Catholic Encyclopedia - St. John of the Cross (2024)

Founder (with St. Teresa) of the Discalced Carmelites, doctor of mystictheology, b. at Hontoveros, Old Castile, 24 June, 1542; d. at Ubeda, Andalusia,14 Dec., 1591. John de Yepes, youngest child of Gonzalo de Yepes and CatherineAlvarez, poor silk weavers of Toledo, knew from his earliest years the hardshipsof life. The father, originally of a good family but disinherited on account ofhis marriage below his rank, died in the prime of his youth; the widow, assistedby her eldest son, was scarcely able to provide the bare necessities. John wassent to the poor school at Medina del Campo, whither the family had gone to live,and proved an attentive and diligent pupil; but when apprenticed to an artisan,he seemed incapable of learning anything. Thereupon the governor of the hospitalof Medina took him into his service, and for seven years John divided his timebetween waiting on the poorest of the poor, and frequenting a school establishedby the Jesuits. Already at that early age he treated his body with the utmostrigour; twice he was saved from certain death by the intervention of the BlessedVirgin. Anxious about his future life, he was told in prayer that he was toserve God in an order the ancient perfection of which he was to help bring backagain. The Carmelites having founded a house at Medina, he there received thehabit on 24 February, 1563, and took the name of John of St. Matthias. Afterprofession he obtained leave from his superiors to follow to the letter theoriginal Carmelite rule without the mitigations granted by various popes. He wassent to Salamanca for the higher studies, and was ordained priest in 1567; athis first Mass he received the assurance that he should preserve his baptismalinnocence. But, shrinking from the responsibilities of the priesthood, hedetermined to join the Carthusians.

However, before taking any further step he made the acquaintance of St.Teresa, who had come to Medina to found a convent of nuns, and who persuaded himto remain in the Carmelite Order and to assist her in the establishment of amonastery of friars carrying out the primitive rule. He accompanied her toValladolid in order to gain practi cal experience of the manner of life led bythe reformed nuns. A small house having been offered, St. John resolved to tryat once the new form of life, although St. Teresa did not think anyone, howevergreat his spirituality, could bear the discomforts of that hovel. He was joinedby two companions, an ex-prior and a lay brother, with whom he inaugurated thereform among friars, 28 Nov., 1568. St. Teresa has left a classical dscriptionof the sort of life led by these first Discalced Carmelites, in chaps.xiii andxiv of her Book of Foundations. John of the Cross, as he now called himself,became the first master of novices, and laid the foundation of the spiritualedifice which soon was to assume majestic proportions. He filled various postsin different places until St. Teresa called him to Avila as director andconfessor to the convent of the Incarnation, of which she had been appointedprioress. He remained there, with a few interruptions, for over five years.Meanwhile, the reform spread rapidly, and, partly through the confusion causedby contradictory orders issued by the general and the general chapter on onehand, and the Apostolic nuncio on the other, and partly through human passionwhich sometimes ran high, its existence became seriously endangered.

St. John was ordered by his provincial to return to the house of hisprofession (Medina), and, on his refusing to do so, owing to the fact that heheld his office not from the order but from the Apostolic delegate, he was takenprisoner in the night of 3 December, 1577, and carried off to Toledo, where hesuffered for more than nine months close imprisonment in a narrow, stifling cell,together with such additional punishment as might have been called for in thecase of one guilty of the most serious crimes. In the midst of his sufferings hewas visited with heavenly consolations, and some of his exquisite poetry datesfrom that period. He made good his escape in a miraculous manner, August, 1578.During the next years he was chiefly occupied with the foundation and governmentof monasteries at Baeza, Granada, Cordova, Segovia, and elsewhere, but took noprominent part in the negotiations which led to the establishment of a separategovernment for the Discalced Carmelites. After the death of St. Teresa (4 Oct.,1582), when the two parties of the Moderates under Jerome Gratian, and theZelanti under Nicholas Doria struggled for the upper hand, St. John supportedthe former and shared his fate. For some time he filled the post of vicarprovincial of Andalusia, but when Doria changed the government of the order,concentrating all power in the hands of a permanent committee, St. John resistedand, supporting the nuns in their endeavour to secure the papal approbation oftheir constitutions, drew upon himself the displeasure of the superior, whodeprived him of his offices and relegated him to one of the poorest monasteries,where he fell seriously ill. One of his opponents went so far as to go form tomonastery gathering materials in order to bring grave charges against him,hoping for his expulsion from the order which he had helped to found.

As his illness increased he was removed to the monastery of Ubeda, where heat first was treated very unkindly, his constant prayer, to suffer and to bedespised, being thus literally fulfilled almost to the end of his life. But atlast even his adversaries came to acknowledge his sanctity, and his funeral wasthe occasion of a great outburst of enthusiasm. The body, still incorrupt, ashas been ascertained within the last few years, was removed to Segovia, only asmall portion remaining at Ubeda; there was some litigation about its possession.A strange phenomenon, for which no satisfactory explanation has been given, hasfrequently been observed in connexion with the relics of St. John of the Cross:Francis de Yepes, the brother of the saint, and after him many other personshave noticed the appearance in his relics of images of Christ on the Cross, theBlessed Virgin, St. Elias, St. Francis Xavier, or other saints, according to thedevotion of the beholder. The beatification took place onb 25 Jan., 1675, thetranslation of his body on 21 May of the same year, and the canonization on 27Dec., 1726.

