John of the Cross

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John of the Cross
Statue of St. John of the Cross in the Carmelite Monastery of Varroville, Australia
Sepulcher Chapel in Segovia

John of the Cross (Spanish Juan de la Cruz , birth name Juan de Yepes Álvarez ) (born June 24, 1542 in Fontiveros , Spain , † December 14, 1591 in Úbeda ) was a Spanish Discalced Carmelite and mystic . He is venerated as a saint and doctor of the church in the Roman Catholic Church , and is also considered a saint in the Anglican Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America . His tomb is in the Carmelite Church in Segovia in Spain.

Life

Juan de Yepes was the third son of the silk weaver Gonzales de Yepes and his wife Catalina, nee. Álvarez. Around 1555 he came to Medina del Campo with his mother and his about ten years older brother , where he enjoyed a solid education in the Colegio de los Doctrinos school for the poor and, from 1559, in the newly founded College of the Jesuits . Training in practical professions was not very successful, but he proved to be a capable carer and alms collector for the Hospital de las Bubas , where syphilis patients were cared for. In 1563 he joined the Order of the Carmelites , and took the religious name of Juan de San Matía on. From 1564 on he studied theology and philosophy at the University of Salamanca and met Teresa of Ávila shortly after his ordination in 1567, and he was enthusiastic about her reform within the Carmelite order, so that he abandoned his idea of ​​converting to the Carthusian monastery .

After completing his studies in Salamanca, John began on November 28, 1568 under the religious name Juan de la Cruz ("John of the Cross") in Duruelo with Antonio de Jesús de Heredia and another confrere to live according to the ideas of Teresa, which she had already been doing 1562 in their first monastery in San José at Avila. Their followers were called Descalzos ("the disconsolate") in accordance with the reform movements common in Castile at the time .

In the rapidly expanding Order of the Discalced Carmelites, also known as the Teresian Carmel , John of the Cross was first master of novices , then rector of the college in Alcalá de Henares , and from spring 1572 confessor in the Carmel of the Incarnation in Avila . Teresa had called him there, who had been appointed prioress there since October 6, 1571, due to the appointment of the apostolic visitor . Because of the different reform ideas between the Roman Curia and the court of Philip II , into which the Carmelite order in Spain was drawn, violent disputes broke out between the Discalced and the Tribal Order, the victim of which was John of the Cross. On the night of December 2nd to 3rd, 1577 he was kidnapped and imprisoned in the prison of the monastery in Toledo , where he was mistreated and humiliated as a "persistent rebel".

For him, this time became the real center of his experience of God and the resulting mystical poetry, which has characteristics of the a lo divino . The priest and orientalist Miguel Asín Palacios (1871–1944) also points to the connection to the writings of the Sufi Ibn ʿAbbād (1332–1390). Ibn ʿAbbād had retired to the Moroccan city of Salé for some years for meditation and asceticism . He left behind the work Sharḥ al-ḥikam and a collection of 54 letters in which he humbly described himself as a slave before God. Palacios took the concept of the “dark night of the soul” as an essential common feature, because in this passive state of man God reveals himself most clearly. Among other things, Johannes' work Cántico espiritual , in which the human soul sings of its longing for the lost lover, while his most famous poem, The Dark Night after, was written in prison . His poems in the form of a lira are among the best that has been written in the Castilian (Spanish) language. Reinhold Schneider wrote the story The Dark Night of John of the Cross about this time , although he relied more on hagiography than on the historical knowledge available today.

In the days after August 15, 1578, John was able to flee from the cross and after several short stays in November 1578 he reached the remote monastery of Calvario, from where he took care of the Carmelites in Beas de Segura . As early as June 13, 1579, he founded the first preparatory college for the Andalusian students of the Discalced in Baeza ; In 1582 he became prior of the monastery in Granada, in 1585 provincial definitor and then provincial vicar of Andalusia, as which he covered an average of 15 km a day. During this time he wrote his writings, comments on his poems: Ascent to Mount Carmel , The Dark Night , Spiritual Chant and Living Flame of Love . In addition, he worked in various monasteries of the Discalced Carmelites and outside the order as a confessor and pastor. In 1588 he became prior of the Discalced Carmelite Monastery in Segovia and a member of the administration (General Conciliar).

At the General Chapter of the Order in Madrid in 1591, John of the Cross was a victim of disputes over the direction of the young Order because he defended Teresa's reforms against the rigor of Vicar General Nicolás Doria. Ostracized by the order, he withdrew to Úbeda near Jaén, where he died in the first few minutes of December 14, 1591. His relics are in San Juan de la Cruz in Segovia in a 1926 shrine on the altar in his burial chapel. He was soon venerated by many confreres and people outside the Order. The chronicle of the order distorted his vita, however, so that until recently he was considered a rigorist and maestro de nada (“teacher of nothing”), while he was much more a “singer of love”. The Nada te turbe , which one after the death of St. Teresa found in her book of hours , the overwhelming opinion is that St. Attributed to John of the Cross, but there are already similar thoughts in Teresa's Vida , which was completed in 1565 , e.g. For example: "I gradually realized again that everything was nothing" (3.5).

