The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Carlos Eire

The book includes fascinating chapters about how artists such as Bernini interpreted her life. This inspired her and she begged for Jesus’s help, asking him to “strengthen her once and for all”. In 1555, an image of Christ was brought to the convent. She became so weak that she received the Last Rites, but she recovered and returned to the community although she abandoned silent prayer. She fell ill in her early twenties and her father removed her from the convent in the hope of finding a cure. “The Lord walks among the pots and pans in the kitchen.” “These menial tasks were lessons in humility,” she later reflected. Despite her family’s wealth she also had to perform routine tasks such as cooking and cleaning. There were no fewer than eight daily prayers. In November 1536, she became a novice and donned the habit of a Carmelite nun. Her parents were virtuous, so sure enough she “began to awaken to piety … at around the age of five or six”. Her mother died when she was 13 years old.

The author is professor of history and religious studies at Yale University but he wears his learning lightly and writes wittily, weightily and warmly about St Teresa, a Doctor of the Church.Īlso known as Teresa de Jesus, she was a 16th-century Carmelite nun who lived in Ávila, a walled city in central Spain. This incisive, insightful book gets to the heart of the matter about St Teresa of Avila (1515-1582).

The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Carlos Eire