent source of wealth, with so many imposing and interesting monuments. They are all massive and severe, because built in an heroic age that disdained all that was light and unsubstantial. It is a city of granite—not of the softer hues that take a polish like marble, but of cold blue granite, severe andinvincible as the steel-clad knights who built it. The granite houses are built with a solidity that would withstand many a hard assault; the granite churches, with their frowning battlements, have the aspect of fortresses; and the granite convents with their high granite walls look indeed like “citadels of prayer.” Everything speaks of a bygone age, an age of conflict and chivalrous deeds, when the city must have been far more wealthy and powerful than now, to have erected such solid edifices. We are not in the least surprised to hear it was originally founded by Hercules himself, or one of the forty of that name to whom so many of the cities of Spain are attributed. Avila is worthy of being counted among his labors.But whoever founded Avila, it afterwards became the seat of a Roman colony which is mentioned by Ptolemy. It has always been of strategic importance, being at the entrance to the Guadarrama Mountains and the Castiles. When Roderick, the last of the Goths, brought destruction on the land by his folly, Avila was one of the first places seized by the Moors. This was in 714. After being repeatedly taken and lost, Don Sancho of Castile finally took it in 992, and the Moors never regained possession of it. But there were not Christiansenough to repeople it, and it remained desolate eighty-nine years.St.Ferdinand found it uninhabited when he came from the conquest of Seville. AlonsoVI.finally commissioned his son-in-law, Count Raymond of Burgundy, to rebuild and fortify it.AlonsoVI.had already taken the city of Toledo and made peace with the Moors, but the latter, intent on ruling over the whole of the Peninsula, soon became unmindful of the treaty. In this new crisis many foreign knights hastened to acquire fresh renown in this land of a perpetual crusade. Among the most renowned were Henry of Lorraine; Raymond deSt.Gilles, Count of Toulouse; and Raymond, son of Guillaume Tête-Hardie of Burgundy, and brother of Pope CalixtusII.They contributed so much to the triumph of the cross that Alonso gave them his three daughters in marriage. Urraca (the name of a delicious pear in Spain) fell to the lot of Raymond of Burgundy, with Galicia for her portion, and to him was entrusted the task of rebuilding Avila, the more formidable because it required numerous outposts and a continual struggle with the Moors. The flower of Spanish knighthood came to his aid, and the king granted great privileges to all who would establish themselves in the city. Hewers of wood, stone-cutters, masons, and artificers of all kinds came from Biscay, Galicia, and Leon. The king sent the Moors taken in battle to aid in the work. The bishop in pontificals, accompanied by a long train of clergy, blessed the outlines traced for the walls, stopping to make special exorcisms at the spaces for the ten gates, that the great enemy of the human race might never obtain entranceinto the city. The walls were built out of the ruins left successively behind by the Moors, the Goths, and the Romans, to say nothing of Hercules. As an old chronicler remarks, had they been obliged to hew out and bring hither all the materials, no king would have been able to build such walls. They are forty-two feet high and twelve feet thick. The so-called towers are rather solid circular buttresses that add to their strength. These walls were begun May 3, 1090. Eight hundred men were employed in the work, which was completed in nine years. They proved an effectual barrier against the Saracen; the crescent never floated from those towers. How proud the people are of them is shown by the lines at the head of this sketch:“Behold the superb walls that surround and crown thee, victorious in so many assaults! Each battlement deserves a crown in reward for thy glorious triumphs!”It was thus this daughter of Hercules rose from the grave where she had lain seemingly dead so many years. Houses sprang up as by enchantment, and were peopled so rapidly that in 1093 there were about thirty thousand inhabitants. The city thus rebuilt and defended by its incomparable knights merited the name often given it from that time by the old chroniclers,Avila de los Caballeros.One of these cavaliers, Zurraquin Sancho, the honor and glory of knighthood, was captain of the country forces around Avila. One day, while riding over his estate with a single attendant to examine his herds, he spied a band of Moors returning from a foray into Christian lands, dragging several Spanish peasants after them in chains. Assoon as Zurraquin was perceived, the captives cried to him for deliverance. Whereupon, mindful of his knightly vows to relieve the distressed, he rode boldly up, though but slightly armed, and offered to ransom his countrymen. The Moors would not consent, and the knight prudently withdrew. But, as soon as he was out of sight, he alighted to tighten the girths of his steed, which he then remounted and spurred on by a different path. In a short time he came again upon the Moors, and crying “Santiago!” as with the voice of twenty men, he suddenly dashed into their midst, laying about him right and left so lustily that, taken unawares, they were thrown into confusion, and, supposing themselves attacked by a considerable force, fled for their lives, leaving two of their number wounded, and one dead on the field. Zurraquin unbound the captives, who had also been left behind, and sent them away with the injunction to be silent concerning his exploit.A few days after, these peasants came to Avila in search of their benefactor, bringing with them twelve fat swine and a large flock of hens. Regardless of his parting admonition, they stopped on the Square of San Pedro, and related how he had delivered them single-handed against threescore infidels. The whole city soon resounded with so brave a deed, and Zurraquin was declared a peerless knight. The women also took up his praises and sang songs in his honor to the sound of the tambourine:“Cantan de Oliveros, e cantan de Roldan,E non de Zurraquin, ca fue buen barragan.”[40]A second band would take up the strain:“Cantan de Roldan, e cantan de Olivero,E non de Zurraquin, ca fue buen caballero.”[41]After rebuilding Avila Count Raymond of Burgundy retired to his province of Galicia, and, dying March 26, 1107, he was buried in the celebrated church of Santiago at Compostella. It was his son who became King of Castile under the name of AlonsoVIII., and Avila, because of its loyalty to him and his successors, acquired a new name—Avila del Rey—among the chroniclers of the time.But the city bears a title still more glorious than those already mentioned—that ofAvila de los Santos. It was in the sixteenth century especially that it became worthy of this name, when there gathered aboutSt.Teresa a constellation of holy souls, making the place a very Carmel, filled with the “sons of the prophets.”Avila cantos y santos—Avila has as many saints as stones—says an old Spanish proverb, and that is saying not a little. The city has always been noted for dignity of character and its attachment to the church.The piety of its ancient inhabitants is attested by the number and grave beauty of the churches, with their lamp-lit shrines of the saints and their dusky aisles filled with tombs of the old knights who fought under the banner of the cross. InSt.Teresa’s time it was honored with the presence of several saints who have been canonized:St.Thomas of Villanueva,St.Peter of Alcantara,St.John of the Cross, and that holy Spanish grandee,St.Francis Borgia, besides many other individuals noted for their sanctity. ButSt.Teresa is the best type of Avila. Her piety was as sweetlyaustere as the place, as broad and enlightened as the vast horizon that bounds it, and fervid as its glowing sun.“You mustn’t say anything againstSt.Teresa at Avila,” said the inevitable Englishmen we met an hour after our arrival.“We are by no means disposed to, here or anywhere else,” was our reply. On the contrary, we regarded her, with Mrs. Jameson, as “the most extraordinary woman of her age and country”; nay, “who would have been a remarkable woman inanyage or country.” We had seen her statue among the fathers of the church in the first Christian temple in the world, with the inscription:Sancta Teresa, Mater spiritualis. We had read her works, written in the pure Castilian for which Avila is noted, breathing the imagination of a poet and the austerity of a saint, till we were ready to exclaim with Crashawe:“Oh! ’tis not Spanish, but ’tis Heaven she speaks!”and we had come to Avila expressly to offer her the tribute of our admiration. Here she reigns, to quote Miss Martineau’s words, “as true a queen on this mountain throne as any empress who ever wore a crown!”At this very moment we were on our way to visit the places associated with her memory. A few turns more through the narrow, tortuous streets, and we came to the ponderous gateway of San Vicente on the north side of the city, so named from the venerable church just without the walls, beloved of archæologists. But for the moment it had no attraction for us; for below, in the broad, sunny valley, we could see the monastery of the Incarnation, a place of great interest to the Catholic heart. There it wasthatSt.Teresa, young and beautiful, took the veil and spent more than thirty years of her life. The first glimpse of it one can never forget; and, apart from the associations, the ancient towers of San Vicente on the edge of the hill, the fair valley below with its winding stream and the convent embosomed among trees, and the mountains that girt the horizon, made up a picture none the less lovely for being framed in that antique gateway. We went winding down to the convent, perhaps half a mile distant, by theCalle de la Encarnacion. No sweeter, quieter spot could be desired in which to end one’s days. It is charmingly situated on the farther side of the Adaja, and commands a fine view of Avila, which, indeed, is picturesque in every direction. We could count thirty towers in the city walls as we turned at the convent gate to look back.St.Teresa stopped in this same archway, Nov. 2, 1533, to bid farewell to her brother Antonio, who, on leaving her, went to the Dominican convent, where he took the monastic habit. She was then only eighteen and a half years old. The inward agony she experienced on entering the convent she relates with great sincerity, but there was no faltering in her determination to embrace the higher life. The house had been founded only about twenty years before, and the first Mass was said in it the very day she was baptized. That was more than three centuries ago. Its stout walls may be somewhat grayer, and the alleys of its large garden more umbrageous, but its general aspect must be very much the same; for in that dry climate nature does not take so kindly to man’s handiwork as in the misty north, where the old convents are all draped with mossand the ivy green. It is less peopled also. In 1550 there were ninety nuns, but now there are not more than half that number.There is a series of little parlors, low and dim, with unpainted beams, and queer old chairs, and two black grates with nearly a yard between, through which you can converse, as through a tunnel, with the nuns. They have not been changed sinceSt.Teresa’s time. In one of these our Lord reproved her for her conversations, which still savored too much of the world. Here, later in life,St.Francis Borgia came to see her on his way from the convent of Yuste, where he had been to visit his kinsman, CharlesV.Here she sawSt.Peter of Alcantara in ecstasy. In one of these parlors, now regarded as a sacred spot, she held her interviews withSt.John of the Cross when he was director of the house. It is related that one day, while he was discoursing here on the mystery of the Holy Trinity, she was so impressed by his words that she fell on her knees to listen. In a short time he entered the ecstatic state, leavingSt.Teresa lost in divine contemplation; and when one of the nuns came with a message, she found them both suspended in the air! For a moment they ceased to belong to earth, and its laws did not control them. A picture of this scene hangs on the wall. In a larger and more cheerful parlor some nuns of very pleasing manners of the true Spanish type showed us several objects that belonged toSt.Teresa, and some of her embroidery of curious Spanish work, very nicely done, as we were glad to see; likewise, a Christ covered with bleeding wounds as he appeared toSt.John of the Cross, and many other touching memorials of the past.We next visited the church, which is large, with buttressed walls, low, square towers, and a gabled belfry. The interior is spacious and lofty, but severe in style. There is a nave, and two short transepts with a dome rising between them. It is paved with flag-stones, and plain wooden benches stand against the stone walls. The high altar, at whichSt.John of the Cross used to say Mass, has its gilt retable, with colonnettes and niches filled with the saints of the order, among whom we remember the prophets who dwelt on Mt. Carmel, andSt.Albert, patriarch of Jerusalem. The nuns’ choir is at the opposite end of the church. We should saychoirs; for they have two, one above the other, with double black grates, which are generally curtained. It was at the grate of the lower choir, dim and mystic as hisObscure Night of the Soul, thatSt.John of the Cross used to preach to the nuns. What sermons there must have been from him who wrote, as never man wrote, on the upward way from night to light!The grating of this lower choir has two divisions, between which is a small square shutter, like the door of a tabernacle, on which is represented a chalice and Host. It was hereSt.Teresa received the Holy Communion for more than thirty years. Here one morning, after receiving it from the hand ofSt.John of the Cross, she was mysteriously affianced to the heavenly Bridegroom, who called her, in the language of the Canticles, by the sweet name of Spouse, and placed on her finger the nuptial ring. She was then fifty-seven years of age. A painting over the communion table represents this supernatural event.This choir is also associated with the memory of Eleonora de Cepeda,a niece ofSt.Teresa’s, who became a nun at the convent of the Incarnation. She was remarkable for her detachment from earth, and died young, an angel of purity and devotion.St.Teresa saw her body borne to the choir by angels. No Mass of requiem was sung over her. It was during the Octave of Corpus Christi. The church was adorned as for a festival. The Mass of the Blessed Sacrament was chanted to the sound of the organ, and the Alleluia repeatedly sung, as if to celebrate the entrance of her soul into glory. The dead nun, in the holy habit of Mt. Carmel, lay on her bier covered with lilies and roses, with a celestial smile on her pale face that seemed to reflect the beatitude of her soul. The procession of the Host was made around her, and all the nuns took a last look at their beautiful sister before she was lowered into the gloomy vault below.