Teresa of Ávila

Teresa of Ávila was a Spanish nun of Jewish descent who spent twenty years in a comfortable convent before a conversion at forty set her to reforming the Carmelite order, founding seventeen houses of discalced nuns across Castile against the opposition of the church, the order and the Inquisition, with John of the Cross as her ally. She wrote at her confessors’ command: the Life, The Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle, which maps the soul’s journey through seven mansions to union with God. She was canonised in 1622 and made the first woman Doctor of the Church in 1970. Bernini carved her ecstasy.