The Pope's envoy who protected St. Teresa's convents dies at Madrid

MADRID, October 1577 AD — This month the nuns of the Convent of the Incarnation at Ávila elected Saint Teresa of Ávila their prioress, against the explicit threats of their superiors, and today’s lead reports that election. Early last year the papal nuncio had forbidden the friars of the old observance to meddle with the Incarnation. He died in June, a new nuncio has come from Rome, and the friars have taken courage.

St. Teresa is a Carmelite nun of sixty-two who has spent fifteen years founding convents that keep the older and stricter Carmelite rule. Those houses are not an order of their own. They belong to the Carmelites, whose superiors in Rome and in Castile have been working since 1575 AD to bring them back under their own hand. The man who stopped them was Monsignor Nicolás Ormaneto, the papal nuncio in Spain — the Pope’s permanent representative at the court of King Philip II, holding both political and ecclesiastical authority. He died at Madrid on June 18, 1577 AD, and St. Teresa grieved greatly, because he had always defended her reform.

Ormaneto was sent to Spain in 1572 AD. He had gone to England with Cardinal Pole in 1553 AD, sat at the Council of Trent, and been made Bishop of Padua. His enemies nicknamed him Reformator Orbis (the reformer of the world) for the way he went after abuses. He had given away so much in alms that the king had to pay for his funeral.

Four authorities claim a say over the Carmelites of Spain, and they had been pulling against each other for three years before Ormaneto died. In August 1574 AD Pope Gregory XIII ended the visitation the Dominicans had been conducting, at the Order’s own request. A visitation is an official inspection of the houses, and the visitor can correct what he finds wrong and remove men from office. The Pope ruled that from then on the Carmelites should be visited by their own prior general, Fray Juan Bautista Rubeo, and by the men Rubeo deputed. Rubeo is the head of the whole Order and is still in office; it was his letter from Barcelona in August 1567 AD that authorised St. Teresa’s first two houses of friars. King Philip II was displeased, because the matter had not been put to him first for his placet (the sovereign’s formal consent).

The general chapter of the Order met at Piacenza in May 1575 AD and resolved to deal sharply with the friars of St. Teresa’s reform. Its ordinances required that any man made a superior against the obedience owed inside the Order be removed. The same went for any man holding office in a house the Order had forbidden. The king’s officers were to be called in if force was needed. Men who resisted were to be punished as rebels. Fray Jerónimo Tostado was given full powers to carry the decrees out in Spain.

Working closely with the king, Ormaneto obtained an assurance that a nuncio still held the power to visit and reform religious orders in Spain, whatever Rome had granted the general. On that power he appointed Fray Jerónimo Gracián, a friar of the reform, visitor apostolic over the Carmelites of Andalusia. What the appointment was worth was shown in January 1576 AD, when the friars of the old observance arrested St. John of the Cross at Ávila and Ormaneto had him released.

A patent of that kind lasts as long as the man who signs it. Faculties granted by someone who himself holds only delegated power end when the man who delegated to him dies, unless the Holy See provides otherwise. St. Teresa understood the danger in January, when Ormaneto was thought to be dying at any hour. She wrote from Toledo to Mother Mary of St. Joseph, prioress of Seville: “This would be utter destruction for us if our Father’s commission were to cease, for our permission to be under the jurisdiction of the Discalced Fathers would not be valid unless he were to declare, while still holding the Apostolic Commission, that we might continue as before.” She wanted that declaration in writing while Gracián could still give it: “We might be in such a case at any moment, so for charity’s sake, lose no time.”

When the news of the death came she was at Toledo. The Order had kept her in that city since August 1576 AD. She was sixteen days into the Interior Castle, the book she had begun at the convent of St. Joseph of Carmel there on Trinity Sunday, June 2. A fortnight after the death she set out the position for Mother Ana de San Alberto, prioress of Caravaca: “the nuncio is dead and Tostado is at Madrid as Vicar General, nominated by the most Reverend Father General. Although hitherto the King has not allowed him to undertake the visitation, we do not know what may happen. Our Father’s powers as Apostolic Commissary have not expired on the nuncio’s death, so I know that he is still Visitor.” She asked the prioress for prayers in the same month: “You should pray much, as we do here, that matters may be directed to the greater glory of God. We have had processions as well. Do not be careless about it, for this is a critical time, though apparently all will come right.”

Monsignor Filippo Sega reached Madrid in August and dealt severely with the friars of the reform. Gracián’s commission had come from his predecessor, not from him. Sega was displeased with St. Teresa and more displeased with her friars, who by then numbered more than three hundred, and he began looking for a settlement with Tostado’s help. St. Teresa begged the king for help.