CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXIV., No. 140.—NOVEMBER, 1876.

Copyright: Rev. I. T. Hecker. 1877.

THOUGHTS ON MYSTICAL THEOLOGY.

St. John of the Cross, in commenting on these two lines of the thirty-ninth stanza of his Spiritual Canticle:

gives us a definition of mystical theology. “‘In the serene night’—that is, contemplation, in which the soul desires to behold the grove (God as the Creator and Giver of life to all creatures). It is called night because contemplation is obscure, and that is the reason why it is also called mystical theology—that is, the secret or hidden wisdom of God, wherein God, without the sound of words or the intervention of any bodily or spiritual sense, as it were in silence and repose, in the darkness of sense and nature, teaches the soul—and the soul knows not how—in a most secret and hidden way. Some spiritual writers call this ‘understanding without understanding,’ because it does not take place in what philosophers call the active intellect (intellectus agens), which is conversant with the forms, fancies, and apprehensions of the physical faculties, but in the intellect as it is passive (intellectus possibilis), which, without receiving such forms, receives passively only the substantial intelligence of them, free from all imagery.”[35]

Father Baker explains mystic contemplation as follows: “In the second place, there is a mystic contemplation which is, indeed, truly and properly such, by which a soul, without discoursings and curious speculations, without any perceptible use of the internal senses or sensible images, by a pure, simple, and reposeful operation of the mind, in the obscurity of faith, simply regards God as infinite and incomprehensible verity, and with the whole bent of the will rests in him as (her) infinite, universal, and incomprehensible good.… This is properly the exercise of angels, for their knowledge is not by discourse (discursive), but by one Pg 146 simple intuition all objects are represented to their view at once with all their natures, qualities, relations, dependencies, and effects; but man, that receives all his knowledge first from his senses, can only by effects and outward appearances with the labor of reasoning collect the nature of objects, and this but imperfectly; but his reasoning being ended, then he can at once contemplate all that is known unto him in the object.… This mystic contemplation or union is of two sorts: 1. Active and ordinary.… 2. Passive and extraordinary; the which is not a state, but an actual grace and favor from God.… And it is called passive, not but that therein the soul doth actively contemplate God, but she can neither, when she pleases, dispose herself thereto, nor yet refuse it when that God thinks good to operate after such a manner in the soul, and to represent himself unto her by a divine particular image, not at all framed by the soul, but supernaturally infused into her.… As for the former sort, which is active contemplation, we read in mystic authors—Thaulerus, Harphius, etc.—that he that would become spiritual ought to practise the drawing of his external senses inwardly into his internal, there losing and, as it were, annihilating them. Having done this, he must then draw his internal senses into the superior powers of the soul, and there annihilate them likewise; and those powers of the intellectual soul he must draw into that which is called their unity, which is the principle and fountain from whence those powers do flow, and in which they are united. And, lastly, that unity (which alone is capable of perfect union with God) must be applied and firmly fixed on God; and herein, [36]

That kind of contemplation which is treated of in mystical theology is, therefore, a state or an act of the mind in which the intellectual operation approaches to that of separate spirits—that is, of human souls separated from their bodies, and of pure spirits or angels who are, by their essence unembodied, simply intellectual beings. Its direct and chief object is God, other objects Pg 147 being viewed in their relation to him. The end of it is the elevation of the soul above the sphere of the senses and the sensible world into a more spiritual condition approaching the angelic, in which it is closely united with God, and prepared for the beatific and deific state of the future and eternal life. The longing after such a liberation from the natural and imperfect mode of knowing and enjoying the sovereign good, the sovereign truth, the sovereign beauty, through the senses and the discursive operations of reason, is as ancient and as universal among men as religion and philosophy. It is an aspiration after the invisible and the infinite. When it is not enlightened, directed, and controlled by a divine authority, it drives men into a kind of intellectual and spiritual madness, produces the most extravagant absurdities in thought and criminal excesses in conduct, stimulates and employs as its servants all the most cruel and base impulses of the disordered passions, and disturbs the whole course of nature. Demons are fallen angels who aspired to obtain their deification through pride, and the fall of man was brought about through an inordinate and disobedient effort of Eve to become like the gods, knowing good and evil. An inordinate striving to become like the angels assimilates man to the demons, and an inordinate striving after a similitude to God causes a relapse into a lower state of sin than that in which we are born. The history of false religions and philosophies furnishes a series of illustrations of this statement. In the circle of nominal Christianity, and even within the external communion of the Catholic Church, heretical and false systems of a similar kind have sprung up, and the opinions and writings

