← [[appendix-f-f1b|The Dark Night — St. John of the Cross]] | [[formation-I-b-handbook|Table of Contents]] | [[appendix-h-f1b|The Reform — Journey to Carith]] → # Excerpts from Foundations — On the First Friars Used with permission On the founding of the reform monasteries for the friars It is not quite clear how much precise thinking Teresa had been doing about additional convents before Rossi’s visit. The multiplication of convents following the primitive rule was beyond her original scope, and yet after his visit, and armed with his permissions, she began to plan other foundations. And something else, too: After some days, I began to think how necessary it was, if convents for women were to be founded, that there should be friars following the same rule, and seeing how few there were in this province—it even seemed to me that they were dying out—I commended the matter earnestly to our Lord, and wrote a letter to our Father General, begging him as well as I could to grant this permission. Teresa’s letter, which outlined her reasons for friars who would follow the primitive rule and which concluded by “representing to him what a service it would be to our Lady,” reached Rossi in Barcelona. He replied immediately, granting her request and allowing her to establish two monasteries of friars who were to be called “contemplative Carmelites”; and he prudently sent a copy of the permission to the Carmelite provincial. Teresa, however, was preoccupied with making the second convent of reformed nuns, and she had chosen the city of Medina del Campo, fifty miles north of Avila; she thus put the question of the friars aside for a moment: “Here was a poor Discalced nun, without help from anyone except the Lord, loaded with patents and good wishes but devoid of either courage or hope.” The Jesuits at Medina del Campo made the preliminary arrangements for her foundation, and in the summer of 1567 she set off in three lumbering, creaking carts to establish the second house of the reform. She took six nuns with her, two from St. Joseph’s and four from the Incarnation who wanted to join the movement. They spent the night at Arévalo, and in the morning the prior of the Carmelite monastery in Medina, Anthony de Heredia, came out to escort them into the city. The prior offered Mass in the new monastery, but a close inspection afterward showed that the building needed extensive repairs before it would be fit for habitation. A wealthy merchant offered the nuns the upper story of his home while they waited for the repairs to be completed, and Teresa gladly accepted the offer. The nuns remained in these temporary quarters for about two months. During that time Teresa had the opportunity to discuss her reform with the prior and she revealed to him the permission she had from the general to found two houses of reformed friars. She was startled when he volunteered to become the first friar of the new reform. Anthony de Heredia, was an esteemed Carmelite from Valencia who had entered the Order at the age of ten, later graduated from Salamanca University, and served as prior in three different monasteries. But he was now fifty-seven years old, and his health was not good. Teresa later wrote about Anthony’s offer: “I thought it was a joke, and told him so.” But the prior protested, even stating that he had been planning to leave the Carmelites and join the 62 01.24 1-24-2024Appendix H Carthusians so he could find a more dedicated form of life. However, Teresa felt uneasy about him: “Nevertheless I was not very well satisfied, although it made me happy to hear him, and I asked him to let us wait awhile.” The following month Anthony brought another Carmelite to meet Teresa at her temporary dwelling. He was a newly ordained priest, twenty-five years old, and he had confided to the prior that he too wanted to leave the Order and join the Carthusians. Anthony felt that the young man had better speak to Teresa. His name was John de Yepes. St. John of the Cross, one of the original group of reformed Carmelite friars, occupies a major position in the history of Christian thought—as a doctor of the church, the “mystical doctor”; and as perhaps the Church’s most outstanding writer on mystical theology. In association with St. Teresa he was a key figure in the reform movement within the Carmelite Order, although his role was a far different one from hers. Teresa was the organizer, the administrative genius who was able to wrest permissions and donations from the proper people and thus move the work of reform relentlessly forward; John was never considered a major administrative force in the work of reform, although he did for a while occupy a number of important administrative positions: his contribution to reform, rather, was in the area of inspiration, where he stood as a blinding symbol of dedication and fidelity to original Carmelite ideals. Temperamentally, he presented a striking contrast to the voluble, outgoing Teresa. He was basically a quiet man, deeply reflective, somewhat withdrawn, but nevertheless a friendly, approachable person, who put people immediately at ease. Despite his own personal uncompromising asceticism and austerity, he was extremely kind and sympathetic with others, understanding of their problems and eager to help. But above all, this quiet Carmelite friar, this man of deep prayer and profound mystical experience, presented a vivid image of complete commitment and, if necessary, grim determination. John was