John of the Cross
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{{Infobox Saint
|name=Saint John of the Cross
|birth_date=[[24 June]] [[1542]]
|death_date={{Death date and age|1591|12|14|1542|06|24}}
|feast_day=[[14 December]]<br>[[24 November]] Traditional Catholic Calendar
|venerated_in=[[Roman Catholic Church]]; [[Anglican Communion]]; [[Lutheran Church]]
|image=JohnCross.jpg
|imagesize=205px
|caption=
|birth_place=[[Fontiveros]], [[Spain]]
|death_place=[[Ubeda]], [[Andalusia]], [[Spain]]
|titles=Confessor and Doctor of the Church
|beatified_date=[[25 January]] [[1675]]
|beatified_place=
|beatified_by=[[Pope Clement X]]
|canonized_date=[[27 December]] [[1726]]
|canonized_place=
|canonized_by=[[Pope Benedict XIII]]
|attributes=
|patronage=contemplative life; contemplatives; [[mystical theology]]; [[mysticism|mystic]]s; Spanish poets
|major_shrine=Tomb of Saint John of the Cross, [[Segovia]], [[Spain]]
|suppressed_date=
|issues=
|prayer=
|prayer_attrib=
}}
:''For another saint who lived around the same time and area, see [[John of Avila]]''.
'''Saint John of the Cross''' (''San Juan de la Cruz'') ([[24 June]] [[1542]] – [[14 December]] [[1591]]), born '''Juan de Yepes Alvarez''', was a major figure of the [[Counter-Reformation]], a [[Spanish mystics|Spanish mystic]], and [[Carmelites|Carmelite]] [[friar]] and [[Priesthood (Catholic Church)|priest]], born at [[Fontiveros]], a small village near [[Ávila]].
Saint 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 [[mysticism|mystical]] Spanish literature and one of the peaks of all [[Spanish literature]]. He was [[canonized]] as a [[saint]] in 1762 by [[Pope Benedict XIII]]. He is one of the thirty-three [[Doctors of the Church]]. His original feast day was [[November 24]], since his date of death was impeded by the octave of the Immaculate Conception. The 1969 calendar reforms placed his feast day on his date of death, [[December 14]].
==Life==
===Early life and education===
He was born by the name of ''Juan de Yepes Alvarez''<ref>Roddriguez, Jose Vincente, Biographical Narrative. ''God Speaks in the Night. The Life, Times, and Teaching of St. John of the Cross'', Washington D.C.: ICS Publications, 1991, p. 3 </ref> into a Jewish [[converso]] family in a small community near [[Ávila]].<ref>Norman Roth, ''Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain'', Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1995, pp. 157, 369</ref> His father died when he was young, and so John, his two older brothers and his widowed mother struggled with poverty, moving around and living in various [[Castile (historical region)|Castilian]] villages, with the last being [[Medina del Campo]], to which he moved in [[1551]]. There he worked at a hospital and studied the humanities at a [[Society of Jesus]] (Jesuit) school from 1559 to 1563. The Society of Jesus was a new organization at the time, having been founded a few years earlier by the Spanish St. [[Ignatius Loyola]]. On [[24 February]] [[1563]] he entered the Carmelite order, adopting the name Fr. Juan de Santo Matía.
The following year (1564) he professed as a Carmelite (was promoted from novice status) and moved to [[Salamanca]], where he studied theology and philosophy at the University and at the Colegio de San Andrés. This stay would influence all his later writings, as [[Luis Ponce de León|Fray Luis de León]] taught biblical studies ([[Exegesis]], [[Hebrew language|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 language|Spanish]]. (Translation of the [[Bible]] into the vernacular was not allowed then in Spain).
===Priesthood and association with Saint Teresa de Jesús===
Saint 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. Before this, however, he travelled to [[Medina del Campo]], where he met the charismatic Saint [[Teresa of Avila|Teresa de Jesús]]. She immediately talked to him about her reformation projects for the Carmelite order, and asked him to delay his entry into the Carthusians. The following year, on [[28 November]], he started this reformation at Duruelo together with Fr. Antonio de Jesús de Heredia, and the originally small and impoverished town of Duruelo became a center of religion.
John, still in his 20s, continued to work as a helper of Saint Teresa until 1577, founding monasteries around Spain and taking active part in their government. These foundations and the reformation process were resisted by a great number of Carmelite friars, some of whom felt that Teresa's version of the order was too strict. Some of these opponents would even try to bar Teresa from entering their convents.
The followers of St. John and St. Teresa differentiated themselves from the non-reformed communities by calling themselves the "discalced", i.e., barefoot, and the others the "calced" Carmelites.