There are two fundamental errors underlying all these false systems of mystical theology—or more properly theosophy—and philosophy. One is distinctively anti-theistic, the other distinctively anti-Christian; but we may class both under one logical species with the common differentia of denial of the real essence and personality, and the real operation ad extra, of the Incarnate Word. The first error denies his divine nature and creative act, the second his human nature and theandric operation. By the first error identity of substance in respect to the divine nature and all nature is asserted; by the second, identity of the human nature and its operation with that nature which is purely spiritual. The first error manifests itself as a perversion of the revealed and Catholic doctrine of the deification of the creature in and through the Word, by teaching that it becomes one with God in its mode of being by absorption into the essence whose emanation it is, in substantial unity. The second manifests itself by teaching that the instrumentality and the Pg 148 process of this unification are purely spiritual. The first denies the substantiality of the soul and the proper activity which proceeds from it and constitutes its life. The second denies the difference of the human essence as a composite of spirit and body, which separates it from purely spiritual essences and marks it as a distinct species. The first error is pantheism; for the second we cannot think of any designating term more specific than idealism. Both these errors, however disguised or modified may be the forms they assume, conduct logically to the explicit denial of the Catholic faith, and even of any form of positive doctrinal Christianity. Their extreme developments are to be found outside of the boundaries of all that is denominated Christian theology. Within these boundaries they have developed themselves more or less imperfectly into gross heresies, and into shapes of erroneous doctrine which approach to or recede from direct and palpable heresy in proportion to the degree of their evolution. Our purpose is not directly concerned with any of the openly anti-Christian forms of these errors, but only with such as have really infected or have been imputed to the doctrines and writings of mystical authors who were Catholics by profession, and have flourished within the last four centuries. There is a certain more or less general and sweeping charge made by some Catholic authors of reputation, and a prejudice or suspicion to some extent among educated Catholics, against the German school of mystics of the epoch preceding the Reformation, that they prepared the way by their teaching for Martin Luther and his associates. This notion of an affinity between the St. Bonaventure and St. John of the Cross, cannot be censured, and their writings must be treated with respect. Nevertheless, they may be neglected, their doctrine ignored, and, through misapprehension or inadvertence, their teachings may be criticised and assailed when presented by other authors not canonized and approved by the solemn judgment of the church; and thus mystical theology itself may suffer discredit and be undervalued. It is desirable to prove that genuine mystical theology has no affinity with the Protestant heresies which subvert the visible church with its authority, or those of idealistic philosophy, but is, on the contrary, in perfect harmony with the dogmatic and philosophical doctrine of the most approved Catholic schools. It is only a modest effort in that direction which we can pretend to make, with respect chiefly to the second or philosophical aspect of the question. We must devote, however, a few paragraphs to its first or theological aspect.

From the mystery of the Incarnation necessarily follows the substantial reality of human nature as a composite of spirit and body, the Pg 149 excellence and endless existence, in its own distinct entity, not only of the spiritual but also of the corporeal part of man and of the visible universe to which he belongs as being an embodied spirit. The theology which springs out of this fundamental doctrine teaches a visible church, existing as an organic body with visible priesthood, sacrifice, sacraments, ceremonies, and order, as mediums subordinate to the theandric, mediatorial operation of the divine Word acting through his human nature. Sound philosophy, which is in accordance with theology, teaches also that the corporeal life and sensitive operation of man is for the benefit of his mind and his intellectual operation. He is not a purely intellectual being, but a rational animal. He must therefore derive his intelligible species or ideas by abstraction from sensible species furnished by the corporeal world to the senses, and then proceed by a discursive process of reasoning from these general ideas to investigate the particular objects apprehended by his faculties. False theology denies or undervalues the being of the created universe or the corporeal part of it. Under the pretence of making way for God it would destroy the creature, and, to exalt the spiritual part of the universe, reduce to nothing that part which is corporeal. Hence the denial of the visible church, the sacraments, the Real Presence, the external sacrifice and worship, the value of reason, the merit of good works, the essential goodness of nature, and the necessity of active voluntary co-operation by the senses and the mind with the Spirit of God in attaining perfection. The corporeal part of man, and the visible world to which it belongs, are regarded as unreal appearances, or as

