The Teresian Constitutions

June 5, 2013

THE TERESIAN CONSTITUTIONS

In beginning this small essay on the Constitutions of Saint Teresa, our Mother, two memories spontaneously spring to mind: firstly that of her death, then that of the Chapter of AlcalÃ¡, celebrated the previous year in March 1581. For Discalced Carmelite Nuns this signifies, above all, the promulgation and publishing of the Teresian Constitutions.

Among the words spoken by the Saint on her death-bed, three things stand out, distilling the prevailing mood of Mother Teresa already prepared to celebrate her final Passover. They are "Christ the Bridegroom", "Mother Church", and the "sinner" needing salvation, Teresa of Jesus. "The hour has come, my Spouse, for us to see one another" -- "I die a daughter of the Church" -- "a humbled contrite heart ... do not cast me away from your presence."

Besides this trilogy, unanimously mentioned by the witnesses at her Process for beatification, there stands out another statement of the Saint concerning the Rule and Constitutions. Nearly all the witnesses at her death-bed remembered it. She uttered it while waiting for the Viaticum -- her last Holy Communion. One of the young nuns, Constance of the Angels (a 21 year old), recorded it in this way: 'The Sisters were asking her to say something else, and she asked them only to observe their Rule and Constitutions, and to obey their superiors. Joining her hands, she said, "My daughters and my ladies, I ask you for the love of God to take great care to observe your Rule and Constitutions. Take no notice of the bad example this wicked nun has given you, and for the love of God, pardon me".⁽¹⁾

The nuns of Alba, witnesses to her death, remembered not only her words but also the maternal tone and warmth with which the Saint said them. She herself "called for all the nuns and spoke to them with great fervour and delicacy telling them ...".⁽²⁾ It was said "with much fervour and conviction, with love for the nuns, calling them sisters and ladies, asking them insistently, for the love of God, to observe the Rule and Constitutions".⁽³⁾ Even more expressive was the testimony of Catalina of St Angelus, she "was approaching death ... and this witness saw that when she came to die, it was with great fervour and spirit, speaking with great love, fervour, spirit and fondness to the nuns, calling them 'sisters and my ladies', beseeching them with much insistence to keep their Rule and Constitutions, and encouraging them to keep poverty".⁽⁴⁾

These were not words made up on the spur of the moment. She uttered them many times in her life. Just a year before, in the letter of dedication of the Provincial, Fr Gracian, to the Constitutions of AlcalÃ¡ edited in Salamanca, he recalled them thus, "to the most religious Mother Teresa of Jesus, foundress of the monasteries of Discalced Carmelite nuns: The principal and most common counsel that I always heard her give them (the Saint to the nuns) was that they never let fall from their hands the law of God, the Rule and Constitutions of the Order, so that they read them each day, in order not to lose their grasp of understanding them, to stay in their memory to meditate upon them, and they do not slip from the heart so that they obey them perfectly and safeguard them..." He concludes his letter of dedication to the Saint thus: "Let your Reverence request our Lord and Our Lady the Virgin Mary that your daughters safeguard them as they are obliged, and that he gives me the grace always to serve you and to be pleasing to you in all things. I never neglect to ask his divine Majesty to keep us many years in as much good health and spirit as I desire and we have need of. Amen".

Four centuries distant, this instruction echoes the feelings of the Saint, with veneration and high esteem for her Constitutions and with the great desire that she and her spirit animate the life of the Teresian Carmel.

First of all we will explain the path followed by the Saint in drawing up the constitutional text, and secondly --by way of conclusion -- we will say something on the significance of these Constitutions and the place they have in the teaching of the Saint.

Some preliminary considerations: The Saint as legislator

1 From the foundation of Saint Joseph's in Avila, St Teresa could be considered almost on a par as foundress and legislator. As a foundress because of her charismatic inspirations. As a legislator by virtue of the pontifical briefs which reached her from Rome: " ... to the prioress and nuns who for a time have been (in St Joseph's), in the knowledge of the happy and good government of the said monastery, we give permission and the free faculty to have statutes and licit and honest ordinances ... and with our apostolic authority we ordain that these constitutions and ordinances... be from now on confirmed and they ought to be safeguarded without violation"⁽⁵⁾. These faculties were confirmed and repeated in the Bull of Pius IV, three years later (17/7/1565) with the express mention of "Teresa of Jesus, present abbess or mother... " of the convent of Saint Joseph.⁽⁶⁾

2. In her duty as legislator, St Teresa proceeded prudently, without haste, with restraint and aplomb. She hoped to experiment before legislating, according to the testimony of Maria of St Joseph (Salazar). This explains the slow process of drawing up her Constitutions. They began with a brief outline in the first five years at St Joseph's in Avila, and reached their definitive form only in 1581.

For their elaboration the Saint also made use of the experience of others, especially communities of her day who were undergoing renewal or reform of life. 'With great prudence she set out to examine what there was in other religious orders and she took from them what seemed to agree with her Order, and what did not suit she left aside . . . She went to the Monastery of Our Lady of Respect at Valladolid, Discalced religious of the Order of St Francis, renowned for observance and piety, and from there she retained frugality and simplicity of relations between religious, and whatever seemed best to her . . .'⁽⁷⁾

Above all Our Holy Mother made use of the legislation and religious experience of the community of the Incarnation. From the latter monastery, she had, right from the beginning, retained as the basic norm the Primitive Rule of Carmel, She also used the Constitutions, 'the old Constitutions' she called them, but only as a point of reference for beginning the life at St Joseph's and for working out new laws. She did not adopt the old text for the drafting of the new one. At times she even used them as a basis for putting forward a contrary prescription in order to make the new way of life different. Thus in the saint's hands the Rule and Constitutions took on a different meaning: the Rule established and guaranteed continuity with the origins of Carmel; the Constitutions express the originality of the charism and of the style of religious life in the Teresian convents.

3. All her life St Teresa felt a sense of responsibility with regard to the Constitutions of her Carmels. Yet as the foundations went on increasing and as the new family was being constituted into a new body of religious, the legislative powers of the Saint continued to diminish and she herself passed into the background while yet remaining vigilant and active up to the very end.

It does not seem that Pius IV formally approved the primitive Constitutions of St Joseph's. ⁽⁸⁾

John Baptist Rubeo, the General of the Order, approved them between 1567 and 1569. And, by virtue of this authorization, they were from that time on, officially designated as the Constitutions of Fr General.

When the time came for the Chapter of separation (AlcalÃ¡ 1581), the powers sought from Rome for convoking the Chapter and drawing up legislation were no longer addressed to the Mother Foundress. On the contrary the brief for erecting the Province does not mention her. It attributed the commencement of the new family to "some religious" who, towards 1565 (!) proposed to keep "the primitive Rule in its full and strict observance". This brief conferred legislative power on the AlcalÃ¡ Chapter and its members, rescinding all other faculties that had been conceded previously and among them evidently, those granted to Mother Teresa of Jesus almost twenty years earlier. As we shall see, this legal tightening-up did not prevent St Teresa, at that particular moment nor later on, from continuing to make herself responsible for the life of her Carmels and the laws that were to animate them.

First legislative step: The Constitutions of St Joseph's, Avila

1. We do not know when the Saint drew up constitutions for the first time. It is probable that the life at the Carmel of St Joseph's began in all simplicity, based on the Rule, animated by the presence of the Mother Foundress, without any other statutory additions. It is equally probable that on writing the Life and the Way (in the years 1565 and 1566 respectively) she had already sketched a first draft of the Constitutions. According to the Life, at St Joseph's they not only followed the prescriptions of the Rule, they followed "many other things conformable with this which the Sisters found light and made and kept other rules which seemed to them necessary to keeping our own Rule more perfectly: I hope in the Lord that what has been begun will prosper, as His Majesty told me it would". (Life 36:27) In the first draft of the Way the allusions to these Constitutions of St Joseph's are equally numerous. This is the text which Our Holy Mother presented to the General in 1567 and which he approved in view of the foundations which would be made in future under obedience to him. This approval was referred to by Fr GraciÃ¡n, as well as the Provincial of Castile Angel de Salazar, the General himself and the prologue of the 1581 Constitutions.

2. But these first-fruits of the Teresian pen have not come down to us. We know of their contents only indirectly. Towards 1568-1569, they served as a basis for the rough-draft of the Constitutions drawn up for the Discalced Friars by the initiators of Duruelo. The Saint took a special interest in them so that, before commencing, they learnt the reformed way of Carmelite life from her and from her Carmels. It was to this end that she had taken Fr John of the Cross, young, readily pliable and full of promise as he was, along with her to Valladolid so that he would get to know about "our whole way of life, so that he might have an exact knowledge of everything, both of the mortification we practice and of the sisterly way in which we live and the recreation which we take in common . . . the way in which the Sisters live" (Foundations 13:5 and earlier 10:4).

Once at Duruelo, Frs Anthony of Jesus and John of the Cross embraced the primitive Rule and adopted the Teresian Constitutions in order to work out their own. The rough copy in Fr Anthony's handwriting has come down to us. It is preserved in the General Archives of the Calced Carmelites in Rome. It was prepared for the revision and signature of Fr Rubeo, the General.

3. The manuscript draft from Duruelo is extremely interesting from the Teresian point of view. Fr Anthony intended to copy the Saint's text closely, transcribing it throughout from the feminine into the masculine and introducing modifications made necessary by the clerical status of the new community, or which he himself judged opportune. Thanks to this close external fidelity we know through the Duruelo text what the Constitutions of St Joseph's were like. They were the same as the ones that remained in force in the Carmels of Medina, MalagÃ³n and perhaps Valladolid, namely:

a) It was an extremely brief text, hardly longer than the Rule.

b) Fundamentally, these Constitutions proposed to give the outline of a day in Carmel. In fact they concluded with this modest assertion: "The whole of the above (i.e. the whole of the Duruelo text) concerns the arrangement of the horarium". Clocks and time-tables must have been an important preoccupation of Fr Anthony in these beginnings, according to what the Saint already observed with some amusement. (Foundations 14:1)

c) There was no distinction between friars, choir or non-choir.

d) The chapter headings of the eight subjects that the text was divided into can give us some idea of the legislative points, namely 1) the order to be observed in spiritual matters, 2) The days for receiving the Lord, 3) temporal matters, 4) fast and abstinence, 5) enclosure, 6) novices, 7) the lesser offices, 8) the care of the sick.

4. The eight subjects, in the same order, remained in the text of the Constitutions which the Saint completed and later sent round her Carmels. As they appear in this first draft, they compose a very simple treatise, a direct outpouring of the Teresian charism so recently manifested. It begins with spiritual matters: the liturgy and personal prayer. There is special attention given to the custody of the house and the recollection of the Sisters: the enclosure. It ends with the eighth point on the love of the sick, work, recreation, sisterly correction and the poverty of the house.

In the little convent of St Joseph, this elementary framework of norms together with the Rule, sufficed and was later taken up and high-lighted through the teaching and instructions contained in the Way of Perfection.

The three texts -- Rule, Constitutions, Way -- described the manner of life established in the house.

From this life and these Constitutions we possess a kind of authoritative synthesis such as was made by Fr GraciÃ¡n a few years later in his account of the Chapter of AlcalÃ¡. Here are his words, "... convents of Discalced friars and nuns began to be founded, subject to the government of the Calced Provincial with the laws and Constitutions given them by the said most Reverend General according to the primitive Rule which contained penance, humility, contempt of the world, manual work and prayer.⁽⁹⁾

The Second Step: Constitutions for all the Carmels

1. From 1567 on, foundations multiplied. With them increased not only the Saint's experience with regard to religious life, but also the demands made on her by these same Teresian Carmels in the process of formation and who required a more complete codification of her Constitutions. The grounds for this were, for example:

a) the new juridical situation: from the second foundation of Medina, and then on, the houses were all under the jurisdiction of the Order.

b) the variations with regard to matters of poverty and observance: from the time of the third foundation at Malagon there came into existence houses that had incomes and other dispensations from the Rule. In spite of this, the Saint insisted that there should be unity and consistency of life in all the Carmels. (Foundations 9:4)

c) Shortly afterwards, at the end of 1569, Apostolic Visitators began to tamper with the text. They were easily tempted to command "acts" that modified or overburdened the Teresian life and Constitutions and this very much in spite of the Saint's vigilance, for she was all for a simple form of legislation that would be moderate and stable and opposed to the authoritarian intrusions of those from outside who did not understand the life that was being lead in her Carmels.

d) Finally, manuscript copies of the Constitutions increased with the different Carmels. As a result of the new foundations the Saint had prescribed that, "Each convent shall have one copy of these Constitutions in the safe of three keys and other copies so that they can be read out once a week to all the assembled Sisters . . . and each Sister shall know them by heart . . . and let them try to re-read them from time to time and for that purpose let there be still more copies in the convent so that each one, when she so desires, can have them in her cell" (nÂº 57). As the copies grew more numerous our Holy Mother noticed that more and more variants and even contradictory statements were being put into them, at times as copyists' errors, and other times on a prioress's decision. In the Carmels for women she wanted to avoid at all costs that there should come about what was happening in the Discalced Friars where "in each house they did as they thought well" (Foundations 23:12).

