1593
Ordo Carmelitarum Discalceatorum / The Order of Discalced Carmelites

The aim to bring back the diminished component of contemplation and asceticism into the life of Carmelites became the main goal of the reform initiated by St Teresa of Avila. The basis of the new Carmelite way of life was following the lifestyle of the ancient order as well as enclosure and asceticism.

The Discalced Carmelites settled in Vilnius in 1624 having visited once before twenty years earlier. Within two years, they had already settled in a newly acquired house with a small chapel. The construction of a new early Baroque style brick church dedicated to St Teresa of Avila began in 1633, and the church was consecrated in 1654. When St Casimir’s Province of Lithuania was founded, the Vilnius monastery became the seat of the Provincial of the Discalced Carmelites of Lithuania. A novitiate and a house of studies was based there for a long time. The monastery had under its auspices the Chapel of Our Lady of Mercy of the Gate of Dawn, which remains a pilgrimage site to this day. The Discalced Carmelites also received significant support from the Lithuanian nobleman, Stefan Pac, and his wife Ona Marcibelė Rudaminaitė. Thanks to their efforts, in 1638, the Convent of Discalced Carmelites for Carmelite nuns with St Joseph’s Church, the only one in Lithuania and the richest in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, was founded nearby. In 1844, the Monastery of St Teresa of Avila was suppressed, and its premises were handed over to the Institute of the Daughters of Eastern Orthodox Priests. In 1865, the women’s Convent of St Joseph was closed, and the church was demolished in 1877. In 1930, the buildings belonging to the Monastery of St Theresa of Avila were returned to the Discalced Carmelites, but this hopeful period of restoration of this Religious Order was brutally cut short by World War II. The Church of St Teresa of Avila, having become a parish church, has never been closed.