[42]In the upper choir there is a statue ofSt.Teresa, dressed as a Carmelite, in the stall she occupied when prioress of the house. The nuns often go to kiss the hand as a mark of homage to her memory. The actual prioress occupies the next stall below.It will be remembered thatSt.Teresa passed twenty-nine years in this convent before she left to found that of San José. She afterwards returned three years as prioress, when, at her request,St.John of the Cross (who was born in a small town near Avila) was appointed spiritual director. Under the direction of these two saints the house became a paradise filled with souls of such fervor that the heavenly spirits themselves came down to join in their holy psalmody, according tothe testimony ofSt.Teresa herself, who saw the stalls occupied by them.“The air of Paradise did fan the house,And angels office all.”One ofSt.Teresa’s first acts, on taking charge of the house, was to place a large statue of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in the upper choir, and present her with the keys of the monastery, to indicate that this womanly type of all that is sweet and heavenly was to be the true ruler of the house. This statue still retains its place in the choir, and in its hand are the keys presented by the saint.The convent garden is surrounded by high walls. It wears the same smiling aspect as in the saint’s time, but it is larger. The neighboring house occupied bySt.John of the Cross, with the land around it, has been bought and added to the enclosure. The house has been converted into an octagon chapel, called theErmita de San Juan de la Cruz. The unpainted wooden altar was made from a part ofSt.Teresa’s cell. In this garden are the flowers and shrubbery she loved, the almond-trees she planted, the paths she trod. Here are the oratories where she prayed, the dark cypresses that witnessed her penitential tears, the limpid water she was never weary of contemplating—symbol of divine grace and regeneration.St.Teresa’s love of nature is evident on every page of her writings. She said the sight of the fields and flowers raised her soul towards God, and was like a book in which she read his grandeur and benefits. And she often compared her soul to a garden which she prayed the divine Husbandman to fill with the sweet perfume of the lowly virtues.In the right wing of the convent is a little oratory, quiet and solitary, beloved of the saint, where an angel, all flame, appeared to the eyes of her soul with a golden arrow in his hand, which he thrust deep into her heart, leaving it for ever inflamed with seraphic love. This mystery is honored in the Carmelite Order by the annual festival of the Transverberation. Art like-wise has immortalized it. We remember the group by Bernini in the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria at Rome, in which the divine transport of her soul is so clearly visible through the pale beauty of her rapt form, which trembles beneath the fire-tipped dart of the angel. What significance in this sacred seal set upon her virginal heart, from this time rent in twain by love and penitence!Cor contritum et humiliatum, Deus, non despicies!was the exclamation ofSt.Teresa when dying.The sun was descending behind the proud walls of Avila when we regained the steep hillside, lighting up the grim towers and crowning them with splendor. We stopped on the brow, before the lofty portal of San Vicente, to look at its wreaths of stone and mutilated saints, and read the story of the rich man and Lazarus so beautifully told in the arch. Angels are bearing away the soul of the latter on a mantle to Abraham’s bosom. On the south side of the church is a sunny portico with light, clustered pillars, filled with tombs, some in niches covered with emblazonry, others like plain chests of stone set against the wall. We went down the steps into the church, cold, and dim, and gray, all of granite and cave-like. The pavement is composed of granite tombstones covered with inscriptions and coats ofarms. There are granite fonts for the holy water. Old statues, old paintings, and old inscriptions in Gothic text line the narrow aisles. The windows are high up in the arches, which were still light, though shadows were gathering around the tombs below. There was not a soul in the church. We looked through therejathat divides the nave at the beautiful Gothic shrine of San Vicente and his two sisters, Sabina and Chrysteta, standing on pillars under a richly-painted canopy, with curious old lamps burning within, and then went down a long, narrow, stone staircase into the crypt—of the third century—and kept along beneath the low, round arches till we came to a chapel where, by the light of a torch, we saw the bare rock on which the above-mentioned saints were martyred, and theBujoout of which the legendary serpent came to defend their remains when thrown out for the beasts to devour. ThisBujowas long used as a place of solemn adjuration, a kind ofBocca de la Verità, into which the perjurer shrank from thrusting his hand, but the custom has been discontinued.The following morning we went to visit the place whereSt.Teresa was born. On the way we passed through the Plaza de San Juan, like an immense cloister with its arcades, which takes its name from the church on one side, whereSt.Teresa was baptized. The very font is at the left on entering—a granite basin fluted diagonally, surrounded by an iron railing. Over it is her portrait and the following inscription:Vigesimo octavo MartiiTeresia oborta,Aprilis ante nona estsacro hoc fonterenataMDXV.A grim old church for so sweet a flower to first open to the dews of divine grace in; the baptismal font at one end, and the grave at the other, with cold, gray arches encircling both like the all-embracing arms of that great nursing-mother—Death. At each side of the high altar are low, sepulchral recesses, into which you look down through a grating at the coroneted tombs, before which lamps hang dimly burning. Over the altar the Good Shepherd is going in search of his lost lambs, and at the left is a great, pale Christ on the Cross, ghastly and terrible in the shadowy, torch-lit arch. The whole church is paved with tomb-stones, like most of the churches of Avila, as if the idea of death could never be separated from life. But then, which is death and which life? Is it not in the womb of the grave we awaken to the real life?One of the most popular traditions of Avila is connected with the Square of San Juan: the defence of the city in 1109 by the heroic Ximena Blasquez, whose husband, father, and brothers were all valiant knights. The old governor of the city, Ximenes Blasquez, was dead, and Ximena’s husband and sons were away fighting on the frontier. The people, left without rulers and means of defence, came together on the public square and proclaimed her governor of the place. She accepted the charge, and proved herself equal to the emergency. Spain at this time was overrun by the Moors who had come from Africa to the aid of their brethren. They pillaged and ravaged the country as they went. Learning the defenceless state of Avila, and supposing it to contain great riches and many Moorish captives, they resolved to lay siege to it. Ximena waswarned of the danger, and, instantly mounting her horse, she took two squires and rode forth to the country place of Sancho de Estrada to summon him to her aid. Sancho, though enfeebled by illness, was too gallant a knight to turn a deaf ear to the behest of ladye fair. He did not make his entrance into the city in a very knightly fashion, however. Instead of coming on his war-horse, all booted and spurred, and clad in bright armor, he was brought in a cart on two feather-beds, on the principle of Butler’s couplet, which we vary to suit the occasion:“And feather-bed ’twixt knight urbaneAnd heavy brunt of springless wain.”In descending at the door of his palace at Avila he unfortunately fell and was mortally injured, and the vassals he had brought with him basely fled when they found they had no chastisement to fear.But the dauntless Ximena was not discouraged. Determined to save the city, she went from house to house, and street to street, to distribute provisions, count the men, furnish them with darts and arrows, and assign their posts. It is mentioned that she took all the flour she could find at the bishop’s; and Tamara, the Jewess, made her a present of all the salt meat she had on hand.[43]On the3dof July Ximena, hearing the Moors were within two miles of the city, sent a knight with twenty squires to reconnoitre their camp and cut off some of the outposts, promising to keep open a postern gate to admit them at their return. Then she despatched several trumpeters in different directions to sound their trumpets, thatthe Moors might suppose armed forces were at hand for the defence of the city. This produced the effect she desired. The knight penetrated to the camp, killed several sentinels, and re-entered Avila by the postern. Ximena passed the whole night on her palfrey, making the round of the city, keeping watch on the guards, and encouraging the men. At dawn she returned to her palace, and, summoning her three daughters and two daughters-in-law to her presence, she put on a suit of armor, and, taking a lance in her hand, called upon them to imitate her, which they did, as well as all the women in the house. Thus accoutred, they proceeded to the Square of San Juan, where they found a great number of women weeping and lamenting. “My good friends,” said Ximena, “follow my example, and God will give you the victory.” Whereupon they all hastened to their houses, put on all the armor they could find, and covered their long hair with sombreros. Ximena provided them with javelins, caltrops, and gabions full of stones, and with these troops she mounted the walls in order to attack the Moors when they should arrive beneath.The Moorish captain, approaching the city, saw it apparently defended by armed men, and, deceived by the trumpets in the night, supposed the place had been reinforced. He therefore decided to retreat.As soon as Ximena found the enemy really gone she descended from the walls with her daughters and daughters-in-law, distributed provisions to her troops on the Square ofSt.John, and, after the necessary repose, they all went in procession to the church of the glorious martyrs San Vicente andhis sisters, and, returning by the churches ofSt.Jago and San Salvador, led Ximena in triumph to the Alcazar. The fame of her bravery and presence of mind extended all over the land, and has become the subject of legend and song. A street near the church of San Juan still bears the name of Ximena Blasquez.A convent for Carmelite friars was built in the seventeenth century on the site ofSt.Teresa’s family mansion, in the western part of Avila. The church, in the style of the Renaissance, faces a large, sunny square, on one side of which is a fine old palace with sculptured doors and windows and emblazoned shields. Near by is thePosada de Santa Teresa. The whole convent is embalmed with her memory. Her statue is over the door of the church. All through the corridors you meet her image. The cloisters are covered with frescoes of her life and that ofSt.John of the Cross. Over the main altar of the church, framed in the columns of the gilt retable, is an alto-relievo ofSt.Teresa, supported by Joseph and Mary, gazing up with suppliant hands at our Saviour, who appears with his cross amid a multitude of angels. The church is not sumptuous, but there is an atmosphere of piety about it that is very touching. The eight side-chapels are like deep alcoves, each with some scene of the Passion or the life of the Virgin. The transept, on the gospel side, constitutes the chapel of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, from which you enter a little oratory hung with lamps and entirely covered with paintings, reliquaries, and gilding, as if art and piety had vied in adorning it. It was on this spotSt.Teresa first saw the light in the year 1515, during the pontificate ofLeoX.A quieter, more secluded spot in which to pray could not be desired. But Avila is full of such dim, shadowy oratories, consecrated by some holy memory. Over the altar where Mass is daily offered is a statue ofSt.Teresa, sad as the Virgin of Many Sorrows, representing her as when she beheld the bleeding form of Christ, her face and one hand raised towards the divine Sufferer, the other hand on her arrow-pierced breast. She wears a broidered cope and golden rosary. Among the paintings on the wall are her Espousals, and Joseph and Mary bringing her the jewelled collar. Two little windows admit a feeble light into this cell-like solitude. The ceiling is panelled. Benches covered with blue cloth stand against the wall. And there are little mirrors under the paintings, in true modern Spanish taste, to increase the glitter and effect. The De Cepeda coat of arms and the family tree hang at one end, appropriate enough here. But in the church family distinctions are laid aside. There only the arms of the order of Mt. Carmel,St.Teresa’s true family, are emblazoned.In a little closet of the oratory we were shown some relics of the saint, among which were her sandals and a staff—the latter too long to walk with, and with a small crook at the end. It might have been the emblem of her monastic authority.Beneath the church are brick vaults full of the bones of the old friars, into which we could have thrust our hands. Their cells above are less fortunate. They are tenantless, or without their rightful inmates; for since the suppression of the monasteries in Spain only the nuns in Avila have been left unmolested.Here, atSt.Teresa’s, a part of the convent has been appropriated for a normal school. We went through one of the corridors still in possession of the church.Ave Maria, sin peccado concebidawas on the door of every cell. We entered one to obtain some souvenir of the place, and found a studious young priest surrounded by his books and pictures, in a narrow room, quiet and monastic, with one small window to admit the light.Then there is the garden full of roses and vines, also sequestered, whereSt.Teresa and her brother Rodriguez, in their childhood, built hermitages, and talked of heaven, and encouraged each other for martyrdom.