Some of the German mystics, especially Eckhardt and the author of the Theologia Germanica, undoubtedly prepared the way for the errors of Luther and the pantheists who followed him. But the doctors of mystic theology, the canonized saints of the church and their disciples, have invariably taught that as the human nature of Christ is for ever essentially and substantially distinct from the divine nature in the personal union, so much more the beatified, in their separate personalities, remain for ever distinct in essence and substance from God. So, also, as they teach that the body of Christ is immortal and to be adored for ever with the worship of latria, they maintain that the union of the soul with the body and the existence of corporeal things is for the advantage of the soul, and perpetual. It is only by comparison with supernatural life in God that natural life is depreciated by the Catholic mystics, and by comparison with the spiritual world that the corporeal world is undervalued. In a word, all things which are created and visible, even the humanity of the Word, are only mediums and instruments of the Holy Spirit; all nature is only a pedestal for grace; and the gifts and operations of grace are only for the sake of the beatific union with Christ in the Holy Spirit, in whom he is one with the Father. All things, therefore, are to be valued and employed for their utility as means to the final end, but not as ends in themselves; and, consequently, the lower are to give place to the higher, the more remote to the proximate, and that which is Pg 150 inferior in nature is to be wholly subordinated to that which is highest. Mystical theology is in doctrine what the lives of the great saints have been in practice. Neither can be blamed without impiety; and when the actions or doctrines of those whose lives or writings have not received solemn sanction from the church are criticised, it must be done by comparing them with the speculative and practical science of the saints as a standard.

The psychological doctrine of the doctors and other canonized authors who have treated scientifically of the nature of mystic contemplation, is not, however, placed above all critical discussion. A few important questions excepted, upon which the supreme authority of the Holy See has pronounced a judgment, the theory of cognition is an open area of discussion, and therefore explanations of the phenomena of the spiritual life, given by any author in accordance with his own philosophical system, may be criticised by those who differ from him in opinion. Those who follow strictly the psychology of St. Thomas, as contained in modern writers of the later Thomistic school, may easily be led by their philosophical opinions to suspect and qualify as scientifically untenable the common language of mystical writers. The passage quoted from Father Baker at the head of this article will furnish an illustration of our meaning. Those who are familiar with metaphysics will understand at once where the apparent opposition between scholastic psychology and mystical theology is found. For others it may suffice to explain that, in the metaphysics of the Thomists, no origin of ideas is recognized except that which is called abstraction from

Now, assuming the Thomistic doctrine of the origin of ideas and the specific nature of human cognition to be true, it is worthy of careful inquiry how the statements of mystical authors respecting infused contemplation are to be explained in accordance with this system. We cannot prudently assume that there is a repugnance between them. Practically, St. Thomas was one of those saints who have made the highest attainments in mystic contemplation. He is the “Angelical,” and the history of his life shows that he was frequently, and towards the close of his life almost habitually, rapt out of the common sphere of the senses, so as to take no notice of what went on before his eyes or was uttered in his hearing. His last act as an instructor in divine wisdom was an exposition of the Canticle of Solomon to the monks of Fossa Nuova, and he could no doubt have explained according to his own philosophical doctrine all the facts and phenomena of mystic contemplation, so far as these can be represented in human language. There cannot be any sufficient reason, Pg 151 therefore, to regard the two as dissonant or as demanding either one any sacrifice of the other.

In respect to the purely passive and supernatural contemplation, there seems, indeed, to be no difficulty whatsoever in the way. There is no question of an immediate intuition of the divine essence in this ecstatic state, so that, even if the soul is supposed to be raised for a time to an equality with angels in its intellectual acts, the errors of false mysticism and ontologism are excluded from the hypothesis. For even the angels have no such natural intuition. That the human intellect should receive immediately from angels or from God infused species or ideas by which it becomes cognizant of realities behind the veil of the sensible, and contemplates God through a more perfect glass than that of discursive reason, does not in any way interfere with the psychology of scholastic metaphysics. For the cause and mode are professedly supernatural. In the human intellect of our Lord, the perfection of infused and acquired knowledge, the beatific vision and the natural sensitive life common to all men co-existed in perfect harmony. It is even probable that Moses, the Blessed Virgin, and St. Paul enjoyed temporary glimpses of the beatific vision. Therefore, although it is true that, without a miracle, no mere man “can see God and live,” and that the ecstasies of the saints, in which there is no intuitive vision of the divine essence, but only a manifestation of divine things, naturally tend to extinguish bodily life, yet, by the power of God, the operations of the natural life can be sustained in conjunction with those which are supernatural, because they are not essentially incongruous. The only question is

