"Obedience, voluntary austerities beyond the rule. my daughter, and a rasher of broiled bacon," she said to a young nun, who attempted to macerate herself by an exorbitant fast. The words passed into a proverb. On the other hand, she had little sympathy with that kind of caution which makes men afraid of doing anything out of the common way for a good object. "The world," she said, "honours such discretion; for it is a name that shelters many imperfections."* (66.) It is evident from many proofs in her life and writings, that she had a penetration into the character of others which qualified her for the task of directing a religious society. To the Bishop of Osma, a prelate of some activity in his diocese, she gave praise for his zeal and charity, but plainly told him that the one thing needful to sustain these virtues was wanting: "There is one high place alone from which a pastor can secure a good view of all his flock : it is the watch-tower of Prayer." To Diego de Mendoza, the warrior, the wit, and courtier, confessedly an able politician, but one whose studies had been rather in Tacitus and Machiavelli, than in more sacred wisdom, she addressed herself in arguments like these: "I know that to great understandings the light of truth wins its way by gentle approaches: but I know that nothing would gladden my heart more, than to see you master of yourself. You are brave; your desires are high be sure that God alone can satisfy them. * Obras, ii. 263. Cartas, i. 180, 189. Obras, ii. 573. A friend tells me, that in praying for you, he does not content himself with praying that you may be a good man he prays that you may be a saint. I have more humble thoughts. I could be well content, if you would be content with that only, which for yourself you only need, and forbear to extend your charity so much in seeking good for others: for I see if you only took account with what might procure you rest, you would soon find rest, and serve a Master who would keep you ever near to Himself, and never be weary of bestowing favours on you." The skilfulness of such arguments, addressed to one grown old in Courts, and so well adapted to the person, may be easily appreciated. (67.) Her first converts were persons of very different classes of society, and of very different individual character: but it is one of the achievements in which a superior mind takes pleasure, to conquer the difficulties presented by varieties of temper, where they are not exclusive of higher aims and hopes. She was more afraid of admitting commonplace qualities, and those women who had no character at all." "They tell me such a one is a good little soul:*- -we do not want those who are good little souls, and nothing more." "Where they are so few, in all reason they should be well chosen."+ She seems, however, to have admitted some at a very early age. There was 66 "No debe ser mas que bonita." Orig. Cart. i. 384. a young heiress, whom her friends had sought to betroth in marriage, when little more than twelve years old, or, as a verse of Gongora's expresses it, "Just in the uncertain twilight of her teens." She fled for refuge to Teresa's newly-founded nunnery in Valladolid. Her relatives demanded her back :— "it was but a childish fancy," they said; "she must wait till she was of riper age." Her answer was, "If you found that I was old enough for you to promise me in marriage, and devote me to the service of the world, how is it that you think me not of age to consecrate myself to God?"* Teresa, who had the support of her mother, had no scruple in accepting her as a novice, till she should be of age to take the veil. Others were women, who had seen more than they wished of the fashions of the world, as Catharine de Cardona, a daughter of the ducal house with that title, of whom the female reformer speaks as having become an inmate of one of her convents, after passing years of hard penance in a wild hermitage.† Others, again, gave her some trouble; for all her troubles did not arise from the opposition of the old unreformed orders, as the famous Princess of Eboli, who, after the death of her husband Ruy Gomez, in the fresh grief of her widowhood would needs profess herself a Carmelite in a convent of their founding on the ducal estate at Pastrana. But Teresa, finding that this high * Obras, ii. 299. + Obras, ii. 424. and mighty novice required her religious superior and her new associates to go down upon their knees when they spoke to her, cut short the difficulty by giving back the house to the lady, and removing her more dutiful daughters to Segovia. It would seem that this was not done all at once; for, after she had returned to her ducal mansion, she kept the nuns for a time as prisoners.* (68.) Teresa was beatified by Paul V. in 1614, about thirty-two years after her death, in 1582; and eight years later, in 1622, she obtained from Gregory XV. the honours of canonization. By this time much of her spirit had been imparted to religious people in other lands, and its influence was felt by the virtuous Francis de Sales and his friend Madame de Chantal. In 1604 six of her nuns had crossed the Pyrenees, and became the pioneers of the new order at Paris. Ere long there were sixty of her houses in France, and they extended themselves to Italy, and the Spanish Netherlands, where the pencil of Rubens was employed in decorating her churches, and spreading the fame of her holy visions. In her own country she had lived to found about eighteen convents for nuns, and fifteen for friars, chiefly in the cities of Castille, but also under noble patronage at a few more retired places, and, in the later years of her life, at Seville and Granada. Towards the end of the reign of Philip III. these had increased to seventy-two friaries and * Cart. ii. 125, 131. forty-nine nunneries,* and some of her disciples had planted religious colonies in Mexico and the Indies. But it would be a very imperfect estimate of her influence to regard it as only felt by her own spiritual children. The old Carmelites, those who still wore shoes, were provoked to jealousy. Franciscans, Dominicans, Geronymites, bestirred themselves; and all the orders, white, black, and grey; so that the town of Madrid alone, which, at the time of the second Philip's accession, gave shelter to about nine convents, at the close of his son's reign numbered more than forty. They were probably inhabited by not fewer than between two and three thousand nuns and friars. (69.) The power of the movement may also be in some degree estimated from the rank of those who were carried with it. Among these lilies of Carmel, from the time of Teresa to the close of the last century, were many of noble and even of royal extraction. Two daughters of the two German Emperors, Rudolph II. and Matthias, and a third princess of the Imperial house, retired from the troubles of the Thirty Years' War to this life of seclusion. In France this was the end of the unfortunate Duchess de la Valiere, after her early fall, living a life of exemplary humble piety among the poor sisters. And in 1771 Louisa Maria, a daughter of the worthless Louis XV., fled from a vicious court to the society of the Barefooted Carmelites of St. Denis. *Davila, Grandezas de Madrid, 269, 289. |