He left the following works, which for the first time appeared at Barcelonain 1619.

The Ascent of Mount Carmel, an explanation of some versesbeginning: In a dark night with anxious love inflamed. This work was to havecomprised four books, but breaks off in the middle of the third.
2. The Dark Night of the Soul, another explanation of the same verses,breaking off in the second book. Both these works were written soon after hisescape from prison, and, though incomplete, supplement each other, forming afull treatise on mystic theology.
3. An explanation of the Spiritual Canticle, (a paraphrase of theCanticle of Canticles) beginning Where hast Thou hidden Thyself? composed partduring his imprisonment, and completed and commented upon some years later atthe request of Venerable Anne of Jesus.
4. An explanation of a poem beginning: O Living Flame of Love, writtenabout 1584 at the bidding of Dona Ana de Penalosa.
5. Some instructions and precautions on matters spiritual.
6. Some twenty letters, chiefly to his penitents. Unfortunately the bulkof his correspondence, including numerous letters to and from St. Teresa, wasdestroyed, partly by himself, partly during the persecutions to which he fell avictim.
7. Poems, of which twenty-six have been hitherto published, viz., twentyin the older editions, and recently six more, discovered partly at the NationalLibrary at Madrid, and partly at the convent of Carmelite nuns at Pamplona.
8. A Collection of Spiritual Maxims (in some editions to the number ofone hundred, and in others three hundred and sixty-five) can scarcely count asan independent work, as they are culled from his writings.

It has been recorded that during his studies St. John particularly relishedpsychology; this is amply borne out by his writings. He was not what one wouldterm a scholar, but he was intimately acquainted with the Summa of St. ThomasAquinas, as almost every page of his works proves. Holy Scripture he seems tohave known by heart, yet he evidently obtained his knowledge more by meditationthan in the lecture room. But there is no vestige of influence on him of themystical teaching of the Fathers, the Aeropagite, Augustine, Gregory, Bernard,Bonaventure,etc., Hugh of St. Victor, or the German Dominican school. The fewquotations from patristic works are easily traced to the Breviary or the Summa.In the absence of any conscious or unconscious influence of earlier mysticalschools, his own system, like that of St. Teresa, whose influence is obviousthroughout, might be termed empirical mysticism. They both start from their ownexperience, St. Teresa avowedly so, while St. John, who hardly ever speaks ofhimself, invents nothing (to quote Cardinal Wiseman), borrows nothing fromothers, but gives us clearly the results of his own experience in himself andothers. He presents you with a portrait, not with a fancy picture. He representsthe ideal of one who has passed, as he had done, through the career of thespiritual life, through its struggles and its victories.

His axiom is that the soul must empty itself of self in order to be filledwith God, that it must be purified of the last traces of earthly dross before itis fit to become united with God. In the application of this simple maxim heshows the most uncompromising logic. Supposing the soul with which he deals tobe habitually in the state of grace and pushing forward to better things, heovertakes it on the very road leading it, in its opinion to God, and lays openbefore its eyes a number of sores of which it was altogether ignorant, viz. whathe terms the spiritual capital sins. Not until these are removed (a mostformidable task) is it fit to be admitted to what he calls the Dark Night,which consists in the passive purgation, where God by heavy trials, particularlyinterior ones, perfects and completes what the soul had begun of its own accord.It is now passive, but not inert, for by submitting to the Divine operation itco-operates in the measure of its power. Here lies one of the essentialdifferences between St. John's mysticism and a false quietism. The perfectpurgation of the soul in the present life leaves it free to act with wonderfulenergy: in fact it might almost be said to obtain a share in God's omnipotence,as is shown in the marvelous deeds of so many saints. As the soul emerges fromthe Dark Night it enters into the full noonlight described in the SpiritualCanticle and the Living Flame of Love. St. John leads it to the highestheights, in fact to the point where it becomes a partaker of the Divine Nature.It is here that the necessity of the previous cleansing is clearly perceived thepain of the mortification of all the senses and the powers and faculties of thesoul being amply repaid by the glory which is now being revealed in it.

St. John has often been represented as a grim character; nothing could bemore untrue. He was indeed austere in the extreme with himself, and, to someextent, also with others, but both from his writings and from the depositions ofthose who knew him, we see in him a man overflowing with charity and kindness, apoetical mind deeply influenced by all that is beautiful and attractive.

The best life of St. John of the Cross was written byJEROME DE SAN JOSÉ (Madrid, 1641), but, not being approved by the superiors, itwas not incorporated in the chronicles of the order, and the author lost hisposition of annalist on account of it.

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