The Beauty of Carmel and St. Teresa of Avila Medal
Whilst renovating a house in the Andalucían mountain village
of Salares a friend discovered within one of the walls a religious medal. One
evening I had a quick look to see if I could find out anything about it and was
very pleased to be able to identify its potential age, its subject and a little
of the background history.
Although the medal is worn it is still possible to make out
the inscriptions on each side of the medal. On one side is a female saint with
hands clasped together in prayer with the inscription .S.Teresia whilst on the other is the Virgin Mary holding the child Christ with the inscription Mater.Decor.Carmel.
This provided a very good starting point and I set out to look for the most
appropriate Saint Teresa.
I decided that the most likely of the saints was Saint
Teresa of Avila who was a Spanish mystic and became one of the most revered
women in the Catholic Church for her teachings and writings, becoming a
Doctor of the Church which is an accolade attained by very few women. As Teresa was a
Carmelite nun it gave greater credence to my having settled on the right saint
as Carmel is part of the inscription. Teresa is the patron saint of headache
sufferers, sick people, Spanish writers and lace makers amongst others. Born in Toledo on 1515 she died in 1582 and
was canonised in 1622. Lace-making is still a very popular craft in the mountain
villages of the Axarquia region of Andalucía including Salares, Sedella and
Competa and with that in mind I have hazarded a guess that this may well have
been the reason that St. Teresa was chosen for the subject of the medal though
further research would be required to make this a more definitive assumption.
As I looked for images of this medal or similar I was
pleased to come across what was almost an exact replica of the one I had in
front of me. Produced in the 1990s it was a copy of a medallion that had been
among the cargo of a shipwreck in 1772 off the coast of Anguilla in the
Caribbean. The ship El Buen Consejo left Cádiz bound for Vera Cruz on May 29th,
1772 and hit the reef off of Anguilla in the Caribbean on July 8th. On board
were 52 Franciscan monks who were set to carry on from Vera Cruz to the
Philippines on missionary work; with them they had a stock of bronze
medallions. The contents that remained within the shipwreck were brought to the
surface post 1986 having been out of sight for over 200 years. Contemporary reports of the shipwreck say that the ship was
grounded in shallow waters allowing the Spaniards to remove a good deal of the
cargo and supplies before the hurricane season hit and the ship was sent to the
bottom of the sea with some, if not all, of the medallions on board.
Taking into account the dates of the canonization of
St.Teresa, the shipwreck and rediscovery of El Buen Consejo, the place in which
the medal was discovered and the amount of wear on the medal we can be very
certain that the medal can be placed within the date ranges of 1622 and 1986.
It would be fairly safe to reduce the time period still further. The earliest
date cannot be before 1622 as that was when Teresa of Avila was canonized, that
is therefore an unmoveable date. The wreck of El Buen Consejo was not
rediscovered until 1986 (of course the medals may have continued to be produced so there may not be a definite link to El Buen Consejo) and combined with the fact that the medal was found within the wall of a house that had not
had any renovation carried out in villagers’ memories, the medal can almost
certainly be assumed to date from prior to 1900. A good number of the houses in
the village of Salares date from about 200 years ago but the records are hard
to find regarding specific properties. Stretching the hypothesis of the date of
the medal even further it is possible that the medal could date from around the
time of the shipwreck of El Buen Consejo in 1772 when we know for certain that medals of this description were being made. A conservative view therefore
of the dating of the medal would be from 1622 to 1986 whilst an optimistic view
would be from 1622 to 1772.
In order to fully ascertain the date of the medal more
research needs to be carried out:
- The medal needs to be tested to discover the type of metal from which it is made (quite likely silver or a nickel based mix),
- the date of construction of the house in which it was found needs to be ascertained
- more information on the production of the Beauty of St Teresa Carmel medal, i.e. which areas produced them, how were they distributed and so on.
In the meantime the medal is being cared for and enjoyed by
its new owners.
Information on Salares can be found at
Information on the shipwreck of El Buen Consejo can be found
at
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