#king-philip-ii — Public Fediverse posts

Quote of the day, 2 December: St. Teresa of Avila

To the King Don Philip II

The grace of the Holy Spirit be with your majesty, amen. I strongly believe that our Lady has chosen you to protect and help her order. So, I cannot fail to have recourse to you regarding her affairs. For the love of our Lord, I beg you to pardon me for so much boldness.

I am sure your majesty has received news of how the nuns at the Incarnation tried to have me go there, thinking they would have some means to free themselves from the friars, who are certainly a great hindrance to the recollection and religious observance of the nuns. And the friars are entirely at fault for the lack of observance previously present in that house. The nuns are very much mistaken in their desire that I go there, for as long as they are subject to the friars as confessors and visitators, I would be of no help—at least not of any lasting help. I always said this to the Dominican visitator, and he understood it well.

Since God allowed that situation to exist, I tried to provide a remedy and placed a discalced friar in a house next to them, along with a companion friar. He is so great a servant of our Lord that the nuns are truly edified, and this city is amazed by the remarkable amount of good he has done there, and so they consider him a saint, and in my opinion, he is one and has been one all his life.

When the previous nuncio through a long report sent him by the inhabitants of the city was informed of the things that were happening and of the harm that the friars of the cloth were doing, he gave orders under pain of ex-communication that the confessors be restored to their house (for the calced friars had driven them from the city heaping abuse on them and giving much scandal to everyone). And he also ordered that no friar of the cloth under pain of ex-communication go to the Incarnation for business purposes, to say Mass, or hear confessions, but only the discalced friars and secular clergy. As a result, the house was in a good state until the nuncio died. Then the calced friars returned—and so too the disturbance—without demonstrating the grounds on which they could do so.

And now a friar who came to absolve the nuns caused such a disturbance without any concern for what is reasonable and just that the nuns are deeply afflicted and still bound by the same penalties as before, according to what I have been told. And worst of all he has taken from them their confessors. They say that he has been made vicar provincial, and this must be true because he is more capable than the others of making martyrs. And he is holding these confessors captive in his monastery after having forced his way into their cells and confiscating their papers.

The whole city is truly scandalized. He is not a prelate nor did he show any evidence of the authority on which these things were done, for these confessors are subject to the apostolic commissary. Those friars dared so much, even though this city is so close to where your majesty resides, that it doesn’t seem they fear either justice or God. I feel very sad to see these confessors in the hands of those friars who for some days have been desiring to seize hold of them. I would consider the confessors better off if they were held by the Moors, who perhaps would show more compassion. And this one friar who is so great a servant of God is so weak from all that he has suffered that I fear for his life.

I beg your majesty for the love of our Lord to issue orders for them to set him free at once and that these poor discalced friars not be subjected to so much suffering by the friars of the cloth. The former do no more than suffer and keep silent and gain a great deal. But the people are scandalized by what is being done to them. This past summer in Toledo, without any reason, the same superior took as prisoner Fray Antonio de Jesús—a holy and blessed man, who was the first discalced friar. They go about saying that with orders from Tostado they will destroy them all. May God be blessed! Those who were to be the means of removing offenses against God have become the cause of so many sins. And each day matters will get worse if your majesty does not provide us with some help. Otherwise, I don’t know where things will end up, because we have no other help on earth.

May it please our Lord that for our sakes you live many years. I hope in him that he will grant us this favor. He is so alone, for there are few who look after his honor. All these servants of your majesty’s, and I ask this of him continually.

Dated in St. Joseph’s in Avila, 4 December 1577.

Your majesty’s unworthy servant and subject,

Teresa of Jesus, Carmelite

Saint Teresa of Avila

Letter 218 to King Philip II

We recall two important events on this date:

In early December 1577—some scholars say the exact date was 2 December—St. John of the Cross and fellow chaplain-confessor Fray Germán de San Matías were abducted from their chaplain’s residence at the Monastery of the Incarnation in Avila. In the general introduction to The Collected Works of Saint John of the Cross, Father Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. describes the scene:

On the night of December 2, 1577, a group of Carmelites, lay people, and men-at-arms broke into the chaplain’s quarters, seized Fray John, and took him away. By a secret journey, with orders from Tostado, they carted him off, handcuffed and often blindfolded, to the monastery in Toledo, the order’s finest in Castile, where nearly 85 friars lived.

In her introduction to Science of the Cross, St. Edith Stein continues the story of John’s abduction:

He was interrogated, and because he refused to abandon the Reform he was treated as a rebel. His prison was a narrow room, about 10 feet long and 6 feet wide. Teresa later wrote: “small though he was in stature, he could hardly stand erect in it.” This cell had neither window nor air vent other than a slit high up on the wall. The prisoner had to “stand on the poor-sinner-stool and wait until the sun’s rays were reflected on the wall in order to be able to pray the breviary” [a very plain stool typically found in a monastic cell]. The door was secured by a bolt.

