The upcoming celebration of the V Centenary of the birth of the Saint of Avila and the opening of the Teresian Year that will be celebrated on the occasion of her feast in different cities, lead us to reflect, briefly, on the bequest of her sons and daughters in Navarra, since her convents, starting with the first of St. Joseph, secularly located in the same place del Castillo, have historically modulated the spirituality of the social environments where they are located, both in religious and cultural core topic .

In favor of the Jesuits
In the context of the civil service examination to the establishment of the sons of St. Ignatius in Pamplona by the clergy, a letter of the saint is contextualized, dated in Toledo on May 8, 1580, in which she joins the bishop and the viceroy in their support to the presence of the Jesuits in the city. It is addressed to the Countess of Lerín, doña Brianda de Beaumont, and it says to her textually: "A mercy has to make me now your excellency, in any case, because I care to understand the favor, that your excellency makes me in everything, and it is that in Pamplona of Navarre a house of the Company of Jesus has been founded now, and it entered very in peace. Afterwards such a great persecution has arisen against them that they want to drive them out of the place. They have taken refuge with the constable, and his lordship has spoken very well of them and done them much mercy. The one that your excellency has to do me is to write a letter to his lordship, thanking him for what he has done, and ordering him to carry it forward, and to favor them in everything that is offered to them".

Foundations of the Carmel
The Teresian foundations in Navarra, by chronology, are the following for the Discalced Sisters: Pamplona (1583), Corella (1722), Lesaca (1767), Echavacoiz (1910) and Donamaría (1945). The Discalced Sisters of Lesaca and Echavacoiz moved to Lizaso-Calahorra, the first ones, and the second ones to Olza. The Descalzos founded in Pamplona (1587), Corella (1595), Tudela (1597) and Villafranca (1734). In the prolegomena of the foundation of San José, Saint Teresa herself and Father Gracián intervened, and Leonor de la Misericordia (Ayanz and Beaumont) and Beatriz de Beaumont and Don Martín Cruzat participated actively in its realization. In the Fathers of the capital of Navarre, the prioress of the same city, Mother Catalina de Cristo and the Navarrese nobleman Don Martín Cruzat y Oiz promoted the establishment. In Corella the friars were established at the request of the town council, as in Tudela. The Mothers of Corella also arrived at the request of the city to be custodians of the venerated image of the Virgin of Araceli, having a great benefactor in Don Juan José Martínez de Boleaga. Other benefactors did the same in Villafranca and in Lesaca, in this last case with board of trustees of Don Ignacio de Arriola.

The devotees, nobles, some brotherhoods and guilds requested chapels of board of trustees in their convents, so the relationship of the Carmelites with the localities where their convents were located was a repeated fact.
The sons and daughters of the saint in Navarra constitute a chapter B. Among them there have been artists, writers, editors, promoters of confraternities and devotions, missionaries, teachers, preachers and musicians who were the subject of a study by Father Higinio Gandarias in 1982. All of them kept alive the flame of devotion and admiration for St. Teresa in their works, as well as a great catechetical, pastoral and social activity, in tune with the needs of the times.

Some letters of the saint

As is well known, a large part of the Teresian epistolary, published for the first time by the bishop-viceroy Don Juan de Palafox, was destined in the XVII century to the confection of reliquaries in a typology of these that is precisely called reliquary-signature, with which a great issue of the letters of the saint disappeared. Others suffered a better fate, being framed or guarded like a treasure with great care by their owners.

In Navarre, Juan Cruz Labeaga collected eight in his study, among those that were at some time in the region and those that are still preserved. Among the latter are those of the parish of Viana, the Recoletas of Pamplona, the Counts of Guenduláin, the Discalced Carmelites of Pamplona and a private collection. Chronologically, they cover dates between 1574 and 1582 and by their addressees we find her confessor, noble friends, her sister and the nuns of Soria. Except for those addressed in 1574 to Fray Domingo Báñez and Don Teutonio de Braganza, the rest correspond to the last years of the saint's life. As in other letters, in those preserved in Navarra, her personality is sample full of common sense, extraordinarily human and attentive to the problems of daily life. plenary session of the Executive Council All this made the Discalced, in the 17th century, doubt about the convenience of publishing the Teresian epistolary, since they thought that it distanced the saint from the public that always contemplated her as a writer, static and seraphic, capable of being enraptured while she wrote. In the letters that were finally published by Blessed Juan de Palafox in 1658, we find everything but raptures, rather intimate things, far from idealization and baroque visualization.