born at Fontiveros, a small town some twenty-five miles northwest of Avila, about the year 1542, the third child of Gonzalo de Yepes and Catalina Álvarez.1 Gonzalo de Yepes came from a good family in Toledo, and after both his parents died when he was still quite young he was sponsored by his uncles who were wealthy silk merchants. Gonzalo kept the accounts for his uncles and performed a number of tasks of a general business nature. His work frequently took him to Fontiveros, where he met Catalina Álvarez, an attractive young woman from an impoverished background who worked as a silk weaver. They fell in love and soon married, but Gonzalo’s uncles were so infuriated at him because he had married beneath his station that they discharged him from their employment and banished him from their homes. Suddenly deprived of his position, the young man was forced to learn his wife’s trade of silk weaving. But he apparently had little success at it because the family lived in dire poverty. Shortly after John’s birth, Gonzalo died, leaving his almost destitute widow with three small children. Catalina trudged to Toledo, carrying John in her arms, seeking some assistance from her late husband’s relatives, but they all refused to help, except a doctor who agreed to take care of one of the three boys, Francis. However, the doctor’s wife abused the young boy, and he soon 1 His full legal name, therefore, was Juan de Yepes y Alvarez. The records of his birth have been lost, and the year 1542 is an approximation. 63 returned to his mother. The second child died about this time, and Catalina desperately began to hunt for the most advantageous place to rear her two other sons. She chose Medina del Campo, where she taught Francis to assist her in silk weaving and sent John, then age nine, to the catechism school, a residential institution for poor boys. John lived at the school for eight years, and he was apprenticed to a number of different artisans, notably a carpenter and a tailor, but he was completely inept at any of these trades. He was a serious and upright boy, however, and he came to the attention of Don Alonso Alvarez, the governor of the plague hospital in Medina, who invited him to live and work at the hospital. John acted as a nurse and a collector of alms, but Alvarez also allowed him to attend the new Jesuit college in the city, where he received an excellent education in the classics for four years. John expressed a desire to become a priest, and Álvarez volunteered to defray the cost of his education, in the hope that he would one day serve as chaplain in the hospital. But John had become acquainted with the recently founded Carmelite community in Medina, and he was preparing to enter the Order. Álvarez apparently protested this decision so much that when the young man of twenty-one entered the monastery he had to steal away from the hospital secretly at night, and thus both he and his future associate Teresa joined the Order by fleeing furtively from their homes. After his profession of vows in 1564 he was sent to the Carmelite College of St. Andrew at the University of Salamanca where he attended classes in philosophy and theology at both the university and St. Andrew’s. During his years as a student he was carefully evaluating his position as a Carmelite, and he requested permission from his superiors to follow the primitive rule without mitigation, insofar as he could in the framework of the actual situation. This did not seem too practicable, because we soon find him planning to leave the Order and join the Carthusians. In 1567, while he was still pondering all these personal problems, he was ordained, and in September of that year he returned to Medina for the purpose of offering his first Mass. It was then that he met Teresa of Avila. The young priest of twenty-five whom Teresa saw was an extremely short man, about five feet in height, thin, with a swarthy complexion and dark eyes. His face was slightly oval, his forehead broad, and his hairline was receding into early baldness. Teresa was then fifty-two, and still attractive in her middle age, despite the fact that she was becoming slightly plump. The nun and the priest presented an interesting study in contrasts—the vivacious middle-aged nun from an affluent family, and the quiet young priest from an impoverished background who had worked his way tenaciously through school. “When I spoke to the friar I liked him very much,” Teresa said, and she explained her project to him, asking him to put off his plan to enter the Carthusians until she had obtained a monastery for reformed friars. She told him that if he wanted to lead a more perfect life “he should lead it within his own Order.” Teresa’s singular persuasiveness worked again, and John agreed to her proposal, “provided there were no long delay.” John had to return to Salamanca for a final year of theology, and Teresa promised to do something about finding a house suitable for a monastery of friars during that time. Teresa was immediately enthused with John de Yepes. “Although he is small in stature,” she later wrote, “I believe he is great in the sight of God.” After John and Anthony left her temporary convent that autumn day in 1567, she told the nuns that she now felt she could proceed with the 64 01.24 1-24-2024Appendix H establishment of the friars’ monastery, “although I was still not quite satisfied with the prior.” She said that she now had “a friar and a half,” and that phrase has