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The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: Selections Annotated and Explained Russell McNeil, PhD Editor, Malaspina Great Books In 1862 the English literary critic and poet Matthew Arnold described Marcus Aurelius as "the most beautiful figure in history." The Stoicism of Aurelius is grounded in rationality and rests solidly on an ethical approach rooted in nature. Stoicism promises real happiness and joy in this life and a serenity that can never be soured by personal misfortune. This philosophy has universal appeal with practical implications on problems ranging from climate change and terrorism to the personal management of sickness, aging, depression and addiction. I truly believe that the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius has much to offer us now...(Click on book cover for more)

Category:	Renaissance Literature
Name:	Teresa of Avila - Theology Series
Birth Year:	1515
Death Year:	1582
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Biography, Lectures, and Research Links:	Brief Biography - Theology Series Blog Teresa of Avila SEARCH NOW: by title by author Saint Teresa of Avila, (known in religion as Teresa De Jesus) Spanish mystic and monastic reformer; born at Avila (53 miles north-west of Madrid), Old Castile, March 28, 1515; died at AlvaOctober 4, 1582. The deeply pious and ascetic ideal after the example of saints and martyrs was early instilled in her by her father, the knight Alonso Sanchez de Cloister Cepeda, and especially by her mother, Life. Beatrix d'Avila y Ahumada. Leaving her parental home secretly one morning in 1534, she entered the monastery of the Incarnation of the Carmelite nuns at Avila. In the cloister she suffered much from illness. Early in her sickness she experienced periods of spiritual ecstasy through the use of the devotional book, Abecedario espiritual, commonly known as the "third" or the "spiritual alphabet" (published, six parts, 1537-1554). This work, following the example of similar writings of the Medieval mystics, consisted of directions for tests of conscience and for spiritual self concentration and inner contemplation, known in mystical nomenclature as oratio recollectionis or oratio meretalis. Besides, she employed other mystical ascetic works; such as the Tractatus de ora tione et meditationx of Peter of Alcantara and perhaps many of those upon which Ignatius Loyola based his Exercitia, and not improbably this Exercitia itself. She professed, in her illness, to rise from the lowest stage, "recollection", to the "devotions of peace" or even to the "devotions of union", which was one of perfect ecstasy. With this was frequently joined a rich "blessing of tears". As the merely outer and void Roman Catholic distinction between mortal and venial sin dawned upon her, she came upon the secret of the awful terror of sinful iniquity, and the inherent nature of original sin. With this was correlated the consciousness of utter natural impotence and the necessity of absolute subjection to God. The intimation on the part of various of her friends (c. 1556) of a diabolical, not divine, element in her supernatural experiences led her to the most horrible self-inflicted tortures and mortifications, far in excess of her ordinary asceticism, until Francisco Borgia, to whom she had made confession, reassured her. On St. Peter's Day of 1559 she became firmly convinced that Christ was present to her in bodily form, though invisible. This vision lasted almost uninterruptedly for more than two years. In another vision, a seraphim drove the fiery point of a golden lance repeatedly through her heart, causing an unexampled, as it were, spiritual-bodily pain. The memory of this episode served as an inspiration in determining her long struggle of love and suffering, from which emanated her life-long passion for conformation to the life and endurance of the Savior, to be epitomized in the cry usually inscribed as a motto upon her images: "Lord, either let me suffer or let me die." [The brief biography is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on Teresa of Avila. and Catholic Encyclopedia (1912)] Detailed Biography Teresa Sanchez Cepeda Davila y Ahumada, born at Avila, Old Castile, 28 March, 1515; died at Alba de Tormes, 4 Oct., 1582. The third child of Don Alonso Sanchez de Cepeda by his second wife, Doña Beatriz Davila y Ahumada, who died when the saint was in her fourteenth year, Teresa was brought up by her saintly father, a lover of serious books, and a tender and pious mother. After her death and the marriage of her eldest sister, Teresa was sent for her education to the Augustinian nuns at Avila, but owing to illness she left at the end of eighteen months, and for some years remained with her father and occasionally with other relatives, notably an uncle who made her acquainted with the Letters of St. Jerome, which determined her to adopt the religious life, not so much through any attraction towards it, as through a desire of choosing the safest course. Unable to obtain her father's consent she left his house unknown to him on Nov., 1535, to enter the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation at Avila, which then counted 140 nuns. The wrench from her family caused her a pain