“Scarce has she learned to lisp the nameOf martyr, yet she thinks it shameLife should so long play with the breathWhich, spent, could buy so brave a death.”Avila was full of the traditions of the incomparable old knights who had delivered Spain from the Moor. The chains of the Christian captives they had freed were suspended on the walls of one of the most beautiful churches in the land, and those who had fallen victims to the hate of the infidel were regarded as martyrs. The precocious imagination of the young Teresa was fired with these tales of chivalry and Christian endurance. She was barely seven years of age when she and her brother escaped from home, and took the road to Salamanca to seek martyrdom among the Moors. We took the same path when we left the convent. Leaving the city walls, and descending into the valley, we came to the Adaja, which flows along a narrow defile at the foot of Avila, over a rocky bed bordered by old mills that have been here from time immemorial, this faubourg in the middle ages havingbeen inhabited by dyers, millers, tanners, etc. We crossed the river by the same massive stone bridge with five arches, and went on and up a sunny slope, along the same road the would-be martyrs took, through open fields strewn with huge boulders, till we came to a tall, round granite cross between four round pillars connected by stone cross-beams that once evidently supported a dome. This marks the spot where the children were overtaken by their uncle. The cross bends over, as if from the northern blasts, and is covered with great patches of bright green and yellow moss. The best view of Avila is to be had from this point, and we sat down at the foot of the cross, among the wild thyme, to look at the picturesque old town of the middle ages clearly traced out against the clear blue sky—its gray feudal turrets; itspalacios, once filled with Spanish valor and beauty, but now lonely; the strong Alcazar, with its historic memories; and the numerous towers and belfries crowned by the embattled walls of the cathedral, that seems at once to protect and bless the city.St.Teresa’s home is distinctly visible. The Adaja below goes winding leisurely through the broad, almost woodless landscape. Across the pale fields, in yonder peaceful valley, is the convent of the Incarnation, where Teresa’s aspirations for martyrdom were realized in a mystical sense. Her brother Rodriguez was afterwards killed in battle in South America, andSt.Teresa always regarded him as a martyr, because he fell in defending the cause of religion.The next morning we were awakened at an early hour by the sound of drum and bugle, and the measured tramp of soldiersover the pebbled streets. We hurried to the window. It was not a company of phantom knights fleeing away at the dawn, but the flesh-and-blood soldiers of AlfonsoXII.going to early Mass at the cathedral of San Salvador on the opposite side of the small square. We hastened to follow their example.San Salvador, half church, half fortress, seems expressly built to honor the God of Battles. Chained granite lions guard the entrance. Stone knights keep watch and ward at the sculptured doorway. Happily, on looking up we see the blessed saints in long lines above the yawning arch, and we enter. The church is of the early pointed style, though nearly every age has left its impress. All is gray, severe, and majestic. Its cold aisles are sombre and mysterious, with tombs of bishops and knights in niches along the wall, where they lie with folded hands and something of everlasting peace on their still faces. The heart that shuts its secrets from the glare of sunlight, in these shadowy aisles unfolds them one by one, as in some mystic Presence, with vague, dreamy thoughts of something higher, more satisfying, than the outer world has yet given, or can give. The distant murmur of the priests at the altars, the twinkling lights, the tinkling bells, the bowed forms grouped here and there, the holy sculptures on the walls, all speak to the heart. The painted windows of the nave are high up in the arches, which are now empurpled with the morning sun. Below, all dimness and groping for light; above, all clearness and the radiance of heaven!Sursum corda!Thecoro, as in most Spanish cathedrals, is in the body of the church, and connected with theCapilla Mayorby a railed passage.The stalls are beautifully carved. Old choral books stand on the lecterns ready for service. The outer wall of the choir is covered with sculptures of the Renaissance representing the great mysteries of religion, of which we never tire. Though told in every church in Christendom, they always seem told in a new light, and strike us with new force, as something too deep for mortal ever to fathom fully. They are the alphabet of the faith, which we repeat and combine in a thousand different ways in order to obtain some faint idea of God’s manifestations to us who see here but darkly.These mysteries are continued in the magnificent retable of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella in theCapilla Mayor, where they are richly painted on a gold ground by Berruguete and other famous artists of the day, and now glorious under the descending morning light. It is the same sweet Rosary of Love that seems to have caught new lights, more heavenly hues.The interesting chapels around the apsis are lighted by small windows like mere loop-holes cut through walls of enormous thickness. In the ambulatory we come to the beautiful alabaster tomb of Alfonso de Madrigal, surnamedEl Tostado, the tawny, from his complexion, andEl Abulense, Abula being the Latin for Avila. He was a writer of such astonishing productiveness that he left behind him forty-eight volumes in folio, amounting to sixty thousand pages. It is to be feared we shall never get time to read them, at least inthisworld. He became so proverbial that Don Quixote mentions some book as large as all the works ofEl Tostadocombined, as if human imagination could go no farther. Leigh Huntspeaks of some Spanish bishop as probably writing his homilies in a room ninety feet long! He must have referred toEl Tostado. He is represented on his tomb sitting in a chair, pen in hand, and eyes half closed, as if collecting his thoughts or listening to the divine inspiration. His jewelled cope, embroidered with scenes of the Passion, is beautifully carved. Below him are the Virtues in attendance, as in life, and above are scenes of Our Lord’s infancy, which he loved. This tomb is one of the finest works of Berruguete.Further along we opened a door at a venture, and found ourselves in the chapel of San Segundo, the first apostle of Avila, covered with frescoes of his life. His crystal-covered shrine is in the centre, with an altar on each of the four sides, behind open-work doors of wrought brass. The chapel was quiet and dim and solemn, with burning lamps and people at prayer. Then, by another happy turn, we came into a large cloister with chapels and tombs, where the altar-boys were at play in their red cassocks and short white tunics. The church bells now began to ring, and they hurried away, leaving us alone to enjoy the cloistral shades.When we went into the church again the service had been commenced, theCapilla Mayorwas hung with crimson and gold, candles were distributed to the canons, who, in their purple robes, made the round of the church, the wax dripping on the tombstones that paved the aisles, and the arches resonant with the dying strains of the aged Simeon:Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine!For it was Candlemas-day.The cathedral of San Salvador was begun in 1091, on the site of aformer church. The pope, at the request of AlonsoVI., granted indulgences to all who would contribute to its erection. Contributions were sent, not only from the different provinces of Spain, but from France and Italy. More than a thousand stone-cutters and carpenters were employed under the architect Garcia de Estella, of Navarre, and the building was completed in less than sixteen years.After breakfast we left the city walls and came out on the Square of San Pedro, where women were filling their jars at the well in true Oriental fashion, the air vocal with their gossip and laughter. Groups of peasant women had come up from the plains for a holiday, and were sauntering around the square or along the arcades in their gay stuff dresses, the skirts of which were generally drawn over their heads, as if to show the bright facings of another color. Yellow skirts were faced with red peaked with green; red ones faced with green and trimmed with yellow. When let down, they stood out, in their fulness, like a farthingale, short enough to show their blue stockings. Their hair, in flat basket-braids, was looped up behind with gay pins. We saw several just such glossy black plaits among the votive offerings in the oratory ofSt.Teresa’s Nativity.We stopped awhile in the church of San Pedro, of the thirteenth century—like all of the churches of Avila, well worth visiting—and then kept on to the Dominican convent ofSt.Thomas, a mile distant, and quite in the country. This vast convent is still one of the finest monuments about Avila, though deserted, half ruined, and covered with the garment of sadness. It was hereSt.Teresa’sbrother Antonio retired from the world and died while in the novitiate. We visited several grass-grown cloisters with fine, broad arches; the lonely cells once inhabited by the friars, commanding a fine view over the rock-strewn moor and the Guadarrama Mountains beyond; the infirmary, with a sunny gallery for invalids to walk in, and windows in the cells so arranged opposite each other that all the sick could from their beds attend Mass said in the oratory at the end; the refectory, with stone tables and seats, and defaced paintings on the walls; the royal apartments, looking into a cloister with sculptured arches, and everywhere the arrows and yoke, emblems of Ferdinand and Isabella; and the broad stone staircase leading to the church where lies their only son Juan in his beautifully-sculptured Florentine tomb of alabaster, now sadly mutilated. On one side of this fine church is a chapel with the confessional once used bySt.Teresa. It was here, on Assumption day, 1561, while attending Mass, and secretly deploring the offences she had confessed here, she was ravished in spirit and received a supernatural assurance that her sins were forgiven her. She was herself clothed in a garment of dazzling whiteness, and, as a pledge of the divine favor, a necklace of gold, to which was attached a jewelled cross of unearthly brilliancy, was placed on her neck. There is a painting of this vision on one side of the chapel, as well as in several of the churches of Avila. Mary Most Pure, in all the freshness of youth, appears withSt.Joseph, bearing the garment of purity and the collar of wrought gold—a sweet yoke of love she received just before she founded the convent of San José.Pedro Ybañez, a distinguished Dominican, who combined sanctity with great acquirements, and has left several valuable religious works, was a member of this house. He was one ofSt.Teresa’s spiritual advisers, and the first to order her to write her life.We were glad to learn that this convent has been purchased by the bishop of Avila, and is about to be restored to the Dominican Order.The Jesuit college of San Ginès, likewise among the things of the past, has some interesting associations. It was founded bySt.Francis Borgia, and in it lived for a time the saintly Balthazar Alvarez, the confessorpar excellenceofSt.Teresa, who said her soul owed more to him than to any one else in the world. She saw him one day at the altar crowned with light, symbolic of the fervor of his devotion. He was a consummate master of the spiritual life, and the guide of several persons at Avila noted for their sanctity.One day we walked entirely around the walls of Avila, and came about sunset to a terrace at the west, overlooking a vast plain towards Estramadura. The fertile Vega below, with the stream winding in long, silvery links; the purple mist on the mountains that stood against the golden sky; the snowy range farther to the left, rose-flushed in the sunset light, made the view truly enchanting. We could picture to ourselves this plain when it was filled with contending hosts—the Moslem with the floating crescent, the glittering ranks of Christian knights with the proudly streaming cross and the ensigns of Castile, the peal of bugle and clash of arms, and perchance the bishop descending with the clergy from hispalaciojustabove us to encourage and bless the defenders of the land.Now only a few mules were slowly moving across the plain with the produce of peaceful labor, and the soft tinkle of the convent bells, calling one to another at the hour of prayer, the only sounds to break the melancholy silence.Near by is the church of Santiago, where thecaballerosof Avila used to make theirveillée des armesbefore they were armed knights, and with what Christian sentiments may be seen from an address, as related by an old chronicle, made by Don Pelayo, Bishop of Oviedo, to two young candidates in this very church, after administering the Holy Eucharist. It must be remembered this was at the end of the eleventh or beginning of the twelfth century, being in the reign of AlonsoVI., to whom the rebuilding of Avila was due:“My young lords, who are this day to be armed knights, do you comprehend thoroughly what