John of the Cross

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John of the Cross bigraphy, stories - Spanish Carmelite mystic, theologian, poet

John of the Cross : biography

24 June 1542 – 14 December 1591

Saint John of the Cross, O.C.D. ( 1542 – 14 December 1591) was a major figure of the Counter-Reformation, a Spanish mystic, a Roman Catholic saint, a Carmelite friar and a priest who was born at Fontiveros, Old Castile.

John of the Cross was a reformer of the Carmelite Order and is considered, along with Saint Teresa of Ávila, as a founder of the Discalced Carmelites. He is also known for his writings. Both his poetry and his studies on the growth of the soul are considered the summit of mystical Spanish literature and one of the peaks of all Spanish literature. He was canonized as a saint in 1726 by Pope Benedict XIII. He is one of the thirty-five Doctors of the Church.

Life

Early life and education

He was born Juan de Yepes y Álvarez into a Jewish converso family in Fontiveros, near Ávila, a town of around 2,000 people.CP Thompson, St. John of the Cross: Songs in the Night, London: SPCK, 2002, p27.Norman Roth, Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1995, pp. 157, 369 His father, Gonzalo, was an accountant to richer relatives who were silk merchants. However, when in 1529 he married John’s mother, Catalina, who was an orphan of a lower class, Gonzalo was rejected by his family and forced to work with his wife as a weaver.Desmond Tillyer, Union with God: The Teaching of St John of the Cross, London & Oxford: Mowbray, 1984, p4 John’s father died in 1545, while John was still only around seven years old.Gerald Brenan, St John of the Cross: His Life and Poetry, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p4 Two years later, John’s older brother Luis died, probably as a result of insufficient nourishment caused by the penury to which John’s family had been reduced. After this, John’s mother Catalina took John and his surviving brother Francisco, and moved first in 1548 to Arévalo, and then in 1551 to Medina del Campo, where she was able to find work weaving.

In Medina, John entered a school for around 160CP Thompson, St. John of the Cross: Songs in the Night, London: SPCK, 2002, p31 poor children, usually orphans, receiving a basic education, mainly in Christian doctrine, as well as some food, clothing, and lodging. While studying there, he was chosen to serve as acolyte at a nearby monastery of Augustinian nuns. Growing up, John worked at a hospital and studied the humanities at a Jesuit school from 1559 to 1563; the Society of Jesus was a new organization at the time, having been founded only a few years earlier by the Spaniard St. Ignatius of Loyola. In 1563Kavanaugh (1991) names the date as 24 February. However, E Allison Peers (1943), p13, points out that although this, the Feast of St Matthias, is often assumed to be the date, Father Silverio postulates a date in August or September. he entered the Carmelite Order, adopting the name John of St. Matthias.

The following year (1564)At some point between 21 May and October. See E Allison Peers, Spirit of Flame: A Study of St John of the Cross, (London: SCM Press, 1943), p13 he professed his religious vows as a Carmelite and travelled to Salamanca, where he studied theology and philosophy at the prestigious University there (at the time one of the four biggest in Europe, alongside Paris, Oxford and Bologna) and at the Colegio de San Andrés. Some modern writers claim that this stay would influence all his later writings, as Fray Luis de León taught biblical studies (Exegesis, Hebrew and Aramaic) at the University: León was one of the foremost experts in Biblical Studies then and had written an important and controversial translation of the Song of Songs into Spanish. (Translation of the Bible into the vernacular was not allowed then in Spain.)

Joining the Reform of Teresa of Jesus

John was ordained a priest in 1567, and then indicated his intent to join the strict Carthusian Order, which appealed to him because of its encouragement of solitary and silent contemplation. A journey from Salamanca to Medina del Campo, probably in September 1567, changed this.E Allison Peers (1943, p16) suggests that the journey was in order to visit a nearby Carthusian monastery; Richard P Hardy, The Life of St John of the Cross: Search for Nothing, (London: DLT, 1982), p24, argues that the reason was for John to say his first mass In Medina he met the charismatic Carmelite nun, Teresa of Jesus. She was in Medina to found the second of her convents for women.E Allison Peers, Spirit of Flame: A Study of St John of the Cross, (London: SCM Press, 1943), p16 She immediately talked to him about her reformation projects for the Order: she was seeking to restore the purity of the Carmelite Order by restarting observance of its "Primitive Rule" of 1209, observance of which had been relaxed by Pope Eugene IV in 1432.