She founded this convent. She left it without breakfast.

MEDINA DEL CAMPO, Castile, this week, September 1582 AD — The carriage standing outside the convent at Medina del Campo this week had been sent by the Duchess of Alba. There was no food in it. Saint Teresa of Ávila had eaten nothing since the day before. She was sixty-seven, and she was being taken to a town she had not chosen.

She had founded that convent fifteen years ago, on the feast of the Assumption. It was the second house of nuns she started. In twenty years she founded and ran seventeen houses of nuns. She had been on the road since the end of July, coming back from the newest of them at Burgos. For months she had had a high fever and an open wound in her throat that almost stopped her swallowing.

What she wanted was Ávila. She was prioress of the convent of St. Joseph’s there, and her niece Teresita was to receive the veil from her hands. The Duchess of Alba wanted her somewhere else. St. Teresa had promised the duchess a visit a year before. Now the duchess’s son’s wife was about to have a baby, and the duchess wanted St. Teresa in the house as a blessing on the young woman.

Neither woman got to choose. St. Teresa’s superior did, and he chose Alba. He was Father Antonio de Jesús, the first Carmelite friar who had joined her reform. A nun under obedience goes where her superior sends her.

He was waiting for her when she reached Medina, with the order to set off for Alba at once. That was hard. She badly wanted to get to Ávila, and now she had to give the journey up because a duchess had asked for her. She obeyed anyway, as she had obeyed all her life. Her niece Teresita says that once the order was given, she took the change in perfect peace.

The remark that spoiled her supper

That evening, in the dining hall, St. Teresa noticed a small thing that needed putting right. She said so to Mother Alberta Bautista, the prioress of the house. St. Teresa had written the rules these houses live by. One of those rules says a sister does not correct another sister for a fault she sees. That job belongs to the prioress, and to the sisters she picks to do it for her.

Mother Alberta was ill. She was hurt by what St. Teresa had said, and she turned cold towards her. It grieved St. Teresa. She could not eat her supper, and she lay awake all that night.

In the morning she still did not eat. They helped her into the carriage the duchess had sent to fetch her, and no food had come with it. She went out through the gate of the convent she had founded, on the road to Alba. She was worn out and ill the whole way.

A letter went into the post at Medina that morning, to Mother Catalina de Cristo, the prioress at Soria. St. Teresa had begun it at Valladolid, and after she reached Medina she added a line to it:

“We are now in Medina and so busy that I cannot say more than that the trip went well…”