In 1999, a new biography by Cathleen Medwick, "Teresa of Avila," was published. The author is not a Catholic, but a Jew. She is a contributing editor to House and Garden, and has worked as a contributing editor at Vogue, Vanity Fair and Mirabella, Medwick lives on a small farm in northern Westchester with her husband and two children.

From her, we hear Teresa saying of her life at the Convent, "Everything about religious life delighted me, and the truth is that sometimes when I was sweeping the floor at a time of day when I used to be busy indulging and adorning myself, and realized that I was now free from all that, I felt a thrill, which surprised me because I couldn't understand where it came from."

Nevertheless, this was not enough; she was determined to enter upon a strict regimen of penance, which brought her health to the breaking point. It was decided that she should consult a woman who dealt in herbal remedies, but the winter traveling was so difficult, Teresa stopped to visit her Uncle Pedro, where she found a book in his library, titled, "The Third Spiritual Alphabet," by a Franciscan, Francisco de Osuna, whose theory was that it is not the road that matters, but that one sets out single-mindedly for God.

The uncle gave her the book as a gift, and she took it with her to visit Maria, where she says, "I began to spend time alone, to confess often, and to start on the road to prayer, with this book as my guide. Because I found no other guide -- I mean, no confessor who understood me -- though I kept looking for one for twenty years."

When she arrived in Becedas for the herbal cure, she began to confess to the village priest who told her he was having an affair with a married woman; everyone knew it, and he was still offering Mass.

Teresa was flattered that he had confided in her:" I felt very sorry for him," she said," because I liked him quite a lot; and I was so worldly and blind that I considered myself virtuous for being grateful and loyal to anyone who cared about me." The priest gave up his evil ways and died a year later.

Growing illness left Teresa no time or energy to revel in the success of converting the priest from his life of sin. She wrote: "I had no strength. The idea of eating repelled me, all I could do was drink a little, and I was always feverish and wasted, because for nearly a month they had been purging me every day."

Again, she returned home to recuperate, only to be carried back to the convent, where she spent three years in the infirmary, paralyzed. Finally, she was able to crawl, and gradually improved in health, but worldliness began to creep into her life. She would write: "So I began to go from distraction to distraction, from vanity to vanity, from one occasion of sin to the next, letting my soul be corrupted by so many vanities that I was ashamed to turn to God, in that intimate friendship that comes with prayer."

Teresa began to visit the parlor more frequently, speaking with authority about prayer, even though she wasn't praying that much. Her father was saddened to see his daughter laughing and chatting away in a worldly fashion. He reproached her for her lack of recollection, and said he would visit less often.

This had little effect on Teresa. "I was caught up in so many vanities, " she wrote, "that I didn't trouble about it."

When admonished by an older nun to stop seeing a particular young man in the parlor, Teresa replied, "You take scandal over nothing," and went away to pout.

The convent atmosphere was hardly conducive to prayer. Many nuns wore jewelry, conversed during periods of silence, visited in one another's cells, and enjoyed worldly music at recreation.

So poor was the convent and over-crowded with 180 members, that the prioress was happy when nuns were invited out to dinner, and many lay people vied for the honor of having Sister Teresa at their table. Seven years after entering the convent, she was still torn between two worlds.

In 1543, Teresa returned home to nurse her dying father, and said, "There was more sickness in my soul than in his body, taken up as I was by a multitude of vanities ... a period more wretched than I can say."

Desperately, she confessed to the priest who was assisting her father. He told her to return to mental prayer and to receive Holy Communion more often. She began to avoid the parlor, and prayed more. The nuns saw a change in her; some resented it.

Two priests pronounced her experiences of God in prayer as from the devil, while St. Francis Borgia said they were from God, and told her, "Allow yourself to be delighted by His Majesty, rejoice in him since he wants to give you joy." It took a saint to understand a saint, but sanctity in those days of the Inquisition could be a dangerous business.

One nun said of her, "I hope to live long enough to see this nun end up as she deserves, at the stake set up by the Inquisition."

One day, Teresa was sitting on cushions in her suite, surrounded by nuns who, like her, yearned for religious life with greater silence and rule of enclosure. They began to plan, and, eventually, Pope Pius IV was persuaded to grant permission to begin a new order - Discalced Carmelites - those who didn't wear shoes, and adhered more closely to strict observance.

It was decided that thirteen nuns would be a good number to a convent, though the first established, San Jose, began with four, under the authority of the bishop of Avila.

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