S. CLARA.
S. CLARA.
S. CLARA.
XVIS. CLARA
It has been often remarked how that a saint who initiates a reform, or does some great work, has a faithful woman to assist, or carry on his work, and complete it. What he designed for all alike, he was competent only to apply to men, and she carried out his ideas among women. Thus S. Bridget supplemented the achievements of S. Patrick, and S. Hilda those of S. Aidan. Benedict’s twin sister Scholastica worked side by side with her brother; and, as we shall now see, S. Clara was the spiritual sister and helpmate of S. Francis. The moon, according to David, is an ever faithful witness in heaven; and yet the moon wanes and for a time disappears. The moon much resembles the Church.
“The moon above, the Church below,A wondrous race they run;And all their radiance, all their glow,Each borrows from its sun.”
“The moon above, the Church below,A wondrous race they run;And all their radiance, all their glow,Each borrows from its sun.”
“The moon above, the Church below,A wondrous race they run;And all their radiance, all their glow,Each borrows from its sun.”
“The moon above, the Church below,
A wondrous race they run;
And all their radiance, all their glow,
Each borrows from its sun.”
As the moon wanes, so there are periods when the Church proves dull, dark, and without much token of spiritual life; but this is for a time only, and precedes a restoration of illumination. The period when S. Francis appeared was one of those of darkness in the Church. The enthusiastic faith of the barbarian kings and nobles, bred of the self-devotion and earnestness of the first missionaries among them, had led to their endowing the Church largely. This was done to enable her to carry on the great work of evangelisation without care for the material concerns of life. But it led to an unfortunate result. As the bishoprics were wealthy, and seats of power, ambitious and greedy men of the noble class rushed into Holy Orders for the sake of these material advantages, and in entire disregard of the religious responsibilities attached to such offices. And as with the prelates, so with the clergy. They seemed to think that thethings of Jesus Christ were best served by making themselves comfortable; they were ignorant, careless, and worldly. The great ecclesiastics made a display of their wealth, and exercised their power tyrannically. “The Church might still seem to preach to all,” says Dean Milman; “but it preached in a tone of lofty condescension, it dictated rather than persuaded; but, in general, actual preaching had fallen into disuse; it was in theory the special privilege of the bishops, and the bishops were but few who had either the gift, the inclination, or the leisure from their secular, judicial, or warlike occupations to preach even in their cathedral cities; in the rest of their dioceses their presence was but occasional—a progress or visitation of pomp and form, rather than of popular instruction. The only general teaching of the people was the ritual.
“But the splendid ritual, admirably as it was constituted to impress by its words or symbolic forms the leading truths of Christianity upon the more intelligent, or in a vague way upon the more rude and uneducated, could be administered, and was administered, by a priesthoodalmost entirely ignorant, but which had learned mechanically, not without decency, perhaps not without devotion, to go through the stated observances. Everywhere the bell summoned to the frequent service, the service was performed, and the obedient flock gathered to the chapel or the church, knelt, and either performed their orisons or heard the customary chant and prayer. This, the only instruction which the mass of the priesthood could convey, might for a time be sufficient to maintain in the minds of the people a quiescent and submissive faith, nevertheless, in itself, could not but awaken in some a desire of knowledge, which it could not satisfy.... And just at this time the popular mind throughout Christendom seemed to demand instruction. There was a wide and vague awakening and yearning of the human intellect. Here that which was heresy stepped in and seized upon the vacant mind. Preaching in public and in private was the strength of all the heresiarchs, of all the sects. Eloquence, popular eloquence, became a new power which the Church had comparatively neglected or disdained, since the time of theCrusades. The Patropassians, the Henricians, the followers of Peter Waldo, and the wilder teachers at least, tinged with the old Manichæan tenets of the East, met on this common ground. They were poor and popular; they felt with the people, whether the lower burghers of the cities, the lower vassals, or even the peasants and serfs; they spoke the language of the people, they were of the people. All these sects were bound together by their common aversion to the clergy—not only the wealthy, worldly, immoral, tyrannical, but the decent yet inert priesthood, who left the uninstructed souls of men to perish.”[9]
It was when, apparently, the bulk of the population was hesitating whether to break away from the Church, and when certain ardent spirits began to question whether the Church could be the Kingdom of God, wherein appeared so much of evil, that almost simultaneously two men stood forth to arrest the evil. The story was told afterwards that the pope in a dream had seen the Church under the form of a building tottering to its fall, but thattwo men rushed forward and sustained it. These men were Dominic and Francis. The former founded an order of preachers, by which Christendom in the West was overspread with a host of zealous, active, and devoted men, whose function was popular instruction.
Francis, seeing the universal greed after lands and money, took the vow of poverty, made that a capital point in his institution. The grasping after possessions should never curse his society, and he donned, and made his disciples don, the poor, coarse dress of the common labourer, to show that they were to be ever of the people, and for the people, even for the lowest. And he aimed first of all to encourage piety—the striving of the soul after God—and to show that within the Church that flame could burn brightest and give out most heat. But he taught as well. It was due to his great desire to bring home to the people the truth of the Incarnation, that he devised thecrècheof Christmas, and composed the first Christmas carols. And he was a preacher—fervent, inspired,convincing. His heart so overflowed with love, that even birds and beasts were attracted to him, and his love extended to them—“his sisters and brothers,” as he termed them.
