Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada was born in Ávila on March 28, 1515. She entered the Carmelite convent of the Incarnation at twenty and stayed for twenty-seven years, honest about how divided her heart remained. A conversion before an image of the wounded Christ in 1554, when she was nearly forty, set her on a different course.
In 1562 she founded San José in Ávila, the first convent of the Discalced Carmelite reform: small, poor, enclosed and given to prayer. Sixteen more foundations followed, with St. John of the Cross taking the reform to the friars. Her Life, The Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle were written under obedience and for her sisters.
She died at Alba de Tormes on October 4, 1582, the night the Gregorian calendar came into force in Spain, and is buried there. Gregory XV canonized her in 1622; Paul VI named her the first woman Doctor of the Church in 1970. In Ávila the convent of St. Teresa stands on the site of her birthplace.