which she ever afterwards compared to that of death. However, her father at once yielded and Teresa took the habit. After her profession in the following year she became very seriously ill, and underwent a prolonged cure and such unskillful medical treatment that she was reduced to a most pitiful state, and even after partial recovery through the intercession of St. Joseph, her health remained permanently impaired. During these years of suffering she began the practice of mental prayer, but fearing that her conversations with some world-minded relatives, frequent visitors at the convent, rendered her unworthy of the graces God bestowed on her in prayer, discontinued it, until she came under the influence, first of the Dominicans, and afterwards of the Jesuits. Meanwhile God had begun to visit her with "intellectual visions and locutions", that is manifestations in which the exterior senses were in no way affected, the things seen and the words heard being directly impressed upon her mind, and giving her wonderful strength in trials, reprimanding her for unfaithfulness, and consoling her in trouble. Unable to reconcile such graces with her shortcomings, which her delicate conscience represented as grievous faults, she had recourse not only to the most spiritual confessors she could find, but also to some saintly laymen, who, never suspecting that the account she gave them of her sins was greatly exaggerated, believed these manifestations to be the work of the evil spirit. The more she endeavoured to resist them the more powerfully did God work in her soul. The whole city of Avila was troubled by the reports of the visions of this nun. It was reserved to St. Francis Borgia and St. Peter of Alcantara, and afterwards to a number of Dominicans (particularly Pedro Ibañez and Domingo Bañez), Jesuits, and other religious and secular priests, to discern the work of God and to guide her on a safe road. The account of her spiritual life contained in the Life written by herself (completed in 1565, an earlier version being lost), in the Relations, and in the Interior Castle, forms one of the most remarkable spiritual biographies with which only the Confessions of St. Augustine can bear comparison. To this period belong also such extraordinary manifestations as the piercing or transverberation of her heart, the spiritual espousals, and the mystical marriage. A vision of the place destined for her in hell in case she should have been unfaithful to grace, determined her to seek a more perfect life. After many troubles and much opposition St. Teresa founded the convent of Discalced Carmelite Nuns of the Primitive Rule of St. Joseph at Avila (24 Aug., 1562), and after six months obtained permission to take up her residence there. Four years later she received the visit of the General of the Carmelites, John-Baptist Rubeo (Rossi), who not only approved of what she had done but granted leave for the foundation of other convents of friars as well as nuns. In rapid succession she established her nuns at Medina del Campo (1567), Malagon and Valladolid (1568), Toledo and Pastrana (1569), Salamanca (1570), Alba de Tormes (1571), Segovia (1574), Veas and Seville (1575), and Caravaca (1576). In the "Book of Foundations" she tells the story of these convents, nearly all of which were established in spite of violent opposition but with manifest assistance from above. Everywhere she found souls generous enough to embrace the austerities of the primitive rule of Carmel. Having made the acquaintance of Antonio de Heredia, prior of Medina, and St. John of the Cross (q.v.), she established her reform among the friars (28 Nov., 1568), the first convents being those of Duruelo (1568), Pastrana (1569), Mancera, and Alcala de Henares (1570). A new epoch began with the entrance into religion of Jerome Gratian, inasmuch as this remarkable man was almost immediately entrusted by the nuncio with the authority of visitor Apostolic of the Carmelite friars and nuns of the old observance in Andalusia, and as such considered himself entitled to overrule the various restrictions insisted upon by the general and the general chapter. On the death of the nuncio and the arrival of his successor a fearful storm burst over St. Teresa and her work, lasting four years and threatening to annihilate the nascent reform. The incidents of this persecution are best described in her letters. The storm at length passed, and the province of Discalced Carmelites, with the support of Philip II, was approved and canonically established on 22 June, 1580. St. Teresa, old and broken in health, made further foundations at Villnuava de la Jara and Palencia (1580), Soria (1581), Granada (through her assiatant the Venerable Anne of Jesus), and at Burgos (1582). She left this latter place at the end of July, and, stopping at Palencia, Valldolid, and Medina del Campo, reached Alba de Torres in September, suffering intensely. Soon she took to her bed and passed away on 4 Oct., 1582, the following day, owing to the reform of the calendar, being reckoned as 15 October. After some years her body was transferred to Avila, but later on reconveyed to Alba, where it is still preserved incorrupt. Her heart, too, showing the marks of the Transverberation, is exposed there to the veneration of the