===Imprisonment, writings, torture, death and recognition===
On the night of 3 to 4 December 1577, following his refusal to relocate after his superior's orders and allegedly because of his attempts to reform life within the Carmelite order, he was taken prisoner by his superiors, and jailed in [[Toledo, Spain|Toledo]], where he was kept under a brutal regimen that included public lashing before the community at least weekly, and severe isolation in a tiny stifling cell barely large enough for his body. He managed to escape nine months later, on [[15 August]] [[1578]]. In the meantime, he had composed a great part of his most famous poem [http://www.karmel.at/ics/john/cn.html ''Spiritual Canticle''] during this imprisonment; his harsh sufferings and spiritual endeavours are then reflected in all of his subsequent writings.
After returning to a normal life, he went on with the reformation and the founding of monasteries for the new [[Discalced Carmelites|Discalced Carmelite]] order, which he had helped found along with his fellow St. Teresa de Ávila.
He died on [[14 December]] [[1591]]. His writings were first published in 1618, and he was [[canonization|canonized]] by [[Pope Benedict XIII|Benedict XIII]] in 1726. In 1926, he was declared a [[Doctor of the Church]] by [[Pope Pius XI]]. When inserted into the [[Roman Catholic calendar of saints]] in 1738, his feast day was assigned to [[24 November]].<ref>''Calendarium Romanum'' (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1969), p. 110</ref>
[[Pope Paul VI]] moved it to the ''dies natalis'' (birthday to heaven) of the saint, [[14 December]].<ref>''Calendarium Romanum'' (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1969), p. 146</ref>
The [[Church of England]] commemorates him as a "Teacher of the Faith" on the same date.
==Literary Works==
St. John of the Cross is considered one of the foremost poets in the [[Spanish language]]. Although his complete poems add up to less than 2500 verses, two of them—the ''Spiritual Canticle'' and ''[[Dark Night of the Soul]]'' are widely considered to be among the best poems ever written in Spanish, both for their formal [[Stylistics (linguistics)|stylistic]] point of view and their rich [[symbolism]] and imagery.
The ''Spiritual Canticle'' is an [[eclogue]] in which the bride (representing the [[soul]]) searches for the bridegroom (representing [[Christian views of Jesus|Jesus Christ]]), and is anxious at having lost him; both are filled with joy upon reuniting. It can be seen as a free-form Spanish version of the [[Song of songs]] at a time when translations of the Bible into the vernacular were forbidden.
''Dark Night of the Soul'' (from which the spiritual term [[Dark Night of the Soul]] takes its name) narrates the journey of the [[soul]] from her bodily home to her union with [[God]]. It happens during the night, which represents the hardships and difficulties she meets in detachment from the world and reaching the light of the union with the Creator. There are several steps in this night, which are related in successive stanzas. The main idea of the poem can be seen as the painful experience that people endure as they seek to grow in spiritual maturity and union with God. A year after writing this poem, in 1586 he wrote a commentary on ''Dark Night of the Soul'' with the same title. This commentary explains the meaning of the poem verse by verse. Canadian world music artist [[Loreena McKennitt]] composed the music for and recorded a "song" version of the poem on her 1994 album ''[[The Mask and Mirror]]''.
St. John also wrote four treatises on [[mystical]] [[theology]], two of them concerning the two poems above, and supposedly explaining the meaning of the poems verse by verse and even word by word. He actually proves unable to follow this scheme and writes freely on the subject he is treating at each time.
The third work, ''[[Ascent of Mount Carmel]]'' is a more systematic study of the ascetical endeavour of a soul looking for perfect union, God, and the [[mysticism|mystical]] events happening along the way. A four stanza work, ''Living Flame of Love'' describes a greater [[intimacy]], as the [[soul]] responds to God's love. These, together with his ''Dichos de Luz y Amor'', or "Sayings of Light and Love," and [[Teresa of Avila|St. Teresa]]'s writings, are the most important mystical works in Spanish, and have deeply influenced later spiritual writers all around the world. Among these can be named [[T. S. Eliot]], [[Thérèse de Lisieux]], [[Edith Stein]] (Teresa Benedicta of the Cross), and [[Thomas Merton]]. John has also influenced philosophers ([[Jacques Maritain]]), theologians ([[Hans Urs von Balthasar]]), and [[pacifists]] ([[Dorothy Day]], [[Daniel Berrigan]], and [[Philip Berrigan]]). He is also mentioned in [[Allen Ginsberg]]'s groundbreaking poem "[[Howl]]."