The story of the conversion of S. Francis, the wealthy merchant’s son, is well known. He was a young man, just at the age when the deepest feelings of man’s nature begin to make themselves articulate. One evening he was revelling with his companions of the same age with himself. When supper was over, the merry party dashed out of the hot, lighted room into the open air. The dark indigo-blue vault of heaven overhead was besprent with myriads of stars, and Francis suddenly halted, looked up, and remained silent in contemplation of this wondrous canopy.
“What ails you, Francis?” asked one of the revellers.
“He is star-gazing for a wife,” joked another.
“Ah!” said Francis gravely, “for a wife past all that your imagination can conceive.”
His soul with inarticulate cravings strainedafter something higher than a merchant’s life behind a counter, a nobler life than revelling and drunkenness. Then probably he first conceived the idea of embracing poverty, and of devoting his whole life to his poor brothers.
The first great gathering of the Order he founded was in 1212, and that same year saw the establishment of a sisterhood in connection with the Society. It came about thus:—
Favorino Scefi was a man of noble family in Assisi, given to the profession of arms, and a good swordsman; his wife, Hortulana, had presented him with three daughters, Clara, Agnes, and Beatrix, but no son.
One day—it was Palm Sunday—in the before-mentioned year, when Clara was aged eighteen, she and her mother were present when Francis preached. The effect of his sermon on her young heart was overwhelming and ineradicable. From this moment she resolved to leave the world and its splendours, and the prospect of marriage, and to devote her whole life to God and to the advancement of His kingdom.
What she was to do, what God’s designswere, all was dark before her; only in her was the intense longing to place herself in His hands, that He might use her as He saw fit. And it appeared to her that her desire had been known and her self-offering accepted. As already said, it was Palm Sunday, and the custom was for the bishop to bless the palms that were presented him by the deacon, and to distribute them among those who came up in single file to the altar steps. Clara, shy and retiring, hung back. The bishop’s eye rested on her. All at once he stepped down into the nave, the acolytes bearing their tapers before him, and carrying a palm branch, he placed it in the hands of the shrinking maiden.
To her it was as a consecration.
In the evening she ran to the chapel of the Portiuncula, where Francis and his disciples were installed; she fell on her knees and implored to be received, and given work to do. In a paroxysm of devotion she plucked off her little ornaments, and tore away her rich dress.
Francis, unable as he was unwilling to refuseher offer of herself, cast over her a coarse habit, and she was enrolled in the ranks of the Champions of Poverty.
But where was the young girl to be put? He had no other female adherents. He accordingly took her to the Benedictine nunnery of S. Paolo, where she was to remain till he had considered what to do with her.
The parents of Clara were indignant and annoyed when they learned what she had done, and they endeavoured by every means to induce her to return to them. They even employed violence. She escaped from them to the altar, and laid hold of the cloth that covered it. They tried to drag her away, but she clung with such tenacity as to tear the very cloth to which she clung.
Clara now removed to another convent of Benedictins, S. Angelo di Panso, where she spent a fortnight in prayer and silence, considering the step she had taken.
At the end of that time her sister Agnes, two years younger than herself, came and entreated to be allowed to remain with her. The father was very angry, and called the membersof the family together to consult on the matter. Nothing, however, could be done; the two girls were resolute.
In the meantime S. Francis was busy preparing a dwelling for them near a little church of S. Damian that he had restored. When this was complete he removed them to it. Many girls and even women now joined the sisters, and constituted a little community. Francis was appealed to for a rule by which they might form their lives, but this he was unwilling to give. Let them, said he, take Clara herself as their example.
Presently, little Beatrix arrived. She could not bear to be alone in the now desolate home, she yearned to be with her sisters. She also was accepted. After the death of her husband Hortulana also joined them, so that mother and daughters were united again.
As the fundamental rule of Francis was absolute poverty, his brothers were obliged to beg their bread. They went round the town and country with sacks, asking for scraps of food; and as it would not be seemly for the sisters of the house at S. Damian to do thesame, the friars were constrained to divide their crusts with them.
Gregory IX. very sensibly objected to the friars going in and out of the convent, and he forbade it. “Very well,” said Clara; “if holy brothers may not minister to us the Bread of Life, they shall not provide us with the bread that perishes,” and she refused the crusts and broken meat they had collected on their rounds. What was to be done? The whole convent would starve. In a few days the Poor Clares would be dead. An express was sent to the Pope. Gregory could defy an emperor, and that such an one as Frederick Barbarossa; but he was no match for an obstinate woman. He gave way.
The rule imposed on the sisterhood by S. Clara was one of dreary penance. Their services in church were to be without music, even on the high festivals. She would not allow those who were ignorant to learn to read, so that to such these services were unintelligible.