The real matter of difficult and perplexing investigation relates to certain abnormal or preternatural phenomena, which seem to indicate a partial liberation of the soul from the conditions of organic life and union with the body, and to that state of mystic contemplation which is called active or acquired. In these cases there is no liberty allowed us by sound theology or philosophy of resorting to the supernatural in its strict and proper sense. We are restricted to the sphere of the nature of man and the operations which can proceed from it or be terminated to it according to the natural laws of its being. There is one hypothesis, very intelligible and perfectly in accordance with psychology, which will remove all difficulty out of the way, if only it is found adequate to explain all the certain and probable facts and phenomena which have to be considered. Father Baker furnishes this explanation as a probable one, and it no doubt amply suffices for the greatest number of instances. That is to say, we may suppose that whenever the mind seems to act without any species, image, or idea, originally presented through the medium of the senses, and by a pure, spiritual intuition, it is really by a subtile and imperceptible image which it has elaborated by an abstractive and discursive process, and which exists in the imagination, that the intellect receives the object which it contemplates.

But let us suppose that this hypothesis is found insufficient to explain Pg 152 all the facts to which it must be applied. Can it be admitted, without prejudice to rational psychology, that the soul may, by an abnormal condition of its relations to the body, or as the result of its efforts and habits, whether for evil or good, lawfully or unlawfully, escape from its ordinary limits in knowing and acting, and thus draw nearer to the state of separate spirits?

We must briefly consider what is the mode of knowing proper to separate spirits before we can find any data for answering this question. Here we avail ourselves of the explication of the doctrine of St. Thomas given by Liberatore in his interesting treatise on the nature of man entitled Dell’Uomo.[37]

St. Thomas, following St. Augustine, teaches that in the creation, the divine idea in the Word was communicated in a twofold way, spiritual and corporeal. In the latter mode this light was made to reverberate from the visible universe. In the former it was made to shine in the superior and intellectual beings—that is, the angels—producing in them ideally all that which exists in the universe really. As they approximate in intelligence to God, these ideas or intelligible species by which they know all things have a nearer resemblance to the Idea in the Divine Word—that is, approach to its unity and simplicity of intuition—are fewer and more general. As their grade of intelligence is more remote from its source, they depart to a greater and greater distance from this unity by the increasing multiplicity of their intelligible species. Moreover, Pg 153 taking into account in the least that supernatural light of glory which enables a beatified spirit to see the essence of God, and in him to see the whole universe.