2. These reasons kept the Saint on the alert in the matter of the text of her Constitutions, and all these considerations made her decide to revise and complete it. We do not know the exact date of this revision. Neither do we have the manuscript of the new text in her own handwriting. However, we do have a text that is reliable, faithfully edited by Fr Silverio of St Teresa⁽¹⁰⁾ and by successive editors of the Saint's works. It is a venerable text on many grounds. It is the one which the foundress took with her from foundation to foundation up until the year before her death. It is the one she herself offered to the Carmel of La Imagen, founded by her friend Mary of Jesus and faithfully observed in that monastery for many centuries. It is the text from which Fr GraciÃ¡n, in that very place, La Imagen, AlcalÃ¡, was to sift out and bring to light the charism of Mother Teresa. It is the text with which the Saint set on foot the second foundation of the Discalced Friars.⁽¹¹⁾ It was these pages that the Saint took to the Chapter of AlcalÃ¡ so that from them the definitive Constitutions could be worked out.

3. Here is a brief rÃ©sumÃ© of their contents, or rather of the new items introduced by the Saint:

a) Materially, the new text came to almost double the length of the former. To the eight subjects of the original text, nine new points were added, namely: a very short one on the dead (point 9); another, long and remarkable, on "the obligations of each office" (no. 10); six more briefer ones on the chapter of faults and the different categories of faults (nos. 11-16); and finally some other separate numbers on the reading of the Constitutions, the safe of three keys and the keeping of the books, on communal discipline and the different intentions for which it was taken (no. 17).

b) In this series of additions attention must be drawn to two markedly different types of material. On the one hand those which are Teresian in origin dealing with community life. On the other hand the penal code (points 11-16) which had not been drawn up by the Saint but which had been taken verbatim, as is known, from the texts of alien constitutions, probably on the initiative or stipulation of the Visitators. Certainly a section of recommendations so out of proportion and legalistic in character breaks the symmetry and upsets the moderation and simplicity of the Saint's Constitutions.

c) So then, the worth-while contributions to the text are found in points 9-11 and in the three last numbers. Without any doubt the most important of these is the section in which the Saint defined the most characteristic offices and functions in the life of the community: what she wanted the Prioress to be like, the sub-prioress, the mistress of novices, the discreets and right down to the sacristan and portress. These are important sketches for the description of community life and the type of close relationship that the foundress wanted to portray so vividly for her Carmels.

4. Right from the beginning of the new series of foundations, the Saint did all she could to get official approbation for her Constitutions. As we have mentioned, her Fr Provincial and Fr General accorded it to her in the first place. In confirmation of this, there is the witness of this Provincial at the Process of beatification of St Teresa: "this witness has seen and approved the Chapters and the Rule of the said monasteries of Discalced, of the nuns as well as of the friars, that the said Mother Teresa presented to the General of the Carmelite Order, who was then Friar John Baptist Rubeo, which General himself saw and approved the said Rule".⁽¹²⁾

In 1571, on taking up his office as Visitator, the Dominican Peter Fernandez not only asked for an account "of how they kept the Primitive Rule and the Constitutions that the said Religious were to observe" but he banned future Visitators "from having the power to alter anything at all in the Constitutions or make innovations".⁽¹³⁾

A short while afterwards, in 1576, the new Visitator, GraciÃ¡n, re-confirmed this for the Carmels of Castile and Andalusia on 7 May 1576.⁽¹⁴⁾

In these three cases it is evident that these attestations were made with the Saint's help, on her initiative and following her suggestions. A year later when the new Papal Legate, Philip Sega intervened, fresh incidents occurred which gave rise to grave fears. But the Saint succeeded in warding off these difficulties and managed to get her text of the Constitutions safely to the AlcalÃ¡ Chapter free from outside pressures. They were handed over to the chapter members directly, from the foundress's own hands.

Third step: the Constitutions of AlcalÃ¡ (1581)

This last stage of the Saint's Constitutions corresponds to the revised text promulgated on the occasion of the Chapter of AlcalÃ¡ in 1581. It is a text and an event that has been widely commented on by our historians. For this reason we shall be content to point out here only the most important facts.

1. Alerted by the great tribulations of the years 1577-1579, the Saint saw the importance that this Chapter of separation to erect a separate Province was going to have for her Carmels and she wanted that her Constitutions to be given official sanction in it.

The papal brief "Pie Consideratione" which erected the Province on 22 June 1580, conferred on the Chapter the faculties to "make, change, dispense with, organize and, if it seems good to them, to wholly abrogate and re-write whatever statutes and ordinances may be for the good of the Province . . ."⁽¹⁵⁾, for the Discalced friars as well as for the nuns.

For her part, the Saint took up an unequivocal stand: she wished to ensure that in this Chapter, the Constitutions of her Carmels would be fixed and authorised, but, if at all possible, that the chapter members as such should not meddle with them.

2. For the realisation of her plan she used the person most fitted for the purpose, Fr GraciÃ¡n. He was her best collaborator at that time: the one who best knew the nuns' life and laws and the mind of the foundress. He was the man called upon to organise the Chapter in collaboration with the Papal Delegate. The Saint foresaw him as the first Provincial of the Reform and this did indeed happen.

During the months preceding the Chapter there was a frequent exchange of letters between these two -- GraciÃ¡n and the Saint -- the purpose of which was to prepare the ground. Through the Papal Commissary, GraciÃ¡n sent an instruction to the Carmels that each community should send in its requests to the Chapter. The replies went through the Saint's hands. She reviewed and annotated them before passing them on to GraciÃ¡n. She herself, in successive letters almost up to the eve of the meeting sent a series of suggestions and requirements on matters that would have to be explained, perfected and modified in the Constitutions.

However, this last group, the personal suggestions of the Mother Foundress, were for GraciÃ¡n only and not for the Chapter members. It was his business to use them in the revision of the constitutional text. Thus the Saint's criteria would be fully effective while she herself preferred to remain at a distance from the Chapter meeting for various reasons.

3. In fact, the Chapter did scarcely any work in this domain. It gave very little time to the matter of the Constitutions (of either friars or nuns), a little more than three days according to GraciÃ¡n's meticulous account, namely the 7, 8 and 9 March. The matter came back for discussion on the 11^th, and as early as the 13^th "the Constitutions were published (at the meeting)" those of the friars as well as those of the nuns.⁽¹⁶⁾

These three or four days were hardly enough time for working on the Friar's Constitutions which had to be drawn up almost in their entirety. Before the meeting the Papal Commissary had already gathered around him Fathers GraciÃ¡n, Doria, Roca, Ambrose Mariano and the Rector of AlcalÃ¡, Elias of St Martin, for a discussion on the matter of the Constitutions: preferably those of the friars, if not exclusively theirs.

It is certain that GraciÃ¡n being so insistently urged on by the Saint worked to bring forward her Constitutions. So their presentation and promulgation appeared on the agenda of the Chapter. The Chapter itself would have a clear conscience that this was not a text that had to be worked out during the assembly -- as was the case with the friars' -- but the same text that was already in force among the nuns.

4. We do not know what was the practice followed in the Chapter for presenting the Saint's Constitutions. We do know the results. Whereas for the Discalced friars' Constitutions they had applied the norm from the papal brief which gave the faculty of "abrogating and re-writing", it was not so with the Teresian nuns' Constitutions. The prologue to the Constitutions expressly stated that they were promulgated by the Chapter: "because the laws and Constitutions you have had up till now are so holy and religious, made and ordained by men so respectable and endowed with authority, those we are giving you are not different laws but the same as you have had up till now." The same, only "adding, deleting, or changing a few small things that seemed to be for the good of religion" .⁽¹⁷⁾

"A few small things." Indeed GraciÃ¡n, who did the revising, had lovingly treated the Saint's text with utmost respect, showing insight into the finer points of the re-drafting. He incorporated into it nearly all the suggestions received from her in the last months. He gave a new order to the contents and restructured the work: not always with total success in some cases, but obliged to do so because of the spontaneous disorder of the preceding Teresian text. (We already know that the Saint's procedure was to keep on adding things, adding recommendations to the primitive text. The last of all followed the concluding "Deo gratias".) Finally, GraciÃ¡n had completed the work by adding indispensable points such as the one relating to the election of the Prioress (Ch.1)⁽¹⁸⁾

5. "On March 13, 1581, the Saint's Constitutions were solemnly promulgated in these words, "These are the Constitutions that the above-mentioned Apostolic Commissary, the Provincial and Definitors have made. We ordain, in our Chapter of the said Province of the Friars of the Order of Our Lady of Carmel of the Primitive Rule called Discalced, that these Constitutions which we approve are to be regarded as law so that they may be kept, and we command all the nuns of the said Province of the Primitive Rule called Discalced to live in conformity with them". (Salamanca edition 1581, 68)

They were signed by the Apostolic Commissary, the new Provincial GraciÃ¡n and the Definitors. Among these were John of the Cross and Anthony of Jesus, the two Discalced friars who had received the first outline of the Saint's text at Duruelo.

The rapid decline of the Teresian Constitutions

1. There had been a lapse in delicacy in the AlcalÃ¡ edition of the Constitutions. Not only was the name of Mother Teresa omitted but also all allusion to her and to her preliminary work of drafting.

The omission was certainly due to the juridical and not particularly pro-feminist mentality of the day and of these men. Even if the omission could perhaps be justified on the juridical plane, it resulted in a blurring of historical facts. In the prologue, as in the epilogue, allusion was made to the authors of the Constitutions prior to the Chapter in terms that completely exclude the Saint's authority.

Fr GraciÃ¡n himself had made it even more explicit in his introductory letter: the authors of the former Constitutional texts had been Fr Rubeo the General, the Apostolic Visitator Pedro HernÃ¡ndez and himself. "These, (the AlcalÃ¡ Constitutions) were taken in the first place from the former Constitutions of the Order and given by our most Reverend Father and Master Friar John Baptist Rubeo of Ravenna, Prior General. Later the very Reverend Peter FernÃ¡ndez, Apostolic Visitator for the Order, through our holy Father Pius V added a few resolutions and amplified a few points of the said Constitutions. In the same way, I made some additions as I was visiting this Congregation of Discalced Carmelite friars with an apostolic commission.... And finally, in this Provincial Chapter which is being held at AlcalÃ¡".⁽¹⁹⁾ We shall see the consequences of this innocent omission.

2. The omission did not inconvenience the Saint in the slightest. In this same month of March she already knew of the matter and rejoiced in it. She made haste to beg GraciÃ¡n for the new edition of the text. She succeeded in getting its publication promised for the same year, at the end of December.

It was the first Teresian work to come from the press and it was very well presented, with a beautiful picture of the Virgin as a frontispiece and the new coat-of-arms on the Teresian family on the back page. It was a volume of 96 pages, a pocket-sized 14 x 10 cms (5Â½ x 4 inches) containing Fr GraciÃ¡n's letters of introduction, the Rule of St Albert, the Constitutions and the "manner of giving the veil and the profession of Discalced Carmelite nuns". Its production had been personally looked after by Fr GraciÃ¡n at Salamanca.⁽²⁰⁾

In fact, it is this little book the Saint referred to on her death-bed, on 3 October the following year.

