Two things led me to leave the "Saxonia" at Gibraltar, and journey
through the Spanish peninsula. I wanted to go to Lourdes, and I
wanted to drink in the memories of St. Teresa, Spain's chiefest
glory, at the fountain-head. At Algeciras, right across from
Gibraltar, I set foot for the first time on the soil of Spain. The
train for Ronda was waiting, and I stepped on board. The railway
passes through a wild, mountainous region, rich in traces of the
Moorish occupation. At Ronda I said Mass in the chapel of the Little
Sisters of the Poor. One of the Sisters was from Dumfries, in
Scotland, and one from our own Quebec. I asked them how they came to
be in Ronda, and they said they were like soldiers and had to go
where they were sent. The Little Sisters have their houses and do
their Christlike work in many parts of the world. Wherever the
Catholic Church is, where the Cross of Christ points heavenward,
there they are at home.
* * *
Andalusia comprises the four old Moorish Kingdoms of Jaen, Seville,
Granada, and Cordova. It is the most fascinating province of Spain.
The scenic beauty of mountain and valley soothes the mind, while the
soft languorous climate steeps the senses in repose. To the
voluptuous Mohammedan Andalusia was well worth fighting for. And
long he fought and fiercely ere he gave it back finally to the sons
of Spain.
* * *
The region from Ronda to Seville is wonderfully fertile. So indeed
is nearly the whole of Spain--land of the vine and the olive, land of
corn and wheat, land of clear blue skies and brilliant sun. Seville,
on the banks of the Guadalquiver, is a city of great interest,
possessing a wealth of historical associations. It has passed
through many vicissitudes from the time of the Romans down. The long
domination of the Moors has stamped an oriental character upon it. I
said Mass at the Convent of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
founded by the famous Mary Ward. The Sisters are commonly known as
the Loreto Nuns, and in Spain as "Las Madres Irlandesas." They teach
a day school in Seville, and have a boarding school outside the city.
I met one who said she was connected by ties of kinship with the
family of St. Teresa. She wrote for me in Spanish a saying of the
saint, which shows she was human enough to hate Seville because it
was so hot: "Whoever suffers the heat of Seville with patience has
done penance enough." It seems a pity the human element should have
been almost wholly eliminated from our Lives of the Saints. The run
of those that have come down to us, especially from mediæval times,
are little more than an abstract of the heroic virtues practised by
the saints and the miracles performed by them. The servants of God
are set up on a pedestal so high and so far away that we feel as if
we could never hope to get near to them at all. And yet they had
their human side, to us intensely interesting, for, to apply in a
good sense what was first written disparagingly,
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
* * *
At Seville I visited the monastery of Discalced Carmelites founded by
St. Teresa. The present one was built by St. John of the Cross in a
different locality from that of the original monastery, because the
situation of this latter one was found to be unhealthy. Over the
grille is a wooden cross erected by St. John, the faithful co-worker
of St. Teresa, a man of lofty spirit kindred to her own. I was shown
an autograph letter of his, bearing date March 28, 1586. The
handwriting is very legible. Of St. Teresa's own relics there are
the following: (1) an autograph letter, signed "Teresa of Jesus," the
name being spelled as written, not "Theresa," which follows the
French "Thérèse;" (2) a bit of the hair shirt worn by the saint; (3)
a medicine bottle used by her in her last illness--which shows her to
have been human to the end; (4) a large white woolen mantle that she
wore, the mantle of her Order; (5) one of her slippers, now so richly
embroidered that the original cannot be seen; (6) last and far the
most signal relic of all, the autograph original of the Interior
Castle, or Castle of the Soul, perhaps her greatest work. The
handwriting is somewhat peculiar, and the text not easily read,
because in many cases the syllables are separated. This priceless
autograph is in an excellent state of preservation, bound with heavy
plates of gold. It came into possession of the monastery, the nuns
told me, through one of the first novices of the community, her
father, a gentleman of high social standing, having received it from
a Carmelite priest who was intimate in life with St. Teresa.
