The Book of the Foundations
Teresa of Ávila’s own narrative of the convents she founded after St Joseph’s at Ávila, from Medina del Campo in 1567 onwards. It tells how she obtained leave to found houses of friars and how John of the Cross joined her reform.
The book continues the story that Teresa’s the Life of Teresa of Jesus breaks off. She says in its prologue that she began it at Salamanca in 1573 on the order of her confessor, and she carried it on as the foundations continued. Each chapter or group of chapters tells how one house came into being: the journeys, the search for a building, the benefactors, the opposition, and the first mass. Along the way she gives advice to her prioresses and stories of individual nuns.
For the history of the Discalced Carmelites it is the founder’s own record, written close to the events and from inside them. She is candid about setbacks and about people, including the first two friars, of whom she did not at first think one strong enough. Her dates are sometimes given from memory, as when she says that the first mass at Duruelo was said on “the first or second Sunday in Advent” of 1568 and that she does not remember which. The notes of the edition linked here add dates and names from later Carmelite histories.
Cited in
- 24 August 1562, firm date