knighthood is? Knighthood means nobility, and he who is truly noble will not for anything in the world do the least thing that is low or vile. Wherefore you are about to promise, in order to fulfil your obligations unfalteringly, to love God above all things; for he has created you and redeemed you at the price of his Blood and Passion. In the second place, you promise to live and die subject to his holy law, without denying it, either now or in time to come; and, moreover, to serve in all loyalty Don Alonso, your liege lord, and all other kings who may legitimately succeed him; to receive no reward from rich or noble, Moor or Christian, without the license of Don Alonso, your rightful sovereign. You promise, likewise, in whatever battles or engagements you take part, to suffer death rather than flee; that on your tongue truth shall always be found, for the lying man is an abomination to the Lord; that you will always be ready to fly to the assistance of the poor man who implores your aid and seeks protection, even to encounterthose who may have done him injustice or outrage; that you be ready to protect all matrons or maidens who claim your succor, even to do battle for them, should the cause be just, no matter against what power, till you obtain complete redress for the wrong they may have endured. You promise, moreover, not to show yourselves lofty in your conversation, but, on the contrary, humble and considerate with all; to show reverence and honor to the aged; to offer no defiance, without cause, to any one in the world; finally, that you receive the Body of the Lord, having confessed your faults and transgressions, not only on the three Paschs of the year, but on the festivals of the gloriousSt.John the Baptist,St.James,St.Martin, andSt.George.”Which the two young lords, who were the bishop’s nephews, solemnly swore to perform. Whereupon they were dubbed knights by Count Raymond of Burgundy, after which they departed for Toledo to kiss the king’s hand.Not far from the church of Santiago is the convent of Nuestra Señora de la Gracia on the very edge of the hill, inhabited by Augustinian nuns. The church stands on the site of an ancient mosque. The entrance is shaded by a portico with granite pillars. Our guide rang the bell at the convent door, saying: “Ave Maria Purissima!” “Sin peccado concebida,” responded a mysterious voice within, as from an oracle.St.Teresa attended school here, and several memorials of her are shown by the nuns.St.Thomas of Villanueva, the Almsgiver, who is said to have made his vows as an Augustinian friar the very day Luther publicly threw off the habit of the order, was for a time the director of the house, and often preached in the church, which we visited. It consists of a single aisle, narrow and lofty, with the gilt retable over the altar, as in all the Spanish churches, and a tomb ortwo of some Castilian noblemen at the side. The pulpit, in which saints have preached, is a mere circular rail against the wall, ascended by steps. When used it is hung with drapery. On the same side of the church is a picture of the young Teresa beside her teacher, Maria Briceño, a nun of fervent piety, to whom the saint said she was indebted for her first spiritual light. This nun, who, it appears, conversed admirably on religious subjects, told her pupil one day how in her youth she was so struck on reading the words of the Gospel, “Many are called, but few are chosen,” that she resolved to embrace the monastic life; and she dwelt on the rewards reserved for those who abandon all things for the love of Christ—a lesson not lost on the eager listener.At the end of the church is a large grating, through which we looked into the choir of the nuns, quiet and prayerful, with its books and pictures and stalls. Two nuns, with sweet, contemplative faces, were at prayer, dressed in queer pointed hoods and white mantles over black habits. At the sides of the communion wicket stood the angel of the Annunciation and Raphael with his fish—gilded statues of symbolic import.One of the most interesting places in Avila is the convent of San José, on the little Plaza de las Madres, the first house of the reform established bySt.Teresa. The convent and high walls are all of granite and prison-like in their severity of aspect, but we were received with a kindness by the inmates that convinced us there was nothing severe in the spirit within. It is true we found the doors most inhospitably closed and locked, even those of the outer courts generally left open, andwe were obliged to hunt up the chaplain, who lived in the vicinity, to come to our aid. We thought he would prove equally unsuccessful in obtaining entrance, for he rang repeatedly (giving three strokes each time to the bell, we noticed), and it was a full quarter of an hour before any one concluded to answer so unwelcome a summons from the outer world. We began to suppose them all in the state of ecstasy, and the nun who at length made—her appearance, we were going to say—herself audible spoke to us from some inaccessible depth in a voice absolutely beatific, as if she had just descended from the clouds. We never heard anything so calm and sweet and well modulated. Thanks to her, we saw several relics ofSt.Teresa, whom she invariably spoke of as “Our holy Mother.” She also gave us bags of almonds and filberts, and branches of laurel, from the trees planted in the garden by the holy hands of their seraphic foundress.The church of this convent is said to be the first church ever erected in honor ofSt.Joseph. There were several chapels before, which bore his name, in different parts of Europe—for example, one at Santa Maria ad Martyres at Rome—but no distinct church.St.Teresa was the great propagator of the devotion toSt.Joseph, now so popular throughout the world. Of the first eighteen monasteries of her reform, thirteen were placed under his invocation; and in all she inculcated this devotion, and had his statue placed over one of the doors. She left the devotion as a legacy to the order, which has never ceased to extend it. At the end of the eighteenth century there were one hundred and fifty churches ofSt.Joseph in the Carmelite Orderalone. His statue is over the door of the church at Avila, and beside him stands the Child Jesus with a saw in his hand. “For is not this the carpenter’s son?”The church consists of a nave with round arches and six side chapels, the severity of which is relieved by the paintings and inevitable gilt retables. A statue ofSt.Joseph stands over the altar. The grating of the nuns’ choir is on the gospel side, opposite which is a painting ofSt.Teresa with pen in hand and the symbolic white dove at her ear.Jesus,Maria,Joséare successively carved on the key-stones of the arches of the nave.The first chapel next the epistle side of the altar contains the tomb of Lorenzo de Cepeda,St.Teresa’s brother, who entered the army and went to South America about the year 1540, where he became chief treasurer of the province of Quito. Having lost his wife, a woman of rare merit (it is related she died in the habit of Nuestra Señora de la Merced), he returned to Spain with his children, after an absence of thirty four years, and established himself at a country-seat near Avila. He had a great veneration for his sister, and placed himself under her spiritual direction. Not to be separated from her, even in death, he founded this chapel at San José’s, which he dedicated to his patron, San Lorenzo, as his burial-place. His tomb is at the left as you enter, with the following inscription: “On the 26th of June, in the year 1580, fell asleep in the Lord Lorenzo de Cepeda, brother of the holy foundress of this house and all the barefooted Carmelites. He reposes in this chapel, which he erected.”In the same tomb lies his daughter Teresita, who entered a noviceatSt.Joseph’s at the age of thirteen and died young, an angel of innocence and piety.Another chapel was founded by Gaspar Daza, a holy priest of Avila, who gathered about him a circle of zealous clergymen devoted to works of charity and the salvation of souls. His reverence forSt.Teresa induced him to build this chapel, which he dedicated to the Nativity of the Virgin, with a tomb in which he lies buried with his mother and sister. It was he who said the first Mass in the church, Aug. 24, 1562, and placed the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle, after which he gave the veil to four novices, among whom was Antonia de Hanao, a relative ofSt.Teresa’s, who attained to eminent piety under the guidance ofSt.Peter of Alcantara, and died prioress of the Carmelites of Malaga, where her memory is still held in great veneration. At the close of this ceremonySt.Peter of Alcantara, of the Order ofSt.Francis; Pedro Ybañez, the holy Dominican, and the celebrated Balthazar Alvarez, of the Society of Jesus, offered Masses of thanksgiving. What a reunion of saints! On that day—the birthday of the discalced Carmelites—St.Teresa laid aside her family name, and took that of Teresa de Jésus, by which she is now known throughout the Christian world.Among the early novices at San José was a niece ofSt.Teresa’s, Maria de Ocampo, beautiful in person and gifted in mind, who, from the age of seventeen, resolved to be the bride of none but Christ. She became one of the pillars of the order, and died prioress of the convent at Valladolid, so venerated for her sanctity that PhilipIII.went to see her on her death-bed,and recommended himself and the kingdom of Spain to her prayers. Her remains are in a tomb over the grating of the choir in the Carmelite convent at Valladolid, suspended, as it were, in the air, among other holy virgins who sleep in the Lord.Another niece ofSt.Teresa’s,[44]who belonged to one of the noblest families of Avila, also entered the convent of San José. Her father, Alonso Alvarez, was himself regarded as a saint. Maria was of rare beauty, but, though left an orphan at an early age with a large fortune, she rejected all offers of marriage as beneath her, and finally chose the higher life. All the nobility of Avila came to see her take the veil. Here her noble soul found its true sphere. She rose to a high degree of piety, and succeededSt.Teresa as prioress of the house.Another chapel at San José, that ofSt.Paul, at the right as you go in, was founded by Don Francisco de Salcedo, a gentleman of Avila, who was a great friend ofSt.Teresa’s, as well as his wife, a devout servant of God and given to good works.St.Teresa says he lived a life of prayer, and in all the perfection of which his state admitted, for forty years. For twenty years he regularly attended the theological course at the convent ofSt.Thomas, then in great repute, and after his wife’s death took holy orders. He greatly aidedSt.Teresa in her foundations, and accompanied her in her journeys. He lies buried in his chapel ofSt.Paul.Not far fromSt.Joseph’s is the church ofSt.Emilian, in the tribune of which Maria Diaz, also a friend ofSt.Teresa’s, spent the last forty years of her life in perpetualadoration of the Blessed Sacrament, which she called her dear neighbor, never leaving her cell, excepting to go to confession and communion atSt.Ginès; for she was under the direction of Balthazar Alvarez. She had distributed all her goods to the poor, and now lived on alms. The veil that covers the divine Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar was rent asunder for her, and, when she communed, her happiness was so great that she wondered if heaven itself had anything more to offer.St.Teresa saying one day how she longed to behold God, Maria, though eighty years of age, and bowed down by grievous infirmities, replied that she preferred to prolong her exile on earth, that she might continue to suffer. “As long as we remain in the world,” she said, “we can give something to God by supporting our pains for his love; whereas in heaven nothing remains but to receive the reward for our sufferings.” Dying in the odor of sanctity, she was so venerated by the people that she was buried in the choir of the church, at the foot of the very tabernacle to which her adoring eyes had been unceasingly turned for forty years.We have mentioned, too briefly for our satisfaction, some of the persons, noted for their eminent piety, who made Avila, at least in the sixteenth century, a cityde los Santos. It is a disappointment not to find here the tomb of her who is the crowning glory of the place. The expectations of Lorenzo deCepeda were not realized. He does not sleep in death beside his sainted sister. The remains ofSt.Teresa are at Alba de Tormes, where she died, in a shrine of jasper and silver given by FerdinandVII.It stands over the high altar of the Carmelite church, thirty feet above the pavement, where it can be seen from the choir of the nuns, and approached by means of an oratory behind, where they go to pray. Her heart, pierced by the angel, is in a reliquary below.We left Avila with regret. Few places take such hold on the heart. For those to whom life has nothing left to offer but long sufferance it seems the very place to live in. The last thing we did was to go to the brow of the hill by San Vicente, and take a farewell look at the convent of the Incarnation, where still so many“Willing hearts wear quite away their earthly stains”in one of the fairest, happiest of valleys. How long we might have lingered there we cannot say, had not the carriage come to hurry us to the station. And so, taking up life’s burden once more, which we seemed to have laid down in this City of the Saints, we went on our pilgrim way, repeating the linesSt.Teresa wrote in her breviary:“Nada te turbe,Let nothing disturb thee,Nada te espante,Let nothing affright thee;Todo se pasa.All passeth away.Dios no se muda.God alone changeth not.La pacienzaPatience to all thingsTodo se alcanza,Reacheth, and he whoQuien a Dios tiene,Fast by God holdeth,Nada le falta;To him naught is wanting;Solo Dios basta.”Alone God sufficeth.[40]“Some sing of Oliver, and some of Roldan:We sing of Zurraquin, the brave partisan.”[41]“Some sing of Roland, and others Oliver:We sing of Zurraquin, the brave cavalier.”[42]SeeLife ofSt.Teresa.[43]The butchery, at the repeopling of Avila, was given to Benjamin, the Jew, and his sister. There seem to have been a good many Jews in the streets now calledSt.Dominic andSt.Scholastica.[44]SeeLife ofSt.Teresa.