In fact, extravagance marked all she did. She did not suffer the sisters ever to interchangea word with each other without permission, and they were all shut up in their convent, which they might not leave. It is true that S. Francis did slightly modify some of this severity. But his own rule of absolute poverty was a mistake. He intended it as a protest against the money and land grabbing which prevailed, not among laymen only, but among ecclesiastics, and also among the monks; but he went too far. He turned his friars into mere beggars. If he had insisted that they should be poor and work for their livelihood, that would have been well; but to employ them as tramps, begging from door to door, and sponging on the honest, hard-working people, was a fatal mistake, and led to very bad results.
So also Clara, in the hope of keeping her sisters devoted only to the service of God, dissuaded, nay, forbade, reading. In place of cultivating the intellect—a splendid gift of God—she made those under her direction bury their talents.
Insensibly, the Manichæan heresy had penetrated all minds, and made men and womenthink that the body was evil and must be tortured and bullied, and all that was human trampled underfoot, that the soul alone should be cared for. The result was the production of hysterical, ecstatic beings, who were helpless to do anything for themselves, and were, so far as their minds went, idiots.
S. Clara’s work would have been worse than useless, positively mischievous, had it not been for one thing. S. Francis, in order to extend religion among the people, had instituted a third branch of his institution, of which the second was that of the Poor Clares. This third order comprised men and women living in the world—in fact, a great guild of pious people, observing very simple rules, which bound all together in the service of God, His Church, and the poor and sick. This spread like wildfire: everywhere men and women, husbands and wives, young men and girls, rich and poor, nobles and merchants, day-labourers and needlewomen, joined this community, encouraged each other in good works, and learned, by knowing each other, to lose class exclusiveness.
Inevitably the charge of the female members of the third order devolved on the Poor Clares. Then other duties sprang up. There were plenty of little orphan girls adrift; these had to be cared for, and the Clares took charge of them. The devout desired to have their daughters taught by them, and they were constrained to open schools,—and thus to cultivate their own minds, and abandon the rule of silence, or at least to modify it. Consequently the order of Poor Clares did a great deal of good, but not in the way in which S. Clara desired.
The time was one of furious intestinal war in Italy between the factions of Guelph and Ghibelline, and there were far more women than men, as the latter had fallen. Children were left without fathers, wives lost their husbands, girls were deprived of their natural protectors, and the convent served as an asylum for these unfortunates, who otherwise would have succumbed.
In 1220 occurred a scene bearing some resemblance to that of the last meeting of S. Benedict and his sister. S. Clara felt agreat desire to be with S. Francis and to eat with him; but he constantly refused. At length his companions, seeing how this troubled her, said to him, “Father, it seems to us that this sternness is not in accordance with Christian charity. Pay attention to Clara, and consent to her request. It is but a small thing that she desires of you—just to eat with her. Remember how that, at your preaching, she forsook all that the world offers.”
S. Francis answered, “As it is so in your eyes, so let it be. Let the feast be held at the Church of the Portiuncula, for it was in that that she took the vows.”
When the appointed day arrived, S. Clara went forth from her convent with one companion, and came to the place appointed, and waited till Francis should arrive. After awhile he appeared, and he caused their common meal to be prepared on the grass. He seated himself beside Clara, and one of his friars beside the nun who had attended S. Clara. Then all the rest of the company gathered about them.
During the first course S. Francis spoke of God so sweetly, so tenderly, that all were raptin ecstasy, and forgetting their food, remained wondering and thinking only of God.
When the repast was ended, Clara returned to San Damiani greatly comforted. This was her only meeting, for other purposes than those of ghostly counsel, with her friend and father.
S. Francis died in 1226, six years after the meeting; but Clara lived on for more than a quarter of a century after his decease.
Concerning the austerities practised by S. Clara it is unnecessary to write: a knowledge of them would provoke disgust; but they have probably been vastly exaggerated, for had they been what is represented, she could not have lived forty-two years of self-torture. As she died she was heard murmuring that she saw our Lord surrounded with virgins crowned with flowers, and that one, whose wreath was “like a windowed censer,” bowed over her and kissed her.
She died in 1257.
We cannot say of S. Clara that she originated a great work of utility. She supplemented the undertaking of S. Francis, and carried hisextravagances to a further extreme. But she was sincere, she held to her purpose; and although her foundation was one void of common-sense and right principles, yet, because well intended, it worked itself into one of utility, and continues to the present day in the Latin Communion doing good service.
S. THERESA.
S. THERESA.
S. THERESA.
XVIIS. THERESA
The most beautiful and pathetic female figure that stands out in the age of the great convulsion which rent Europe into two religious camps, is that of Theresa of Avila: beautiful, because of her exquisitely pure and sincere character and strength of purpose; pathetic, because all her saintliness, all her energies, were directed in a false channel, and to build up what crumbled to pieces almost as soon as the breath left her body.
S. Theresa was born at Avila, in Spain, in the province of the same name and the kingdom of Castile, 1515. Her parents belonged to the class of gentry, and were well connected, but not wealthy.
