THE HEIRS OF ST. TERESA

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MOTHER MARY OF ST. JOSEPH (SALAZAR)

 

 

MOTHER ANNE OF JESUS (LOBERA)

 

 

MOTHER ANNE OF ST BARTHOLOMEW (GARCIA)

 

 

FATHER JEROME GRACIAN OF THE MOTHER OF GOD (

 

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MARY OF ST. JOSEPH SALAZAR

Associate of St. teresa of avila and writer; b. Toledo, 1548; d. Cuerva, Oct. 19, 1603. She came of a noble family linked with the ducal house of Medinacelli. As a child she entered the service of Doña Luisa de la Cuerda in Toledo where, at the age of 14, she met Teresa. Attracted to the Teresian enterprise by Teresa herself, Mary took the habit (May 6, 1570) and made her profession at Malagon (June 10, 1571). Teresa took her to her new foundation of Beas (1565), then to Seville (1565–66). The many extant letters of St. Teresa to Mary testify to the great affection and love that the mother foundress had for her. After the death of St. Teresa, Mary made the foundation of the Lisbon house (1588), where she soon became very popular. …

 

 

COMING SOON... THE RIVALRY BETWEEN THE TWO ANNES

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ANA FACTIONS

Antagonism between the two women was rooted in 1590 conflict known as "the nun's revolt."  When Nicolas Doria proposed changes in monastic monastic governance and sought to alter the Teresian constitutions, Ana de Jesus led a group of rebel nuns and petitioned the pope to forbid changes to the primitive constitutions drafted bu the Founding Mother.  Ana de San Bartolome, however, sided with Doria, convinced that Teresa would have endorsed major points of his proposed reform.

Tensions flared up again in 1605, when Ana de Jesus, the prioress in Paris, rejected an English postulant who had convered from Protestantism.  In defiant response Ana de San Bartolome accepted the English novice at her convent in Pontoise.  In a letter to Berulle regarding this issue Ana de Jesus condescendingly dismissed the other Ana's judgment:

"As for Mother Ana de San Bartolome, she has no occasion up to the present of knowing what it means to make or abrogate a point of Rule or of the Constitutions.  If our Holy Mother, four or five years before her death, had her constantly with her, it was not to help in business, but only to dress and undress her and to help her to write letters, for her Reverence had broken her arm and the choir nuns could not always be with her."

Ana de San Bartolome, in her text Defense of the Teresian Legacy (Defensa de la herencia teresiana), date by Urkiza to 1621, offers her own spin on the recently-deceased Ana de Jesus:

"....it seems they want to make more of (her) than our Holy Mother, and this I cannot endure, since she is far from deserving canonization... Mother Ana (de Jesus) was not with the Saint but two or three months in Salamanca and after some years she (the saint) carried her to a new foundation at Veas and left her there, so that they never saw each other again.  And through letters our Holy \mother commanded her to go to Granada... and well I know that she was unhappy with how Ana did things there...and what is least to the credit of Mother Ana is that in her life she wanted to be head of everything, and this is not high praise for a subordinate."

In these two excerpts, each Ana undermines the other's claim to authority: if Ana de San Bartholome was Teresa's constant companion, she was more servant than trusted collaborator; and though Ana de Jesus held positions of administrative leadership, she was too independent-minded and bossy.

 

Taken from THE HEIRS OF ST. TERESA OF AVILA, edited by Christopher Wilson, PhD

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the subject of Anne of St. Batholomew on taking the black veil of a choir nun:

(Berulle) had told her that he had wanted to make her novice mistress.  But Blessed Anne said that she could do that work without taking the black veil.  Anne of Jesus for her part was unhappy with Berulle's wished and tried to persuade Blessed Anne to refuse, saying that it would go against the Spirit of St. Teresa.  Bleassed Anne could only respond that Teresa herself wanted her to change and take the black veil, but because of Blessed Anne's repugnance toward the idea, she let the matter drop.

Taken from THE HEIRS OF ST. TERESA OF AVILA, edited by Christopher Wilson, PhD

 

 

 

 

 

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Anne of St. Bartholomew's difficulty in the chanting of the Divine Office

Two days later after she received the black veil, she was on her way to Pontoise, the next foundation in France, where she was to remain as Prioress.  The day after her arrival, four young French women received the habit, and after two days Mother Anne of Jesus returned to Paris.  The Spanish nun from Burgos, Isabel de San Pablo, originally from Spanish Netherlands, remained as subprioress.  She spoke Spanish poorly and French worse.  After Isabel fell sick with the quartan fevers, Anne of St. Bartholomew had to take over the recitation of the office in Latin in choir.  Anne describes her situation in this way: "Since I didn't know how the office should be said in choir, and I found myself there everyday alone with four novices and I didn't know the language, I was the most embarrassed woman in the world and so cast down that i didn't think anything could have been more humbling for me.  I felt so incapable that I didn't know myself."  She said that the only time she has ever felt so afflicted was when St. Teresa died.  She tells us, though, that the French nuns read Latin very well (in fact, as though they had doctorates) and that they had to each her.  Blessed Anne was always very impressed by the French Nuns and thought they made excellent Carmelites.  

 

Taken from THE HEIRS OF ST. TERESA OF AVILA, edited by Christopher Wilson, PhD

 

 

 

 

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Thank you