We see from the foregoing that the necessity for using sensible images in operations of the intellect does not arise from an intrinsic, essential incapacity of the human mind to act without them. As Father Baker says, and as Liberatore distinctly asserts after St. Thomas, it is “the state of a soul joined to a mortal body” which impedes the exercise of a power inherent and latent in the very nature of the soul, as a form which is in and by itself substantial and capable of self-subsistence and action in a separate state. Remove the impediment of the body, and the spirit starts, like a spring that has been weighted down, into a new and immortal life and activity. The curtain has dropped, and it is at once in the world of spirits. The earth, carrying with it the earthly body, drops down from the ascending soul, as it does from an aeronaut going up in a balloon. “Animæ, secundum illum modum essendi, quo corpori est unita, competit modus intelligendi per conversionem ad phantasmata corporum, quæ in corporeis organis sunt. Cum autem fuerit a corpore separata, competit ei modus intelligendi per conversionem ad ea, quæ sunt intelligibilia simpliciter, sicut et aliis substantiis separatis”—“To the soul, in respect to the mode of being by union with a body, belongs a mode of understanding by turning toward the phantasms of bodies which are in the bodily organs. But when it is separated from the body, a mode of understanding belongs to it in common with other separate substances, by [38] “Hujusmodi perfectionem recipiunt animæ separatæ a Deo, mediantibus angelis”—“This kind of perfection the separate souls receive from God through the mediation of angels.”[39] “Quando anima erit a corpore separata plenius percipere poterit influentiam a superioribus substantiis, quantum ad hoc quod per hujusmodi influxum intelligere poterit absque phantasmate quod modo non potest”—“When the soul shall be separated from the body, it will be capable of receiving influence from superior substances more fully, inasmuch as by an influx of this kind it can exercise intellectual perception without a phantasm, which in its present state it cannot do.” This language of St. Thomas and other schoolmen explains the hesitation of Father Baker in respect to certain statements of mystical authors, especially Harphius. He says, as quoted above: “This abstraction and elevation (perhaps) are not to be understood as if the soul in these pure operations had no use at all of the internal senses or sensible images (for the schools resolve that cannot consist with the state of a soul joined to a mortal body).” He says “perhaps,” which shows that he was in doubt on the point. The precise question we have raised is whether there is reason for this doubt in the shape of probable arguments, or conjectures not absolutely excluded by sound philosophy. The point to be considered, namely, is whether the reception of this influx and the action of the intellect without the medium of sensible images is made absolutely impossible, unless by a miracle, by the union of the soul and body. Pg 154 It is a hindrance, and ordinarily a complete preventive of this kind of influx from the spiritual world into the soul, and this kind of activity properly belonging to a separate spirit. But we propose the conjectural hypothesis that there may be, in the first place, some kind of extraordinary and abnormal condition of the soul, in which the natural effect of the union with a body is diminished, or at times partially suspended. In this condition the soul would come in a partial and imperfect manner, and quite involuntarily, into immediate contact with the world of spirits, receive influences from it, and perceive things imperceptible to the senses and the intellect acting by their aid as its instruments. In the second place, that it is possible to bring about this condition unlawfully, to the great damage and danger of the soul by voluntarily yielding to or courting preternatural influences, and thus coming into immediate commerce with demons. In the third place, that it is possible, lawfully, for a good end and to the soul’s great benefit, to approximate to the angelical state by abstractive contemplation, according to the description given by Harphius and quoted by Father Baker. As for passive, supernatural contemplation, it is not possible for the soul to do more than prepare itself for the visitation of the divine Spirit with his lights and graces. In this supernatural condition it is more consonant to the doctrine of St. John of the Cross, who was well versed in scholastic metaphysics and theology; of St. Teresa, whose St. John of the Cross at the head of this article, if carefully reperused and reflected on, will make this statement plain, and intelligible at least to all those who have some tincture of scholastic metaphysics.

There are many facts reported on more or less probable evidence, and extraordinary phenomena, belonging to diabolical and natural mysticism, which receive at least a plausible explanation on the same hypothesis. To refer all these to subjective affections of the external or internal senses and the imagination does not seem to be quite sufficient for their full explanation. It appears like bending and straining the facts of experience too violently, for the sake of a theory which, perhaps, is conceived in too exclusive and literal a sense. At all events it is worth investigation and discussion whether the dictum of St. Thomas, intelligere absque phantasmate modo non potest, does not admit of and require some modification, by which it is restricted to those intellectual perceptions which belong to the normal, ordinary condition of man within the limits of the purely natural order.

Pg 155

AVILA.

—Ariz grandezas de Avila.

It was on the 31st of January, 1876, we left the Escorial to visit the muy leal, muy magnifica, y muy noble city 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 of St. 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 and

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 Christians Pg 156 enough to repeople it, and it remained desolate eighty-nine years. St. Ferdinand found it uninhabited when he came from the conquest of Seville. Alonso VI. finally commissioned his son-in-law, Count Raymond of Burgundy, to rebuild and fortify it.

Alonso VI. 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 de St. Gilles, Count of Toulouse; and Raymond, son of Guillaume Tête-Hardie of Burgundy, and brother of Pope Calixtus II. 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 entrance

“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. As Pg 157 soon 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:

A second band would take up the strain:

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 Alonso VIII., 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 of Avila de los Santos. It was in the sixteenth century especially that it became worthy of this name, when there gathered about St. 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. In St. 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. But St. Teresa is the best type of Avila. Her piety was as sweetly Pg 158 austere 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 against St. 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 in any age 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:

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 was St. 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 the Calle 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 moss Pg 159 and 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 since St. 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, Charles V. Here she saw St. Peter of Alcantara in ecstasy. In one of these parlors, now regarded as a sacred spot, she held her interviews with St. 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, leaving St. 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 to St. 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 to St. 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 which St. 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, and St. Albert, patriarch of Jerusalem. The nuns’ choir is at the opposite end of the church. We should say choirs; 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 his Obscure Night of the Soul, that St. 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 here St. Teresa received the Holy Communion for more than thirty years. Here one morning, after receiving it from the hand of St. 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, Pg 160 a niece of St. 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 of St. 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 that St. 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 to St. Teresa herself, who saw the stalls occupied by them.

