c. 1531. Enters Augustinian Convent of St. Mary of Grace, Ávila, as a boarder. Stays
AN OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF ST. TERESA
(Abbreviations: F = Foundations; I.C. = Interior Castle; L = Life; LL = Letters; R = Relations. Roman numerals after F. I.C., L, R refer to chapters; Arabic numerals after LL, to the numbers of the Letters. The numerals in brackets after the names of the foundations record their chronological sequence.)
1515 (March 28). Birth of Teresa de (Cepeda y) Ahumada at Ávila.
1528. Teresa loses her mother.
c. 1531. Enters Augustinian Convent of St. Mary of Grace, Ávila, as a boarder. Stays there for eighteen months (L III).
1536 (November 2). Enters Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation, Ávila, as a novice (cf. n. 79. "It is forty years since this nun took the habit," wrote St. Teresa in 1576: R IV, p. 319).
1537 (November 3). Professed at Convent of the Incarnation.
1538 (Autumn: "before two years had passed": L V). Health gives way. Goes ("when the winter began") to stay with her half-sister, Doña María de Cepeda de Barrientos, at the village of Castellanos de la Cañada. On the way there, stays at Hortigosa with her uncle, Don Pedro de Cepeda, who gives her a copy of Osuna's Third Spiritual Alphabet.
1539 (April-July). Undergoes treatment at Becedas.
1539 (August 15). Attack of catalepsy, which leaves her helpless "for more than eight months" (L VI).
1540 (about Easter). Returns to Incarnation. An invalid till late in 1541: "This (illness) I suffered for three years" (L V). The effects of the paralysis remain till the summer of 1542 (L VI) and recur intermittently (L VII) till about 1554.
1543 (December 24). Death of her father, Don Alonso Sánchez de Cepeda.
c. 1555-6. Begins to think she is "sometimes being addressed by interior voices and to see certain visions and experience revelations" (R IV).
c. 1556-7. Final "conversion" (after "nearly twenty years on that stormy sea": L VIII: p. 108). Cf. pp. 78, 117, n. 3. First contact with the Society of Jesus ("after almost twenty years' experience of prayer": L XXIII).
(1557. Visit of St. Francis Borgia to Ávila [L XXIV].)
1558. Experiences her first rapture (L XXIV) and perhaps (L XXVIII) an imaginary vision of Christ (usually dated January 25 or June 29-30, 1558. But a likelier date is 1560: see pp. 235, 260, 268, 271).
Discussions begin about the foundation in Ávila of a convent for Discalced nuns (R IV).
159. P. Álvarez becomes her confessor. Transverberation of her heart (L XXIX).
1560. Makes a vow of greater perfection.
1561. P. Gaspar de Salazar comes to Ávila (April).