3. The Saint's aim in procuring the promulgation and printing of her Constitutions had been to give them stability, to keep intact their original moderation, to prevent inopportune insertions and to assure their future after her death. In a letter to GraciÃ¡n while he was still Visitator, she had protested against the multiplication of laws and the itch for innovations that certain superiors had: "Now your Reverence can judge how fatiguing all those regulations left by Fr John of Jesus are. In my opinion they only repeat the legislation of your Paternity's Constitutions. I cannot understand why he made them. That is what my nuns are afraid of, that some heavy-handed superior will come and weigh them down with extra regulations and overburden them. There is no point in that. It is strange that they do not think their visitations of any use unless they make new regulations ..."⁽²¹⁾

The Saint did not succeed in averting the danger. Hardly was she dead than it broke out again. Her death revived the crisis in the growth of the Reform which was aggravated by the conflict between GraciÃ¡n who was at her right hand in revising the Constitutions, and Fr Nicholas Doria who had succeeded him as Provincial. These were stormy days that we are about to look at now. In this paper, the only things that concern us are the facts that are indispensable for understanding the how and why of the rapid decline of the Constitutions.⁽²²⁾

The decline was completed during the decade following the death of the saint: 1582-92. As landmarks in the process we can fix the three editions of the Constitutions that followed one after the other in quick succession:

1588: Anne of Jesus' edition, at Madrid.
1590: the Latin edition, at Rome.
1592: Fr Doria's edition, at Madrid.
We will now take a look at each one of them.

4. We come to the first reprint which contained no changes and was almost a success. Anne of Jesus (Lobera) had it printed at Madrid. Two important episodes occurred just before it. The first was the recent Chapter of Valladolid in 1587. The nuns, fearing that the Saint's Constitutions might be altered and remodelled there, sent requests that they be left intact. Mary of St Joseph reports in her Ramillete de Mirra: "In the Valladolid Chapter, since various convents had been put on their guard, petitions were sent from all the convents, asking principally that since Our Holy Mother Teresa had arranged the Constitutions with such determination and such spirit, prayer and holiness, and since past Chapters and other superiors, for example the Apostolic Commissaries, Generals and Provincials had approved them and experience had shown what good had come from them, we entreat the Chapter not to start altering them or changing anything in them.

The Constitutions remained effectively intact.

The second incident occurred in connection with the formalities of this edition. As copies of the AlcalÃ¡ Constitutions were rare and as the number of Carmels and of nuns was growing, Anne of Jesus obtained permission from Fr Doria and the Consulta for some reprints on 15 August 1588, and while they were still in the press, she obtained a solemn confirmation of the Saint's text from the Papal Nuncio at Madrid, CÃ©sar Speciano. This was to be printed at the beginning of the new edition. The document was dated Madrid, 13 October 1588.⁽²³⁾ It was addressed to the nuns. Through it the former official silence on the subject of the Teresian origin of the Constitutions was to a large extent made good. It affirmed that "Teresa of Jesus, deceased, composed them under divine inspiration, as the first legislator and foundress of your Order".⁽²⁴⁾ The document specified in detail the norm relating to the silence enjoined by the Rule (after Night Prayer), and confirmed the Saint's text with "authority, to be binding in perpetuity", commanding the superiors of the Reform "not to change in any way anything whatever in them (the Constitutions), but rather to see that they are observed perfectly and inviolably".⁽²⁵⁾ With this guarantee and the approval of the superiors, the Saint's Constitutions again saw the light of day in a pleasing volume of minute size, (11 x 7 cms, 4Â½ x 2Â¾inches, 193 pages) in the same year as the complete Works of the Saint were published at Salamanca and at Barcelona in 1588.

The only point in the text substantially altered was number 8 of Chapter 5, on the silence after Night Prayer, abiding by the Rule and the Nuncio's declarations.

5. Two years later things changed completely when a new edition appeared, officially carried out at Rome and brought about by the same Anne of Jesus and the other Spanish nuns.

The fact was that the Papal Nuncio's recent confirmation was not sufficient to avoid changes that were introduced by Fr Doria in such important points as liberty to choose confessors and elections of prioresses. In view of this, recourse was had to the Sovereign Pontiff requesting a definitive confirmation and other favours with it at the same time, which, because they were conceded and introduced into the Constitutions were to deform the Saint's text seriously for the first time.

The actual authors of the change were the members of the Roman Commission who revised the Constitutions of the Saint, translating them into Latin, (which was to become the official text) and included them in the body of the papal brief "Salvatoris et Domini" of Sixtus V, dated 5 June 1590.

The most serious alteration introduced into the Teresian Constitutions appeared in the very title of the document, such as it was officially printed that same year at Rome and which was worded thus: "Confirmatio apostolica Constitutionum Monialium Primitivae Regulae Ordinis Beatae Mariae de Monte Carmelo discalceatarum nuncupatarum et erectio Commissariatus Monialium dictae observantiae".⁽²⁶⁾

In effect, the new text together with the setting up of the General Commissariat, introduced a substantial change into the Saint's Constitutions (ch. 1) and into the entire organisation of the Reform. It restructured afresh the division of the sections (there were no longer 20 but 24) and made numerous small alterations in the contents. As an example it is enough here to draw attention to one number, apparently only a secondary one but highly significant from the Teresian point of view. It is the one referring to the nuns' spiritual reading, chapter 10 number 2 in both the AlcalÃ¡ and Rome editions.

The Constitutions of AlcalÃ¡ read as follows:

The prioress will see to it that there are good books, in particular the Carthusian Flos Sanctorum, Contemptus mundi, Prayer for Religious, the works of Friar Luis de Granada and those of Father Friar Peter of Alcantara, because this nourishment is, so to speak, as necessary to the soul as food is to the body". ⁽²⁷⁾

The Latin text of the Roman Constitutions had enlarged and distorted the list in this way:

Let the Prioress have a care that they only read approved spiritual books, principally the lives of the holy Fathers, the passion of holy Martyrs and other lives of saints; (then followed a long list): Denis the Carthusian on the four last things, Thomas a Kempis (John Gerson), the Imitation of Christ; Flores Sanctorum of Diego of Villegas; works of Br LuÃs of Granada, especially his Memoriale, or on prayer; Dux paenitentium peccatorum commonly known as Guide for Sinners; Meditations on the Life of Christ; the works of Br Peter of Alcantara, namely On prayer and meditation; works of Br Diego Stella, De vanitate mundi et amore Dei; Prayer-book for Religious by Anthony de Guevara Bishop of Minton; works of John of Avila namely his book called Audi filia, and his letters; the book written by Br LuÃs of Leon; Nomina Christi, and other approved spiritual books; because this nourishment is, so to speak, as necessary to the soul as food is to the body".⁽²⁸⁾

This strange increase of titles and authors reverses the whole pedagogical framework of the Saint and, finally, in all this bibliography they have not deigned to mention one single Teresian work precisely at the time when these were becoming authentic "best-sellers" in spiritual literature. The Way had been published in 1583 at Evora, in 1585 at Salamanca and in 1587 at Valencia. Besides, the Complete Works of the Saint had been printed twice in 1588, at Salamanca and at Barcelona, and then again at Salamanca in 1589.

On the other hand, the Brief containing the new edition abounded in Teresianisms. According to this, the Chapter at AlcalÃ¡ had published "some Rules and Constitutions taken from the books and writings with which the same Teresa was in the habit of instructing her disciples". (The Castilian translation of the Brief was published the same year 1590, by the Saint's biographer, Francis de Ribera, in his introduction to the "Life of Mother Teresa". In this way all the Carmels became acquainted rapidly with the Brief. Ribera, who had not paid attention to the changes introduced into the Constitutions, gave high praise to the Roman document and, in so doing, worsened the situation.)

6. The outcome was a new revised edition produced by Fr Doria and his Consulta. Apart from the changes introduced by the Roman text, the setting up of a General Commissariat which directly affected the government of the Reform, provoked a violent reaction among the Superiors of the Reform.

Two years later (we are passing over the dramatic episodes of 1590 and 1591 here), the Constitutions were published again in Madrid in 1592, newly reworked. Again they were endorsed by the Holy See. But from henceforth they were irreversibly different from the Teresian text.

They had taken up an extreme position. They denied that the Constitutions published by the Chapter of AlcalÃ¡ came from the Saint. They rejected the Roman edition, because according to the latest wave of opinion, it originated from a false presupposition of the Teresian authorship of the Constitutions, so they completely remoulded them. But by a strange paradox they took as the basis, not the AlcalÃ¡ text but the already deformed Roman text which had been translated into Castilian. As a revealing example, it suffices to take up the point already mentioned, concerning spiritual reading (ch.10, n.4, ff. 48-49 of the 1592 edition) which transcribes in its entirety the list of 1590, without falling into the temptation of quoting even the Way or the Mansions!

The tiny volume, 10Â½ x 7cm (4Â¼ x 2Â¾ inches), published in Madrid, had, by way of introduction, five pages in which the history of the Discalced Constitutions was again recounted, leaving out -- purposely -- all mention of Mother Teresa.

7. The Saint's Constitutions survived both in Carmel and outside of it, but it was a marginal and isolated survival. The Carmel of La Imagen of AlcalÃ¡ faithfully followed the Constitutions which the Saint had brought to them in 1569, the text prior to the one of the AlcalÃ¡ Chapter. A great admirer of the Saint, St John de Ribera, Patriarch of Valencia adopted them for the Augustinian Congregation founded by him and they have been observed there down to our own day. (First edition by Ribera: Valencia 1598). The Carmelites founded by Fecet in Saragossa, adopted them in 1626 and together with them all the Carmels affiliated to Saragossa, observing them down to this century. Likewise the French Carmels and those founded from them until the remodelling of the Constitutions imposed by the Code of Canon Law in our own century. The following diagram should make it easier to form an overall view of all these ramifications:

Avila / Duruelo manuscript text 1562 - 1568

New foundations manuscript text 1658 - 1581
La Imagen -- AlcalÃ¡ Chapter of AlcalÃ¡ 1581
given to them by the Saint through Fr GraciÃ¡n
in 1569 Salamanca edition 1581
Madrid edition Latin edition Mother Anne: 1588 Rome 1590
Fr Doria's edition Madrid 1592
Valencia St John de Ribera 1598 ...
French translations 1607 ...
Saragossa 1626 1926

Place of the Saint's Constitutions in the Teresian teaching and charism

1. It suffices to keep in mind the Saint's words on her death-bed and the care she took in the working out of the Constitutions to realise the importance which she attached to them.

It does not come within the scope of this present instruction to make an analysis and evaluation of their contents. Given the brevity of the Teresian text, such a study would not be too difficult for any Carmelite or Carmel to undertake. It would be sufficient to follow the evolution of the Saint's text through the three stages that have been mentioned.

-- The primitive text (Avila-Duruelo) can be found in "La Reforma Teresiana. Documentario historico de sus primeros dias" by Frs Thomas and Simeon printed in 1962 and available from the Teresianum in Rome. Or again in the last editions of the Saint's Works by Frs EfrÃ©n de la Madre de Dios and Oteger Steggink, in the publication by the BAC in Madrid.

-- The second text can be found in full in the current editions of the Saint's Works and in the appendix to the 1991 Constitutions.

-- The third text, AlcalÃ¡ 1581, can be found in the facsimile reproduction of the first edition (Salamanca 1581) made at Burgos in 1978: (Editorial Monte Carmelo, Burgos, Spain) and in the appendix to the 1991 Constitutions.

-- The edition containing the second and third texts in juxtaposition can be seen in the edition of the "Way -- Constitutions -- Manner of Visitation" produced by "Archivio Silveriano" in Burgos (already cited). It can also be found in the comparative edition of Fr Otilio Rodriguez under the title El Testamento Teresiano, Burgos, Editorial Monte Carmelo 1970, and in the Italian translation (Spanish original text and Italian translation) taken care of by the Carmelite Nuns of Tre Madonne, Rome.

Here we shall simply indicate the few points of reference to put the book of the Constitutions in its right position in the overall framework of the Saint's works and to facilitate appreciation of them.

2. The source: was from the Constitutions of the Incarnation. The Saint lived for 27 years in the monastery where she had made her profession. It was there that her idea of the foundation was born and it was from this place that she began to realise it. Before it took shape, while the new idea was still beginning to jell in her mind, she read and re-read the Constitutions of the Order with renewed interest: "I who had so often read and re-read the Constitutions..." we note in her Life in Chapter 35: 2. It was obviously a question of Carmelite Nuns' Constitutions and in particular those of her own monastery.

Once they had begun the life at St Joseph's Avila, we do not know how much these Constitutions served as a guide for the Community. In one of the Saint's rare notes one can read a sort of reminder: "It was the custom in the old Constitutions that on the day of Profession and of taking the habit, for the Sisters concerned to communicate" (no date). Allusions to these "old Constitutions" are not numerous. It does not seem as if the primitive Constitutions of St Joseph's got to the point of incorporating the norm which figures in the rough copy that Fr Anthony of Jesus elaborated for Duruelo and who by way of conclusions states, "What each one is supposed to do in his office is indicated in our holy Constitutions (in those of the Order) which we use for reference".

