Chapter XIII

How and by whom was founded the first House of Barefoot

Carmelite friars, in 1568.

BEFORE I went to that foundation at Valladolid, I had already agreed, as I have before said, with the Father Fray Antonio of Jesus, then Prior of the Carmelite Monastery of St Anne's at Medina, and with Fray Juan of the Cross, that if a friars' monastery of the primitive Rule were founded, they should be the first to enter it. As I had no means of getting a house, I did nothing but commend it to our Lord. For, as I have said, I was well satisfied with those Fathers; because in the year after I had spoken about it to Brother Antonio of Jesus, the Lord had tried him with difficulties and he had borne them with great perfection: while of Brother John of the Cross, no trial was needed, because, even while he was living among the unreformed Fathers of the Cloth¹, he always lived a life of great perfection and strictness.

It pleased our Lord, having given me the chief thing, brothers to begin with, to provide for the rest. A gentleman of Avila, Don Rafael, to whom I had never spoken, came to know — I do not know or remember how — that we desired to found a monastery of Barefoot friars, and he came to me to offer to give me a house he had in a little place of perhaps not twenty inhabitants. He used it for a farmer who collected the rent in kind from that part of his property. I gave praise to our Lord and thanked him much, although I saw what sort of a house it must be. He told me that it was on the way to Medina del Campo; and as I was going there for the foundation at Valladolid, since it is on the direct route, I could see it. I said I would: and so I did: for I set out from Avila in June with one companion and the chaplain of St Joseph's, Father Julian of Avila, the priest who, as I have said, helped me in these journeys.

We started early in the morning. As we did not know the way, we went wrong: and as the place is little known, we could not get much information about it. So we travelled that day with great weariness, for the sun was very strong: when we thought we were close to the place, we found we had as far again to go. I shall never forget the fatigue and perplexity we went through in that journey. So we arrived but little before nightfall. When we went into the house, it was in such a condition of extreme dirtiness that we dared not spend the night there: also there were a great many harvesters there. It had a fair entrance², and a room with an alcove with a garret above, and a little kitchen: this was the whole of the .edifice which was to serve as our monastery. On thinking it over, I thought that the entrance might be made into a chapel and the attic into a choir for saying Office, for it would do well for that, and the room to sleep in. My companion, although she was much better than I, and much given to penance, could not bear to think of my making a monastery there; and so she said to me, " Assuredly, Mother, there is no one, however good, whose spirit could stand this: do not think of it." The Father who was travelling with me thought the same as my companion: but when I told him what I planned, he did not oppose me.

We went to spend the night in the church, because we were so very tired that we did not want to spend it watching.

When we got to Medina, I spoke at once to Father Fray Antonio and told him what had taken place, and said that if he had the courage to live there for a time, I was certain that God would soon make things better: it was everything to make a beginning. That which the Lord has now done seemed to me, so to say, as present and as certain as I now see it: and indeed much more than what I have seen up to the present: although at the time that I write this there are, by God's goodness, ten monasteries of Barefoot³ friars. I told him that I did not believe the late Provincial or the present one would give us a licence (for the foundations had to be with their consent, as I said at the beginning) if they saw us in a very well-appointed house — let alone that we had no means of getting one; but that in that little place and house they would think it did not matter. He answered — for to him God had given more courage than to me — that he was ready to live not only there but in a pigsty. Fray Juan of the Cross was of the same mind.

Now we sought to obtain the leave of those two Fathers whom I have mentioned; for it was on that condition that our Father General had given us the licence. I trusted in our Lord to obtain it: and so I bade Father Fray Antonio take pains to do all he could to get together something for the house, while I went with Fray Juan of the Cross to the foundation of Valladolid, which I have narrated: and as we were there some days with workmen to repair the house, without enclosure, I had an opportunity of shewing Father Fray Juan of the Cross all our ways of going on, so that he should carry away a thorough knowledge of everything, of our mortification as well as of our sisterliness, and of our Recreation which we have all together, which is all so quietly done that it serves but to shew the Sisters' faults and to afford a little refreshment to enable us to endure the rigour of the Rule. Fray Juan was so good that I, at least, could have learned much more from him than he from me: but this was not what I did; I only shewed him the Sisters' way of going on.

God was pleased that Fray Alonso Gonzalez, the Provincial of our Order, whose leave I had to get, should be at Valladolid: he was an old man, of very good stuff and straightforward. When I asked him, I said so much to him of the account he would have to give to God if he hindered so good a work, and His Majesty so disposed him to agree, that he softened greatly towards our projects. When Dona Maria de Mendoza came with her brother the Bishop of Avila, who has always favoured and protected us, they succeeded in arranging it with him and with Father Fray Angel de Salazar, the late Provincial, from whom I feared all the difficulty. But afterwards there arose circumstances which necessitated the good offices of Dona Maria de Mendoza. And these friends, I believe, helped us much: notwithstanding, even without this timely help, the Lord, I believe, would have disposed his heart towards us, as He did that of the Father General, far though it had been from his mind.

Oh, valame Dios! how many things I have seen in these foundations which seemed impossible, and how easy it has been to His Majesty to make the ways plain! And how am I covered with confusion that, having seen all that I have seen, I am not better! Now that I see it written down, I am amazed, and I desire that our Lord should make everyone understand how in these foundations what we creatures have done is nothing. The Lord has ordered it all, working from such poor beginnings that His Majesty alone could have raised it to what it is now. May He be blessed for ever!

Footnotes

1. The Calced Carmelites were spoken of as Fathers of the Cloth (del Pano) because their habit and cloak were usually of cloth, instead of serge, which was worn by the Discalced. ↩

2. [The entrance had no floor above it, but went up to the roof, and the attic had openings or squints into it. The house had only two stories. Tr.] ↩

3. The first were Duruelo and Mancera, then Pastrana (1569), Alcala (1570), Baeza (1572), Seville (1573). Afterwards some unreformed monasteries accepted the reform. ↩