Teresa

Teresa, or THERESA, ST. (1515-82), Spanish mystic, was born at Avila in Old Castile, and in her twentieth year entered a Carmelite convent in her native town. From earliest childhood her religious susceptibility had been remarkable, but she was nearly forty when a vision, in which she beheld blood streaming from the figure on a crucifix, wrought an abiding change in her heart. Her mode of life now became severely ascetic, and from this time she frequently fell into trances, in which she was granted many supernatural tokens of the divine favour. Alarmed at the laxity of discipline in her own and other Carmelite houses, she obtained the Pope's permission to found the order of Descalzos, or Barefooted Carmelites, which was established secretly at Avila in 1562. She was the authoress of an interesting autobiogiaphy, and several mystical treatises.