The holy Foundress preferred not to adapt the old Constitutions to the life of the new house, but to work them out in detail from beginning to end. Such a deliberate action signifies the abandonment of one style of Constitutions (and way of life) and the adoption of another one, unmistakably different. It will be sufficient to compare the two texts, that of the Saint and the one which we know under the title of the Constitutions of the Incarnation⁽²⁹⁾ in order to perceive the strongly marked contrast. First of all we notice the detail: the old constitutions abound in details, the Teresian ones contain only the essentials. The next apparent contrast is the length: the Saint reduced the text to a quarter of its former length. Noticeable also is the change in tone: the Saint has opted for moderation and mildness. From the numerous norms contained in the original text she has, by contrast, picked out those most suitable for defining and describing the mode of life followed at St Joseph's. A useful clue to the differentiation between the Saint's Constitutions and the old ones can be drawn from the chapters on the "Penalties" transferred verbatim from the old ones to those of the Saint.

In reality, the Constitutions of the Carmelite nuns known by the Saint as the "old Constitutions" or the "Constitutions of Soreth" or "Constitutions of the Incarnation" were an adaptation of the Constitutions of the friars and of the life itself of the so-called "First Order" to form Constitutions for the life of the "Second Order". It is written in the prologue of the Constitutions of the Incarnation that, "because the monastic institutions of whatever approved form of religious life they may be, are ordained for the friars, they can only with difficulty be followed by the nuns of the Order; however it is a just and reasonable thing that all persons, men and women, who profess vows under an approved Rule and who serve God continually as far as is possible for them, may respectively be found before God, to possess the same spirit. So then, with a just and holy reason, it has been instituted and ordained that The Constitutions of the said Sisters of the holy and approved Order of the glorious Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel be drawn from the holy institutions of the friars of the said Order and applied to the said Sisters in accordance with what is required, in the manner most suitable and most profitable to the quality and condition of these latter".⁽³⁰⁾

This was not the Saint's criterion. On the contrary, her first opinion was quite the reverse, that Fr John of the Cross and Fr Anthony were to learn the new style of religious life from the nuns and that the Constitutions of the nuns were to serve as a model for the first Constitutions for Duruelo.

The life initiated at St Joseph's, with its vigour and its evangelical originality was the real inspiration for the new Teresian text which, consequently, come to birth without a prologue, without preconceived doctrinal ideas nor references to former juridical texts, but contained instead a certain freedom with regard to the interpretation of the Rule that had been adopted as the basic law of the house.

In the Constitutions themselves the Saint had written, "... in what has been said, almost all has been ordained in conformity with our Rule" (nÂº31: in those of AlcalÃ¡ the word "almost" has been deliberately omitted, cf. Ch. 11, nÂº5, p.38). In effect, she had felt free to depart even from the Rule by stressing the community aspect of the life and by introducing recreations into the horarium.

3. The combination Constitutions -- Way. We do not know if there was in existence at the Incarnation of Avila a "suitable" book for the spiritual formation of the community in accordance with the spirit and charism of the house. At St Joseph's the Saint made haste to write one in her own hand, with no less speed than the Constitutions. In 1566 the Way was already written out. Then after the comments made by the censor of the manuscript she did it over again the same year, writing it out by hand in its entirety for the second time.

She followed a similar policy with her new book as that which she had adopted for the Constitutions: she revised and corrected it, had it copied out for the different Carmels and then herself began all over again to make alterations in those copies that had been written out for others. Finally she prepared it carefully for printing at the same time as the Constitutions. It was only because of difficulties that cropped up that the pages of the Way did not see the light of day until after a delay of almost two years: the edition of Evora 1583.

In juxtaposing the Way with the Constitutions the Saint achieved something similar to what modern congregations are doing with the combination "Constitutions -- Directory". However there is this difference, that for her the complementarity of the two books was clearer: the Way had a style that was strictly pedagogical and spiritual, not juridical. She set herself the task of explaining the doctrinal-spiritual bearing of the basic texts: the Rule and Constitutions.

With regard to these last two, the Way fulfilled the function of a free commentary setting out for the readers the aims of the Carmelite life, the ideals of community, the approach to virtue and the evangelical counsels, the aim of the contemplative life: the holiness of the union achieved in contemplation.

It is necessary to read these pages again and again in order to understand the spirit of the Constitutions as norms of life for a contemplative community, in which the finer points are taken seriously, but with the aim of the final goal which each religious and the community as a whole ought to keep in mind.

At the same time reading the Constitutions from the vantage point of the Way allows us not only to perceive the value of the details, but also to establish a hierarchy of values in the list of prescribed norms. It is easy to understand why the Saint, in the original text (first and second draft) accorded the first place to the subject of liturgy and personal prayer (nos. 1 and 2) and her concern to define the Carmelite enclosure (no. 4). It can be understood also why she paid so much attention to outlining the character of community life, carefully balancing "solitude and community", "work and prayer", "choir and recreation", "cell and garden with hermitages" . . . .; why she added such a precise section on the individual persons and their function in the community ("the obligation of each sister in her office"). Why she made subtle distinctions, in a lengthy list of stipulations, expressed in her usual hyperbolic way: for example on fidelity to the Rule and Constitutions ("they should take into careful account what the rule ordains", nÂº24; "to take great care in everything about the observance of the Rule and Constitutions", nÂº34; "great care should be taken to read the Constitutions to the novices", nos 40 and 57), or concerning the selection of vocations and the formation of the novices ("let the nuns consider carefully whether those about to be received are persons of prayer", "let them be careful ..." "this should in no way be done, for doing so would be a great evil", "this law should be considered carefully and be observed" nÂº21) and so on, one after another on the common life, poverty, silence, the care of the sick ("the sick should be cared with the fulness of love, concern for their comfort, and compassion... the Mother prioress should be very careful" nÂº23). All these superlatives reveal the Saint's sensitivity towards the various situations and aspects of our religious life. Is it not essential, then, to establish as an interpretive basis that the Way is the authentic exposition of the spirit of the Teresian Constitutions?

4. We come now to the other Teresian combination "Constitutions -- Manner of Visiting Convents": These two small works put us on two different but complementary levels. We know that the second little work (the Manner or as it has recently been entitled, The Visitation of the Discalced Carmelites) was not written for the nuns but for the Visitator. It contained directives for when the latter would have to make an intervention and to enable him to draw up something in the nature of a Directory for Visitators. (It must be remembered that the one for whom it was immediately destined was GraciÃ¡n. It was for him that the Saint wrote with absolute frankness and in all confidence.)

For the Carmelite reader of today, the Manner opens up interesting perspectives when faced with the Constitutions. The style of life devised by the Saint calls for so much gentleness, simplicity, family life, such an awareness of the Presence of God, and such a contemplative attitude that it makes peace, concord, a community bond of understanding, and "love for one another" indispensable requirements. Nevertheless, in the life of each Carmel it is essential that there should be periodically a time for reviewing the life and for tightening-up ideals. Something exceptional distinguishes this time: a person comes from outside, to whom the Superior, conscientiously and with authority, submits a balance sheet of the life and of fidelity to what has been legislated and vowed. This is done with love and strictness, "without weakening" the Saint says. This was how she looked on the time of "Visitation".

The exceptional character of this episode, important but transient permits one to grasp more easily the tone and even the spirit of the Teresian Constitutions. Confronted with this passing event of a Visitation, the Constitutions, (like the Way) envisaged the life of the community in its full extent, viewing seriously the obligations entailed by the Vows, the Rule, fraternal life, contemplation, work, but viewing it also with "mildness",⁽³¹⁾ with love for the Spouse⁽³²⁾, with love, compassion and agreement among the sisters.⁽³³⁾ The Constitutions are in fact the condensed experience that the Saint had progressively acquired in her religious life. She herself summed up her evolution in this way, "I am no longer the same in my way of governing: everything is being done by love". ⁽³⁴⁾

5. The Constitutions in the framework of the other Teresian writings. Besides the combination "Constitutions -- Way -- Manner", there remains the Teresian teaching in the other books, especially those which were written when the Saint's experience was fully matured towards the end of her life.

For reading the Constitutions and assessing its ordinances, the Foundations and the Letters take on a special importance. The Foundations are important for bearing witness to the Saint's life as it unfolded, sometimes in exceptional circumstances, but also because the account is constantly interspersed with orders, suggestions and counsels which throw light on what has been set out in the pages of the Constitutions.

The Letters are no less interesting for directly reflecting the life as it was lived. As she was against the proliferation of norms, the Saint had opted for the conciseness we find in the Constitutions. But life itself is always full of different aspects and changes, of situations which are impossible to foresee and impossible to codify. The Letters (especially the letters exchanged with GraciÃ¡n and the Carmelites) open an immense window on the life of the Saint and of the Carmels recently founded.

The narrow line of the Rule and Constitutions becomes a wide-open space, containing a wealth of possibilities, intentions, ideas to be realised.

Neither the Way nor the Saint's other works contain any glossary or "official commentary" on the Rule and Constitutions. Nor have the first generation of Carmelite nuns who have transmitted so many of the Saint's sayings to us in the various Processes made any collection of the talks in which she commented on the laws during conventual Chapter or at recreation. Nor did Mary of St Joseph do so in her Book of Recreations or in the Instructions to Novices. But this gap is for the most part filled by that other kind of free and authentic commentary which comes to us first of all from the Way which helps us to establish the ideal which makes up the soul of the Constitutions; then from the Manner which places in relief the lifestyle codified in them; and finally from the Foundations and the Letters which mark the limits of the very text of the laws, as we see how they were embodied and interpreted in real life under the direction of the holy Mother Foundress herself.⁽³⁵⁾

1. Biblioteca MÃstica Carmelitana, T. 18: 105.
2. Isabel of the Cross: BMC 18:111.
3. Maria of St Francis: BMC 20: 219.
4. BMC 20: 195.
5. Brief of foundation, 7/2/1562; MHCT 1:11.
6. Ib. p.46.
7. Life of the Saint by Ribera, Salamanca 1590, ii, 2, 132.
8. The Saint's biographer, Ribera, affirms the contrary: ii, 2, 135.
9. cf.. Historia del Carmen Descalzo by Fr Silverio, IV, p.547; Monumenta Historica Carmeli Teresiani, ii, 277.
10. BMC VI: 1-26
11. Cf.. Conversation with Fr Mariano and the foundation of Pastrana in 1569: Foundations 17:3
12. BMC 9:2
13. MHCT, I, 115.
14. Cf.. MHCT I, 316-317
15. MHCT, II, 204.
16. MHCT, II, 283.
17. Salamanca edition, 1581, 5.
18. A detailed study of the variants introduced into the AlcalÃ¡ text and of their justification in the Saint's preceding suggestions can be read in Fr Otilio Rodriguez work El Testamento Teresiano, edited in Castellan at Burgos, Monte Carmelo, 1970. Also, in Italian and Castellan (texts juxtaposed) at Rome, 1973, by the Carmel of "Tre Madonne".
19. Letter of dedication to the Saint, at the beginning of the AlcalÃ¡ Constitutions, Salamanca edition 1581.
20. Printed "in Salamanca by the heirs of Mathias Gast. 1581"
21. Letter to GraciÃ¡n, 19/11/1576.
22. Concerning this is a doctoral thesis in Church History: i. moriones Ana de JesÃºs y la herencia teresiana. Â¿Humanismo cristiano o rigor primitivo?, Rome 1968. The complete documen-tation was published in 1985 in vol. IV of MHCT.
23. Cf.. MHCT, III, 349-352.
24. Ibid p. 350.
25. Ibid p. 351
26. The papal document, printed in 16 pages (n. n.), plus the frontispiece, appeared having been printed at "Romae, apud Paulum Bladum Impressorum Cameralem, MDXC". This can be seen in an edition with the text printed by Anne of Jesus in parallel, in MHCT, IV, doc. 434.
27. pp. 35-36 of the Salamanca edition, 1581.
28. MHCT, IV, 80-82. See also Bullarium Romanum. Ed. Tarin, tome IX, pp. 216-217, which corrects the reading of the 1590 edition.
29. BMC ix, 481-523.
30. BMC ix, 481: this is how the prologue to the Constitutions opens, and it coincides with the Fre

June 5, 2013

THE TERESIAN CONSTITUTIONS

In beginning this small essay on the Constitutions of Saint Teresa, our Mother, two memories spontaneously spring to mind: firstly that of her death, then that of the Chapter of AlcalÃ¡, celebrated the previous year in March 1581. For Discalced Carmelite Nuns this signifies, above all, the promulgation and publishing of the Teresian Constitutions.
Among the words spoken by the Saint on her death-bed, three things stand out, distilling the prevailing mood of Mother Teresa already prepared to celebrate her final Passover. They are "Christ the Bridegroom", "Mother Church", and the "sinner" needing salvation, Teresa of Jesus. "The hour has come, my Spouse, for us to see one another" -- "I die a daughter of the Church" -- "a humbled contrite heart ... do not cast me away from your presence."