Mira tu muro dichosoQue te rodea y corona,Pues de tantos victorioso!Merece (en triumpho glorioso),Cada almena su corona.

Mira tu muro dichosoQue te rodea y corona,Pues de tantos victorioso!Merece (en triumpho glorioso),Cada almena su corona.

Mira tu muro dichoso

Que te rodea y corona,

Pues de tantos victorioso!

Merece (en triumpho glorioso),

Cada almena su corona.

—Ariz grandezas de Avila.

Itwas on the 31st of January, 1876, we left the Escorial to visit themuy leal, muy magnifica, y muy noblecity of Avila—Avila de los Caballeros, once famed for its valiant knights, and their daring exploits against the Moors, but whose chief glory now is that it is the birthplace ofSt.Teresa, whom all Christendom admires for her genius and venerates for her sanctity.

Keeping along the southern base of the Guadarrama Mountains, whose snowy summits and gray, rock-strewn sides wore a wild, lonely aspect that was inexpressibly melancholy, we came at length to a lower plateau that advances like a promontory between two broad valleys opening to the north and south. On this eminence stands the picturesque city of Avila, the Pearl of Old Castile, very much as it was in the twelfth century. It is full of historic mansions and interesting old churches that have a solemn architectural grandeur. One is astonished to find so small a place inland, inactive, and with no apparent source of wealth, with so many imposing and interesting monuments. They are all massive and severe, because built in an heroic age that disdained all that was light and unsubstantial. It is a city of granite—not of the softer hues that take a polish like marble, but of cold blue granite, severe andinvincible as the steel-clad knights who built it. The granite houses are built with a solidity that would withstand many a hard assault; the granite churches, with their frowning battlements, have the aspect of fortresses; and the granite convents with their high granite walls look indeed like “citadels of prayer.” Everything speaks of a bygone age, an age of conflict and chivalrous deeds, when the city must have been far more wealthy and powerful than now, to have erected such solid edifices. We are not in the least surprised to hear it was originally founded by Hercules himself, or one of the forty of that name to whom so many of the cities of Spain are attributed. Avila is worthy of being counted among his labors.

But whoever founded Avila, it afterwards became the seat of a Roman colony which is mentioned by Ptolemy. It has always been of strategic importance, being at the entrance to the Guadarrama Mountains and the Castiles. When Roderick, the last of the Goths, brought destruction on the land by his folly, Avila was one of the first places seized by the Moors. This was in 714. After being repeatedly taken and lost, Don Sancho of Castile finally took it in 992, and the Moors never regained possession of it. But there were not Christiansenough to repeople it, and it remained desolate eighty-nine years.St.Ferdinand found it uninhabited when he came from the conquest of Seville. AlonsoVI.finally commissioned his son-in-law, Count Raymond of Burgundy, to rebuild and fortify it.

AlonsoVI.had already taken the city of Toledo and made peace with the Moors, but the latter, intent on ruling over the whole of the Peninsula, soon became unmindful of the treaty. In this new crisis many foreign knights hastened to acquire fresh renown in this land of a perpetual crusade. Among the most renowned were Henry of Lorraine; Raymond deSt.Gilles, Count of Toulouse; and Raymond, son of Guillaume Tête-Hardie of Burgundy, and brother of Pope CalixtusII.They contributed so much to the triumph of the cross that Alonso gave them his three daughters in marriage. Urraca (the name of a delicious pear in Spain) fell to the lot of Raymond of Burgundy, with Galicia for her portion, and to him was entrusted the task of rebuilding Avila, the more formidable because it required numerous outposts and a continual struggle with the Moors. The flower of Spanish knighthood came to his aid, and the king granted great privileges to all who would establish themselves in the city. Hewers of wood, stone-cutters, masons, and artificers of all kinds came from Biscay, Galicia, and Leon. The king sent the Moors taken in battle to aid in the work. The bishop in pontificals, accompanied by a long train of clergy, blessed the outlines traced for the walls, stopping to make special exorcisms at the spaces for the ten gates, that the great enemy of the human race might never obtain entranceinto the city. The walls were built out of the ruins left successively behind by the Moors, the Goths, and the Romans, to say nothing of Hercules. As an old chronicler remarks, had they been obliged to hew out and bring hither all the materials, no king would have been able to build such walls. They are forty-two feet high and twelve feet thick. The so-called towers are rather solid circular buttresses that add to their strength. These walls were begun May 3, 1090. Eight hundred men were employed in the work, which was completed in nine years. They proved an effectual barrier against the Saracen; the crescent never floated from those towers. How proud the people are of them is shown by the lines at the head of this sketch:

“Behold the superb walls that surround and crown thee, victorious in so many assaults! Each battlement deserves a crown in reward for thy glorious triumphs!”

It was thus this daughter of Hercules rose from the grave where she had lain seemingly dead so many years. Houses sprang up as by enchantment, and were peopled so rapidly that in 1093 there were about thirty thousand inhabitants. The city thus rebuilt and defended by its incomparable knights merited the name often given it from that time by the old chroniclers,Avila de los Caballeros.

One of these cavaliers, Zurraquin Sancho, the honor and glory of knighthood, was captain of the country forces around Avila. One day, while riding over his estate with a single attendant to examine his herds, he spied a band of Moors returning from a foray into Christian lands, dragging several Spanish peasants after them in chains. Assoon as Zurraquin was perceived, the captives cried to him for deliverance. Whereupon, mindful of his knightly vows to relieve the distressed, he rode boldly up, though but slightly armed, and offered to ransom his countrymen. The Moors would not consent, and the knight prudently withdrew. But, as soon as he was out of sight, he alighted to tighten the girths of his steed, which he then remounted and spurred on by a different path. In a short time he came again upon the Moors, and crying “Santiago!” as with the voice of twenty men, he suddenly dashed into their midst, laying about him right and left so lustily that, taken unawares, they were thrown into confusion, and, supposing themselves attacked by a considerable force, fled for their lives, leaving two of their number wounded, and one dead on the field. Zurraquin unbound the captives, who had also been left behind, and sent them away with the injunction to be silent concerning his exploit.

A few days after, these peasants came to Avila in search of their benefactor, bringing with them twelve fat swine and a large flock of hens. Regardless of his parting admonition, they stopped on the Square of San Pedro, and related how he had delivered them single-handed against threescore infidels. The whole city soon resounded with so brave a deed, and Zurraquin was declared a peerless knight. The women also took up his praises and sang songs in his honor to the sound of the tambourine:

“Cantan de Oliveros, e cantan de Roldan,E non de Zurraquin, ca fue buen barragan.”[40]

“Cantan de Oliveros, e cantan de Roldan,E non de Zurraquin, ca fue buen barragan.”[40]

“Cantan de Oliveros, e cantan de Roldan,

E non de Zurraquin, ca fue buen barragan.”[40]

A second band would take up the strain:

“Cantan de Roldan, e cantan de Olivero,E non de Zurraquin, ca fue buen caballero.”[41]

“Cantan de Roldan, e cantan de Olivero,E non de Zurraquin, ca fue buen caballero.”[41]

“Cantan de Roldan, e cantan de Olivero,

E non de Zurraquin, ca fue buen caballero.”[41]

After rebuilding Avila Count Raymond of Burgundy retired to his province of Galicia, and, dying March 26, 1107, he was buried in the celebrated church of Santiago at Compostella. It was his son who became King of Castile under the name of AlonsoVIII., and Avila, because of its loyalty to him and his successors, acquired a new name—Avila del Rey—among the chroniclers of the time.

But the city bears a title still more glorious than those already mentioned—that ofAvila de los Santos. It was in the sixteenth century especially that it became worthy of this name, when there gathered aboutSt.Teresa a constellation of holy souls, making the place a very Carmel, filled with the “sons of the prophets.”Avila cantos y santos—Avila has as many saints as stones—says an old Spanish proverb, and that is saying not a little. The city has always been noted for dignity of character and its attachment to the church.

The piety of its ancient inhabitants is attested by the number and grave beauty of the churches, with their lamp-lit shrines of the saints and their dusky aisles filled with tombs of the old knights who fought under the banner of the cross. InSt.Teresa’s time it was honored with the presence of several saints who have been canonized:St.Thomas of Villanueva,St.Peter of Alcantara,St.John of the Cross, and that holy Spanish grandee,St.Francis Borgia, besides many other individuals noted for their sanctity. ButSt.Teresa is the best type of Avila. Her piety was as sweetlyaustere as the place, as broad and enlightened as the vast horizon that bounds it, and fervid as its glowing sun.

“You mustn’t say anything againstSt.Teresa at Avila,” said the inevitable Englishmen we met an hour after our arrival.

“We are by no means disposed to, here or anywhere else,” was our reply. On the contrary, we regarded her, with Mrs. Jameson, as “the most extraordinary woman of her age and country”; nay, “who would have been a remarkable woman inanyage or country.” We had seen her statue among the fathers of the church in the first Christian temple in the world, with the inscription:Sancta Teresa, Mater spiritualis. We had read her works, written in the pure Castilian for which Avila is noted, breathing the imagination of a poet and the austerity of a saint, till we were ready to exclaim with Crashawe:

“Oh! ’tis not Spanish, but ’tis Heaven she speaks!”

“Oh! ’tis not Spanish, but ’tis Heaven she speaks!”

“Oh! ’tis not Spanish, but ’tis Heaven she speaks!”

and we had come to Avila expressly to offer her the tribute of our admiration. Here she reigns, to quote Miss Martineau’s words, “as true a queen on this mountain throne as any empress who ever wore a crown!”

At this very moment we were on our way to visit the places associated with her memory. A few turns more through the narrow, tortuous streets, and we came to the ponderous gateway of San Vicente on the north side of the city, so named from the venerable church just without the walls, beloved of archæologists. But for the moment it had no attraction for us; for below, in the broad, sunny valley, we could see the monastery of the Incarnation, a place of great interest to the Catholic heart. There it wasthatSt.Teresa, young and beautiful, took the veil and spent more than thirty years of her life. The first glimpse of it one can never forget; and, apart from the associations, the ancient towers of San Vicente on the edge of the hill, the fair valley below with its winding stream and the convent embosomed among trees, and the mountains that girt the horizon, made up a picture none the less lovely for being framed in that antique gateway. We went winding down to the convent, perhaps half a mile distant, by theCalle de la Encarnacion. No sweeter, quieter spot could be desired in which to end one’s days. It is charmingly situated on the farther side of the Adaja, and commands a fine view of Avila, which, indeed, is picturesque in every direction. We could count thirty towers in the city walls as we turned at the convent gate to look back.St.Teresa stopped in this same archway, Nov. 2, 1533, to bid farewell to her brother Antonio, who, on leaving her, went to the Dominican convent, where he took the monastic habit. She was then only eighteen and a half years old. The inward agony she experienced on entering the convent she relates with great sincerity, but there was no faltering in her determination to embrace the higher life. The house had been founded only about twenty years before, and the first Mass was said in it the very day she was baptized. That was more than three centuries ago. Its stout walls may be somewhat grayer, and the alleys of its large garden more umbrageous, but its general aspect must be very much the same; for in that dry climate nature does not take so kindly to man’s handiwork as in the misty north, where the old convents are all draped with mossand the ivy green. It is less peopled also. In 1550 there were ninety nuns, but now there are not more than half that number.

There is a series of little parlors, low and dim, with unpainted beams, and queer old chairs, and two black grates with nearly a yard between, through which you can converse, as through a tunnel, with the nuns. They have not been changed sinceSt.Teresa’s time. In one of these our Lord reproved her for her conversations, which still savored too much of the world. Here, later in life,St.Francis Borgia came to see her on his way from the convent of Yuste, where he had been to visit his kinsman, CharlesV.Here she sawSt.Peter of Alcantara in ecstasy. In one of these parlors, now regarded as a sacred spot, she held her interviews withSt.John of the Cross when he was director of the house. It is related that one day, while he was discoursing here on the mystery of the Holy Trinity, she was so impressed by his words that she fell on her knees to listen. In a short time he entered the ecstatic state, leavingSt.Teresa lost in divine contemplation; and when one of the nuns came with a message, she found them both suspended in the air! For a moment they ceased to belong to earth, and its laws did not control them. A picture of this scene hangs on the wall. In a larger and more cheerful parlor some nuns of very pleasing manners of the true Spanish type showed us several objects that belonged toSt.Teresa, and some of her embroidery of curious Spanish work, very nicely done, as we were glad to see; likewise, a Christ covered with bleeding wounds as he appeared toSt.John of the Cross, and many other touching memorials of the past.

We next visited the church, which is large, with buttressed walls, low, square towers, and a gabled belfry. The interior is spacious and lofty, but severe in style. There is a nave, and two short transepts with a dome rising between them. It is paved with flag-stones, and plain wooden benches stand against the stone walls. The high altar, at whichSt.John of the Cross used to say Mass, has its gilt retable, with colonnettes and niches filled with the saints of the order, among whom we remember the prophets who dwelt on Mt. Carmel, andSt.Albert, patriarch of Jerusalem. The nuns’ choir is at the opposite end of the church. We should saychoirs; for they have two, one above the other, with double black grates, which are generally curtained. It was at the grate of the lower choir, dim and mystic as hisObscure Night of the Soul, thatSt.John of the Cross used to preach to the nuns. What sermons there must have been from him who wrote, as never man wrote, on the upward way from night to light!