“To know Avila,” says Miss G. C. Graham,in her bookSanta Teresa, “to wander through its streets, to watch the sun rise and set over the sombre moorlands beyond the city walls—is greatly to know Teresa. In one of its fortress-houses, where on the shield over the gateway the bucklers of the Davilas were quartered with the rampant lion of the Cepedas, she was born and passed her childhood. In the cathedral which looms over the city walls, half church, half fortress, she worshipped and gazed with ardent eyes, and with a thrill of wonder and terror, into the dim mysteries of its roof. In the quiet cloisters of the Encarnacion she passed the greater part of her life of peace and contemplation. These time-stained stones, these silent cloisters—all that remains in outward bodily form of that strangely complex age, which produced her and the gentle San Juan de la Cruz, so different from her in character and tendencies, together with Philip II., the gloomy and conscientious bigot who championed both—shaped and moulded her existence, shut in and controlled her life. Most meet background for her whose whole life was to be one long battle, this cityof warriors and knights—their very memory all shadowy.”
Her father was twice married, and Theresa was the eldest daughter by the second wife, who bore him seven sons and two daughters. By his first wife he had two sons and a daughter. She says of this family, “They were all bound to one another by a tender love, and all resembled their parents in virtue except myself.”
The young men for the most part went to the “Indies” to carve out fortunes for themselves, but always looked back wistfully and with love to the old home and the dear sisters and parents there. There was much that was grand and full of promise in ancient Spanish life—great domestic attachment, simplicity, integrity, and self-respect, together with a dauntless spirit and a love of adventure. But a fatal darkness came over it. The liberal and democratic institutions of the country were destroyed by the King’s ambition of obtaining absolute power; and, worst of all, the Inquisition was suffered to scotch and kill all free intellectual life.
Theresa from an early age was full of vital, intellectual and spiritual energies, but none of these was allowed an outlet. With her extraordinary powers, and with her indomitable will, had her energies been directed to expand in practical good works, she might have transformed the position of her countrywomen.
It was, perhaps, impossible for Theresa to revolutionise the position of women in Spain; the thought of attempting such a thing did not occur to her. So she did the only thing that seemed possible—immure them; that they might not gossip, nor fritter their lives in visiting and entertaining.
To return to her biography.
Her favourite brother, Rodrigo, four years older than herself, was her companion in play. Along with him she pored over an old book of the Lives of the Saints and Martyrs. “When I saw the martyrdom which they had suffered for God,” she wrote in after years, “it seemed to me that they had bought the enjoyment of God very cheaply, and I longed to die like them. Together with my brother I discoursed how it would be possible to accomplishthis. We agreed to go to the land of the Moors, begging our way for the love of God, there to be beheaded; and it seems to me that the Lord gave us courage even at so tender an age, if we could have discovered a means of accomplishing what we desired. But our parents seemed to us the great obstacle.” It is said that the two children actually started, carrying with them provisions for the journey. She was then only six or seven. They got out of the town and on to the bridge, where their uncle, who was jogging into Avila on horseback, saw them, stopped and asked what they were about, and whither going. He at once took them home again.
After her mother’s death her father took her to the convent of the Encarnacion. Her elder sister had been married in 1531, and there was no one to look after her at home. In the peaceful retreat of the convent she remained for a year and a half, till, falling ill, she was sent home. A visit she paid during her convalescence to her sister Maria, the wife of a Castilian gentleman who had a country house two days’ journey from Avila, determined hervocation. Half-way lived her uncle, Pedro de Cepeda, in an old manor-house. He was a grave, formal gentleman, without wife and children, who attended to his estate, and read only religious books. The young girl stayed the night in his house, and the old man asked her to read aloud to him one of his favourite books of devotion. Out of courtesy she concealed her distaste, and read to him in the evening. She remained there more than one night, probably because not strong enough to proceed upon her journey, and every evening continued the reading. She says: “Although the days I stayed with him were few, such was the effect the words of God I read and heard had on my heart, and the good companionship, that I began to understand the truth—that all was nothing, and that the world was vanity, and that everything ended speedily.” She prosecuted her journey after this rest, but her mind was working out the solution of her own destiny. She saw life under a new aspect.
She made up her mind to become a nun, though without any very sincere vocation. Herfather gave his consent, and she entered the convent of the Encarnacion as a novice.
The sisterhood was easy-going and numerous. So many men at this period went to the New World, that women abounded, and having nowhere else to go, settled into convents for their convenience, and not for the sake of devotion. “The discipline,” says Miss Graham, “was not severe; in its atmosphere of relaxation and secularism, worldly rank was as potent as in this century: no strict, demure sisterhood that of the Encarnacion, where nearly a hundred merry, noisy, squabbling, sometimes hungry and chattering, women made the best of a life forced on them.”
It was a convenient, harmless sort of pension for middle-aged ladies who were single; but, of course, not quite suited to young girls without a vocation. The sisters went about, paid visits, received friends, just as in an hotel. All would have been well enough had they been given definite work—the education of poor girls, Sunday-schools, nursing the sick, the care of orphans—but they had nothing to occupy their time or their minds except thechoir offices in Latin, which they did not understand.
