TOMMASO of Jesus. - Missionary theorist and mystic, born Díaz Sánchez de Ávila, born in 1564 at Baéza (Andalusia), died 24 May 1627 at Rome.
Having graduated in philosophy and theology in 1583, he studied law at Salamanca. In April 1586 he entered the Carmelite Order and was ordained priest in 1589. Within the Order he initially followed the strictly contemplative tendency, though declaring himself ready for any task entrusted to him. Called to Rome in 1607 by Paul V, T. was assigned as superior to the Congo mission, together with Fr Diego of the Incarnation, but was unable to depart and remained in Rome. To prepare missionaries for a projected Carmelite Congregation of St Paul, Fr T. wrote the *Stimulus Missionum* (Rome 1610), a preparatory work for a major manual of missionary science, for which T. subsequently gathered material in the archives and libraries of Rome and through conversations with converted schismatics and heretics. This plan was interrupted when in 1610, by order of Paul V, T. went to France and the Low Countries to found Carmelite convents according to the Teresian reform, of which he was provincial until 1617, when he returned to Rome. In 1613 *De procuranda salute omnium gentium* was published at Antwerp, and in the same year a simple reprint appeared under the altered title *Thesaurus Sapientiae divinae in gentium omnium salute procuranda*. In Book III of his *Manual of Missionology*, T. developed the project for a *Congregatio de Propaganda Fide* for the central direction of all missionary activity of the Church; T. studied thoroughly the *Cartapacio* of Fr Pietro della Madre di Dio, which contains a *Modus propagandi fidem catholicam* presented together with a supplication by the bishop of Tournai, VENDVILLE, JEAN (v.), to Sixtus V in 1589.
T. of G. is renowned for his works of spiritual theology, especially the *Suma y compendio de los grados de oración* (Rome 1610), *Trattato de la oración mental* (ibid. 1610), *Practica de la viva fe* (Brussels 1613), *Methodus examinandi ac discernendi spiritualem animae profectum* (ibid. 1620), *Divinae orationis... methodus, natura et gradus* (Antwerp 1623), *De contemplatione divina* (ibid. 1620), repeatedly edited and translated. With doctrinal depth and great erudition, T. was the first of the Carmelite spiritual school to study the whole range of mystical problems in the light of scholastic theology. He is also celebrated as a populariser of acquired contemplation (v. IV, 443), which he was the first to treat systematically both in *De contemplatione divina* (Book I, chaps. 1-3, 5) and in *De contemplatione acquisita*, hitherto unpublished until recently (Milan 1922). Most of his writings were collected in the *Opera omnia* in 2 vols. (Cologne, 1684). Other works intended to form Vol. III remain in manuscript in the General Archives of the O.C.D. in Rome.