Chapter XXVI

Continues the account of the Foundation at Seville. Of the first nun who joined the Convent, and of her remarkable history.

You may well imagine, my daughters, the joy we felt that day. My own, I can tell you, was very great, especially in seeing that I was leaving the Sisters in so good a house in so good a situation, and that the monastery was known; and that there were nuns in the house who had money enough to pay the greater part of the price of the house, so that with those who should be received to make up the number¹, if they brought in only a little, they would be left free of debt. And above all, it cheered me to have enjoyed the fruit of our labours. But, when I ought to have taken some rest, I went off. For this festival was the Sunday before Whitsunday, 1576, and I started immediately on the following Monday, because the heat was becoming great, and in order, if possible, not to travel at Whitsuntide, but to spend it at Malagon; for I had desired to stay there some day: and therefore I hastened my movements. I should have liked to hear mass once in the chapel, but this was not the Lord's will.

The Sisters' joy was tempered by my departure; for they felt it much, as we had been together that year and gone through so many troubles. As I have said, the worst troubles I do not set down here. For I think (except the foundation at Avila, for with that there is no comparison) that no foundation has cost me so much as this one, because my trials were mostly interior. May it please the Divine Majesty that He may always be served therein, for then the troubles are as nothing. And so I hope He will be; for His Majesty began to draw good souls to that house: and about those who remained there of the nuns whom I took with me, which was five, I have already told you what can be told — which is the least part — of how good they were.

Of the first who entered there I wish to speak, because it will give you pleasure. She is a girl who was the daughter of very good Christian parents. Her father came from the mountains. When she was very young, about seven, an aunt of her's who was childless begged her of her mother to live with her. She took her home, and made much of her, shewing her all due affection. Some of her women must have been in hopes that she would leave them her property; and it was clear that, if she cared for the child, she would wish it rather to go to her. So they agreed to avert that contingency by a devil's deed. They accused the child of wishing to kill her aunt: and said that for this purpose she had given one of them I do not know how many maravedis to get her some corrosive sublimate. When they told the aunt, as they all three said the same thing, she at once believed them: and so did the child's mother, who is a most virtuous woman. She took the child and brought her home, thinking she was bringing up a girl who would be a very wicked woman. Beatrice of the Mother of God — for that is her name — told me that every day for more than a year she beat and punished her, and made her sleep on the floor, to make her confess such a great sin. As the little girl said she had not done it, and did not know what corrosive sublimate was, she thought much worse of her, seeing her obstinate enough to deny it. The poor woman was miserable at seeing her so stubborn in denying it, thinking that she could never amend. It was a wonder that the little girl did not accuse herself in order to escape such torments; but as she was innocent, God enabled her always to speak the truth. And as His Majesty always protects those who are not to blame, He sent two of these women such a grievous sickness that it seemed as if they had raging madness. They sent secretly for the little girl to come to her aunt, and begged her pardon; and, seeing themselves at the point of death, they retracted their charge: and the third, who died in childbirth, did the same. Finally all three died in torments, in requital of what they had made that innocent child suffer. This I have heard not only from herself: for her mother, when she saw her a nun, being distressed to think of all her illtreatment of her, told it me together with other things — for great were the girl's sufferings. Though she was a very good Christian, God permitted her, knowing no better, to be so cruel to her daughter, though she greatly loved her. She is a very truthful and religious woman.

When the child was perhaps just over twelve, she conceived a great devotion towards the Saints of Mount Carmel, from reading a book about the life of St Anne: for it says there that St Anne's mother (I think her name was Merenciana) often went to speak with them; and hence she conceived such a great devotion to the Order of our Lady that she immediately vowed chastity and to be a nun in that Order. She observed many times of solitude and prayer, when she could. God gave her great graces in her prayer, and so did our Lady, and very special ones. She would have liked to become a nun without delay, but dared not because of her parents: no more did she know where to find this Order; for it was a curious thing that, though there was at Seville a convent of the Mitigated Rule, she never knew of it until she heard of our convents, which was many years later.

When she came to the age for marrying her, her parents arranged a marriage for her, though she was full young for her age; but she was the only child they had. (For though they had had others, they all had died; and this one, who was the least beloved, remained to them. For when there befell her what I have narrated, she had one brother living, who took her part and said they ought not to believe it.) They had already completely arranged the marriage, never thinking that she would do anything else: and when they came to tell her, she told them of the vow she had made not to marry, and that she would not do it for anything they could do to her, not if they killed her.

The devil blinded them, or God permitted it, that she might suffer as a martyr, but they thought she must have misbehaved herself in some way, and therefore was unwilling to marry. And as they had already given their word, and they felt what an affront it was to the other party, they gave her so many beatings and inflicted such tortures, even to hanging her up and throttling her, that it was only a chance they did not kill her. God Who had need of her for other things preserved her life. She told me that towards the end she hardly felt anything, because she called to mind what St Agnes had suffered, for the Lord brought it to her memory, and it was a happiness to her to suffer something for Him, and she kept offering it up to Him. They thought she would die; for she was three months in bed, unable to move.

It seems a very strange thing how her parents could have thought such evil of a girl who never left her mother's side, and whose father, as I heard, lived very quietly. For she was always religious and virtuous, and so charitable that she gave away everything she could get. If our Lord wills to bestow the favour of suffering on any one, His means are many. However, for some years God had kept shewing them the virtues of their daughter, so that they gave her whatever she wanted to give in alms; and their persecutions were turned into kindnesses. Nevertheless, all was wearisome to her, for the mind she had to be a nun: and so, as she told me, she lived dissatisfied and sad.

