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Teresa of Ávila

Teresa of Ávila

1515 CE–1582 CE · Ávila

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582), born Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda Dávila y Ahumada, was a Spanish Carmelite nun, mystic, and reformer who became one of the most influential figures in Christian spirituality. Entering the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation in Ávila around 1534, she underwent a protracted interior conversion and eventually led a sweeping reform of the Carmelite order, founding seventeen convents and collaborating with John of the Cross to establish the Discalced Carmelites. Her masterwork, The Interior Castle, maps the soul's journey through seven dwelling-places toward union with God, and remains the most systematic and psychologically penetrating mystical treatise in the Latin Christian tradition. She was canonized in 1622 and in 1970 became the first woman named Doctor of the Church when Pope Paul VI conferred the title on her on 27 September 1970, followed one week later by Catherine of Siena.

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Stop 2 of 41562–1567First Reformed Convent

ÁvilaאווילהCastile (Spain)

What they did here

Founded San José (St. Joseph's) in 1562, the first house of the Carmelite Reform, where she also wrote The Book of Her Life and The Way of Perfection.

About Ávila

Ávila, a city in Castile, central Spain, was a center of Jewish mysticism in the late thirteenth century. The kabbalist Rabbi Moses de León, who first circulated the Zohar, settled in Ávila and spent his final years there until his death around 1305.

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The world in their lifetime

Thinkers, teachers, and rulers whose lives overlapped with Teresa of Ávila’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Christian world

Works

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