Heritage
Along with outstanding sets of conventual architecture, always with a very similar model , the interiors of their churches preserve rich altarpieces and chapels, witnesses of secular devotions to the saints of the order and to San José and, very particularly, in Navarra to San Joaquín. The Virgin of Carmen and the souls in purgatory also usually have paintings and altarpieces in the convents.

In some cases important paintings have been preserved, generally of Spanish and particularly from Valladolid. The nuns of the convent of Lesaca preserved, almost miraculously, the original traces of the convent studied by Professor García Gaínza, the work of the master tracer of the order Fray José de San Juan de la Cruz, with an extensive artistic biography in Navarra and La Rioja.

Along with this material heritage, the religious communities have jealously safeguarded, until recently, a rich intangible heritage, secular traditions, which constitute unparalleled testimonies of the collective conscience and keys to religiosity. From cooking recipes, sentences to recite at bedtime or wake up to the sound of the ratchet, dances, poetry, theater, to events as unique as the placement of the crib with its rituals, are still recoverable. Today, it is of great interest to collect all this because of the threat of disappearance and the need to preserve living cultures, threatened by globalization.

Feast and iconography
The memory of the saint of Avila has been linked to her numerous images, of different styles and artistic category. On the other hand, the confraternities under her patronage are practically nonexistent, since with her only degree program there was only one in Fitero, formed by the guild of espadrille makers since its foundation in 1696.
The petition of the Diocese of Pamplona in 1611 in favor of his canonization and the cooperation with a quota by all the parishes is a fact to be highlighted, because later it would be translated into his images.

In 1627 the city of Tudela declared her its patron saint, after solemnly celebrating her beatification a few years earlier. In this case it seems that the agreement did not have great significance, leaving the special commemoration in the Carmen Descalzo, where her feast is described in the mid-eighteenth century as follows: "On her day she boasts of having her hearts as capable as her Holy Mother in the prolixity of worship and curiosity of adornment and in the magnificence of music, sermon, and sermon,
Blessed Sacrament exposed and siesta in the afternoon, with which it is idle warning to the contest when Santa Teresa takes the whole world".

Pamplona also collaborated, through its regiment, in the beatification and canonization celebrations in 1614 and 1622, respectively.

His iconography is rich and varied. It gathers scenes of his life, especially visions and ecstasies, so in tune with the 17th century, captivated by the marvelous and theatricality and the sensitive forms with which the imagination translated ineffable grandeurs. Professor Echeverría Goñi and the undersigned compiled a collection of them years ago.

Painted, sculpted and engraved representations of the saint served as a complement to the words of the sermons and her popular joys to know and explain her life and works. In times when people did not know how to read or write, images became irreplaceable elements for such purposes, together with preaching and other oral and musical means.

The sources of inspiration for the artists were the Book of her life, the first biographies and, above all, the engravings of her illustrated life commissioned by Mother Anne of Jesus in Antwerp in 1613 from Cornelius Galle and Adrian Collaert in 1613, one of whose copies is kept by the Discalced Sisters of St. Joseph of Pamplona.

Signatures of painters such as Felipe Diricksen. Diego de Leiva, Pedro Orrente, Díez Ferreras, Vicente and Carlos Berdusán appear in canvases dedicated to her transverberations, nuptials, imposition of the necklace... etc. As for sculpture, splendid carvings have been preserved from Valladolid throughout the 17th century and some of Neapolitan origin of excellent invoice, corresponding to the 18th century. Undoubtedly the most abundant topic is the one that sample as a writer, something logical because of her earned fame as a woman of letters who also used to repeat: "Read and you will drive, don't read and you will be driven". The next topic in quantity is that of the transverberation, in tune with the popularity reached by the passage of chapter XXIX of the book of her life and with the private feast of that vision that the order obtained from the Holy See to celebrate, with its own Mass, on August 24.