266 ST. THERESA idea. Sho began to take steps towards the foundation of a small house, without any endowment, in which thirteen nuns might obey the primitive Carmelite Rule without any mitigation, sleep on straw, fast eight months in the year, abstain from meat, live in perfect seclusion, and work for the poor. They went at first barefooted and hence were known as Descalzas, But as soon as the founda- tion was mooted in Avila a storm of opposition arose. The prioress and nuns of the Incarnation were indignant at what looked like a reflection on them, and the laity of Avila took their part ; the Provincial of the Carmelites sided with the majority and refused to receive the new foundation under his jurisdic- tion, but the Bishop of Avila and other ecclesiastics of wider views, saw that Teresa's idea might be very fruitful to the Church and encouraged her to pro- ceed. On August 24, 15G2, mass was said in the new convent of St. Joseph. Teresa was present on leave of absence from her convent, aud four nuns were installed. All had so far been done as secretly as possible, but this last act could not he concealed. The very next day a convention of civil and ecclesias- tical authorities assembled and ordered the instant removal of the sacrament and the dissolution of the convent. Teresa was peremptorily ordered back to the Incarnation. Her friends, however, suc- ceeded in procuring an appeal to the Boyal Council of Madrid, and meantime the four nuns were allowed to remain in the new house. The Boyal Council de- cided in favour of toleration, and after six months' delay, Teresa was allowed to settle at St. Joseph's, taking with her, from the Incarnation, her little sister- hood of reformers. The five years which she spent in establishing and directing the Sisters of St. Joseph were the happiest and most tranquil of her life. In her leisure time she rewrote her Autobiography y as we now have it. She also, at the request of the sisters, wrote the " Way of Per- fection," to give an account of her method of prayer, for she did not wish them to read her Autobiography ^ " lest they look for revelations for themselves in fancying that they are imitating me."* She had no toleration for imaginary raptures and revelations. The directions which she laid down for the guidance of her foundations are marked by much common sense. She liked to find that a young nun had three temptations — to laugh, to eat, and to sleep. For, she said,
- ' if she is tempted to laugh, she is of a
cheerful disposition; if she is tempted to eat, she is healthy; and if she is tempted to sleep, she has no great sins on her mind." Of all virtues she set obedience highest, and exemplified it by ber own life. " The best things I know," she said, came to me by obedience and not by revelation." She laughed her nuns out of small self-indulgences. During the fourth year of her resi- dence at St. Joseph's, the Greneral of the Carmelite Order, Fra Giovanni Battista Bossi, made a visitation in Spain. Luther had roused the Church to t Counter-Beformation and the General was chagrined to find that so fruitful t work as Teresa's had not been supported by the Provincial. He commissioned her to found other monasteries of the same rule, for men and for women in Castile. This commission enabled her to expand her reform. During her lifetime sixteen other houses of sisters and fourteen of friars were established. All the founda- tions for nuns were made by herself^ except two, Caravaca and Granada, and in many of those for friars sho took an active share. She has left a full account of her labours in the Book of the Foundatiam, begun in 1573 by command of her Con- fessor, Father Jerome Bipalda,a8 a sequel to the account of the foundation of Si Joseph's at Avila, which is included in the Autobiography. It is a most readable book and a rival to Don Quixote in its pictures of Spanish people and Spanish roads. At first the foundations were fiercely opposed, and each one was attended with labour and difficulty. <*Gk>d has never permitted any foundation of mine to be set on its feet without a world of worry," she wrote in her book. At Toledo she had only five ducats, and her object was exceedingly unpopular, ^Teresa