For a while Theresa fell in with this sort of life, frivolity and religion mixed in equal proportions—frivolity bred of idleness. But it did not satisfy her; it was not what she wanted. She was full of impulse and had a soul desirous of better things. Not for a moment did the thought dawn on her that these good women might be made useful in their generation. A woman is hardly ever an innovator, and the notion of innovation never entered the mind of Theresa. The only course that she could take was to make the enclosure of the nuns strict, and to impose silence on their flow of silly talk. Consequently she brooded on the idea of a reform, and a reform in this direction.
Theresa returned to the Encarnacion after a serious catalyptic attack, on Palm Sunday, 1537. She was then about twenty-two; and twenty-five years of her life were spent within its walls in spiritual and physical troubles, all produced by the same cause—having nothing worthy of her powers to occupy her.
Through all these years this grand woman,full of practical commonsense, with fervent devotion to God in her heart, fired with desire to do something for Him, with a really wonderful tact and charm of manner that was irresistible, had been chafing at her impotence.
Talking with a friend one day, she heard that certain nuns of the Carmelite Order, to which the Encarnacion belonged, had gone back to observance of the primitive rule. What that primitive rule was she did not know; but the friend, a widow lady, said: “How should you like to join me, and become barefooted nuns, and help me to found a convent of this sort?” The idea fired the brain of Theresa, and she went to the Superior to ask permission to start a convent of the strict rule. The Superior and Provincial gave their consent after great hesitation, and arranged that the new house should contain thirteen nuns, and enjoy a fixed revenue. But here S. Theresa interposed; she positively refused to have a revenue. The house must be founded in absolute poverty.
“As soon as our intention began to get wind in the town, there arose such a stormof persecution as is quite indescribable. The scoffs, the jeers, the laughter, the outcries that this was a ridiculous, fantastic undertaking, were more than I can speak of.”
The Provincial, thinking it would not do to run counter to popular opinion, changed his mind, and refused to permit the foundation.
“In the meantime I was in very bad odour in the house where I was, because I wished to draw the enclosure more tight. The sisters said that I insulted them, and that God was served well in their convent, and that it would be far better for me to devote my energies to procuring money for that house already existing than to found a new one. Some even wanted to put me in prison, and there were but few who took my part.”
After about six months she persuaded her sister with great secrecy to buy her a house in Avila. Then, delighted to have a mystery to play with, she set to work to prepare for turning this house into a convent of barefooted Carmelites. Happily for her she obtained the favour of the bishop, and also a papal brief; and then very secretly, on S. Bartholomew’sDay, 1562, she and a few intimates moved into this house. All went on smoothly till after dinner. Theresa had lain down for hersiesta, when the house was disturbed by the arrival of a messenger from the convent of the Encarnacion with peremptory orders for her return as well as that of two of the nuns she had persuaded to follow her. The convent was in wild excitement. She was obliged to return, but she was able to hold her own; she had the papal brief to display.
What follows is comical. The town council and the cathedral chapter were convulsed at the news. The mayor sent messages about to convoke a grand assembly of the city council to decide what was to be done, and orders to Theresa to leave the house. But she was resolute. Then, when the town council was baffled, the mayor endeavoured to effect a compromise, being much put out at a woman having defied all the city magnates. But she flourished in his face the brief and an authorisation from the bishop, and he returned defeated. The city magnates in high dudgeon appealed to the sovereign, Philip II., andTheresa was obliged also to send a delegate to court to plead her case. The opposition dragged on for a year, but in the end Theresa carried her point. It was not worth the storm in a teacup raised.
This was the beginning. Even in Spain it was felt that a change in monastic life was necessary.
But reform assumed the direction of recurrence to severe asceticism, a phase as out of date as could well be conceived, and which accordingly flickered for a while, and then expired.
Theresa was delighted to enlist some earnest friars in the cause, and they reformed the Carmelite monasteries on the same lines as those she had pursued with the convents.
In her own account of how she founded her various establishments, she says:—
“I lived five years in the convent of S. Joseph at Avila, after I had founded it; and I think that they were the most quiet years of my life. I there enjoyed the tranquillity and calmness which my soul has often since longed for.... The number in the house was thirteen, a number which I was resolved not to exceed.I was much delighted at living among such pure and holy souls, for all their care was to serve and praise our Lord. His Divine Majesty sent us everything necessary without our asking; and whenever we were in want—and that was seldom—their joy was all the greater. I praised the Lord for giving them such heroic virtue, and especially for endowing them with indifference to what concerned their bodies. I, who was their Superior, never remember to have been troubled with any thought in this matter, because I firmly believed that our Lord would not be wanting to those who had no other wish than how to please Him. With regard to the virtue of obedience, I could mention many things which I here saw in them. One at present recurs to me. One day a few cucumbers were given to us, and we were eating them at our meal. The cucumber that fell to my share was rotten inside. I called one of the sisters, and to prove her obedience, bade her plant it in the garden. She asked if she should plant it upright or sideways; I said ‘sideways,’ and she immediately did so, without the thoughtoccurring to her that it must decay. Her esteem for obedience was so superior to her natural reason, that she acted as if believing that what I ordered was proper.”