The grating of this lower choir has two divisions, between which is a small square shutter, like the door of a tabernacle, on which is represented a chalice and Host. It was hereSt.Teresa received the Holy Communion for more than thirty years. Here one morning, after receiving it from the hand ofSt.John of the Cross, she was mysteriously affianced to the heavenly Bridegroom, who called her, in the language of the Canticles, by the sweet name of Spouse, and placed on her finger the nuptial ring. She was then fifty-seven years of age. A painting over the communion table represents this supernatural event.

This choir is also associated with the memory of Eleonora de Cepeda,a niece ofSt.Teresa’s, who became a nun at the convent of the Incarnation. She was remarkable for her detachment from earth, and died young, an angel of purity and devotion.St.Teresa saw her body borne to the choir by angels. No Mass of requiem was sung over her. It was during the Octave of Corpus Christi. The church was adorned as for a festival. The Mass of the Blessed Sacrament was chanted to the sound of the organ, and the Alleluia repeatedly sung, as if to celebrate the entrance of her soul into glory. The dead nun, in the holy habit of Mt. Carmel, lay on her bier covered with lilies and roses, with a celestial smile on her pale face that seemed to reflect the beatitude of her soul. The procession of the Host was made around her, and all the nuns took a last look at their beautiful sister before she was lowered into the gloomy vault below.[42]

In the upper choir there is a statue ofSt.Teresa, dressed as a Carmelite, in the stall she occupied when prioress of the house. The nuns often go to kiss the hand as a mark of homage to her memory. The actual prioress occupies the next stall below.

It will be remembered thatSt.Teresa passed twenty-nine years in this convent before she left to found that of San José. She afterwards returned three years as prioress, when, at her request,St.John of the Cross (who was born in a small town near Avila) was appointed spiritual director. Under the direction of these two saints the house became a paradise filled with souls of such fervor that the heavenly spirits themselves came down to join in their holy psalmody, according tothe testimony ofSt.Teresa herself, who saw the stalls occupied by them.

“The air of Paradise did fan the house,And angels office all.”

“The air of Paradise did fan the house,And angels office all.”

“The air of Paradise did fan the house,

And angels office all.”

One ofSt.Teresa’s first acts, on taking charge of the house, was to place a large statue of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in the upper choir, and present her with the keys of the monastery, to indicate that this womanly type of all that is sweet and heavenly was to be the true ruler of the house. This statue still retains its place in the choir, and in its hand are the keys presented by the saint.

The convent garden is surrounded by high walls. It wears the same smiling aspect as in the saint’s time, but it is larger. The neighboring house occupied bySt.John of the Cross, with the land around it, has been bought and added to the enclosure. The house has been converted into an octagon chapel, called theErmita de San Juan de la Cruz. The unpainted wooden altar was made from a part ofSt.Teresa’s cell. In this garden are the flowers and shrubbery she loved, the almond-trees she planted, the paths she trod. Here are the oratories where she prayed, the dark cypresses that witnessed her penitential tears, the limpid water she was never weary of contemplating—symbol of divine grace and regeneration.St.Teresa’s love of nature is evident on every page of her writings. She said the sight of the fields and flowers raised her soul towards God, and was like a book in which she read his grandeur and benefits. And she often compared her soul to a garden which she prayed the divine Husbandman to fill with the sweet perfume of the lowly virtues.

In the right wing of the convent is a little oratory, quiet and solitary, beloved of the saint, where an angel, all flame, appeared to the eyes of her soul with a golden arrow in his hand, which he thrust deep into her heart, leaving it for ever inflamed with seraphic love. This mystery is honored in the Carmelite Order by the annual festival of the Transverberation. Art like-wise has immortalized it. We remember the group by Bernini in the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria at Rome, in which the divine transport of her soul is so clearly visible through the pale beauty of her rapt form, which trembles beneath the fire-tipped dart of the angel. What significance in this sacred seal set upon her virginal heart, from this time rent in twain by love and penitence!Cor contritum et humiliatum, Deus, non despicies!was the exclamation ofSt.Teresa when dying.

The sun was descending behind the proud walls of Avila when we regained the steep hillside, lighting up the grim towers and crowning them with splendor. We stopped on the brow, before the lofty portal of San Vicente, to look at its wreaths of stone and mutilated saints, and read the story of the rich man and Lazarus so beautifully told in the arch. Angels are bearing away the soul of the latter on a mantle to Abraham’s bosom. On the south side of the church is a sunny portico with light, clustered pillars, filled with tombs, some in niches covered with emblazonry, others like plain chests of stone set against the wall. We went down the steps into the church, cold, and dim, and gray, all of granite and cave-like. The pavement is composed of granite tombstones covered with inscriptions and coats ofarms. There are granite fonts for the holy water. Old statues, old paintings, and old inscriptions in Gothic text line the narrow aisles. The windows are high up in the arches, which were still light, though shadows were gathering around the tombs below. There was not a soul in the church. We looked through therejathat divides the nave at the beautiful Gothic shrine of San Vicente and his two sisters, Sabina and Chrysteta, standing on pillars under a richly-painted canopy, with curious old lamps burning within, and then went down a long, narrow, stone staircase into the crypt—of the third century—and kept along beneath the low, round arches till we came to a chapel where, by the light of a torch, we saw the bare rock on which the above-mentioned saints were martyred, and theBujoout of which the legendary serpent came to defend their remains when thrown out for the beasts to devour. ThisBujowas long used as a place of solemn adjuration, a kind ofBocca de la Verità, into which the perjurer shrank from thrusting his hand, but the custom has been discontinued.

The following morning we went to visit the place whereSt.Teresa was born. On the way we passed through the Plaza de San Juan, like an immense cloister with its arcades, which takes its name from the church on one side, whereSt.Teresa was baptized. The very font is at the left on entering—a granite basin fluted diagonally, surrounded by an iron railing. Over it is her portrait and the following inscription:

Vigesimo octavo MartiiTeresia oborta,Aprilis ante nona estsacro hoc fonterenataMDXV.

A grim old church for so sweet a flower to first open to the dews of divine grace in; the baptismal font at one end, and the grave at the other, with cold, gray arches encircling both like the all-embracing arms of that great nursing-mother—Death. At each side of the high altar are low, sepulchral recesses, into which you look down through a grating at the coroneted tombs, before which lamps hang dimly burning. Over the altar the Good Shepherd is going in search of his lost lambs, and at the left is a great, pale Christ on the Cross, ghastly and terrible in the shadowy, torch-lit arch. The whole church is paved with tomb-stones, like most of the churches of Avila, as if the idea of death could never be separated from life. But then, which is death and which life? Is it not in the womb of the grave we awaken to the real life?

One of the most popular traditions of Avila is connected with the Square of San Juan: the defence of the city in 1109 by the heroic Ximena Blasquez, whose husband, father, and brothers were all valiant knights. The old governor of the city, Ximenes Blasquez, was dead, and Ximena’s husband and sons were away fighting on the frontier. The people, left without rulers and means of defence, came together on the public square and proclaimed her governor of the place. She accepted the charge, and proved herself equal to the emergency. Spain at this time was overrun by the Moors who had come from Africa to the aid of their brethren. They pillaged and ravaged the country as they went. Learning the defenceless state of Avila, and supposing it to contain great riches and many Moorish captives, they resolved to lay siege to it. Ximena waswarned of the danger, and, instantly mounting her horse, she took two squires and rode forth to the country place of Sancho de Estrada to summon him to her aid. Sancho, though enfeebled by illness, was too gallant a knight to turn a deaf ear to the behest of ladye fair. He did not make his entrance into the city in a very knightly fashion, however. Instead of coming on his war-horse, all booted and spurred, and clad in bright armor, he was brought in a cart on two feather-beds, on the principle of Butler’s couplet, which we vary to suit the occasion:

“And feather-bed ’twixt knight urbaneAnd heavy brunt of springless wain.”

“And feather-bed ’twixt knight urbaneAnd heavy brunt of springless wain.”

“And feather-bed ’twixt knight urbane

And heavy brunt of springless wain.”

In descending at the door of his palace at Avila he unfortunately fell and was mortally injured, and the vassals he had brought with him basely fled when they found they had no chastisement to fear.

But the dauntless Ximena was not discouraged. Determined to save the city, she went from house to house, and street to street, to distribute provisions, count the men, furnish them with darts and arrows, and assign their posts. It is mentioned that she took all the flour she could find at the bishop’s; and Tamara, the Jewess, made her a present of all the salt meat she had on hand.[43]

On the3dof July Ximena, hearing the Moors were within two miles of the city, sent a knight with twenty squires to reconnoitre their camp and cut off some of the outposts, promising to keep open a postern gate to admit them at their return. Then she despatched several trumpeters in different directions to sound their trumpets, thatthe Moors might suppose armed forces were at hand for the defence of the city. This produced the effect she desired. The knight penetrated to the camp, killed several sentinels, and re-entered Avila by the postern. Ximena passed the whole night on her palfrey, making the round of the city, keeping watch on the guards, and encouraging the men. At dawn she returned to her palace, and, summoning her three daughters and two daughters-in-law to her presence, she put on a suit of armor, and, taking a lance in her hand, called upon them to imitate her, which they did, as well as all the women in the house. Thus accoutred, they proceeded to the Square of San Juan, where they found a great number of women weeping and lamenting. “My good friends,” said Ximena, “follow my example, and God will give you the victory.” Whereupon they all hastened to their houses, put on all the armor they could find, and covered their long hair with sombreros. Ximena provided them with javelins, caltrops, and gabions full of stones, and with these troops she mounted the walls in order to attack the Moors when they should arrive beneath.

The Moorish captain, approaching the city, saw it apparently defended by armed men, and, deceived by the trumpets in the night, supposed the place had been reinforced. He therefore decided to retreat.

As soon as Ximena found the enemy really gone she descended from the walls with her daughters and daughters-in-law, distributed provisions to her troops on the Square ofSt.John, and, after the necessary repose, they all went in procession to the church of the glorious martyrs San Vicente andhis sisters, and, returning by the churches ofSt.Jago and San Salvador, led Ximena in triumph to the Alcazar. The fame of her bravery and presence of mind extended all over the land, and has become the subject of legend and song. A street near the church of San Juan still bears the name of Ximena Blasquez.

A convent for Carmelite friars was built in the seventeenth century on the site ofSt.Teresa’s family mansion, in the western part of Avila. The church, in the style of the Renaissance, faces a large, sunny square, on one side of which is a fine old palace with sculptured doors and windows and emblazoned shields. Near by is thePosada de Santa Teresa. The whole convent is embalmed with her memory. Her statue is over the door of the church. All through the corridors you meet her image. The cloisters are covered with frescoes of her life and that ofSt.John of the Cross. Over the main altar of the church, framed in the columns of the gilt retable, is an alto-relievo ofSt.Teresa, supported by Joseph and Mary, gazing up with suppliant hands at our Saviour, who appears with his cross amid a multitude of angels. The church is not sumptuous, but there is an atmosphere of piety about it that is very touching. The eight side-chapels are like deep alcoves, each with some scene of the Passion or the life of the Virgin. The transept, on the gospel side, constitutes the chapel of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, from which you enter a little oratory hung with lamps and entirely covered with paintings, reliquaries, and gilding, as if art and piety had vied in adorning it. It was on this spotSt.Teresa first saw the light in the year 1515, during the pontificate ofLeoX.A quieter, more secluded spot in which to pray could not be desired. But Avila is full of such dim, shadowy oratories, consecrated by some holy memory. Over the altar where Mass is daily offered is a statue ofSt.Teresa, sad as the Virgin of Many Sorrows, representing her as when she beheld the bleeding form of Christ, her face and one hand raised towards the divine Sufferer, the other hand on her arrow-pierced breast. She wears a broidered cope and golden rosary. Among the paintings on the wall are her Espousals, and Joseph and Mary bringing her the jewelled collar. Two little windows admit a feeble light into this cell-like solitude. The ceiling is panelled. Benches covered with blue cloth stand against the wall. And there are little mirrors under the paintings, in true modern Spanish taste, to increase the glitter and effect. The De Cepeda coat of arms and the family tree hang at one end, appropriate enough here. But in the church family distinctions are laid aside. There only the arms of the order of Mt. Carmel,St.Teresa’s true family, are emblazoned.

In a little closet of the oratory we were shown some relics of the saint, among which were her sandals and a staff—the latter too long to walk with, and with a small crook at the end. It might have been the emblem of her monastic authority.