caused a minor controversy among historians. Some have said that the “half friar” was the diminutive John of the Cross, while others have contended that she was referring to her doubts about Anthony, and that she would certainly not jest about the small stature of the future doctor of the church. Or would she? After Teresa had established the nuns at Medina del Campo in their regular convent, she departed for Madrid and eventually arrived at Alcalá de Henares in late November. Then in February she was off to Malagón where she founded another convent. This was the pattern of her life for the next fourteen years, and by the time of her death in 1582 she had personally founded fifteen convents of nuns. In May of 1568 Teresa left Malagón and returned for a visit to St. Joseph’s in Avila. While there, a relative of hers, Raphael Mejía, offered her an abandoned farm house at Duruelo some twentyfive miles away, which she could use as a monastery for the friars. At the end of June, on her way back to Medina del Campo, she visited the site, accompanied by another nun and Julian of Avila, the chaplain at St. Joseph’s. “I always remember the fatigue of that long roundabout journey,” Teresa wrote. The sun was scorching, and no one they met had ever heard of the site at Duruelo. They lost their way, wandered in circles for hours, and did not arrive at the property until dusk. And then they found the wooden farm house to be severely disappointing: “It had a fair-sized porch, a room divided into two, with a loft above it, and a little kitchen: that was all there was of the building which was to be our monastery.” Teresa’s companion said that the building was completely uninhabitable and that no one could endure living there, but the saint began to make plans for using the limited space: she determined that the porch could be used for a small chapel, and the loft as a choir, while the friars could sleep in the downstairs area. The building was so dirty that they were unable to spend the night there, and they had to sleep in a nearby church. The following morning they made their way to Medina del Campo, where Teresa immediately described the site at Duruelo to Anthony, sparing none of the harsh facts. She told him that if he had the courage to at least begin the foundation the Lord would provide better quarters in due time, but “the important thing was to make a start.” Anthony eagerly agreed to begin at Duruelo, adding that “he would be willing to live, not only there, but in a pigsty.” John returned to Medina del Campo from his school year at Salamanca in the early summer of that year, 1568, and Teresa took him with her to Valladolid where she was planning yet another convent. He remained with the nuns from August until October, while Teresa instructed John “all about our way of life, so that he might have an exact knowledge of everything.” It seems that at this point Teresa had a finer sense of the original Carmelite tradition than John, and she carefully explained to her young protégé the mechanics of the primitive rule. She later wrote that he was such a good man that “I could have learned much more from him than he from me.” But she adds, in her typical fashion: “I did not do so, however, but merely showed him the way the nuns lived.” Anthony came to visit Teresa in Valladolid, informing her of the preparations he had made and the articles he had gathered for the foundation at Duruelo. For some odd reason he had collected five clocks, and Teresa commented: “I thought that very amusing. I do not think he even had anything to sleep on.” It was arranged that John would go to Duruelo as soon as possible to prepare the building, while Anthony remained in Medina del Campo to conclude his affairs and 65 resign his office of prior. Teresa herself sewed the new habit to be worn by the reformed friars, a Carmelite habit which, like the nuns’ habits, was shorn of all excesses—the capuche was shortened, the extra folds of material were eradicated, the mantle reduced in length, and of course, the effete additions of the Renaissance age were removed: the gleaming buckles, the silver buttons on the sleeves, the ruffles and the lace collars. John tried on the habit in Valladolid, but did not wear it regularly until he arrived at Duruelo. He reached Duruelo sometime in early October, accompanied by a young man who had asked to become a lay brother in the reform. The two men worked on the dilapidated farm house until it was in some semblance of order and ready for community living. On November 27, Anthony arrived at Duruelo in the company of the provincial, Alonso González, and two more recruits: a young Carmelite from Medina del Campo named Joseph who was a deacon; and Luke de Celis, a Carmelite priest who wanted to live in the reformed monastery for a while before deciding whether he should join. On the following day, the first Sunday of Advent, the provincial offered Mass, and then Anthony, John, and the deacon Joseph approached the altar, where they formally renounced the mitigation of Eugene IV and promised to live according to the rule of 1247. After this significant ceremony they signed the deed of foundation: We, Brother Anthony of Jesus, Brother John of the Cross, and Brother Joseph of Christ, begin this day, 28 November 1568, to live the primitive rule. They followed Teresa’s practice of omitting their family names and adopting a religious title instead, and it is the first time that John used the title “of the