In course of time, the eager, active mind of Theresa formed a new scheme. She had now a convent of discalced nuns; she was resolved to have also a monastery of discalced friars. The General of her Order came to Avila from Rome; she explained to him the reform she had effected, and her desire to extend the reform to monasteries of men. He acquiesced, and gave her permission to form such a society if she could. “I was now,” says she, “much consoled at having his licence, but much troubled at having no friars ready to begin the work, nor any secular ready to start the house. Here was I, a poor barefooted nun, without the support of any one but our Lord, furnished with plenty of letters and good wishes, but without the possibility of putting my wishes into execution.”
However, she wrote to the General of the Jesuits at Medina, and he and the rest of the fathers of that Society took the matter upvery warmly, and did not desist till they had obtained from the bishop and magistrates licence for the foundation of such a monastery as S. Theresa desired.
“Now, though I had a licence, I had no house, nor a farthing wherewith to buy one; and how could a poor stranger like me procure credit, had not the Lord assisted us? He so ordered that a virtuous lady, for whom there had been no room for admission into S. Joseph’s convent, hearing that another house was about to be started, asked to be admitted into it. She had some money, but not enough to buy the house with—only sufficient for the hire of one, and to pay our travelling expenses. And so we hired one; and without any other assistance we left Avila, two nuns from S. Joseph’s and myself, with four from the relaxed convent of the Incarnation, and our chaplain Julian d’Avila.”
They reached Medina del Campo on the eve of the Assumption, 1567, at midnight, and stole on foot with great secrecy to the hired house. “It was a great mercy of God that at such an hour we met no one, thoughthen was the time when the bulls were about to be shut up which were to fight next day. I have no recollection of anything, I was in such a scare and anxiety. Having come to the house, we entered a court, the walls of which were much decayed. The good father who had hired the house was short-sighted, and had not noticed how unfit the place was to be made an abode for the Blessed Sacrament. When I saw the hall I perceived that much rubbish would have to be removed, and the walls to be plastered. The night was far advanced, and we had brought only a few hangings there, I think, which was nothing for the whole length of the hall. I knew not what was to be done, for I saw that this was not a fit place for an altar to be erected in it. However, our Lord was willing that this should be done immediately, for the steward of the lady had in the house several pieces of tapestry and a piece of blue damask, and we were allowed the use of them. When I saw such good furniture, I praised our Lord. But we knew not what to do for nails, and that was not the time when they could be bought.We began to search for some on the walls, and at length procured enough. Then some of the men put up the tapestry whilst we swept the floor; and we made such haste, that when it was daylight the altar was ready, a bell was put up, and immediately mass was said. This was sufficient for taking possession, but we did not rest till the Blessed Sacrament was placed in the tabernacle, and through the chinks of the door opposite the altar we heard mass, having no other place.”
When daylight came S. Theresa was aghast to see how ruinous the house was: the hall, which she had hastily converted into a chapel, was so full of cracks that the Blessed Sacrament was exposed to the sight of those who passed in the streets, and she saw that the repairs of the dilapidated mansion would cost money and take time. She was much dispirited, for she began to fear that she had undertaken what she had not the power to carry out—her intention being to make this a convent of nuns, and then to found, if possible, in the same town, a monastery for reformed Carmelite friars.
“In this trouble I passed a great part of the evening, till the Rector of the Society (of Jesus) sent a father to visit me, and he consoled me greatly. I did not tell him all my troubles, but only that which I felt at seeing ourselves in the street. I spoke to him of the necessity of having another house for us, cost what it might, wherein we might dwell till this one was repaired. I recovered courage also at seeing so many people come to us and none of them accuse me of folly, which was a mercy of God, for they would have done quite right to take away from us the Blessed Sacrament. In spite of all the efforts made to obtain another house, none could be found to be let in the old town, and this gave me great anxiety night and day; for though I had appointed men to watch and guard the Blessed Sacrament, yet I was fearful lest they should fall asleep, and so I got up in the night myself to guard it at a window, and by the clear light of the moon I could see it very plainly.
“About eight days after, a merchant, seeing our necessity, and living himself in a very goodhouse, told us we might have the upper part of it, where we might live as in a private house of our own. He also had a large hall with a gilt ceiling, and this he gave us for a church.”
Others came forward and assisted, and the upper story of the merchant’s house was fitted up for their reception.
Shortly after she began to see her way towards obtaining friars for her reformed Order. There was in Medina an excellent priest, named Antonio de Heredia, who had assisted her greatly. He told her that he desired to enter the Carthusian Order. This did not please Theresa; she entreated him to delay a year the execution of his design, and she then confided to him her plan. He was pleased with it, and to her great delight offered to be the first friar of her reformed society. Shortly after, she met S. John of the Cross, who was also at the time thinking of joining the Carthusians. She intercepted him, and persuaded him to become a discalced Carmelite. “He promised me he would do so if the business did not prove too tedious. When I nowsaw I had two religious to commence the work with, it seemed to me that the matter was accomplished, although I was not entirely satisfied with the Prior; and thus some delay was caused, as well as by our not having any place for commencing our monastery.”