Besides this trilogy, unanimously mentioned by the witnesses at her Process for beatification, there stands out another statement of the Saint concerning the Rule and Constitutions. Nearly all the witnesses at her death-bed remembered it. She uttered it while waiting for the Viaticum -- her last Holy Communion. One of the young nuns, Constance of the Angels (a 21 year old), recorded it in this way: 'The Sisters were asking her to say something else, and she asked them only to observe their Rule and Constitutions, and to obey their superiors. Joining her hands, she said, "My daughters and my ladies, I ask you for the love of God to take great care to observe your Rule and Constitutions. Take no notice of the bad example this wicked nun has given you, and for the love of God, pardon me".⁽¹⁾

The nuns of Alba, witnesses to her death, remembered not only her words but also the maternal tone and warmth with which the Saint said them. She herself "called for all the nuns and spoke to them with great fervour and delicacy telling them ...".⁽²⁾ It was said "with much fervour and conviction, with love for the nuns, calling them sisters and ladies, asking them insistently, for the love of God, to observe the Rule and Constitutions".⁽³⁾ Even more expressive was the testimony of Catalina of St Angelus, she "was approaching death ... and this witness saw that when she came to die, it was with great fervour and spirit, speaking with great love, fervour, spirit and fondness to the nuns, calling them 'sisters and my ladies', beseeching them with much insistence to keep their Rule and Constitutions, and encouraging them to keep poverty".⁽⁴⁾

These were not words made up on the spur of the moment. She uttered them many times in her life. Just a year before, in the letter of dedication of the Provincial, Fr Gracian, to the Constitutions of AlcalÃ¡ edited in Salamanca, he recalled them thus, "to the most religious Mother Teresa of Jesus, foundress of the monasteries of Discalced Carmelite nuns: The principal and most common counsel that I always heard her give them (the Saint to the nuns) was that they never let fall from their hands the law of God, the Rule and Constitutions of the Order, so that they read them each day, in order not to lose their grasp of understanding them, to stay in their memory to meditate upon them, and they do not slip from the heart so that they obey them perfectly and safeguard them..." He concludes his letter of dedication to the Saint thus: "Let your Reverence request our Lord and Our Lady the Virgin Mary that your daughters safeguard them as they are obliged, and that he gives me the grace always to serve you and to be pleasing to you in all things. I never neglect to ask his divine Majesty to keep us many years in as much good health and spirit as I desire and we have need of. Amen".

Four centuries distant, this instruction echoes the feelings of the Saint, with veneration and high esteem for her Constitutions and with the great desire that she and her spirit animate the life of the Teresian Carmel.

First of all we will explain the path followed by the Saint in drawing up the constitutional text, and secondly --by way of conclusion -- we will say something on the significance of these Constitutions and the place they have in the teaching of the Saint.

Some preliminary considerations: The Saint as legislator

1 From the foundation of Saint Joseph's in Avila, St Teresa could be considered almost on a par as foundress and legislator. As a foundress because of her charismatic inspirations. As a legislator by virtue of the pontifical briefs which reached her from Rome: " ... to the prioress and nuns who for a time have been (in St Joseph's), in the knowledge of the happy and good government of the said monastery, we give permission and the free faculty to have statutes and licit and honest ordinances ... and with our apostolic authority we ordain that these constitutions and ordinances... be from now on confirmed and they ought to be safeguarded without violation"⁽⁵⁾. These faculties were confirmed and repeated in the Bull of Pius IV, three years later (17/7/1565) with the express mention of "Teresa of Jesus, present abbess or mother... " of the convent of Saint Joseph.⁽⁶⁾

2. In her duty as legislator, St Teresa proceeded prudently, without haste, with restraint and aplomb. She hoped to experiment before legislating, according to the testimony of Maria of St Joseph (Salazar). This explains the slow process of drawing up her Constitutions. They began with a brief outline in the first five years at St Joseph's in Avila, and reached their definitive form only in 1581.

For their elaboration the Saint also made use of the experience of others, especially communities of her day who were undergoing renewal or reform of life. 'With great prudence she set out to examine what there was in other religious orders and she took from them what seemed to agree with her Order, and what did not suit she left aside . . . She went to the Monastery of Our Lady of Respect at Valladolid, Discalced religious of the Order of St Francis, renowned for observance and piety, and from there she retained frugality and simplicity of relations between religious, and whatever seemed best to her . . .'⁽⁷⁾

Above all Our Holy Mother made use of the legislation and religious experience of the community of the Incarnation. From the latter monastery, she had, right from the beginning, retained as the basic norm the Primitive Rule of Carmel, She also used the Constitutions, 'the old Constitutions' she called them, but only as a point of reference for beginning the life at St Joseph's and for working out new laws. She did not adopt the old text for the drafting of the new one. At times she even used them as a basis for putting forward a contrary prescription in order to make the new way of life different. Thus in the saint's hands the Rule and Constitutions took on a different meaning: the Rule established and guaranteed continuity with the origins of Carmel; the Constitutions express the originality of the charism and of the style of religious life in the Teresian convents.

3. All her life St Teresa felt a sense of responsibility with regard to the Constitutions of her Carmels. Yet as the foundations went on increasing and as the new family was being constituted into a new body of religious, the legislative powers of the Saint continued to diminish and she herself passed into the background while yet remaining vigilant and active up to the very end.

It does not seem that Pius IV formally approved the primitive Constitutions of St Joseph's. ⁽⁸⁾

John Baptist Rubeo, the General of the Order, approved them between 1567 and 1569. And, by virtue of this authorization, they were from that time on, officially designated as the Constitutions of Fr General.

When the time came for the Chapter of separation (AlcalÃ¡ 1581), the powers sought from Rome for convoking the Chapter and drawing up legislation were no longer addressed to the Mother Foundress. On the contrary the brief for erecting the Province does not mention her. It attributed the commencement of the new family to "some religious" who, towards 1565 (!) proposed to keep "the primitive Rule in its full and strict observance". This brief conferred legislative power on the AlcalÃ¡ Chapter and its members, rescinding all other faculties that had been conceded previously and among them evidently, those granted to Mother Teresa of Jesus almost twenty years earlier. As we shall see, this legal tightening-up did not prevent St Teresa, at that particular moment nor later on, from continuing to make herself responsible for the life of her Carmels and the laws that were to animate them.

First legislative step: The Constitutions of St Joseph's, Avila

1. We do not know when the Saint drew up constitutions for the first time. It is probable that the life at the Carmel of St Joseph's began in all simplicity, based on the Rule, animated by the presence of the Mother Foundress, without any other statutory additions. It is equally probable that on writing the Life and the Way (in the years 1565 and 1566 respectively) she had already sketched a first draft of the Constitutions. According to the Life, at St Joseph's they not only followed the prescriptions of the Rule, they followed "many other things conformable with this which the Sisters found light and made and kept other rules which seemed to them necessary to keeping our own Rule more perfectly: I hope in the Lord that what has been begun will prosper, as His Majesty told me it would". (Life 36:27) In the first draft of the Way the allusions to these Constitutions of St Joseph's are equally numerous. This is the text which Our Holy Mother presented to the General in 1567 and which he approved in view of the foundations which would be made in future under obedience to him. This approval was referred to by Fr GraciÃ¡n, as well as the Provincial of Castile Angel de Salazar, the General himself and the prologue of the 1581 Constitutions.

2. But these first-fruits of the Teresian pen have not come down to us. We know of their contents only indirectly. Towards 1568-1569, they served as a basis for the rough-draft of the Constitutions drawn up for the Discalced Friars by the initiators of Duruelo. The Saint took a special interest in them so that, before commencing, they learnt the reformed way of Carmelite life from her and from her Carmels. It was to this end that she had taken Fr John of the Cross, young, readily pliable and full of promise as he was, along with her to Valladolid so that he would get to know about "our whole way of life, so that he might have an exact knowledge of everything, both of the mortification we practice and of the sisterly way in which we live and the recreation which we take in common . . . the way in which the Sisters live" (Foundations 13:5 and earlier 10:4).

Once at Duruelo, Frs Anthony of Jesus and John of the Cross embraced the primitive Rule and adopted the Teresian Constitutions in order to work out their own. The rough copy in Fr Anthony's handwriting has come down to us. It is preserved in the General Archives of the Calced Carmelites in Rome. It was prepared for the revision and signature of Fr Rubeo, the General.

3. The manuscript draft from Duruelo is extremely interesting from the Teresian point of view. Fr Anthony intended to copy the Saint's text closely, transcribing it throughout from the feminine into the masculine and introducing modifications made necessary by the clerical status of the new community, or which he himself judged opportune. Thanks to this close external fidelity we know through the Duruelo text what the Constitutions of St Joseph's were like. They were the same as the ones that remained in force in the Carmels of Medina, MalagÃ³n and perhaps Valladolid, namely:

a) It was an extremely brief text, hardly longer than the Rule.

b) Fundamentally, these Constitutions proposed to give the outline of a day in Carmel. In fact they concluded with this modest assertion: "The whole of the above (i.e. the whole of the Duruelo text) concerns the arrangement of the horarium". Clocks and time-tables must have been an important preoccupation of Fr Anthony in these beginnings, according to what the Saint already observed with some amusement. (Foundations 14:1)

c) There was no distinction between friars, choir or non-choir.

d) The chapter headings of the eight subjects that the text was divided into can give us some idea of the legislative points, namely 1) the order to be observed in spiritual matters, 2) The days for receiving the Lord, 3) temporal matters, 4) fast and abstinence, 5) enclosure, 6) novices, 7) the lesser offices, 8) the care of the sick.

4. The eight subjects, in the same order, remained in the text of the Constitutions which the Saint completed and later sent round her Carmels. As they appear in this first draft, they compose a very simple treatise, a direct outpouring of the Teresian charism so recently manifested. It begins with spiritual matters: the liturgy and personal prayer. There is special attention given to the custody of the house and the recollection of the Sisters: the enclosure. It ends with the eighth point on the love of the sick, work, recreation, sisterly correction and the poverty of the house.

In the little convent of St Joseph, this elementary framework of norms together with the Rule, sufficed and was later taken up and high-lighted through the teaching and instructions contained in the Way of Perfection.

The three texts -- Rule, Constitutions, Way -- described the manner of life established in the house.

From this life and these Constitutions we possess a kind of authoritative synthesis such as was made by Fr GraciÃ¡n a few years later in his account of the Chapter of AlcalÃ¡. Here are his words, "... convents of Discalced friars and nuns began to be founded, subject to the government of the Calced Provincial with the laws and Constitutions given them by the said most Reverend General according to the primitive Rule which contained penance, humility, contempt of the world, manual work and prayer.⁽⁹⁾

The Second Step: Constitutions for all the Carmels

1. From 1567 on, foundations multiplied. With them increased not only the Saint's experience with regard to religious life, but also the demands made on her by these same Teresian Carmels in the process of formation and who required a more complete codification of her Constitutions. The grounds for this were, for example:

a) the new juridical situation: from the second foundation of Medina, and then on, the houses were all under the jurisdiction of the Order.

b) the variations with regard to matters of poverty and observance: from the time of the third foundation at Malagon there came into existence houses that had incomes and other dispensations from the Rule. In spite of this, the Saint insisted that there should be unity and consistency of life in all the Carmels. (Foundations 9:4)

c) Shortly afterwards, at the end of 1569, Apostolic Visitators began to tamper with the text. They were easily tempted to command "acts" that modified or overburdened the Teresian life and Constitutions and this very much in spite of the Saint's vigilance, for she was all for a simple form of legislation that would be moderate and stable and opposed to the authoritarian intrusions of those from outside who did not understand the life that was being lead in her Carmels.

d) Finally, manuscript copies of the Constitutions increased with the different Carmels. As a result of the new foundations the Saint had prescribed that, "Each convent shall have one copy of these Constitutions in the safe of three keys and other copies so that they can be read out once a week to all the assembled Sisters . . . and each Sister shall know them by heart . . . and let them try to re-read them from time to time and for that purpose let there be still more copies in the convent so that each one, when she so desires, can have them in her cell" (nÂº 57). As the copies grew more numerous our Holy Mother noticed that more and more variants and even contradictory statements were being put into them, at times as copyists' errors, and other times on a prioress's decision. In the Carmels for women she wanted to avoid at all costs that there should come about what was happening in the Discalced Friars where "in each house they did as they thought well" (Foundations 23:12).