We also recall that on 2 December 1894, Blessed Marie-Eugène of the Child Jesus (Henri Grialou) was born in Aubin (Aveyron) France. After his priestly ordination on February 4, 1922, he was captivated by the doctrine of St. Therese of the Child Jesus and St. John of the Cross and decided to join the Discalced Carmelites.

John of the Cross, St. 1991, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, Revised Edition, translated from the Spanish by Kavanaugh, K and Rodriguez, O with revisions and introductions by Kavanaugh, K, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Stein, E 2002, The Science of the Cross, The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Book 6, translated from the German by Koeppel, J, ICS Publications, Washington D.C.

Teresa of Avila, St. 1985, The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, translated from the Spanish by Kavanaugh, K; Rodriguez, O, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: The walls of Avila are featured in this nighttime winter scene. (Stock photo)

#abduction #BlessedMarieEugeneOfTheChildJesus #CarmeliteFriars #history #imprisonment #KingPhilipII #MonasteryOfTheIncarnation #Spain #StEdithStein #StJohnOfTheCross #StTeresaOfAvila

[T]he general is such a servant of the Lord, and so discreet and learned, that he regarded the work as good; moreover he showed no displeasure toward me. His name is Fray Juan Bautista Rubeo de Ravenna, a person very distinguished in the order, and rightly so.

Saint Teresa of Avila

The Book of Her Foundations, Chap. 2 (excerpt)

Note: Carmelite Prior General Giovanni Battista Rossi—who St. Teresa referred to as ‘Juan Bautista Rubeo’—was elected Prior General of the Carmelites on this day in 1564. Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD provides this brief biographical sketch of Giovanni Battista Rossi:

Juan Bautista Rubeo (Giovanni Battista Rossi, 1507-1578) was an untiring apostle born in Ravenna who entered the Carmelites at the age of ten. He received his doctorate in Padua. In 1546 he was named procurator general of the order and began lecturing at the Sapienza in Rome.

The Carmelite general chapter, under the presidency of St. Charles Borromeo, unanimously elected him general of the order on 21 May 1564. He lost no time in obtaining faculties from the Holy See to visit, reform, and correct the houses of the order. His cherished desires were to bring the order back to its origins, to stress solitude, affective prayer, devotion to Mary, and the apostolate. This appealed to him much more than merely promoting fulfillment of the laws newly set forth by the Council of Trent.

In 1564 he began his visit to Spain, and on 10 June 1566, he had an audience with Philip II. Proceeding to Andalusia, where the Carmelites were torn by rival factions and resistance to reform, he convoked a provincial chapter for 22 September at which over 200 Carmelites took part. His efforts to correct abuses angered the guilty parties and caused them to make appeals to the king, complaining of Rossi and calling on the king himself to set up a visitation.

As a result, Philip II lost confidence in Rossi and initiated his own plans for the reform of religious orders in Spain. Unaware of the king’s attitude, Rossi began his visitation of Castile and on 27 April 1567 authorized Teresa to found other houses for her nuns, provided they be under the jurisdiction of the order, and the number in each community be restricted to no more than twenty-five nuns. A month later he limited the region where the new houses could be founded to Castile, but later he extended this to all parts. Because of the troubles among the friars in Andalusia, he did not want to grant permission for new foundations of discalced friars. But at Teresa’s request on 10 August 1567, he wrote from Barcelona giving her permission to found two houses of “contemplative Carmelite friars” in Castile.

In 1569 in a letter to the prioress of Medina, Rossi wrote: “She [Teresa of Jesus] does more good for the order than all the Carmelite friars in Spain together.” And Teresa esteemed him just as highly.

But later because of the many jurisdictional complexities that arose from the king’s desire to reform the Carmelites in Spain, passions were aroused and Rossi was so misinformed that he approved measures harmful to what Teresa was trying to bring about. She never lost her high esteem for Rossi and explained and appealed to him through her letters.

Teresa of Avila, St. 1985, The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, translated from the Spanish by Kavanaugh, K; Rodriguez, O, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: This engraving of Giovanni Battista Rossi was created by Flemish printmaker Arnold van Westerhout for Gabriel Wessel’s Historia chronologica priorum generalium latinorum Ordinis Beatissimae Virginis Mariae de Monte Carmelo, in qua vitae, gestaque eorum, atque res memoratu digniores, quae sub singulorum accidernut Regimine, breviter describuntur. This history of the Carmelite prior generals featured an engraved portrait of Father General Rossi, which appears on page 188 of Historia chronologica alongside his biography. Another van Westerhout engaging of a famous Carmelite prior general in Wessel’s Historia is Blessed John Soreth. Mariano Ventimiglia was the editor of Wessel’s Carmelite history, published in Naples in 1773. Image credit: Carmelites (Public domain)

https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/05/20/rubeo-21may1564/

#election #foundations #GiovanniBattistaRossi #history #JuanBautistaRubeo #KingPhilipII #praise #PriorGeneral #Spain #StCharlesBorromeo #StTeresaOfAvila