In 1568, the Lady de la Cerda, sister of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, wrote to S. Theresa, offering to found a house of discalced Carmelite nuns in her own town, Malagon. This lady knew Theresa well; it was with her when left a widow that the saint had spent six months. Theresa at once went to Malagon with some of her nuns, and took possession of the house provided for them.
Four or five months after, whilst S. Theresa was talking to a young gentleman of quality, he most unexpectedly offered her a house he possessed in Valladolid, with a vineyard attached to it. She at once accepted the offer. But when she arrived at Valladolid, she found that the place was unhealthy, and altogether unsuitable. Indeed, all the nuns fell ill in it, and they were obliged to move to another house given them by the sister of the Bishop of Avila.
Shortly after this, a young gentleman of Avila hearing that S. Theresa wished to found a monastery of discalced friars, offered her a house he possessed in the little village of Durvello. She accepted it, and then started to see it, with a nun and her chaplain, Father Julian d’Avila.
“Though we set off at daybreak, yet as the place was not much known, no one could direct us; and thus we walked all that day in great trouble, for the sun was very hot, and when we thought we were near the place, we found that we had still a long way to go. I shall never forget the fatigue and wanderings of that day. We arrived at the place just before nightfall, and when we went into the house, we found it was in such a state that we could not possibly spend the night in it, partly because it was filthy, and partly because there were many people about. It had a tolerable hall, two chambers with a garret, and a little kitchen: this was the building we were to use as our friary. I thought that the hall might be turned into a chapel, the garret into a choir for the friars, and the two chambers into a dormitory.My companion could not endure the thought of making a monastery of the place, and said, ‘Mother, no soul can possibly endure such a place as this, however great the sanctity. Speak no more about it.’ Father Julian did not oppose me when I expressed my intentions, though he was of the same opinion as my companion. We spent the night in the church, though, so great was our fatigue, we stood more in need of sleep than of vigil. Having arrived at Medina, I spoke with Father Antonio, and told him everything. He answered: ‘I am ready to live not only in such a house as that which you describe, but even in a pigsty.’ Father John of the Cross was of the same mind.”
The consent of the bishop and of the provincial of the Order having been obtained, the two fathers went off to the wretched house, and took possession of it on the first or second Sunday in Advent, in 1568.
“The following Lent, as I was going to Toledo, I passed that way, and came on Father Antonio sweeping the door of the church, with his usual cheerful countenance. ‘What is this,father?’ said I; ‘what has become of your dignity?’ ‘The time in which I received honour was time ill spent,’ he answered.
“When I went into the church along with two merchants, friends of mine, who had come with me from Medina, I was astonished to see how the spirit of the Lord reigned there. So many crosses and skulls were there that the merchants could do nothing but weep. Never shall I forget one little cross placed over the holy water stoup, on which was fixed a paper crucifix, and which produced more devotion than one elaborately carved. The garret formed the choir. It was high in the middle, so that they could stand up there to say the Hours; but to enter it they were obliged to stoop low. They had made two little hermitages on each side of the church, so low that they could only sit or lie down in them, filled inside with hay because it was cold. Their heads almost touched the roof. Two little windows commanded the altar, and two stones served them as pillows. Here was also a store of crosses and skulls.
“They went about preaching among theignorant people of the neighbourhood, and soon gained such a reputation that I was greatly consoled. They went to preach six or eight miles off, through snow and frost, barefoot, for they wore no sandals then; afterwards they were ordered to wear them. When they had done preaching and confessing they returned late to their meal, but with such joy that all their sufferings were not accounted by them. As for food, they had sufficient, for the people of the neighbouring villages provided them with more than they wanted.”
We need not follow the Saint through the course of many years, travelling from place to place, never quiet anywhere, always on the move, with a scheme in her head, which she obstinately determined on carrying out in spite of obstacle and opposition.
When the boys were throwing stones at the frogs in a pond, according to the fable, one old toad raised its head above the water and said to the urchins, “What is fun to you is death to us.” The unfortunate women whom S. Theresa immured, the unhappy men whom she persuaded to reduce themselves to poverty andimbecility, might have addressed her in the same words. She, herself, was always engaged on carrying her projects into effect;—absolutely useless though they were, nay, worse than useless, for they were positively mischievous. But those confined in her convents were afforded no work to do, no reading to occupy their minds; they were reduced to a condition of stupidity. The brain is given to man and woman to be exercised, the will to be directed; neither to be effaced.
What was the reform to which Theresa devoted all her energies? To induce certain men and women to kick off their shoes. She aimed at restoring the Carmelite Order to the old severity of its rule at a time when everywhere practical, energetic, active men and women were needed to do good work for God and their fellow-men, instead of moping in cells, looking at blank walls, and shivering with cold in compulsory idleness. She deliberately engaged many hundreds of the Lord’s servants in the work of burying their talents.