==See also==
*[[Book of the First Monks]]
*[[Byzantine Discalced Carmelites]]
*[[Calendar of saints (Church of England)]]
*[[Carmelite Rule of St. Albert]]
*[[Christian Meditation]]
*[[Constitutions of the Carmelite Order]]
*[[Miguel Asín Palacios]]
*Saint [[Raphael Kalinowski]], the first friar to be canonized (in 1991 by Pope [[John Paul II]]) in the Order of Discalced Carmelites since Saint John of the Cross
*[[Spanish Renaissance literature]]
==Books==
*''Dark Night of the Soul: A Masterpiece in the Literature of Mysticism (Translated and Edited by E. Allison Peers)'', [[Doubleday (publisher)|Doubleday]], 1959. ISBN 978-0385-02930-8
==References==
{{reflist}}
==External links==
{{wikiquote}}
{{Wikisource author}}
*[http://www.carmelite-seremban.org/Spirituality/saint45.html St John of the Cross, Dec 14 - Solemnity]
*[http://www.carmelite-seremban.org/Spirituality/books.html Books written by St John of the Cross] including St Teresa of Avila
*[http://www.thereseoflisieux.org/therese-and-john-of-the-cross/ St. John of the Cross and his influence on St. Therese of Lisieux]
*[http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08480a.htm Catholic Encyclopedia on John of the Cross]
*[http://www.carmelite.com/saints/john/works/index.shtml The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross] at Discalced Carmelites in the Australian Region
*[http://www.johnofthecross.com The Metaphysics of Mysticism: The Mystical Philosophy of Saint John of the Cross] Biography of St. John of the Cross
*[http://www.ccel.org/j/john_cross/?show=worksBy Christian Classics Ethereal Library: St. John of the Cross]
*[http://www.post-videoart.com/video/160.html Short film based on St. John of the Cross' ''Dark Night of the Soul'']
*[http://home.wxs.nl/~brouw724/Juan.html St. John of the Cross on the Mystical Site www.mysticism.nl]
*[http://www.carmelite-seremban.org/Heights/index.html Carmel's Heights] - This CD album is an attempt to share with all, some of Carmel's Saints - real persons of flesh and blood - who share with us in song their own spiritual experiences.
*[http://www.karmel.at/ics/edith/stein_9.html Carmelite Vocation]
*[http://www.carmelite.com/saints/john/works/p_10.htm Poetry of John of the Cross]
*[http://www.carmelite-seremban.org/Spirituality/carmelite_calendar.html Discalced Carmelite Calendar and Saints]
*[http://carmelites.info Index of Carmelite Websites]
*[http://www.cin.org/saints/jcross-merton.html Thomas Merton on St. John of the Cross]
{{Catholicism}}
{{Churchdoctor}}
[[Category:1542 births]]
[[Category:1591 deaths]]
[[Category:Carmelites]]
[[Category:Hermits]]
[[Category:Christian mystics]]
[[Category:Christian theologians]]
[[Category:Spanish saints]]
[[Category:Spanish philosophers]]
[[Category:Doctors of the Church]]
[[Category:Catholic spirituality]]
[[Category:Founders of Roman Catholic religious communities]]
[[Category:Counter-Reformation]]
[[Category:Roman Catholic theologians]]
[[Category:Theologians]]
[[Category:Carmelite spirituality]]
[[Category:Spanish writers]]
[[Category:16th century philosophers]]
[[Category:Renewers of the church]]
[[be-x-old:Ян ад Крыжа]]
[[br:Yann ar Groaz]]
[[cs:Jan od Kříže]]
[[de:Johannes vom Kreuz]]
[[es:Juan de la Cruz]]
[[eo:Johano de la Kruco]]
[[eu:Joan Gurutzearena]]
[[fr:Jean de La Croix]]
[[hr:Ivan od Križa]]
[[id:Yohanes Salib]]
[[ia:Johannes del Cruce]]
[[it:San Giovanni della Croce]]
[[la:Ioannes a Cruce]]
[[lt:Šv. Kryžiaus Jonas]]
[[hu:Keresztes Szent János]]
[[nl:Johannes van het Kruis]]
[[ja:十字架のヨハネ]]
[[no:Johannes av Korset]]
[[oc:Joan de la Crotz]]
[[pl:Jan od Krzyża]]
[[pt:São João da Cruz]]
[[ro:Ioan al Crucii]]
[[ru:Иоанн Креста]]
[[sq:Shën Gjoni i Kryqit]]
[[sk:Ján z Kríža]]
[[sv:Johannes av Korset]]
[[vi:Gioan Thánh Giá]]