Teresa of Ávila

Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada

Lived

1515–1582

Era

Reformation

Where

Castile, Spain

Tradition

Roman Catholic

The Interior Castle, and a reformed Carmelite order

A Carmelite nun of converso descent who, after twenty years of unremarkable religious life, underwent a decisive conversion at about forty and spent the rest of her life founding reformed houses across Spain against determined opposition, including from the Inquisition.

Why it matters

She wrote the classic western maps of contemplative prayer, the Life and the Interior Castle, in a plain and often funny Spanish, while insisting she was an ignorant woman who should not be writing — a necessary posture for a woman writing theology in the Spain of the Inquisition. She founded seventeen houses in twenty years, and was declared a doctor of the church in 1970, the first woman to be.

All the figures, from the apostolic age to the present, or the timeline they stand in.