The eagle and the dove: a study in contrasts, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Therese of Lisieux / V. Sackvillle-West

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The lives of these two saints with similar names could hardly be more contrasting. St. Teresa, reformer of the Carmelites, 'busy woman and great saint', endured the religious mania of sixteenth-century Spain and lived in a state of near perpetual ecstasy. Thérèse, on the other hand, lived the quiet life of a nun in late-nineteenth-century France, was meek, devout and perhaps rather dim. She became a saint of the common people, largely because of the ordinariness of her life (excepting the odd vision).