faithful. She was beatified in 1614, and canonized in 1622 by Gregory XV, the feast being fixed on 15 October. St. Teresa's position among writers on mystical theology is unique. In all her writings on this subject she deals with her personal experiences, which a deep insight and analytical gifts enabled her to explain clearly. The Thomistic substratum may be traced to the influence of her confessors and directors, many of whom belonged to the Dominican Order. She herself had no pretension to found a school in the accepted sense of the term, and there is no vestige in her writings of any influence of the Aeropagite, the Patristic, or the Scholastic Mystical schools, as represented among others, by the German Dominican Mystics. She is intensely personal, her system going exactly as far as her experiences, but not a step further. A word must be added on the orthography of her name. It has of late become the fashion to write her name Teresa or Teresia, without "h", not only in Spanish and Italian, where the "h" could have no place, but also in French, German, and Latin, which ought to preserve the etymological spelling. As it is derived from a Greek name, Tharasia, the saintly wife of St. Paulinus of Nola, it should be written Theresia in German and Latin, and Thérèse in French. Activities as Reformer The incentive to give outward practical expression to her inward motive was inspired in Theresa by Peter of Alcantara. Incidentally, he became acquainted with as Founder her early in 1560, and became her spiritual guide and counselor. She now resolved to found a Carmelite monastery for nuns, and to reform the laxity which she had found in the Cloister of the Incarnation and others. Giumara de Ullon, a woman of wealth and a friend, supplied the funds. The absolute poverty of the new monastery established in 1562 and named St. Joseph's, at first excited a scandal among the citizens and authorities of Avila, and the little house with its chapel was in peril of suppression; but powerful patrons like the bishop himself, as well as the impression of well-secured subsistence and prosperity, turned animosity into applause. In March, 1563, when Theresa removed to the new cloister, she received the papal sanction to her prime principle of absolute poverty and renunciation of property, which she proceeded to formulate into a "Constitution." Her plan was the revival of the earlier stricter rules, supplemented by new regulations like the three disciplines of ceremonial flagellation prescribed for the divine service every week, and the discalceation of the none, or the substitution of leather or wooden sandals for shoes. For the first five years Theresa remained in pious seclusion, engaged in writing. In 1657 she received a patent from the Carmelite general, Rubeo de Ravenna, to establish new houses of her order, and in this effort and later visitations she made long journeys through nearly all the provinces of Spain. Of these she gives a description in her Libro de Zas Fundacimles (a late ed., Madrid, 1880; Eng. transl., Book of the Foundations, London, 1871). Between 1567 and 1571, reform convents were established at Medina del Campo, Malagon, Valladolid, Toledo, Pastrana, Salamanca, and Alba de Tormes. After her sprit and example, a similar movement for men was begun by Juan de la Cruz. Another friend, Geronimo Grecian, Carmelite visitator of the older observance of Andalusia and apostolic commissioner, and later provincial of the Theresian reforms, gave her powerful support in founding convents at Segovia (1571), Veas de Segura (1574), Seville (1575), and Caravaca in Murcia (1576), while the deeply mystical Juan, by his power as teacher and preacher promoted the inner life of the movement. In 1576 began a series of persecutions on the part of the older observant Carmelite order against Theresa, her friends, and her reforms. Pursuant to a body of resolutions adopted at the general chapter at Piacenza, the "definitors" of the order forbade all further founding of convents. The general condemned her to voluntary retirement to one of her institutions. She obeyed and chose St. Joseph's at Toledo. Her friends and subordinates were subjected to greater trials. Finally, after several years her pleadings by letter with King Philip II of Spain secured relief. As a result, in 1579, the processes before the Inquisition against her, Grecian, and others were dropped, and the extension of the reform was at least negatively permuted. A brief of Pope Gregory XIII. allowed a special provincial for the younger branch of the discalceate nuns, and a royal rescript created a protective board of four assessors for the reform. During the last three years of her life Theresa founded convents at Villanueva de la Xara in northern Andulusia (1580), Palencia (1580), Soria (1581), Burgos, and at Granada (1582). In all seventeen nunneries, all but one founded by her, and as many men's cloisters were due to her reform activity of twenty years. Her final illness overtook her on one of her journeys from Burgos to Alba de Tormes. Forty years after her death she was canonized, and her church reveres her as the "seraphic virgin". The Cortes exalted her to patroness of Spain in 1814, and the university previously conferred the title Doctor ecclesice with a diploma. The mysticism in her works exerted a formative influence upon many theologians of the following centuries, such as Francis of Sales, and the Port Royalists. Her Mysticism The kernel of Theresa's mystical thought throughout all her writings is the ascent of the soul in four stages (Autobiography, chap. x.