We cannot but admire her enthusiasm and her singleness of purpose, whilst we regret thatneither were aright directed. The bishops and magistrates had sense to see that her undertakings were foolish and unprofitable, but she was able to override their opposition, by her strength of purpose and appeal to higher authorities who thought fit to humour her. She was engaged on making one of her many foundations at Burgos in 1582; but was vigorously opposed by the archbishop, who refused to give his licence.
Sick and disgusted, she left Burgos at the end of July 1582, with Anne of S. Bartholomew and Theresa of Jesus, her niece, and went to Palencia, Medina del Campo, and Alba, which latter place she visited at the request of Maria Henriquez, Duchess of Alba, who was anxious to meet with her. There she died. The account of her death we have from the pen of her companion at the time, the Venerable Anne of S. Bartholomew.
“Having arrived on our way at a little village, she found herself, at night, much exhausted, and she said to me, ‘My daughter, I feel very weak; you would do me a pleasure if you could procure me something to eat.’I had only some dry figs with me; I gave four reals to a person wherewith to buy eggs at any price, but none were to be procured. Seeing her half dead, and being in this distress, I could not contain my tears. She said to me, with angelic patience, ‘Do not afflict yourself, my daughter; God wills it, and I am content. The fig you have given me suffices.’ On the morrow we arrived at Alba; our holy mother was so ill that the doctors despaired of her recovery. I was dreadfully troubled to lose her, and especially at her dying at Alba. I was also grieved to think that I must survive her, for I was very fond of her, and she was very tender towards me; her presence was my great consolation.... I was with her for five days at Alba, in the greatest affliction. Two days before her death, when I was alone with her in her cell, she said to me, ‘At last, my daughter, the time of my death is come.’ These words touched me to the quick; I did not leave her for a moment, but had everything that was needed brought to me.
“Father Antony of Jesus, one of the firstDiscalced Carmelites, seeing how tired I was, said to me on the morning of her death, ‘Go and take a little something or other.’ But when I left the room she seemed uneasy, and looked from side to side. The father asked her if she wished me to be recalled. She could not speak, but she made a sign of assent. I therefore returned, and on my re-entering the room, she smiled, and caressed me, drawing me towards her, and placed herself in my arms. I held her thus for fourteen hours, all which time she was in the most exalted meditation, and so full of love for her Saviour, that she seemed as though she could not die soon enough, so greatly did she sigh for His presence. As for me, I felt the most lively pain till I saw the good Lord at the foot of the bed of the saint, in inexpressible majesty accompanied by some saints, ready to conduct her happy soul to heaven. This glorious vision lasted the space of a credo, and entirely resigned me to the will of the Lord. I said, from the bottom of my heart, ‘O my God, even though I should wish to retain her on earth, I would resign her at once to Thee!’I had scarcely said these words when she expired.”
Ribera gives the following account of her death:—“At nine o’clock on the same evening she received, with great reverence and devotion, the sacrament of Extreme Unction, joining with the nuns in the penitential psalms and litany. Father Antony asked her, a little after, if she wished her body, after her death, to be taken to Avila, or to remain at Alba. She seemed displeased at the question, and only answered, ‘Am I to have a will in anything? Will they deny me here a little earth for my body?’ All that night she suffered excessive pain. Next day, at seven in the morning, she turned herself on one side, just in the posture in which the blessed Magdalen is commonly drawn by painters. Thus she remained for fourteen hours, holding a crucifix firmly in her hands, so that the nuns could not remove it till after her death. She continued in an ecstasy, with an inflamed countenance, and great composure, like one wholly taken up with internal contemplation. When she was now drawing near her end,one of the nuns, viewing her more attentively, thought she observed in her certain signs that the Saviour was talking to her, and showing her wonderful things. Thus she remained till nine in the evening, when she surrendered her pure soul into the hands of her Creator. She died in the arms of Sister Anne of S. Bartholomew, on October 4th, 1582; but the next day, on account of the reformation of the calendar, was the fifteenth of that month, the day now appointed for the festival. The saint was sixty-seven years old, forty-seven of which she had passed in religion—twenty-seven in the monastery of the Incarnation, and twenty in that of S. Joseph.”
Such was the end of this remarkable woman, whose life was so full of energy directed to no better purpose than that of a squirrel in a revolving cage.
That was not her fault; it was due to the age in which she lived and to the paralysing influence of the Inquisition in the land, which allowed no independence of thought or of action.
We have seen the utter helplessness of Spainexhibited in the War with the United States of America. Not a token of ability, not a sign of fresh vigour appeared—only feebleness, degeneracy, helplessness. It is to this that the Inquisition has reduced Spain. It has destroyed the recuperative, vital energy out of the character of the people.
The Latin races seem doomed by God to go down, and His hand is manifestly extended to bless and lead on the great Anglo-Saxon race. But this can only be so long as that race fulfils its high mission, as the civilising force in the world, and it maintains the eternal principles of Freedom, Justice, and Integrity.