2. These reasons kept the Saint on the alert in the matter of the text of her Constitutions, and all these considerations made her decide to revise and complete it. We do not know the exact date of this revision. Neither do we have the manuscript of the new text in her own handwriting. However, we do have a text that is reliable, faithfully edited by Fr Silverio of St Teresa⁽¹⁰⁾ and by successive editors of the Saint's works. It is a venerable text on many grounds. It is the one which the foundress took with her from foundation to foundation up until the year before her death. It is the one she herself offered to the Carmel of La Imagen, founded by her friend Mary of Jesus and faithfully observed in that monastery for many centuries. It is the text from which Fr GraciÃ¡n, in that very place, La Imagen, AlcalÃ¡, was to sift out and bring to light the charism of Mother Teresa. It is the text with which the Saint set on foot the second foundation of the Discalced Friars.⁽¹¹⁾ It was these pages that the Saint took to the Chapter of AlcalÃ¡ so that from them the definitive Constitutions could be worked out.

3. Here is a brief rÃ©sumÃ© of their contents, or rather of the new items introduced by the Saint:

a) Materially, the new text came to almost double the length of the former. To the eight subjects of the original text, nine new points were added, namely: a very short one on the dead (point 9); another, long and remarkable, on "the obligations of each office" (no. 10); six more briefer ones on the chapter of faults and the different categories of faults (nos. 11-16); and finally some other separate numbers on the reading of the Constitutions, the safe of three keys and the keeping of the books, on communal discipline and the different intentions for which it was taken (no. 17).

b) In this series of additions attention must be drawn to two markedly different types of material. On the one hand those which are Teresian in origin dealing with community life. On the other hand the penal code (points 11-16) which had not been drawn up by the Saint but which had been taken verbatim, as is known, from the texts of alien constitutions, probably on the initiative or stipulation of the Visitators. Certainly a section of recommendations so out of proportion and legalistic in character breaks the symmetry and upsets the moderation and simplicity of the Saint's Constitutions.

c) So then, the worth-while contributions to the text are found in points 9-11 and in the three last numbers. Without any doubt the most important of these is the section in which the Saint defined the most characteristic offices and functions in the life of the community: what she wanted the Prioress to be like, the sub-prioress, the mistress of novices, the discreets and right down to the sacristan and portress. These are important sketches for the description of community life and the type of close relationship that the foundress wanted to portray so vividly for her Carmels.

4. Right from the beginning of the new series of foundations, the Saint did all she could to get official approbation for her Constitutions. As we have mentioned, her Fr Provincial and Fr General accorded it to her in the first place. In confirmation of this, there is the witness of this Provincial at the Process of beatification of St Teresa: "this witness has seen and approved the Chapters and the Rule of the said monasteries of Discalced, of the nuns as well as of the friars, that the said Mother Teresa presented to the General of the Carmelite Order, who was then Friar John Baptist Rubeo, which General himself saw and approved the said Rule".⁽¹²⁾

In 1571, on taking up his office as Visitator, the Dominican Peter Fernandez not only asked for an account "of how they kept the Primitive Rule and the Constitutions that the said Religious were to observe" but he banned future Visitators "from having the power to alter anything at all in the Constitutions or make innovations".⁽¹³⁾

A short while afterwards, in 1576, the new Visitator, GraciÃ¡n, re-confirmed this for the Carmels of Castile and Andalusia on 7 May 1576.⁽¹⁴⁾

In these three cases it is evident that these attestations were made with the Saint's help, on her initiative and following her suggestions. A year later when the new Papal Legate, Philip Sega intervened, fresh incidents occurred which gave rise to grave fears. But the Saint succeeded in warding off these difficulties and managed to get her text of the Constitutions safely to the AlcalÃ¡ Chapter free from outside pressures. They were handed over to the chapter members directly, from the foundress's own hands.

Third step: the Constitutions of AlcalÃ¡ (1581)

This last stage of the Saint's Constitutions corresponds to the revised text promulgated on the occasion of the Chapter of AlcalÃ¡ in 1581. It is a text and an event that has been widely commented on by our historians. For this reason we shall be content to point out here only the most important facts.

1. Alerted by the great tribulations of the years 1577-1579, the Saint saw the importance that this Chapter of separation to erect a separate Province was going to have for her Carmels and she wanted that her Constitutions to be given official sanction in it.

The papal brief "Pie Consideratione" which erected the Province on 22 June 1580, conferred on the Chapter the faculties to "make, change, dispense with, organize and, if it seems good to them, to wholly abrogate and re-write whatever statutes and ordinances may be for the good of the Province . . ."⁽¹⁵⁾, for the Discalced friars as well as for the nuns.

For her part, the Saint took up an unequivocal stand: she wished to ensure that in this Chapter, the Constitutions of her Carmels would be fixed and authorised, but, if at all possible, that the chapter members as such should not meddle with them.

2. For the realisation of her plan she used the person most fitted for the purpose, Fr GraciÃ¡n. He was her best collaborator at that time: the one who best knew the nuns' life and laws and the mind of the foundress. He was the man called upon to organise the Chapter in collaboration with the Papal Delegate. The Saint foresaw him as the first Provincial of the Reform and this did indeed happen.

During the months preceding the Chapter there was a frequent exchange of letters between these two -- GraciÃ¡n and the Saint -- the purpose of which was to prepare the ground. Through the Papal Commissary, GraciÃ¡n sent an instruction to the Carmels that each community should send in its requests to the Chapter. The replies went through the Saint's hands. She reviewed and annotated them before passing them on to GraciÃ¡n. She herself, in successive letters almost up to the eve of the meeting sent a series of suggestions and requirements on matters that would have to be explained, perfected and modified in the Constitutions.

However, this last group, the personal suggestions of the Mother Foundress, were for GraciÃ¡n only and not for the Chapter members. It was his business to use them in the revision of the constitutional text. Thus the Saint's criteria would be fully effective while she herself preferred to remain at a distance from the Chapter meeting for various reasons.

3. In fact, the Chapter did scarcely any work in this domain. It gave very little time to the matter of the Constitutions (of either friars or nuns), a little more than three days according to GraciÃ¡n's meticulous account, namely the 7, 8 and 9 March. The matter came back for discussion on the 11^th, and as early as the 13^th "the Constitutions were published (at the meeting)" those of the friars as well as those of the nuns.⁽¹⁶⁾

These three or four days were hardly enough time for working on the Friar's Constitutions which had to be drawn up almost in their entirety. Before the meeting the Papal Commissary had already gathered around him Fathers GraciÃ¡n, Doria, Roca, Ambrose Mariano and the Rector of AlcalÃ¡, Elias of St Martin, for a discussion on the matter of the Constitutions: preferably those of the friars, if not exclusively theirs.

It is certain that GraciÃ¡n being so insistently urged on by the Saint worked to bring forward her Constitutions. So their presentation and promulgation appeared on the agenda of the Chapter. The Chapter itself would have a clear conscience that this was not a text that had to be worked out during the assembly -- as was the case with the friars' -- but the same text that was already in force among the nuns.

4. We do not know what was the practice followed in the Chapter for presenting the Saint's Constitutions. We do know the results. Whereas for the Discalced friars' Constitutions they had applied the norm from the papal brief which gave the faculty of "abrogating and re-writing", it was not so with the Teresian nuns' Constitutions. The prologue to the Constitutions expressly stated that they were promulgated by the Chapter: "because the laws and Constitutions you have had up till now are so holy and religious, made and ordained by men so respectable and endowed with authority, those we are giving you are not different laws but the same as you have had up till now." The same, only "adding, deleting, or changing a few small things that seemed to be for the good of religion" .⁽¹⁷⁾

"A few small things." Indeed GraciÃ¡n, who did the revising, had lovingly treated the Saint's text with utmost respect, showing insight into the finer points of the re-drafting. He incorporated into it nearly all the suggestions received from her in the last months. He gave a new order to the contents and restructured the work: not always with total success in some cases, but obliged to do so because of the spontaneous disorder of the preceding Teresian text. (We already know that the Saint's procedure was to keep on adding things, adding recommendations to the primitive text. The last of all followed the concluding "Deo gratias".) Finally, GraciÃ¡n had completed the work by adding indispensable points such as the one relating to the election of the Prioress (Ch.1)⁽¹⁸⁾

5. "On March 13, 1581, the Saint's Constitutions were solemnly promulgated in these words, "These are the Constitutions that the above-mentioned Apostolic Commissary, the Provincial and Definitors have made. We ordain, in our Chapter of the said Province of the Friars of the Order of Our Lady of Carmel of the Primitive Rule called Discalced, that these Constitutions which we approve are to be regarded as law so that they may be kept, and we command all the nuns of the said Province of the Primitive Rule called Discalced to live in conformity with them". (Salamanca edition 1581, 68)

They were signed by the Apostolic Commissary, the new Provincial GraciÃ¡n and the Definitors. Among these were John of the Cross and Anthony of Jesus, the two Discalced friars who had received the first outline of the Saint's text at Duruelo.

The rapid decline of the Teresian Constitutions

1. There had been a lapse in delicacy in the AlcalÃ¡ edition of the Constitutions. Not only was the name of Mother Teresa omitted but also all allusion to her and to her preliminary work of drafting.

The omission was certainly due to the juridical and not particularly pro-feminist mentality of the day and of these men. Even if the omission could perhaps be justified on the juridical plane, it resulted in a blurring of historical facts. In the prologue, as in the epilogue, allusion was made to the authors of the Constitutions prior to the Chapter in terms that completely exclude the Saint's authority.

Fr GraciÃ¡n himself had made it even more explicit in his introductory letter: the authors of the former Constitutional texts had been Fr Rubeo the General, the Apostolic Visitator Pedro HernÃ¡ndez and himself. "These, (the AlcalÃ¡ Constitutions) were taken in the first place from the former Constitutions of the Order and given by our most Reverend Father and Master Friar John Baptist Rubeo of Ravenna, Prior General. Later the very Reverend Peter FernÃ¡ndez, Apostolic Visitator for the Order, through our holy Father Pius V added a few resolutions and amplified a few points of the said Constitutions. In the same way, I made some additions as I was visiting this Congregation of Discalced Carmelite friars with an apostolic commission.... And finally, in this Provincial Chapter which is being held at AlcalÃ¡".⁽¹⁹⁾ We shall see the consequences of this innocent omission.

2. The omission did not inconvenience the Saint in the slightest. In this same month of March she already knew of the matter and rejoiced in it. She made haste to beg GraciÃ¡n for the new edition of the text. She succeeded in getting its publication promised for the same year, at the end of December.

It was the first Teresian work to come from the press and it was very well presented, with a beautiful picture of the Virgin as a frontispiece and the new coat-of-arms on the Teresian family on the back page. It was a volume of 96 pages, a pocket-sized 14 x 10 cms (5Â½ x 4 inches) containing Fr GraciÃ¡n's letters of introduction, the Rule of St Albert, the Constitutions and the "manner of giving the veil and the profession of Discalced Carmelite nuns". Its production had been personally looked after by Fr GraciÃ¡n at Salamanca.⁽²⁰⁾

In fact, it is this little book the Saint referred to on her death-bed, on 3 October the following year.

