Teresa of Avila was an intensely loving person. The deeper her union with God, the more resolute her devotion to others. Most of all she loved her young spiritual director Graci n. This gave rise to all kinds of envy and misunderstanding in the Order. The saint herself wrote imperiously: 'I can permit myself, my father, to show you a great deal of love, but not all nuns may do this.' Yet after the death of Teresa, Graci n, 'Father of the Reform' of the Carmelite Order, went through very hard times: exclusion from the Order, imprisonment by the Moors, homelessness. Posterity has felt obliged...