Saint Teresa

Saint Teresa For saints thus named use Theresa, Saint.

Teresa of Avila, Saint (1515–82) ( Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada) Spanish Carmelite nun and mystic. In 1529 she entered the Convent of the Incarnation at Ávila, central Spain. From 1558 she reformed the Carmelite Order for women, whose rules had become weakened. Under her influence, St John of the Cross introduced a restored Carmelite Order for men. Her literary works, an autobiography and the meditative Interior Castle (1577), as well as her monastic reforms, led to her canonization in 1622. Her feast day is October 15.

Teresa female forename, name of two saints.
St Teresa of Ávila (1515–82), Spanish Carmelite nun and mystic, who combined vigorous activity as a reformer with mysticism and religious contemplation. She instituted the ‘discalced’ reform movement with St John of the Cross, establishing the first of a number of convents in 1562. In 1970 she became the first woman to be declared a Doctor of the Church. Her emblems are a fiery arrow or a dove above her head, and her feast day is 15 October.
St Teresa of Lisieux (1873–97), French Carmelite nun. Her cult grew through the publication of her autobiography L'Histoire d'une âme (1898) in which she taught that sanctity can be attained through continual renunciation in small matters, and not only through extreme self-mortification. She is represented in her Carmelite habit and holding roses, as a sign of her promise to ‘let fall a shower of roses’ of miracles and other favours. Her feast day is 3 October.