3. The Saint's aim in procuring the promulgation and printing of her Constitutions had been to give them stability, to keep intact their original moderation, to prevent inopportune insertions and to assure their future after her death. In a letter to GraciÃ¡n while he was still Visitator, she had protested against the multiplication of laws and the itch for innovations that certain superiors had: "Now your Reverence can judge how fatiguing all those regulations left by Fr John of Jesus are. In my opinion they only repeat the legislation of your Paternity's Constitutions. I cannot understand why he made them. That is what my nuns are afraid of, that some heavy-handed superior will come and weigh them down with extra regulations and overburden them. There is no point in that. It is strange that they do not think their visitations of any use unless they make new regulations ..."⁽²¹⁾

The Saint did not succeed in averting the danger. Hardly was she dead than it broke out again. Her death revived the crisis in the growth of the Reform which was aggravated by the conflict between GraciÃ¡n who was at her right hand in revising the Constitutions, and Fr Nicholas Doria who had succeeded him as Provincial. These were stormy days that we are about to look at now. In this paper, the only things that concern us are the facts that are indispensable for understanding the how and why of the rapid decline of the Constitutions.⁽²²⁾

The decline was completed during the decade following the death of the saint: 1582-92. As landmarks in the process we can fix the three editions of the Constitutions that followed one after the other in quick succession:

1588: Anne of Jesus' edition, at Madrid.
1590: the Latin edition, at Rome.
1592: Fr Doria's edition, at Madrid.
We will now take a look at each one of them.

4. We come to the first reprint which contained no changes and was almost a success. Anne of Jesus (Lobera) had it printed at Madrid. Two important episodes occurred just before it. The first was the recent Chapter of Valladolid in 1587. The nuns, fearing that the Saint's Constitutions might be altered and remodelled there, sent requests that they be left intact. Mary of St Joseph reports in her Ramillete de Mirra: "In the Valladolid Chapter, since various convents had been put on their guard, petitions were sent from all the convents, asking principally that since Our Holy Mother Teresa had arranged the Constitutions with such determination and such spirit, prayer and holiness, and since past Chapters and other superiors, for example the Apostolic Commissaries, Generals and Provincials had approved them and experience had shown what good had come from them, we entreat the Chapter not to start altering them or changing anything in them.

The Constitutions remained effectively intact.

The second incident occurred in connection with the formalities of this edition. As copies of the AlcalÃ¡ Constitutions were rare and as the number of Carmels and of nuns was growing, Anne of Jesus obtained permission from Fr Doria and the Consulta for some reprints on 15 August 1588, and while they were still in the press, she obtained a solemn confirmation of the Saint's text from the Papal Nuncio at Madrid, CÃ©sar Speciano. This was to be printed at the beginning of the new edition. The document was dated Madrid, 13 October 1588.⁽²³⁾ It was addressed to the nuns. Through it the former official silence on the subject of the Teresian origin of the Constitutions was to a large extent made good. It affirmed that "Teresa of Jesus, deceased, composed them under divine inspiration, as the first legislator and foundress of your Order".⁽²⁴⁾ The document specified in detail the norm relating to the silence enjoined by the Rule (after Night Prayer), and confirmed the Saint's text with "authority, to be binding in perpetuity", commanding the superiors of the Reform "not to change in any way anything whatever in them (the Constitutions), but rather to see that they are observed perfectly and inviolably".⁽²⁵⁾ With this guarantee and the approval of the superiors, the Saint's Constitutions again saw the light of day in a pleasing volume of minute size, (11 x 7 cms, 4Â½ x 2Â¾inches, 193 pages) in the same year as the complete Works of the Saint were published at Salamanca and at Barcelona in 1588.

The only point in the text substantially altered was number 8 of Chapter 5, on the silence after Night Prayer, abiding by the Rule and the Nuncio's declarations.

5. Two years later things changed completely when a new edition appeared, officially carried out at Rome and brought about by the same Anne of Jesus and the other Spanish nuns.

The fact was that the Papal Nuncio's recent confirmation was not sufficient to avoid changes that were introduced by Fr Doria in such important points as liberty to choose confessors and elections of prioresses. In view of this, recourse was had to the Sovereign Pontiff requesting a definitive confirmation and other favours with it at the same time, which, because they were conceded and introduced into the Constitutions were to deform the Saint's text seriously for the first time.

The actual authors of the change were the members of the Roman Commission who revised the Constitutions of the Saint, translating them into Latin, (which was to become the official text) and included them in the body of the papal brief "Salvatoris et Domini" of Sixtus V, dated 5 June 1590.

The most serious alteration introduced into the Teresian Constitutions appeared in the very title of the document, such as it was officially printed that same year at Rome and which was worded thus: "Confirmatio apostolica Constitutionum Monialium Primitivae Regulae Ordinis Beatae Mariae de Monte Carmelo discalceatarum nuncupatarum et erectio Commissariatus Monialium dictae observantiae".⁽²⁶⁾

In effect, the new text together with the setting up of the General Commissariat, introduced a substantial change into the Saint's Constitutions (ch. 1) and into the entire organisation of the Reform. It restructured afresh the division of the sections (there were no longer 20 but 24) and made numerous small alterations in the contents. As an example it is enough here to draw attention to one number, apparently only a secondary one but highly significant from the Teresian point of view. It is the one referring to the nuns' spiritual reading, chapter 10 number 2 in both the AlcalÃ¡ and Rome editions.

The Constitutions of AlcalÃ¡ read as follows:

The prioress will see to it that there are good books, in particular the Carthusian Flos Sanctorum, Contemptus mundi, Prayer for Religious, the works of Friar Luis de Granada and those of Father Friar Peter of Alcantara, because this nourishment is, so to speak, as necessary to the soul as food is to the body". ⁽²⁷⁾

The Latin text of the Roman Constitutions had enlarged and distorted the list in this way:

Let the Prioress have a care that they only read approved spiritual books, principally the lives of the holy Fathers, the passion of holy Martyrs and other lives of saints; (then followed a long list): Denis the Carthusian on the four last things, Thomas a Kempis (John Gerson), the Imitation of Christ; Flores Sanctorum of Diego of Villegas; works of Br LuÃs of Granada, especially his Memoriale, or on prayer; Dux paenitentium peccatorum commonly known as Guide for Sinners; Meditations on the Life of Christ; the works of Br Peter of Alcantara, namely On prayer and meditation; works of Br Diego Stella, De vanitate mundi et amore Dei; Prayer-book for Religious by Anthony de Guevara Bishop of Minton; works of John of Avila namely his book called Audi filia, and his letters; the book written by Br LuÃs of Leon; Nomina Christi, and other approved spiritual books; because this nourishment is, so to speak, as necessary to the soul as food is to the body".⁽²⁸⁾

This strange increase of titles and authors reverses the whole pedagogical framework of the Saint and, finally, in all this bibliography they have not deigned to mention one single Teresian work precisely at the time when these were becoming authentic "best-sellers" in spiritual literature. The Way had been published in 1583 at Evora, in 1585 at Salamanca and in 1587 at Valencia. Besides, the Complete Works of the Saint had been printed twice in 1588, at Salamanca and at Barcelona, and then again at Salamanca in 1589.

On the other hand, the Brief containing the new edition abounded in Teresianisms. According to this, the Chapter at AlcalÃ¡ had published "some Rules and Constitutions taken from the books and writings with which the same Teresa was in the habit of instructing her disciples". (The Castilian translation of the Brief was published the same year 1590, by the Saint's biographer, Francis de Ribera, in his introduction to the "Life of Mother Teresa". In this way all the Carmels became acquainted rapidly with the Brief. Ribera, who had not paid attention to the changes introduced into the Constitutions, gave high praise to the Roman document and, in so doing, worsened the situation.)

6. The outcome was a new revised edition produced by Fr Doria and his Consulta. Apart from the changes introduced by the Roman text, the setting up of a General Commissariat which directly affected the government of the Reform, provoked a violent reaction among the Superiors of the Reform.

Two years later (we are passing over the dramatic episodes of 1590 and 1591 here), the Constitutions were published again in Madrid in 1592, newly reworked. Again they were endorsed by the Holy See. But from henceforth they were irreversibly different from the Teresian text.

They had taken up an extreme position. They denied that the Constitutions published by the Chapter of AlcalÃ¡ came from the Saint. They rejected the Roman edition, because according to the latest wave of opinion, it originated from a false presupposition of the Teresian authorship of the Constitutions, so they completely remoulded them. But by a strange paradox they took as the basis, not the AlcalÃ¡ text but the already deformed Roman text which had been translated into Castilian. As a revealing example, it suffices to take up the point already mentioned, concerning spiritual reading (ch.10, n.4, ff. 48-49 of the 1592 edition) which transcribes in its entirety the list of 1590, without falling into the temptation of quoting even the Way or the Mansions!

The tiny volume, 10Â½ x 7cm (4Â¼ x 2Â¾ inches), published in Madrid, had, by way of introduction, five pages in which the history of the Discalced Constitutions was again recounted, leaving out -- purposely -- all mention of Mother Teresa.

7. The Saint's Constitutions survived both in Carmel and outside of it, but it was a marginal and isolated survival. The Carmel of La Imagen of AlcalÃ¡ faithfully followed the Constitutions which the Saint had brought to them in 1569, the text prior to the one of the AlcalÃ¡ Chapter. A great admirer of the Saint, St John de Ribera, Patriarch of Valencia adopted them for the Augustinian Congregation founded by him and they have been observed there down to our own day. (First edition by Ribera: Valencia 1598). The Carmelites founded by Fecet in Saragossa, adopted them in 1626 and together with them all the Carmels affiliated to Saragossa, observing them down to this century. Likewise the French Carmels and those founded from them until the remodelling of the Constitutions imposed by the Code of Canon Law in our own century. The following diagram should make it easier to form an overall view of all these ramifications:

Avila / Duruelo manuscript text 1562 - 1568

New foundations manuscript text 1658 - 1581
La Imagen -- AlcalÃ¡ Chapter of AlcalÃ¡ 1581
given to them by the Saint through Fr GraciÃ¡n
in 1569 Salamanca edition 1581
Madrid edition Latin edition Mother Anne: 1588 Rome 1590
Fr Doria's edition Madrid 1592
Valencia St John de Ribera 1598 ...
French translations 1607 ...
Saragossa 1626 1926

Place of the Saint's Constitutions in the Teresian teaching and charism

1. It suffices to keep in mind the Saint's words on her death-bed and the care she took in the working out of the Constitutions to realise the importance which she attached to them.

It does not come within the scope of this present instruction to make an analysis and evaluation of their contents. Given the brevity of the Teresian text, such a study would not be too difficult for any Carmelite or Carmel to undertake. It would be sufficient to follow the evolution of the Saint's text through the three stages that have been mentioned.

-- The primitive text (Avila-Duruelo) can be found in "La Reforma Teresiana. Documentario historico de sus primeros dias" by Frs Thomas and Simeon printed in 1962 and available from the Teresianum in Rome. Or again in the last editions of the Saint's Works by Frs EfrÃ©n de la Madre de Dios and Oteger Steggink, in the publication by the BAC in Madrid.

-- The second text can be found in full in the current editions of the Saint's Works and in the appendix to the 1991 Constitutions.

-- The third text, AlcalÃ¡ 1581, can be found in the facsimile reproduction of the first edition (Salamanca 1581) made at Burgos in 1978: (Editorial Monte Carmelo, Burgos, Spain) and in the appendix to the 1991 Constitutions.

-- The edition containing the second and third texts in juxtaposition can be seen in the edition of the "Way -- Constitutions -- Manner of Visitation" produced by "Archivio Silveriano" in Burgos (already cited). It can also be found in the comparative edition of Fr Otilio Rodriguez under the title El Testamento Teresiano, Burgos, Editorial Monte Carmelo 1970, and in the Italian translation (Spanish original text and Italian translation) taken care of by the Carmelite Nuns of Tre Madonne, Rome.

Here we shall simply indicate the few points of reference to put the book of the Constitutions in its right position in the overall framework of the Saint's works and to facilitate appreciation of them.

2. The source: was from the Constitutions of the Incarnation. The Saint lived for 27 years in the monastery where she had made her profession. It was there that her idea of the foundation was born and it was from this place that she began to realise it. Before it took shape, while the new idea was still beginning to jell in her mind, she read and re-read the Constitutions of the Order with renewed interest: "I who had so often read and re-read the Constitutions..." we note in her Life in Chapter 35: 2. It was obviously a question of Carmelite Nuns' Constitutions and in particular those of her own monastery.

Once they had begun the life at St Joseph's Avila, we do not know how much these Constitutions served as a guide for the Community. In one of the Saint's rare notes one can read a sort of reminder: "It was the custom in the old Constitutions that on the day of Profession and of taking the habit, for the Sisters concerned to communicate" (no date). Allusions to these "old Constitutions" are not numerous. It does not seem as if the primitive Constitutions of St Joseph's got to the point of incorporating the norm which figures in the rough copy that Fr Anthony of Jesus elaborated for Duruelo and who by way of conclusions states, "What each one is supposed to do in his office is indicated in our holy Constitutions (in those of the Order) which we use for reference".

