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Excerpt from The Life of Teresa of Jesus (1611)

Translated by E. Allison Peers
Published in 1960

The Spanish religious reformer Teresa de Ávila (Teresa of Jesus; 1515–1582) was an important figure in the Catholic Reformation (also called the Counter Reformation), a reform movement within the Roman Catholic Church that took place in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (see Roman Catholic Church entry). The Roman Catholic Church is a Christian religion based in Rome, Italy, and headed by a pope. When the Catholic Reformation began in the mid-1500s, Catholicism was still the only established Christian religion in the Western (non-Asian) world. Nevertheless, the stability of the church was being threatened by the Protestant Reformation, a widespread reform movement in central Europe that was started by the German theology professor (teacher of religion) Martin Luther in 1517...