* * *
The Father Prior of the Discalced Carmelites at Seville, who speaks
English well, having spent some years in England as a missionary,
gave me a story handed down by tradition in the Carmelite Order. It
shows at once the terms of loving familiarity on which St. Teresa
lived with Our Lord and her ready wit. The convent at Burgos, in the
north of Spain, was her last foundation. She feared to go there in
mid-winter because of the cold, but Our Lord reminded her that He was
the source of all warmth. The roads being all but impassable, she
and her companions suffered great hardships, and at one place were
nearly drowned in the waters of a stream that had overflowed its
banks. Gently complaining to her Divine Spouse, she was told that
these were favours He reserved for His friends. "That," she
rejoined, "is why your friends are so few!" "She as very saucy with
Him," said an Irish nun at Madrid, on my reciting this story. The
playful sally finds its proper setting and balance in those other
words of the saint that we read in her _Foundations_, ch. xxxi: "O my
Lord, how true it is that you repay with a cross those who do you a
service! But what an inestimable treasure that cross is to those who
truly love you, were it but given them at once to realize its value!
And yet, they would not have sought to possess themselves of the
treasure, the price to be paid seeming at the moment too great." So
hard is it for us to bear what presses here and now upon us, even
when we are quite persuaded that every trial is a crucible for the
minting of heaven's gold.
* * *
I did but pass through Madrid on my way to Avila. The city is
modern, having none of the quaintness of other Spanish towns. The
Loreto Nuns have a convent and school in the outskirts. Even the
little tots must speak English. A course at this convent is greatly
desired for their daughters by Spanish mothers since Princess
Victoria came to share with Alfonso the throne of Spain.
* * *
About midway between Madrid and Avila, with great ridges of rock
above and around it, stands the palace of the Escorial, built by
Philip the Second, husband of Mary Tudor. It compares with the
pyramids of Egypt in size and solidity. It is at once a palace, a
monastery, a church, and a mausoleum. There are not in all the world
more gorgeous tombs than those that here enclose the ashes of the
kings and queens of Spain. In the treasury of the monastery I saw
the little statue of the Blessed Virgin before which Pope St. Pius V
prayed during the battle of Lepanto. Queen Elizabeth II has decked
it with a crown of brilliants. In the library, among manuscripts of
priceless value, are four of the autograph writings of St. Teresa,
the Book of the Foundations, the Manner of Visiting Convents, the Way
of Perfection, and the Life by herself. All these were collected,
not without difficulty, by the royal founder of the Escorial, who
died sixteen years after St. Teresa, in 1598.
* * *
Avila, famed evermore as the birthplace and home of St. Teresa, is
situated in the centre of the province of that name, west of Segovia
and south of Valladolid. The hill on which it stands rises out of an
undulating country to the north, and, on the south, overlooks a broad
plain which stretches away almost as far as the eye can see to a
range of mountains known as the Sierras of Avila. The waters of the
Adaja river bathe the foot of the cliffs to the west. On the
southwestern slope of the hill, facing the wide extent of meadow land
and the distant mountains, stands the old home of St. Teresa,
enclosed within a Dominican monastery. Here one is shown the room
where she was born, now a chapel in which the Blessed Sacrament is
kept. Here also, but some feet under the ground--for old things have
a way of sinking into the earth--, is the little garden where, a
child of seven, she played at being a nun, and with her brother, four
years her senior planned to seek the crown of martyrdom among the
Moors. "We settled," she tells us, "to go together to the country of
the Moors, begging our way there for the love of God, that we might
be beheaded there." "I ran away," was the naive excuse precocious
piety gave her mother, "because I wanted to see God, and one cannot
do that without dying."
* * *
Avila is little changed since Teresa de Ahumada and Rodriquez de
Cepeda stole softly along its cobbled streets and left its lofty
portals behind, in the gray dawn of that summer's day, some four
hundred years ago. The stones, since worn by many feet, are the same
that they trod; the stout walls that defied Moorish assault still
look proudly down upon the stranger that enters at the gate. Outside
the walls are two religious houses which are fragrant with the
memories of St. Teresa. One is the Convent of St. Joseph, the other
the Monastery of the Incarnation. The latter stands on a hill a few
hundred yards to the north of the town. There Teresa first made her
vows, and there she lived for twenty-seven years, three of which she
was Prioress. Among her relics there are (1) a little water jug, (2)
a crucifix borne by her when she went forth to found new convents,
(3) the key of her cell, (4) a document concerning the dowry of a
religious, signed by the saint and the four nuns who established with
her the new foundation. I sat in the chair, by the side of the
grille, where St. Peter of Alcantara and St. Francis Borgia conversed
with her on spiritual subjects. It was there that a nun, happening
along one day, found herself and St. John of the Cross raised above
the ground in an ecstasy of contemplation. The quick-witted Teresa
put it all on her companion. "See," she said, "what comes of talking
with Father John!"
