The history of the popes, from the close of the middle ages : drawn ...

TERESA OF JESUS. 277
founder in 1562, it gradually spread through no less than 20
provinces of the order. Clement IX. proclaimed Peter of
Alcantara a saint in i66g.
A little later than the Spanish Franciscans, a reformed congregation
was set up among the Carmelites in Spain. The
convents of women in that Order contained many members,
but there was hardly any enclosure and their manner of life
was far from strict. Yet it was precisely there that the fire
was smouldering beneath the ashes ;
when Teresa de Ahumeda,
a Carmelite nun ol great abihty in the convent of the In-
carnation at Avila, went with four sisters of like mind with
herself to a small house at Avila, in order to devote herself,
in complete segregation from the distractions of the world,
entirely to prayer and penance, the enthusiasm for a like
life of sacrifice spread rapidly. In 1567 Teresa began to found
other convents of a hke spirit in other places, while by means
of the Carmelite friar, John of the Cross, the movf-ment spread
to the male branch of the Order, and became of great importance
to the Church in the centuries which followed.^ Both
Peter of Alcantara and Teresa were guided in the exercise of
prayer and self-denial by the desire to make atonement, after
the example of Christ crucified, for the sins of the world, and
to sacrifice themselves for the salvation of others and the
reform of the Church. Looked at in this light, the congrega-
tions which they founded belong to the period of Catholic
restoration ; they differ from the contemporary Orders which
were devoted to the care of souls only in the means which
they adopted, and not in the end they had in view.
If Pius V. restored their religious life to many of the Orders,
in others he reformed the rule itself, or for the first time gave
them a rule and constitution. The congregation of the Canons
Regular of S. Giorgio in Alga, near Venice, the Hermits of
St. Jerome, and in general all those religious bodies which
led a community life, and were distingnislied by their dross
from the secular clergy, but which had hitherto retained their
property and taken no vows, were now obliged to take the
1 Particulars in Vol. XIX. of this work.