The Life S Teresa of Jesus : Of the Order of Our Lady of Carmel

This is a photographic reprint of the original and an older translation than others on the market insuring faithfulness to the spirit of Saint Teresa of Jesus. S. TERESA was born in Avila on Weunesuay March 28 1515. Her father was Don Alfonso Sanchez lle Cepeda and her mother Dona Beatriz Davila y Ahumada. The name she received in her baptism was common to both families for her great-grandmother on the father s side was Teresa Sanchez and her grandmother on her mother s side was Teresa de las Cuevas. While she remained in the world and even after she had become a nun in the monastery of the Incarnation which was under the mitigated rule she was known as Dona Teresa Sanchez Cepeda Davila y Ahumada for in those days children took the name either of the father or of the mother as it pleased them. The two families were noble but that of Ahumada was no longer in possession of its former wealth and power. Dona Beatriz was the second wife of Don Alfonso and was related in the fourth degree to the first wife as appears from the dispensation granted to make the marriage valid on the 16th of October 1509. Of this marriage Teresa was the third child. At last after a struggle which lasted three months she made up her mind and against her inclination to give up the world. She asked her father s leave and was refused. She besieged him throngs her friends but to no purpose. The utmost I could got from him she says was that I might do as I pleased after his death. How long this contest with her father lasted is not known but it is probable that it lasted many months for the Saint was always most careful of the feelings of others and would certainly have endured much rather than displease a father whom she loved so much and who also loved her more than his other children. But she had to forsake her father and so she left her father s house by stealth taking with her one of ber brothers whom she had persuaded to give himself to God in religion. The brother and sister set out early in the morning the former for the monastery of the Dominicans and the latter for the Carmelite monastery of the Incarnation in Avila. The nuns received her into the house but Bent word to her father of his child s escape. Don Alfonso however yielded at once and consented to the sacrifice which he was compelled to make.