* * *
St. Joseph's of Avila, now known as the Convent of St. Teresa, is on
the east side, just outside the walls, but within the town limits.
It was the saint's first foundation, the beginning of the Reform.
Here are several relics, among others a tambourine on which the saint
used to play. Her body lies incorrupt at Alba de Tormes, where she
died. The morning I went to say Mass at St. Joseph's, I was
accompanied by two English ladies, a mother and daughter, Anglicans
both, very High Church, and very much interested in all that related
to St. Teresa. They knelt to the Blessed Sacrament on entering, and
assisted at Mass with every mark of devotion. We afterwards spoke
with the nuns at the grating. They showed us the relics of their
holy foundress, and bade us be sure to visit the chapel built by her
in connection with her first foundation. I had told the mother the
night before of the sweet odor I perceived when, at the Escorial, the
Augustinian Father had opened the glass case that contained the four
autograph writings of St. Teresa. Just as we entered the chapel I
felt the same sweet odor, and asked the mother if she perceived it.
"Yes," she said, "but it is a very elusive odor." A nun at Seville
had spoken to me of the odor exhaled by the relics of the saint, and
had said that some perceived it but others didn't, and that even to
the same person it was perceptible at times, at other times not. It
seemed to me something like the odor of incense, and yet I am quite
sure it was not that. I was much impressed with the fact that it was
the self-same odor I perceived in those two widely distant places.
* * *
At the hotel in Avila I met an American lady who had not visited her
native land in five years. She was so taken with Europe, she said,
that she thought she should never cross the Atlantic again. Perhaps
the recent terrible happenings may have made her change her mind.
The conversation turning on St. Teresa, I said I looked upon her as
being, after the Blessed Virgin, the greatest woman saint that ever
lived. My American friend believed she must yield the palm to St.
Catherine of Siena. And truly the latter may contest the palm in the
outer world of action. But I was thinking rather of the inner world
of the spirit, where piety rears "a building of God, a house not made
with hands." No one has thrown clearer or more copious light upon
the things of that inner world than the author of "The Way of
Perfection" and "The Castle of the Soul." For the rest, "star
differs from star in brightness," and it is not for us, short-sighted
and dim of vision as we are, to say which shines with the greatest
lustre. Stars there are, too, in the firmament of the Church that
have never swum into our ken. We shall see them when we have passed
hence, even as those who pass to the other side of the globe behold
the Southern Cross.--Mrs. Hemans's lines on that brilliant
constellation come to one unbidden: they are put in the mouth of some
son or daughter of Spain:
Thou recallest the ages when first o'er the main
My fathers unfolded the ensign of Spain,
And planted their faith in the regions that see
Its unperishing symbol emblazoned in thee.
Shine on--my own land is a far distant spot,
And the stars of thy sphere can enlighten it not,
And the eyes that I love, though e'en now they may be
O'er the firmament wandering, can gaze not on thee!
* * *
On leaving Avila I visited Valladolid. To me the most interesting
place there was the Scots College, once a home of the Jesuits and
their house of studies in the days of the great Suarez. Here many of
the men who kept the torch of faith burning in the Scottish Highlands
during the dark night of persecution received their education for the
priesthood. The Very Reverend Alexander MacDonald, V.G., who died at
Mabon, Cape Breton, in 1865, left Valladolid for Lismore, Scotland,
in 1816, as the college records bear witness. It was from him I got
in baptism the light of faith.
* * *
I slept at San Sebastian on my way to Lourdes. Of my visit to that
famous shrine I write elsewhere.