One of St. 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 by St. 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 the Ermita de San Juan de la Cruz. The unpainted wooden altar was made from a part of St. 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.

Pg 161 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 of St. 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 of reja that 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 the Bujo out of which the legendary serpent came to defend their remains when thrown out for the beasts to devour. This Bujo was long used as a place of solemn adjuration, a kind of Bocca 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 where St. 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, where St. 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 Martii Teresia oborta, Aprilis ante nona est sacro hoc fonte renata MDXV.

Pg 162 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 was

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 the 3d of 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, that Pg 163 the 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 of St. John, and, after the necessary repose, they all went in procession to the church of the glorious martyrs San Vicente and St. 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 of St. 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 the Posada 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 of St. John of the Cross. Over the main altar of the church, framed in the columns of the gilt retable, is an alto-relievo of St. 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 spot St. Teresa first saw the light in the year 1515, during the pontificate of Pg 164 Leo X. 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 of St. 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. St. 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 concebida was 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, where St. Teresa and her brother Rodriguez, in their childhood, built hermitages, and talked of heaven, and encouraged each other for martyrdom.

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 having Pg 165 been 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; its palacios, 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, and St. 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 soldiers XII. 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!

The coro, as in most Spanish cathedrals, is in the body of the church, and connected with the Capilla Mayor by a railed passage. Pg 166 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 the Capilla 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, surnamed El Tostado, the tawny, from his complexion, and El 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 in this world. He became so proverbial that Don Quixote mentions some book as large as all the works of El Tostado combined, as if human imagination could go no farther. Leigh Hunt El 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, the Capilla Mayor was 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 a Pg 167 former church. The pope, at the request of Alonso VI., 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 of St. 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 of St. 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 here St. Teresa’s St. 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 with St. 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.

Pg 168 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 of St. 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 by St. Francis Borgia, and in it lived for a time the saintly Balthazar Alvarez, the confessor par excellence of St. 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 his palacio just

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 the caballeros of Avila used to make their veillée des armes before 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 Alonso VI., 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 encounter Pg 169 those 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 glorious St. John the Baptist, St. James, St. Martin, and St. 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 or

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 by St. 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, and Pg 170 we 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 of St. 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 of St. 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 to St. 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 of St. Joseph in the Carmelite Order

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 of St. Joseph stands over the altar. The grating of the nuns’ choir is on the gospel side, opposite which is a painting of St. Teresa with pen in hand and the symbolic white dove at her ear. Jesus, Maria, José are 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 novice Pg 171 at St. 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 for St. 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 of St. Teresa’s, who attained to eminent piety under the guidance of St. 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 ceremony St. Peter of Alcantara, of the Order of St. 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 of St. 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 Philip III. went to see her on her death-bed,

Another niece of St. 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 succeeded St. Teresa as prioress of the house.

Another chapel at San José, that of St. Paul, at the right as you go in, was founded by Don Francisco de Salcedo, a gentleman of Avila, who was a great friend of St. 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 of St. Thomas, then in great repute, and after his wife’s death took holy orders. He greatly aided St. Teresa in her foundations, and accompanied her in her journeys. He lies buried in his chapel of St. Paul.

Not far from St. Joseph’s is the church of St. Emilian, in the tribune of which Maria Diaz, also a friend of St. Teresa’s, spent the last forty years of her life in perpetual Pg 172 adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, which she called her dear neighbor, never leaving her cell, excepting to go to confession and communion at St. 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 city de 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 de St. Teresa are at Alba de Tormes, where she died, in a shrine of jasper and silver given by Ferdinand VII. 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

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 lines St. 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 things

Todo se alcanza,Reacheth, and he who

Quien a Dios tiene,Fast by God holdeth,

Nada le falta;To him naught is wanting;

Solo Dios basta.”Alone God sufficeth.

Pg 173

ST. TERESA.

“To suffer or to die.”

M. S. P.

Pg 175

SIX SUNNY MONTHS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.