The Carmelite Reform and the Spanish Mystics

Teresa of Ávila had spent more than twenty years as a Carmelite nun in a large, comfortable, sociable convent when she concluded that the life she had promised was not the life she was living. In 1562 she founded a small house, St Joseph's in Ávila, under a stricter rule — poverty, enclosure, few sisters, long hours of silent prayer. And spent the rest of her life travelling Spain founding others, arguing with officials, and writing books about prayer she had never intended to publish. In 1568 a young friar, John of the Cross, joined the reform on the men's side and became its greatest poet. Both were watched by the Inquisition and opposed from inside their own order, and John spent nine months imprisoned by his own brethren. Which is when he wrote some of his finest verse.