Beneath the church are brick vaults full of the bones of the old friars, into which we could have thrust our hands. Their cells above are less fortunate. They are tenantless, or without their rightful inmates; for since the suppression of the monasteries in Spain only the nuns in Avila have been left unmolested.Here, atSt.Teresa’s, a part of the convent has been appropriated for a normal school. We went through one of the corridors still in possession of the church.Ave Maria, sin peccado concebidawas on the door of every cell. We entered one to obtain some souvenir of the place, and found a studious young priest surrounded by his books and pictures, in a narrow room, quiet and monastic, with one small window to admit the light.

Then there is the garden full of roses and vines, also sequestered, whereSt.Teresa and her brother Rodriguez, in their childhood, built hermitages, and talked of heaven, and encouraged each other for martyrdom.

“Scarce has she learned to lisp the nameOf martyr, yet she thinks it shameLife should so long play with the breathWhich, spent, could buy so brave a death.”

“Scarce has she learned to lisp the nameOf martyr, yet she thinks it shameLife should so long play with the breathWhich, spent, could buy so brave a death.”

“Scarce has she learned to lisp the name

Of martyr, yet she thinks it shame

Life should so long play with the breath

Which, spent, could buy so brave a death.”

Avila was full of the traditions of the incomparable old knights who had delivered Spain from the Moor. The chains of the Christian captives they had freed were suspended on the walls of one of the most beautiful churches in the land, and those who had fallen victims to the hate of the infidel were regarded as martyrs. The precocious imagination of the young Teresa was fired with these tales of chivalry and Christian endurance. She was barely seven years of age when she and her brother escaped from home, and took the road to Salamanca to seek martyrdom among the Moors. We took the same path when we left the convent. Leaving the city walls, and descending into the valley, we came to the Adaja, which flows along a narrow defile at the foot of Avila, over a rocky bed bordered by old mills that have been here from time immemorial, this faubourg in the middle ages havingbeen inhabited by dyers, millers, tanners, etc. We crossed the river by the same massive stone bridge with five arches, and went on and up a sunny slope, along the same road the would-be martyrs took, through open fields strewn with huge boulders, till we came to a tall, round granite cross between four round pillars connected by stone cross-beams that once evidently supported a dome. This marks the spot where the children were overtaken by their uncle. The cross bends over, as if from the northern blasts, and is covered with great patches of bright green and yellow moss. The best view of Avila is to be had from this point, and we sat down at the foot of the cross, among the wild thyme, to look at the picturesque old town of the middle ages clearly traced out against the clear blue sky—its gray feudal turrets; itspalacios, once filled with Spanish valor and beauty, but now lonely; the strong Alcazar, with its historic memories; and the numerous towers and belfries crowned by the embattled walls of the cathedral, that seems at once to protect and bless the city.St.Teresa’s home is distinctly visible. The Adaja below goes winding leisurely through the broad, almost woodless landscape. Across the pale fields, in yonder peaceful valley, is the convent of the Incarnation, where Teresa’s aspirations for martyrdom were realized in a mystical sense. Her brother Rodriguez was afterwards killed in battle in South America, andSt.Teresa always regarded him as a martyr, because he fell in defending the cause of religion.

The next morning we were awakened at an early hour by the sound of drum and bugle, and the measured tramp of soldiersover the pebbled streets. We hurried to the window. It was not a company of phantom knights fleeing away at the dawn, but the flesh-and-blood soldiers of AlfonsoXII.going to early Mass at the cathedral of San Salvador on the opposite side of the small square. We hastened to follow their example.

San Salvador, half church, half fortress, seems expressly built to honor the God of Battles. Chained granite lions guard the entrance. Stone knights keep watch and ward at the sculptured doorway. Happily, on looking up we see the blessed saints in long lines above the yawning arch, and we enter. The church is of the early pointed style, though nearly every age has left its impress. All is gray, severe, and majestic. Its cold aisles are sombre and mysterious, with tombs of bishops and knights in niches along the wall, where they lie with folded hands and something of everlasting peace on their still faces. The heart that shuts its secrets from the glare of sunlight, in these shadowy aisles unfolds them one by one, as in some mystic Presence, with vague, dreamy thoughts of something higher, more satisfying, than the outer world has yet given, or can give. The distant murmur of the priests at the altars, the twinkling lights, the tinkling bells, the bowed forms grouped here and there, the holy sculptures on the walls, all speak to the heart. The painted windows of the nave are high up in the arches, which are now empurpled with the morning sun. Below, all dimness and groping for light; above, all clearness and the radiance of heaven!Sursum corda!

Thecoro, as in most Spanish cathedrals, is in the body of the church, and connected with theCapilla Mayorby a railed passage.The stalls are beautifully carved. Old choral books stand on the lecterns ready for service. The outer wall of the choir is covered with sculptures of the Renaissance representing the great mysteries of religion, of which we never tire. Though told in every church in Christendom, they always seem told in a new light, and strike us with new force, as something too deep for mortal ever to fathom fully. They are the alphabet of the faith, which we repeat and combine in a thousand different ways in order to obtain some faint idea of God’s manifestations to us who see here but darkly.

These mysteries are continued in the magnificent retable of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella in theCapilla Mayor, where they are richly painted on a gold ground by Berruguete and other famous artists of the day, and now glorious under the descending morning light. It is the same sweet Rosary of Love that seems to have caught new lights, more heavenly hues.

The interesting chapels around the apsis are lighted by small windows like mere loop-holes cut through walls of enormous thickness. In the ambulatory we come to the beautiful alabaster tomb of Alfonso de Madrigal, surnamedEl Tostado, the tawny, from his complexion, andEl Abulense, Abula being the Latin for Avila. He was a writer of such astonishing productiveness that he left behind him forty-eight volumes in folio, amounting to sixty thousand pages. It is to be feared we shall never get time to read them, at least inthisworld. He became so proverbial that Don Quixote mentions some book as large as all the works ofEl Tostadocombined, as if human imagination could go no farther. Leigh Huntspeaks of some Spanish bishop as probably writing his homilies in a room ninety feet long! He must have referred toEl Tostado. He is represented on his tomb sitting in a chair, pen in hand, and eyes half closed, as if collecting his thoughts or listening to the divine inspiration. His jewelled cope, embroidered with scenes of the Passion, is beautifully carved. Below him are the Virtues in attendance, as in life, and above are scenes of Our Lord’s infancy, which he loved. This tomb is one of the finest works of Berruguete.

Further along we opened a door at a venture, and found ourselves in the chapel of San Segundo, the first apostle of Avila, covered with frescoes of his life. His crystal-covered shrine is in the centre, with an altar on each of the four sides, behind open-work doors of wrought brass. The chapel was quiet and dim and solemn, with burning lamps and people at prayer. Then, by another happy turn, we came into a large cloister with chapels and tombs, where the altar-boys were at play in their red cassocks and short white tunics. The church bells now began to ring, and they hurried away, leaving us alone to enjoy the cloistral shades.

When we went into the church again the service had been commenced, theCapilla Mayorwas hung with crimson and gold, candles were distributed to the canons, who, in their purple robes, made the round of the church, the wax dripping on the tombstones that paved the aisles, and the arches resonant with the dying strains of the aged Simeon:Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine!For it was Candlemas-day.

The cathedral of San Salvador was begun in 1091, on the site of aformer church. The pope, at the request of AlonsoVI., granted indulgences to all who would contribute to its erection. Contributions were sent, not only from the different provinces of Spain, but from France and Italy. More than a thousand stone-cutters and carpenters were employed under the architect Garcia de Estella, of Navarre, and the building was completed in less than sixteen years.

After breakfast we left the city walls and came out on the Square of San Pedro, where women were filling their jars at the well in true Oriental fashion, the air vocal with their gossip and laughter. Groups of peasant women had come up from the plains for a holiday, and were sauntering around the square or along the arcades in their gay stuff dresses, the skirts of which were generally drawn over their heads, as if to show the bright facings of another color. Yellow skirts were faced with red peaked with green; red ones faced with green and trimmed with yellow. When let down, they stood out, in their fulness, like a farthingale, short enough to show their blue stockings. Their hair, in flat basket-braids, was looped up behind with gay pins. We saw several just such glossy black plaits among the votive offerings in the oratory ofSt.Teresa’s Nativity.

We stopped awhile in the church of San Pedro, of the thirteenth century—like all of the churches of Avila, well worth visiting—and then kept on to the Dominican convent ofSt.Thomas, a mile distant, and quite in the country. This vast convent is still one of the finest monuments about Avila, though deserted, half ruined, and covered with the garment of sadness. It was hereSt.Teresa’sbrother Antonio retired from the world and died while in the novitiate. We visited several grass-grown cloisters with fine, broad arches; the lonely cells once inhabited by the friars, commanding a fine view over the rock-strewn moor and the Guadarrama Mountains beyond; the infirmary, with a sunny gallery for invalids to walk in, and windows in the cells so arranged opposite each other that all the sick could from their beds attend Mass said in the oratory at the end; the refectory, with stone tables and seats, and defaced paintings on the walls; the royal apartments, looking into a cloister with sculptured arches, and everywhere the arrows and yoke, emblems of Ferdinand and Isabella; and the broad stone staircase leading to the church where lies their only son Juan in his beautifully-sculptured Florentine tomb of alabaster, now sadly mutilated. On one side of this fine church is a chapel with the confessional once used bySt.Teresa. It was here, on Assumption day, 1561, while attending Mass, and secretly deploring the offences she had confessed here, she was ravished in spirit and received a supernatural assurance that her sins were forgiven her. She was herself clothed in a garment of dazzling whiteness, and, as a pledge of the divine favor, a necklace of gold, to which was attached a jewelled cross of unearthly brilliancy, was placed on her neck. There is a painting of this vision on one side of the chapel, as well as in several of the churches of Avila. Mary Most Pure, in all the freshness of youth, appears withSt.Joseph, bearing the garment of purity and the collar of wrought gold—a sweet yoke of love she received just before she founded the convent of San José.

Pedro Ybañez, a distinguished Dominican, who combined sanctity with great acquirements, and has left several valuable religious works, was a member of this house. He was one ofSt.Teresa’s spiritual advisers, and the first to order her to write her life.

We were glad to learn that this convent has been purchased by the bishop of Avila, and is about to be restored to the Dominican Order.

The Jesuit college of San Ginès, likewise among the things of the past, has some interesting associations. It was founded bySt.Francis Borgia, and in it lived for a time the saintly Balthazar Alvarez, the confessorpar excellenceofSt.Teresa, who said her soul owed more to him than to any one else in the world. She saw him one day at the altar crowned with light, symbolic of the fervor of his devotion. He was a consummate master of the spiritual life, and the guide of several persons at Avila noted for their sanctity.

One day we walked entirely around the walls of Avila, and came about sunset to a terrace at the west, overlooking a vast plain towards Estramadura. The fertile Vega below, with the stream winding in long, silvery links; the purple mist on the mountains that stood against the golden sky; the snowy range farther to the left, rose-flushed in the sunset light, made the view truly enchanting. We could picture to ourselves this plain when it was filled with contending hosts—the Moslem with the floating crescent, the glittering ranks of Christian knights with the proudly streaming cross and the ensigns of Castile, the peal of bugle and clash of arms, and perchance the bishop descending with the clergy from hispalaciojustabove us to encourage and bless the defenders of the land.

Now only a few mules were slowly moving across the plain with the produce of peaceful labor, and the soft tinkle of the convent bells, calling one to another at the hour of prayer, the only sounds to break the melancholy silence.