Cross.” Anthony of Jesus was then appointed prior of the monastery by the provincial, and John of the Cross novice master. The reform of the friars had begun. Of the original group of five at Duruelo only two persevered through the first year. The lay brother aspirant soon departed; Luke de Celis became ill and returned to Medina del Campo; and Joseph of Christ disappeared from the official records, and is presumed either to have left the reform or to have died. However, other recruits came rapidly from the Carmelite monasteries in Castile, men who wanted to renounce the mitigation and follow the primitive rule, and by the end of the first year there were seven Carmelites at Duruelo. The community followed a brief and simple set of constitutions modeled closely on Teresa’s constitutions for the nuns, with strong emphasis on solitude, poverty, two hours of daily meditation, and the simple, one-tone recitation of the Divine Office. Teresa visited the new foundation three months after its inception while she was on her way to establish the nuns in Toledo, and she was deeply impressed with what she saw. “I was amazed to see what spirituality the Lord had inspired there,” she wrote. She noted that they had arranged the house according to her plan, and that the small loft which had holes in the roof was used as a choir where the friars chanted the office. They rose at midnight to chant matins, and remained in the choir for some time afterward in deep prayer, and Teresa observed that sometimes “their habits would be covered with snow without their having noticed it.” Following the primitive tradition of the prophetic vocation, the friars also preached in the neighboring areas, and Teresa commented on this: They used to go out and preach in many places in the district which were without instruction, and for that reason, too, I was glad that the house had been founded there, for they told me that there was no monastery near, nor any means of getting one, which was 66 01.24 1-24-2024Appendix H a great pity. In this short time they had gained such a good reputation that, when I heard of it, it made me extremely happy.... When they had preached and heard confessions and had returned to their monastery for a meal it would be very late. But this was very little concern to them, because they were so happy. She had only one complaint: “severity in matters of penance, in which they were very strict.” She cautioned Anthony to exercise prudence in the use of penitential practices, because she was afraid that a lack of moderation might destroy the foundation; and “it had cost me so many desires and prayers to obtain men from the Lord who would make a good beginning.” The friars were going barefooted at that initial stage, even on their preaching expeditions, but they later began to wear hemp sandals like the nuns before them. When Teresa left Duruelo she expressed her “great inward joy” at what had been accomplished. “For I saw quite well that this was a much greater grace than He had given me in enabling me to found houses for nuns.” Duruelo represented, as she wrote, “the beginnings of a restoration of the rule of the Virgin, His mother, and our Lady and Patroness.” The second monastery of reformed friars was founded quickly by Teresa in her typically impetuous manner. She was at Toledo in her new convent when she received a message from the Princess of Eboli, stating that she wanted Teresa to come to the little town of Pastrana near Guadalajara and found a convent there. The princess was the wife of Ruy Gómez de Silva, a close friend and advisor to King Philip II, and one of the most influential men in Spain. Teresa did not want to leave Toledo so soon, but she was reluctant to displease the princess because “we were in a very bad way, the reform of the friars having just begun, and from every standpoint it would be useful to have Ruy Gómez on our side, since he had such influence with the king.” As she was pondering the matter, the Lord spoke to her and told her to go immediately, “for there was far more afoot than that foundation.” She traveled first to Madrid, where she stayed in a Franciscan convent. The morning after her arrival she was introduced to two hermits who had been leading a solitary life by themselves for a number of years. She talked to the elder of the two men, Mariano Azaro, an Italian of extraordinary background: he was a doctor, a mathematician, an engineer, he had attended the Council of Trent as a legal advisor, and he had worked in close collaboration with King Philip II on navigation and irrigation problems in Spain; and when he decided to abandon all of this for a life of complete dedication to God he investigated every Order but found them all “unsuitable for a man of his type”; thus he had been living as a hermit for eight years. He also informed Teresa that Ruy Gómez had given him a good piece of property at Pastrana for use as a hermitage. Teresa was intrigued with this amazing Italian from Naples, and she tried to convince him that he should join her reform because “in our Order he could keep all his observances with less trouble, for they were the same as our own.” She talked to him at great length and concluded by telling him that “he could be of great service to God in this habit of ours.” Mariano replied that he wanted to think about it overnight, but Teresa’s dazzling persuasiveness had worked again and in the morning he agreed to join the reform, and to bring the other hermit with him, and to deed the property at Pastrana to her. Teresa later wrote that Mariano was “amazed to find that he had so quickly changed his mind, especially—as he occasionally mentions even to this day—at the suggestion of a woman.” 