Which the two young lords, who were the bishop’s nephews, solemnly swore to perform. Whereupon they were dubbed knights by Count Raymond of Burgundy, after which they departed for Toledo to kiss the king’s hand.
Not far from the church of Santiago is the convent of Nuestra Señora de la Gracia on the very edge of the hill, inhabited by Augustinian nuns. The church stands on the site of an ancient mosque. The entrance is shaded by a portico with granite pillars. Our guide rang the bell at the convent door, saying: “Ave Maria Purissima!” “Sin peccado concebida,” responded a mysterious voice within, as from an oracle. St. Teresa attended school here, and several memorials of her are shown by the nuns. St. Thomas of Villanueva, the Almsgiver, who is said to have made his vows as an Augustinian friar the very day Luther publicly threw off the habit of the order, was for a time the director of the house, and often preached in the church, which we visited. It consists of a single aisle, narrow and lofty, with the gilt retable over the altar, as in all the Spanish churches, and a tomb or
two of some Castilian noblemen at the side. The pulpit, in which saints have preached, is a mere circular rail against the wall, ascended by steps. When used it is hung with drapery. On the same side of the church is a picture of the young Teresa beside her teacher, Maria Briceño, a nun of fervent piety, to whom the saint said she was indebted for her first spiritual light. This nun, who, it appears, conversed admirably on religious subjects, told her pupil one day how in her youth she was so struck on reading the words of the Gospel, “Many are called, but few are chosen,” that she resolved to embrace the monastic life; and she dwelt on the rewards reserved for those who abandon all things for the love of Christ—a lesson not lost on the eager listener.
At the end of the church is a large grating, through which we looked into the choir of the nuns, quiet and prayerful, with its books and pictures and stalls. Two nuns, with sweet, contemplative faces, were at prayer, dressed in queer pointed hoods and white mantles over black habits. At the sides of the communion wicket stood the angel of the Annunciation and Raphael with his fish—gilded statues of symbolic import.
One of the most interesting places in Avila is the convent of San José, on the little Plaza de las Madres, the first house of the reform established by St. Teresa. The convent and high walls are all of granite and prison-like in their severity of aspect, but we were received with a kindness by the inmates that convinced us there was nothing severe in the spirit within. It is true we found the doors most inhospitably closed and locked, even those of the outer courts generally left open, and
we were obliged to hunt up the chaplain, who lived in the vicinity, to come to our aid. We thought he would prove equally unsuccessful in obtaining entrance, for he rang repeatedly (giving three strokes each time to the bell, we noticed), and it was a full quarter of an hour before any one concluded to answer so unwelcome a summons from the outer world. We began to suppose them all in the state of ecstasy, and the nun who at length made—her appearance, we were going to say—herself audible spoke to us from some inaccessible depth in a voice absolutely beatific, as if she had just descended from the clouds. We never heard anything so calm and sweet and well modulated. Thanks to her, we saw several relics of St. Teresa, whom she invariably spoke of as “Our holy Mother.” She also gave us bags of almonds and filberts, and branches of laurel, from the trees planted in the garden by the holy hands of their seraphic foundress.
The church of this convent is said to be the first church ever erected in honor of St. Joseph. There were several chapels before, which bore his name, in different parts of Europe—for example, one at Santa Maria ad Martyres at Rome—but no distinct church. St. Teresa was the great propagator of the devotion to St. Joseph, now so popular throughout the world. Of the first eighteen monasteries of her reform, thirteen were placed under his invocation; and in all she inculcated this devotion, and had his statue placed over one of the doors. She left the devotion as a legacy to the order, which has never ceased to extend it. At the end of the eighteenth century there were one hundred and fifty churches of St. Joseph in the Carmelite Order
alone. His statue is over the door of the church at Avila, and beside him stands the Child Jesus with a saw in his hand. “For is not this the carpenter’s son?”
The church consists of a nave with round arches and six side chapels, the severity of which is relieved by the paintings and inevitable gilt retables. A statue of St. Joseph stands over the altar. The grating of the nuns’ choir is on the gospel side, opposite which is a painting of St. Teresa with pen in hand and the symbolic white dove at her ear. Jesus, Maria, José are successively carved on the key-stones of the arches of the nave.
The first chapel next the epistle side of the altar contains the tomb of Lorenzo de Cepeda, St. Teresa’s brother, who entered the army and went to South America about the year 1540, where he became chief treasurer of the province of Quito. Having lost his wife, a woman of rare merit (it is related she died in the habit of Nuestra Señora de la Merced), he returned to Spain with his children, after an absence of thirty four years, and established himself at a country-seat near Avila. He had a great veneration for his sister, and placed himself under her spiritual direction. Not to be separated from her, even in death, he founded this chapel at San José’s, which he dedicated to his patron, San Lorenzo, as his burial-place. His tomb is at the left as you enter, with the following inscription: “On the 26th of June, in the year 1580, fell asleep in the Lord Lorenzo de Cepeda, brother of the holy foundress of this house and all the barefooted Carmelites. He reposes in this chapel, which he erected.”