Publisher's Synopsis
WHEN S. Teresa had taken possession and founded the first monastery of her nuns in Avila, 24th August 1562, she was summoned back to the monastery of the Incarnation, where she had made her profession, for that monastery was thrown into trouble by the act of the Saint, and the nuns were very angry with her. She was made to give an account of her conduct, and the provincial was sent for, before whom she had to make what defence she could: that defence she made in the prescncc of the nuns her sister's, and so successfully that no one was found to blame her. When she had appeased her sisters, she had to meet other troubles: the people of Avila had been also disturbed, and a new house of religion seemed for the moment to be an offence to them. The magistrates of the city resolved to suppress the monastery, but on finding that it was lawfully established with the consent of the bishop they had recourse to the courts of law. But out of all their efforts nothing came, and the Saint, with the consent of the provincial, left the monastery of the Incarnation, and joined her sisters in the new house of S. Joseph. She went to that house, according to the chronicle of the order, before the end of the year; but Ribera says, and his account is more likely to be true, that she did not return before the middle of Lent 1563. Fray Francisco de Santa Maria, the chronicle," rests his statement that she went back in December on the expression in the Prologue to the Foundations, In the year 1562-the very year in which this house of S. Joseph in Avila was founded. "I was ordered, when in that house, by my confessor, the Dominican friar, father Garcia of Toledo, to write the history of the foundation of the monastery. He says that Fray Garcia could not have given her the commandment to' write before she returned to the Incarnation, he: cause she was summoned thither at once, and was not allowed to remain the whole day in S, Joseph's: she would therefore, he says, have left the Incarnation after the summons, and returned to S, Joseph's before the end of the year.