67 Teresa acted quickly. She wrote letters to the Carmelite provincial for permission to establish at Pastrana the second of the two monasteries for which the general had given permission; to Anthony, requesting him to leave for Pastrana immediately, so that he could supervise the beginning of this second monastery; and to Balthasar Nieto, a Carmelite at Medina, a celebrated and eloquent preacher, who had sought admission to the reform, asking him to enter the reform at Pastrana. Teresa and her nuns made habits for the friars from brown frieze given her by the prince, and then they waited for Anthony to arrive. Balthasar arrived first, but Mariano was so impatient to begin the reform in Pastrana that, with Teresa’s approval, they had Balthasar invest them in the habit and begin the observance of the primitive rule. The three new friars were known as Balthasar of Jesus, Mariano of St. Benedict, and John of the Misery.2 Anthony arrived four days late; on July 13, 1569, and remained to instruct the small community in Carmelite life. He eventually made Balthasar the prior. Mariano and John both entered the Order as lay brothers, but five years later, at the command of his superiors, Mariano was ordained to the priesthood. The monastery at Pastrana ultimately became the most celebrated and important monastery of the reform in Spain, the house of novitiate where generations of Carmelites were trained in the spirit of the primitive rule. For two centuries most of the general chapters of the reform in Spain were held at Pastrana. St. Teresa had less good fortune with the convent of nuns she established at Pastrana, and her problems were due to the capricious Princess of Eboli. … Teresa finally removed the entire community of nuns and relocated the convent in Segovia. In 1570 the overcrowded community of friars at Duruelo was moved to a new site some four miles away at Mancera de Abajo. Don Luis, the lord of Mancera de Abajo, gave the property to the Carmelites because he felt indebted to Anthony of Jesus. When his wife was in perilous labor at the end of a particularly difficult pregnancy, Don Luis asked Anthony to visit his wife. The prior of Duruelo laid his scapular on the sick woman, and her child was born quickly and safely. In gratitude, Don Luis gave the Carmelites a new church he had just built, and he constructed a monastery for the friars adjacent to it. Teresa said of the church: “I never saw anything more beautiful in my life.” On June 11, the seven friars from Duruelo walked in a silent procession from Duruelo to Mancera de Abajo, with Anthony of Jesus and John of the Cross leading them, to take possession of their new monastery. Thus by the summer of 1570 a healthy reform movement was flourishing in the Castilian province of Spain. There were two monasteries of friars, Mancera de Abajo and Pastrana, and six convents of nuns, all following the primitive Carmelite rule. The general in Rome, John Rossi, was pleased with the movement, but he was watching it very carefully because he did not want it to get out 2 John of the Misery was born John Narduch in Naples. He was a painter and sculptor by profession, but he had joined Mariano to live with him as a hermit. As a lay brother in the reform he continued to paint occasionally, and he had St. Teresa sit for his famous portrait of her. During the period of persecution against the reform he became frightened and rejoined the mitigation for a time, but he was ultimately accepted back into the reform again. His last years were saddened by paralysis and blindness, and he died in z6i6. His name in the original Spanish is Juan de la Miseria. “Miseria” has no precise English counterpart, and “misery” is only an approximation. The word implies humility and abjection, a posture of nothingness before Almighty God. Such terms of self-contempt were frequently used in Spanish religious life at that time: one nun wrote Teresa and signed the letter “Elizabeth of the Dunghill”; and Teresa responded tartly, “I hope you mean that, and they are not just words.” 68 01.24 1-24-2024Appendix H of hand as had the Albi reform. However, Rossi regarded Teresa’s reform as fundamentally a Spanish phenomenon, and not a real solution to his nagging problem: the reform of the entire Order. When Rossi assumed the leadership of the Order in 1562 the prolonged Council of Trent was drawing to a close. The Council had sparked a vigorous reform movement within the entire Church which ultimately eradicated the most grievous abuses of the Renaissance era. Rossi rode on the crest of this cleansing tide in the Church and attempted to reform his own Order. He was able, by dint of his forceful and sometimes ruthless efforts, to stamp out most of the more serious faults, especially the moral ones, but he was unable to effect a fundamental change of spirit. The Order now seemed to be wedded to the fifteenth-century mitigation, rather than to the original thirteenth-century tradition. Until the end of his life Rossi unceasingly urged a return to the original Carmelite ideal. --- **Source:** Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites, *Formation I Year B: I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life* (US National Formation Program, 2024).