Adoration

On January 25, 1675, John of the Cross was beatified by Pope Clement X. On December 27, 1726 Pope Benedict XIII spoke . John holy . On August 24, 1926, Pius XI raised him . to the doctor of the church . In March 1993 John Paul II named him the patron saint of Spanish-speaking poets.

Work editions

  • John of the Cross: Complete Works. Complete retransmission. 5 volumes. Edited and translated by Ulrich Dobhan, Elisabeth Hense, Elisabeth Peeters. Herder, Freiburg (Breisgau) et al. 1995–2000 (several editions):
    • Volume 1: The Dark Night . Herder, Freiburg 1995 (Herder spectrum 4374), ISBN 3-451-04374-2
    • Volume 2: Words of Light and Love. Letters and smaller fonts. Herder, Freiburg 1996 (Herder spectrum 4506), ISBN 3-451-04506-0
    • Volume 3: The Spiritual Song. Complete retransmission. Herder, Freiburg 1997 (Herder spectrum 4554), ISBN 3-451-04554-0
    • Volume 4: Ascent to Mount Carmel. Herder, Freiburg 1999 (Herder spectrum 4802), ISBN 3-451-04802-7
    • Volume 5: The living love flame. Herder, Freiburg 2000 (Herder spectrum 5049), ISBN 3-451-05049-8

literature

  • Teresa of Avila: Collected Works. Volume 2: Path of Perfection. (Code of El Escorial). (Herder spectrum. 5318). Complete retransmission. Edited, translated and introduced by Ulrich Dobhan, Elisabeth Peeters. 3. Edition. Herder Freiburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-451-05318-4 .
  • Teresa of Avila: Collected Works. Volume 1: The Book of My Life. (Herder spectrum. 5211). Edited, translated and introduced by Ulrich Dobhan, Elisabeth Peeters. 6th edition. Herder Freiburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-451-05211-8 .
  • Dominique Bach: St. John of the Cross. Éditions du Signe, Strasbourg 2003, ISBN 2-7468-1058-1 .
  • Ulrich Dobhan, Reinhard Körner (Ed.): Johannes vom Kreuz. "New Thought" teacher. San Juan studies in the German-speaking area. Echter, Würzburg 1991, ISBN 3-429-01394-1 .
  • Ulrich Dobhan, Reinhard Körner: John of the Cross. The biography. Herder, Freiburg (Breisgau) et al. 1992, ISBN 3-451-22443-7 .
  • Waltraud Herbstrith: Where the silence begins. Meditations on texts by John of the Cross. New edition, 1st edition. Verlag Neue Stadt, Munich et al. 2006, ISBN 3-87996-663-X .
  • Reinhard Körner: Dark Night. Mystical experience of faith according to John of the Cross. (Münsterschwarzacher Kleinschrift. 154). Vier-Türme-Verlag, Münsterschwarzach 2006, ISBN 978-3-87868-654-5 .
  • Emmanuel Renault : What Therese von Lisieux owes to John of the Cross. Echter, Würzburg et al. 2009, ISBN 978-3-429-03029-2 .
  • Federico Ruiz, Jose Vi Rodriguez: Dios habla en la noche. Vida de San Juan de la Cruz. Editorial de Espiritualidad, Madrid 1990, ISBN 978-84-7068-200-1 .
  • Hartmut Sommer: Seelenburg and dark night. With Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross in Castile. In: Hartmut Sommer: The great mystics. Places of their work. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2008, ISBN 978-3-534-20098-6 , p. 133 ff.
  • Bernhard Teuber: Sacrificium litterae. Allegorical speech and mystical experience in the poetry of St. John of the Cross. Fink, Munich et al. 2003, ISBN 3-7705-3709-2 .

Remembrance day

Web links

Commons : Johannes vom Kreuz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. There is no historical record of this date, as the archives of the parish church in Fontiveros with all the baptismal records were burned a few years after his birth.
  2. ^ Ulrich Dobhan, Reinhard Körner: Johannes von Kreuz. The biography. Herder, Freiburg (Breisgau) et al. 1992, p. 10
  3. IbnʿAbbād of Ronda: Letters on the Sūfī path. Translated and introduced by John Renard. Paulist Press, New York NY et al. 1986, ISBN 0-8091-2730-X , p. 49; Annemarie Schimmel : Mystical Dimensions of Islam. The history of Sufism (= Insel-Taschenbuch. 1715). Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1995, ISBN 3-458-33415-7 , p. 358 f.