Thirteen or fourteen years before Father Gracian went to Seville, when there was no thought of Barefoot Carmelites, something happened. She was with her father and mother and two other neighbours, and a Brother of our Order, habited in serge, as they now are, and barefoot, entered the room. They say his countenance was ruddy and venerable, but he was so ancient that his long beard was like threads of silver1. He placed himself close to her, and began to say a few words in a language which neither she nor anyone else understood; and, when he had done 1 Thus the Prophet Elijah was usually represented. speaking, he made the sign of the cross over her thrice, saying, ' * Beatriz, God mak e thee strong, "and departed . Nobody stirred while he was there, but were as in a maze. Then her father asked her who it was. She supposed that her father knew him. In great haste they arose to seek for him, but he was seen no more. She was left greatly comforted, and all were amazed: for they saw that the thing was from God: and so they began, as I have said, to think great things of her. After this, all those years went by, I think fourteen, in which she continued steadfast in serving our Lord and praying that He would accomplish her desire.

She was in great sadness, when Father Master Fray Gerónimo Gracian went to Seville. One day she went to hear a sermon at a church at Triana, where her father lived, not knowing who would be the preacher. It was the Father Master Gracian. She saw him come out to receive the benediction: and when she saw the habit and the bare feet, at once it recalled the monk whom she had seen; for the habit was the same, though the countenance and the age were different, for Father Gracian was not yet thirty. She told me that she almost fainted with the excess of joy. For though she had heard that a monastery had been founded at Triana, she did not know that it was of the Carmelite Order.

From that day she set to work at once to get Father Gracian to hear her Confessions: and it pleased God that this also should cost her much; for she went about a dozen times, more or less, and he would never hear her. She was young and good looking, for she was not then seven and twenty; and he, being very reserved, kept off from any communications with people like her. At last one day when she was in the church crying — for she too was very shy — a woman asked her what was the matter, and she said that for so long she had been wanting to speak to the Father who was then •

hearing Confessions, and could not tell how. The woman took her to him and begged that he would hear this girl. And so he came to be her ordinary confessor. When he saw a soul so richly endowed, he was glad; and he comforted her by telling her that possibly Barefoot nuns might be coming there, and he would see that they received her at once. And so it was: for the first thing he bade me was that she should be the first we received, for he was satisfied with the state of her soul; and so he told her.

When we went there, she made a great point of her parents' not hearing of it, because if they did, she would not succeed in coming to us. And so on that very day, Trinity Sunday, she left the women who went with her (for her mother did not go to Confession with her, and it was a long way to the Barefoot monastery, where she always went to Confession, and gave away much in alms, and her parents through her). She had arranged with a lady, a great servant of God, to fetch her to us. This lady was well known in Seville as a servant of God, occupied in good works. So the women who went with her let her go, on her saying that she would soon come back. She took her habit and her serge cloak, so heavy that I do not know how she could move; but it was nothing to her for the joy she felt. Her only fear was lest it might be noticed how loaded she was, and she might be stopped: for it was very different from her usual way of going about. What will not the love of God effect! And since she already had given up human respect² nor thought of anything but the fear lest her desire should be baulked, we opened the door to her without delay. I sent to tell her mother. She came as one beside herself, but she said that she already saw what a favour God was doing to her daughter. And, although sorrowfully, she accepted it without taking to extreme courses such as refusing to speak to her daughter, as some others do: on the contrary she continually gave us large alms. The spouse of Jesus Christ began to enjoy the fruition of her great desire. She was so lowly and such a lover of work that we had enough ado to get the broom away from her: though she had been so waited upon at home, all her pleasure was in hard work. Her happiness quickly made her grow much fatter; and her father thought a great deal of this, so that her parents soon were pleased at her being with us.

That she might not have such complete rejoicing without sufferings, some two or three months before the time for her Profession, she experienced great temptations: not that she determined to give up her Profession, but it seemed to her a very dreadful thing. All the years of her suffering for the sake of what she now enjoyed were forgotten: the devil so fiercely beset her that she could do nothing with herself; but in spite of all, doing the greatest violence to herself, she so overcame him that in the midst of the storm she covenanted to be professed. Three days before her Profession, our Lord, Who must have been only waiting to prove her constancy the more, visited her and put the devil to flight and comforted her very specially. This left her so happy that those three days she seemed beside herself with joy, and with great cause, for it was a great mercy. Not many days after her Profession, her father died, and her mother took the habit in the same convent, and bestowed on it everything she possessed: and mother and daughter are living in the greatest happiness, to the edification of all the nuns, and serving Him Who had shewn them such great mercy. Before another year had gone by, another girl also came, greatly against the will of her parents. And thus the Lord keeps peopling His house with souls so desirous of pleasing Him that no rigour nor enclosure puts them from it. May He be for ever blessed and praised for ever. Amen.

Footnotes

1. [i.e., thirteen. Tr.] ↩

2. [Honra. Often wrongly translated honour, whereby St Theresa has been made to teach that religion and honour are opposed. Honour, as an inner principle, is honor. There is the same sort of distinction between our English honour, the inward, and honours, the outward dignity. Tr.] ↩