The holy Foundress preferred not to adapt the old Constitutions to the life of the new house, but to work them out in detail from beginning to end. Such a deliberate action signifies the abandonment of one style of Constitutions (and way of life) and the adoption of another one, unmistakably different. It will be sufficient to compare the two texts, that of the Saint and the one which we know under the title of the Constitutions of the Incarnation⁽²⁹⁾ in order to perceive the strongly marked contrast. First of all we notice the detail: the old constitutions abound in details, the Teresian ones contain only the essentials. The next apparent contrast is the length: the Saint reduced the text to a quarter of its former length. Noticeable also is the change in tone: the Saint has opted for moderation and mildness. From the numerous norms contained in the original text she has, by contrast, picked out those most suitable for defining and describing the mode of life followed at St Joseph's. A useful clue to the differentiation between the Saint's Constitutions and the old ones can be drawn from the chapters on the "Penalties" transferred verbatim from the old ones to those of the Saint.

In reality, the Constitutions of the Carmelite nuns known by the Saint as the "old Constitutions" or the "Constitutions of Soreth" or "Constitutions of the Incarnation" were an adaptation of the Constitutions of the friars and of the life itself of the so-called "First Order" to form Constitutions for the life of the "Second Order". It is written in the prologue of the Constitutions of the Incarnation that, "because the monastic institutions of whatever approved form of religious life they may be, are ordained for the friars, they can only with difficulty be followed by the nuns of the Order; however it is a just and reasonable thing that all persons, men and women, who profess vows under an approved Rule and who serve God continually as far as is possible for them, may respectively be found before God, to possess the same spirit. So then, with a just and holy reason, it has been instituted and ordained that The Constitutions of the said Sisters of the holy and approved Order of the glorious Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel be drawn from the holy institutions of the friars of the said Order and applied to the said Sisters in accordance with what is required, in the manner most suitable and most profitable to the quality and condition of these latter".⁽³⁰⁾

This was not the Saint's criterion. On the contrary, her first opinion was quite the reverse, that Fr John of the Cross and Fr Anthony were to learn the new style of religious life from the nuns and that the Constitutions of the nuns were to serve as a model for the first Constitutions for Duruelo.

The life initiated at St Joseph's, with its vigour and its evangelical originality was the real inspiration for the new Teresian text which, consequently, come to birth without a prologue, without preconceived doctrinal ideas nor references to former juridical texts, but contained instead a certain freedom with regard to the interpretation of the Rule that had been adopted as the basic law of the house.

In the Constitutions themselves the Saint had written, "... in what has been said, almost all has been ordained in conformity with our Rule" (nÂº31: in those of AlcalÃ¡ the word "almost" has been deliberately omitted, cf. Ch. 11, nÂº5, p.38). In effect, she had felt free to depart even from the Rule by stressing the community aspect of the life and by introducing recreations into the horarium.

3. The combination Constitutions -- Way. We do not know if there was in existence at the Incarnation of Avila a "suitable" book for the spiritual formation of the community in accordance with the spirit and charism of the house. At St Joseph's the Saint made haste to write one in her own hand, with no less speed than the Constitutions. In 1566 the Way was already written out. Then after the comments made by the censor of the manuscript she did it over again the same year, writing it out by hand in its entirety for the second time.

She followed a similar policy with her new book as that which she had adopted for the Constitutions: she revised and corrected it, had it copied out for the different Carmels and then herself began all over again to make alterations in those copies that had been written out for others. Finally she prepared it carefully for printing at the same time as the Constitutions. It was only because of difficulties that cropped up that the pages of the Way did not see the light of day until after a delay of almost two years: the edition of Evora 1583.

In juxtaposing the Way with the Constitutions the Saint achieved something similar to what modern congregations are doing with the combination "Constitutions -- Directory". However there is this difference, that for her the complementarity of the two books was clearer: the Way had a style that was strictly pedagogical and spiritual, not juridical. She set herself the task of explaining the doctrinal-spiritual bearing of the basic texts: the Rule and Constitutions.

With regard to these last two, the Way fulfilled the function of a free commentary setting out for the readers the aims of the Carmelite life, the ideals of community, the approach to virtue and the evangelical counsels, the aim of the contemplative life: the holiness of the union achieved in contemplation.

It is necessary to read these pages again and again in order to understand the spirit of the Constitutions as norms of life for a contemplative community, in which the finer points are taken seriously, but with the aim of the final goal which each religious and the community as a whole ought to keep in mind.

At the same time reading the Constitutions from the vantage point of the Way allows us not only to perceive the value of the details, but also to establish a hierarchy of values in the list of prescribed norms. It is easy to understand why the Saint, in the original text (first and second draft) accorded the first place to the subject of liturgy and personal prayer (nos. 1 and 2) and her concern to define the Carmelite enclosure (no. 4). It can be understood also why she paid so much attention to outlining the character of community life, carefully balancing "solitude and community", "work and prayer", "choir and recreation", "cell and garden with hermitages" . . . .; why she added such a precise section on the individual persons and their function in the community ("the obligation of each sister in her office"). Why she made subtle distinctions, in a lengthy list of stipulations, expressed in her usual hyperbolic way: for example on fidelity to the Rule and Constitutions ("they should take into careful account what the rule ordains", nÂº24; "to take great care in everything about the observance of the Rule and Constitutions", nÂº34; "great care should be taken to read the Constitutions to the novices", nos 40 and 57), or concerning the selection of vocations and the formation of the novices ("let the nuns consider carefully whether those about to be received are persons of prayer", "let them be careful ..." "this should in no way be done, for doing so would be a great evil", "this law should be considered carefully and be observed" nÂº21) and so on, one after another on the common life, poverty, silence, the care of the sick ("the sick should be cared with the fulness of love, concern for their comfort, and compassion... the Mother prioress should be very careful" nÂº23). All these superlatives reveal the Saint's sensitivity towards the various situations and aspects of our religious life. Is it not essential, then, to establish as an interpretive basis that the Way is the authentic exposition of the spirit of the Teresian Constitutions?

4. We come now to the other Teresian combination "Constitutions -- Manner of Visiting Convents": These two small works put us on two different but complementary levels. We know that the second little work (the Manner or as it has recently been entitled, The Visitation of the Discalced Carmelites) was not written for the nuns but for the Visitator. It contained directives for when the latter would have to make an intervention and to enable him to draw up something in the nature of a Directory for Visitators. (It must be remembered that the one for whom it was immediately destined was GraciÃ¡n. It was for him that the Saint wrote with absolute frankness and in all confidence.)

For the Carmelite reader of today, the Manner opens up interesting perspectives when faced with the Constitutions. The style of life devised by the Saint calls for so much gentleness, simplicity, family life, such an awareness of the Presence of God, and such a contemplative attitude that it makes peace, concord, a community bond of understanding, and "love for one another" indispensable requirements. Nevertheless, in the life of each Carmel it is essential that there should be periodically a time for reviewing the life and for tightening-up ideals. Something exceptional distinguishes this time: a person comes from outside, to whom the Superior, conscientiously and with authority, submits a balance sheet of the life and of fidelity to what has been legislated and vowed. This is done with love and strictness, "without weakening" the Saint says. This was how she looked on the time of "Visitation".

The exceptional character of this episode, important but transient permits one to grasp more easily the tone and even the spirit of the Teresian Constitutions. Confronted with this passing event of a Visitation, the Constitutions, (like the Way) envisaged the life of the community in its full extent, viewing seriously the obligations entailed by the Vows, the Rule, fraternal life, contemplation, work, but viewing it also with "mildness",⁽³¹⁾ with love for the Spouse⁽³²⁾, with love, compassion and agreement among the sisters.⁽³³⁾ The Constitutions are in fact the condensed experience that the Saint had progressively acquired in her religious life. She herself summed up her evolution in this way, "I am no longer the same in my way of governing: everything is being done by love". ⁽³⁴⁾

5. The Constitutions in the framework of the other Teresian writings. Besides the combination "Constitutions -- Way -- Manner", there remains the Teresian teaching in the other books, especially those which were written when the Saint's experience was fully matured towards the end of her life.

For reading the Constitutions and assessing its ordinances, the Foundations and the Letters take on a special importance. The Foundations are important for bearing witness to the Saint's life as it unfolded, sometimes in exceptional circumstances, but also because the account is constantly interspersed with orders, suggestions and counsels which throw light on what has been set out in the pages of the Constitutions.

The Letters are no less interesting for directly reflecting the life as it was lived. As she was against the proliferation of norms, the Saint had opted for the conciseness we find in the Constitutions. But life itself is always full of different aspects and changes, of situations which are impossible to foresee and impossible to codify. The Letters (especially the letters exchanged with GraciÃ¡n and the Carmelites) open an immense window on the life of the Saint and of the Carmels recently founded.

The narrow line of the Rule and Constitutions becomes a wide-open space, containing a wealth of possibilities, intentions, ideas to be realised.

Neither the Way nor the Saint's other works contain any glossary or "official commentary" on the Rule and Constitutions. Nor have the first generation of Carmelite nuns who have transmitted so many of the Saint's sayings to us in the various Processes made any collection of the talks in which she commented on the laws during conventual Chapter or at recreation. Nor did Mary of St Joseph do so in her Book of Recreations or in the Instructions to Novices. But this gap is for the most part filled by that other kind of free and authentic commentary which comes to us first of all from the Way which helps us to establish the ideal which makes up the soul of the Constitutions; then from the Manner which places in relief the lifestyle codified in them; and finally from the Foundations and the Letters which mark the limits of the very text of the laws, as we see how they were embodied and interpreted in real life under the direction of the holy Mother Foundress herself.⁽³⁵⁾

1. Biblioteca MÃstica Carmelitana, T. 18: 105.
2. Isabel of the Cross: BMC 18:111.
3. Maria of St Francis: BMC 20: 219.
4. BMC 20: 195.
5. Brief of foundation, 7/2/1562; MHCT 1:11.
6. Ib. p.46.
7. Life of the Saint by Ribera, Salamanca 1590, ii, 2, 132.
8. The Saint's biographer, Ribera, affirms the contrary: ii, 2, 135.
9. cf.. Historia del Carmen Descalzo by Fr Silverio, IV, p.547; Monumenta Historica Carmeli Teresiani, ii, 277.
10. BMC VI: 1-26
11. Cf.. Conversation with Fr Mariano and the foundation of Pastrana in 1569: Foundations 17:3
12. BMC 9:2
13. MHCT, I, 115.
14. Cf.. MHCT I, 316-317
15. MHCT, II, 204.
16. MHCT, II, 283.
17. Salamanca edition, 1581, 5.
18. A detailed study of the variants introduced into the AlcalÃ¡ text and of their justification in the Saint's preceding suggestions can be read in Fr Otilio Rodriguez work El Testamento Teresiano, edited in Castellan at Burgos, Monte Carmelo, 1970. Also, in Italian and Castellan (texts juxtaposed) at Rome, 1973, by the Carmel of "Tre Madonne".
19. Letter of dedication to the Saint, at the beginning of the AlcalÃ¡ Constitutions, Salamanca edition 1581.
20. Printed "in Salamanca by the heirs of Mathias Gast. 1581"
21. Letter to GraciÃ¡n, 19/11/1576.
22. Concerning this is a doctoral thesis in Church History: i. moriones Ana de JesÃºs y la herencia teresiana. Â¿Humanismo cristiano o rigor primitivo?, Rome 1968. The complete documen-tation was published in 1985 in vol. IV of MHCT.
23. Cf.. MHCT, III, 349-352.
24. Ibid p. 350.
25. Ibid p. 351
26. The papal document, printed in 16 pages (n. n.), plus the frontispiece, appeared having been printed at "Romae, apud Paulum Bladum Impressorum Cameralem, MDXC". This can be seen in an edition with the text printed by Anne of Jesus in parallel, in MHCT, IV, doc. 434.
27. pp. 35-36 of the Salamanca edition, 1581.
28. MHCT, IV, 80-82. See also Bullarium Romanum. Ed. Tarin, tome IX, pp. 216-217, which corrects the reading of the 1590 edition.
29. BMC ix, 481-523.
30. BMC ix, 481: this is how the prologue to the Constitutions opens, and it coincides with the French text of the Constitutions of Vannes: cf.. V. Wilderink, Les Constitutions des premieres CarmÃ©lites en France, Rome 1966, p. 195.
3

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The Teresian Constitutions

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