Near by is the church of Santiago, where thecaballerosof Avila used to make theirveillée des armesbefore they were armed knights, and with what Christian sentiments may be seen from an address, as related by an old chronicle, made by Don Pelayo, Bishop of Oviedo, to two young candidates in this very church, after administering the Holy Eucharist. It must be remembered this was at the end of the eleventh or beginning of the twelfth century, being in the reign of AlonsoVI., to whom the rebuilding of Avila was due:

“My young lords, who are this day to be armed knights, do you comprehend thoroughly what knighthood is? Knighthood means nobility, and he who is truly noble will not for anything in the world do the least thing that is low or vile. Wherefore you are about to promise, in order to fulfil your obligations unfalteringly, to love God above all things; for he has created you and redeemed you at the price of his Blood and Passion. In the second place, you promise to live and die subject to his holy law, without denying it, either now or in time to come; and, moreover, to serve in all loyalty Don Alonso, your liege lord, and all other kings who may legitimately succeed him; to receive no reward from rich or noble, Moor or Christian, without the license of Don Alonso, your rightful sovereign. You promise, likewise, in whatever battles or engagements you take part, to suffer death rather than flee; that on your tongue truth shall always be found, for the lying man is an abomination to the Lord; that you will always be ready to fly to the assistance of the poor man who implores your aid and seeks protection, even to encounterthose who may have done him injustice or outrage; that you be ready to protect all matrons or maidens who claim your succor, even to do battle for them, should the cause be just, no matter against what power, till you obtain complete redress for the wrong they may have endured. You promise, moreover, not to show yourselves lofty in your conversation, but, on the contrary, humble and considerate with all; to show reverence and honor to the aged; to offer no defiance, without cause, to any one in the world; finally, that you receive the Body of the Lord, having confessed your faults and transgressions, not only on the three Paschs of the year, but on the festivals of the gloriousSt.John the Baptist,St.James,St.Martin, andSt.George.”

Which the two young lords, who were the bishop’s nephews, solemnly swore to perform. Whereupon they were dubbed knights by Count Raymond of Burgundy, after which they departed for Toledo to kiss the king’s hand.

Not far from the church of Santiago is the convent of Nuestra Señora de la Gracia on the very edge of the hill, inhabited by Augustinian nuns. The church stands on the site of an ancient mosque. The entrance is shaded by a portico with granite pillars. Our guide rang the bell at the convent door, saying: “Ave Maria Purissima!” “Sin peccado concebida,” responded a mysterious voice within, as from an oracle.St.Teresa attended school here, and several memorials of her are shown by the nuns.St.Thomas of Villanueva, the Almsgiver, who is said to have made his vows as an Augustinian friar the very day Luther publicly threw off the habit of the order, was for a time the director of the house, and often preached in the church, which we visited. It consists of a single aisle, narrow and lofty, with the gilt retable over the altar, as in all the Spanish churches, and a tomb ortwo of some Castilian noblemen at the side. The pulpit, in which saints have preached, is a mere circular rail against the wall, ascended by steps. When used it is hung with drapery. On the same side of the church is a picture of the young Teresa beside her teacher, Maria Briceño, a nun of fervent piety, to whom the saint said she was indebted for her first spiritual light. This nun, who, it appears, conversed admirably on religious subjects, told her pupil one day how in her youth she was so struck on reading the words of the Gospel, “Many are called, but few are chosen,” that she resolved to embrace the monastic life; and she dwelt on the rewards reserved for those who abandon all things for the love of Christ—a lesson not lost on the eager listener.

At the end of the church is a large grating, through which we looked into the choir of the nuns, quiet and prayerful, with its books and pictures and stalls. Two nuns, with sweet, contemplative faces, were at prayer, dressed in queer pointed hoods and white mantles over black habits. At the sides of the communion wicket stood the angel of the Annunciation and Raphael with his fish—gilded statues of symbolic import.

One of the most interesting places in Avila is the convent of San José, on the little Plaza de las Madres, the first house of the reform established bySt.Teresa. The convent and high walls are all of granite and prison-like in their severity of aspect, but we were received with a kindness by the inmates that convinced us there was nothing severe in the spirit within. It is true we found the doors most inhospitably closed and locked, even those of the outer courts generally left open, andwe were obliged to hunt up the chaplain, who lived in the vicinity, to come to our aid. We thought he would prove equally unsuccessful in obtaining entrance, for he rang repeatedly (giving three strokes each time to the bell, we noticed), and it was a full quarter of an hour before any one concluded to answer so unwelcome a summons from the outer world. We began to suppose them all in the state of ecstasy, and the nun who at length made—her appearance, we were going to say—herself audible spoke to us from some inaccessible depth in a voice absolutely beatific, as if she had just descended from the clouds. We never heard anything so calm and sweet and well modulated. Thanks to her, we saw several relics ofSt.Teresa, whom she invariably spoke of as “Our holy Mother.” She also gave us bags of almonds and filberts, and branches of laurel, from the trees planted in the garden by the holy hands of their seraphic foundress.

The church of this convent is said to be the first church ever erected in honor ofSt.Joseph. There were several chapels before, which bore his name, in different parts of Europe—for example, one at Santa Maria ad Martyres at Rome—but no distinct church.St.Teresa was the great propagator of the devotion toSt.Joseph, now so popular throughout the world. Of the first eighteen monasteries of her reform, thirteen were placed under his invocation; and in all she inculcated this devotion, and had his statue placed over one of the doors. She left the devotion as a legacy to the order, which has never ceased to extend it. At the end of the eighteenth century there were one hundred and fifty churches ofSt.Joseph in the Carmelite Orderalone. His statue is over the door of the church at Avila, and beside him stands the Child Jesus with a saw in his hand. “For is not this the carpenter’s son?”

The church consists of a nave with round arches and six side chapels, the severity of which is relieved by the paintings and inevitable gilt retables. A statue ofSt.Joseph stands over the altar. The grating of the nuns’ choir is on the gospel side, opposite which is a painting ofSt.Teresa with pen in hand and the symbolic white dove at her ear.Jesus,Maria,Joséare successively carved on the key-stones of the arches of the nave.

The first chapel next the epistle side of the altar contains the tomb of Lorenzo de Cepeda,St.Teresa’s brother, who entered the army and went to South America about the year 1540, where he became chief treasurer of the province of Quito. Having lost his wife, a woman of rare merit (it is related she died in the habit of Nuestra Señora de la Merced), he returned to Spain with his children, after an absence of thirty four years, and established himself at a country-seat near Avila. He had a great veneration for his sister, and placed himself under her spiritual direction. Not to be separated from her, even in death, he founded this chapel at San José’s, which he dedicated to his patron, San Lorenzo, as his burial-place. His tomb is at the left as you enter, with the following inscription: “On the 26th of June, in the year 1580, fell asleep in the Lord Lorenzo de Cepeda, brother of the holy foundress of this house and all the barefooted Carmelites. He reposes in this chapel, which he erected.”

In the same tomb lies his daughter Teresita, who entered a noviceatSt.Joseph’s at the age of thirteen and died young, an angel of innocence and piety.

Another chapel was founded by Gaspar Daza, a holy priest of Avila, who gathered about him a circle of zealous clergymen devoted to works of charity and the salvation of souls. His reverence forSt.Teresa induced him to build this chapel, which he dedicated to the Nativity of the Virgin, with a tomb in which he lies buried with his mother and sister. It was he who said the first Mass in the church, Aug. 24, 1562, and placed the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle, after which he gave the veil to four novices, among whom was Antonia de Hanao, a relative ofSt.Teresa’s, who attained to eminent piety under the guidance ofSt.Peter of Alcantara, and died prioress of the Carmelites of Malaga, where her memory is still held in great veneration. At the close of this ceremonySt.Peter of Alcantara, of the Order ofSt.Francis; Pedro Ybañez, the holy Dominican, and the celebrated Balthazar Alvarez, of the Society of Jesus, offered Masses of thanksgiving. What a reunion of saints! On that day—the birthday of the discalced Carmelites—St.Teresa laid aside her family name, and took that of Teresa de Jésus, by which she is now known throughout the Christian world.

Among the early novices at San José was a niece ofSt.Teresa’s, Maria de Ocampo, beautiful in person and gifted in mind, who, from the age of seventeen, resolved to be the bride of none but Christ. She became one of the pillars of the order, and died prioress of the convent at Valladolid, so venerated for her sanctity that PhilipIII.went to see her on her death-bed,and recommended himself and the kingdom of Spain to her prayers. Her remains are in a tomb over the grating of the choir in the Carmelite convent at Valladolid, suspended, as it were, in the air, among other holy virgins who sleep in the Lord.

Another niece ofSt.Teresa’s,[44]who belonged to one of the noblest families of Avila, also entered the convent of San José. Her father, Alonso Alvarez, was himself regarded as a saint. Maria was of rare beauty, but, though left an orphan at an early age with a large fortune, she rejected all offers of marriage as beneath her, and finally chose the higher life. All the nobility of Avila came to see her take the veil. Here her noble soul found its true sphere. She rose to a high degree of piety, and succeededSt.Teresa as prioress of the house.

Another chapel at San José, that ofSt.Paul, at the right as you go in, was founded by Don Francisco de Salcedo, a gentleman of Avila, who was a great friend ofSt.Teresa’s, as well as his wife, a devout servant of God and given to good works.St.Teresa says he lived a life of prayer, and in all the perfection of which his state admitted, for forty years. For twenty years he regularly attended the theological course at the convent ofSt.Thomas, then in great repute, and after his wife’s death took holy orders. He greatly aidedSt.Teresa in her foundations, and accompanied her in her journeys. He lies buried in his chapel ofSt.Paul.

Not far fromSt.Joseph’s is the church ofSt.Emilian, in the tribune of which Maria Diaz, also a friend ofSt.Teresa’s, spent the last forty years of her life in perpetualadoration of the Blessed Sacrament, which she called her dear neighbor, never leaving her cell, excepting to go to confession and communion atSt.Ginès; for she was under the direction of Balthazar Alvarez. She had distributed all her goods to the poor, and now lived on alms. The veil that covers the divine Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar was rent asunder for her, and, when she communed, her happiness was so great that she wondered if heaven itself had anything more to offer.St.Teresa saying one day how she longed to behold God, Maria, though eighty years of age, and bowed down by grievous infirmities, replied that she preferred to prolong her exile on earth, that she might continue to suffer. “As long as we remain in the world,” she said, “we can give something to God by supporting our pains for his love; whereas in heaven nothing remains but to receive the reward for our sufferings.” Dying in the odor of sanctity, she was so venerated by the people that she was buried in the choir of the church, at the foot of the very tabernacle to which her adoring eyes had been unceasingly turned for forty years.

We have mentioned, too briefly for our satisfaction, some of the persons, noted for their eminent piety, who made Avila, at least in the sixteenth century, a cityde los Santos. It is a disappointment not to find here the tomb of her who is the crowning glory of the place. The expectations of Lorenzo deCepeda were not realized. He does not sleep in death beside his sainted sister. The remains ofSt.Teresa are at Alba de Tormes, where she died, in a shrine of jasper and silver given by FerdinandVII.It stands over the high altar of the Carmelite church, thirty feet above the pavement, where it can be seen from the choir of the nuns, and approached by means of an oratory behind, where they go to pray. Her heart, pierced by the angel, is in a reliquary below.

We left Avila with regret. Few places take such hold on the heart. For those to whom life has nothing left to offer but long sufferance it seems the very place to live in. The last thing we did was to go to the brow of the hill by San Vicente, and take a farewell look at the convent of the Incarnation, where still so many

“Willing hearts wear quite away their earthly stains”

“Willing hearts wear quite away their earthly stains”

“Willing hearts wear quite away their earthly stains”

in one of the fairest, happiest of valleys. How long we might have lingered there we cannot say, had not the carriage come to hurry us to the station. And so, taking up life’s burden once more, which we seemed to have laid down in this City of the Saints, we went on our pilgrim way, repeating the linesSt.Teresa wrote in her breviary:

[40]

“Some sing of Oliver, and some of Roldan:We sing of Zurraquin, the brave partisan.”

“Some sing of Oliver, and some of Roldan:We sing of Zurraquin, the brave partisan.”

“Some sing of Oliver, and some of Roldan:

We sing of Zurraquin, the brave partisan.”

[41]

“Some sing of Roland, and others Oliver:We sing of Zurraquin, the brave cavalier.”

“Some sing of Roland, and others Oliver:We sing of Zurraquin, the brave cavalier.”

“Some sing of Roland, and others Oliver:

We sing of Zurraquin, the brave cavalier.”

[42]SeeLife ofSt.Teresa.

[43]The butchery, at the repeopling of Avila, was given to Benjamin, the Jew, and his sister. There seem to have been a good many Jews in the streets now calledSt.Dominic andSt.Scholastica.

[44]SeeLife ofSt.Teresa.

Back to IndexNext