-xxii.). The first, or "heart's devotion", is that of devout contemplation or concentration, the withdrawal of the soul from without and specially the devout observance of the passion of Christ and penitence. The second is the "devotion of peace", in which at least the human will is lost in that of God by virtue of a charismatic, supernatural state given of God, while the other faculties, as memory, reason, and imagination, are not yet secure from worldly distraction. While a partial distraction is due to outer performances such as repetition of prayers and writing down spiritual things, yet the prevailing state is one of quietude. The "devotion of union" is not only a supernatural but an essentially ecstatic state. Here there is also an absorption of the reason in God, and only the memory and imagination are left to ramble. This state is characterized by a blissful peace, a sweet slumber of at least the higher soul faculties, a conscious rapture in the love of God. The fourth is the "devotion of ecstasy or rapture" a passive state, in which the consciousness of being in the body disappears (II Cor. xii. 2-3). Sense activity ceases; memory and imagination are also absorbed in God or intoxicated. Body and spirit are in the throes of a sweet, happy pain, alternating between a fearful fiery glow, a complete impotence and unconsciousness, and a spell of strangulation, intermitted sometimes by such an ecstatic flight that the body is literally lifted into space. This after half an hour is followed by a reactionary relaxation of a few hours in a swoon-like weakness, attended by a negation of all the faculties in the union with God. From this the subject awakens in tears; it is the climax of mystical experience, productive of the trance. Writings Theresa's writings, produced for didactic purposes, stand among the most remarkable in the mystical literature of the Roman Catholic Church: The Autobiography, written before 1567, under the direction of her confessor, Padro Ibanez (La Vide de la Santa Madre Teresa de Jesus, Madrid, 1882; Eng. transl., The Life of S. Teresa of Jesus, London, 1888); Camino de Perfeeion, written also before 1567, at the direction of her confessor (Sala, manes, 1589; Eng. transl., The Way of Perfection, London, 1852); El Castillo Interior, written in 1577 (Eng. transl., The Interior Castle, London, 1852), comparing the contemplative soul to a castle with seven successive interior courts, or chambers, analogous to the seven heavens; Relaciones, an extension of the autobiography giving her inner and outer experiences in epistolary form. Two smaller works are Conceptos del Amor and Exdamaciones. Besides, there are the Cartas (Saragossa, 1671), or correspondence, of which there are 342 letters and 87 fragments of others. Theresa's prose is marked by an unaffected grace, an ornate neatness, and charming power of expression, together placing her in the front rank of Spanish prose writers; and her rare poems (Todas las poesias, Munster, 1854) are distinguished for tenderness of feeling and rhythm of thought. [Adapted from Catholic Encyclopedia (1912)] The Great Books: Teresa of Avila This web page is part of a biographical database on Great Ideas. These are living ideas that have shaped, defined and directed world culture for over 2,500 years. By definition the Great Ideas are radical. As such they are sometimes misread, or distorted by popular simplifications. Understanding a Great Idea demands personal engagement. Our selection of Great Ideas is drawn from literature and philosophy, science, art, music, theatre, and cinema. We also include biographies of pivotal historical and religious figures, as well as contributions from women and other historically under-represented minorities. The result is an integrated multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary database built upon the framework of a Great Books Core List developed by Mortimer Adler (1902-2001). Please browse our Amazon list of titles about Teresa of Avila. 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This web page is part of a biographical database on Great Ideas. These are living ideas that have shaped, defined and directed world culture for over 2,500 years. By definition the Great Ideas are radical. As such they are sometimes misread, or distorted by popular simplifications. Understanding a Great Idea demands personal engagement. Our selection of Great Ideas is drawn from literature and philosophy, science, art, music, theatre, and cinema. We also include biographies of pivotal historical and religious figures, as well as contributions from women and other historically under-represented minorities. The result is an integrated multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary database built upon the framework of the always controversial Great Books Core List published in 1940 by the late Great Books Pioneer Mortimer Adler (1902-2001). Most of the works on that list are available in the 60 volume Great Books of the Western World.