WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.439 I want you to picture a box. It's about 10 feet 00:00:02.439 --> 00:00:05.320 long, maybe 6 feet wide. So yeah, tiny. Like 00:00:05.320 --> 00:00:07.660 a walk -in closet, basically. Or a decent -sized 00:00:07.660 --> 00:00:10.560 rug. Right, exactly. Now, take away the light. 00:00:11.210 --> 00:00:13.609 All of it. Okay. I mean, maybe there's a crack 00:00:13.609 --> 00:00:16.429 high up in the wall, maybe two inches wide, that 00:00:16.429 --> 00:00:19.469 lets in a kind of gray haze for 20 minutes a 00:00:19.469 --> 00:00:21.910 day. But otherwise, it is pitch black. So you 00:00:21.910 --> 00:00:23.789 can't see your own hand in front of your face? 00:00:23.969 --> 00:00:26.609 Not at all. And this is a stone fortress in Spain, 00:00:26.690 --> 00:00:28.350 so you know it's freezing cold in the winter. 00:00:28.530 --> 00:00:31.030 Bone chilling, yeah. And then stiflingly hot 00:00:31.030 --> 00:00:34.030 in the summer. The air is completely stagnant. 00:00:34.049 --> 00:00:37.100 It smells of, well... unwashed bodies and sickness. 00:00:37.420 --> 00:00:39.359 You're in there alone. You are in there alone. 00:00:39.479 --> 00:00:42.579 You are starving. And I mean literally skeletal, 00:00:42.579 --> 00:00:44.920 covered in lice. You haven't had a change of 00:00:44.920 --> 00:00:48.000 clothes in months. Wow. And every so often the 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:51.159 door opens, not to let you out, but so you can 00:00:51.159 --> 00:00:53.479 be dragged into a cafeteria to be whipped in 00:00:53.479 --> 00:00:55.179 front of the very people you used to call your 00:00:55.179 --> 00:00:57.579 brothers. It sounds like a description of a gulag 00:00:57.579 --> 00:01:00.609 or, I don't know, a black site prison. It does. 00:01:00.710 --> 00:01:03.429 It is a machine designed to break a human being, 00:01:03.570 --> 00:01:07.450 to strip away sanity. But here is the paradox 00:01:07.450 --> 00:01:09.290 we're going to be wrestling with today. Okay. 00:01:09.390 --> 00:01:11.870 Out of that closet, out of that lice -ridden, 00:01:12.010 --> 00:01:15.549 freezing, hopeless box, came some of the most 00:01:15.549 --> 00:01:19.730 luminous, romantic, soaring poetry in the entire 00:01:19.730 --> 00:01:22.349 Spanish language. Which is just almost impossible 00:01:22.349 --> 00:01:24.530 to reconcile, isn't it? You'd expect a manifesto 00:01:24.530 --> 00:01:27.150 of rage. You'd expect a screed against his captors. 00:01:27.209 --> 00:01:29.530 Exactly. That's what I would write. But instead... 00:01:29.579 --> 00:01:32.159 We get flowers. We get wine cellars. We get the 00:01:32.159 --> 00:01:36.060 living flame of love. We get this intense, almost 00:01:36.060 --> 00:01:38.859 erotic description of union with the divine. 00:01:39.079 --> 00:01:41.799 And we are talking, of course. about Juana Ubezi 00:01:41.799 --> 00:01:44.120 Alvarez. Better known to the world as St. John 00:01:44.120 --> 00:01:46.799 of the Cross. A man who is technically a doctor 00:01:46.799 --> 00:01:48.620 of the church, which, you know, it sounds very 00:01:48.620 --> 00:01:51.780 stuffy and academic. Very formal. But his actual 00:01:51.780 --> 00:01:54.620 life was a thriller. I mean, you've got kidnappings, 00:01:54.719 --> 00:01:57.239 you've got a prison break that honestly rivals 00:01:57.239 --> 00:01:59.480 the Shawshank Redemption. It really does. And 00:01:59.480 --> 00:02:01.959 then you have his body and, well, the afterlife 00:02:01.959 --> 00:02:04.560 of his physical remains is basically a horror 00:02:04.560 --> 00:02:07.260 movie in itself. It gets incredibly macabre at 00:02:07.260 --> 00:02:09.460 the end, yeah. So here's our mission for this 00:02:09.460 --> 00:02:13.819 deep dive. We have a stack of sources, Wikipedia 00:02:13.819 --> 00:02:16.860 excerpts covering his biography, his literary 00:02:16.860 --> 00:02:20.960 works, his intellectual influences, and the pretty 00:02:20.960 --> 00:02:23.460 complicated history of the Carmelite order. Right. 00:02:23.580 --> 00:02:25.919 We want to understand how this specific pressure 00:02:25.919 --> 00:02:28.740 cooker of suffering catalyzed a very unique type 00:02:28.740 --> 00:02:31.620 of wisdom. We want to decode the dark night of 00:02:31.620 --> 00:02:34.080 the soul, a phrase everyone uses, but almost 00:02:34.080 --> 00:02:36.039 nobody actually understands what he meant by 00:02:36.039 --> 00:02:38.680 it. And to do that, I think we have to ignore 00:02:38.680 --> 00:02:41.520 the statues. You know, you see St. John of the 00:02:41.520 --> 00:02:43.479 Cross in churches and he's this marble figure 00:02:43.479 --> 00:02:46.479 looking piously up at heaven. Yeah. We need to 00:02:46.479 --> 00:02:49.280 smash the marble. We need to find the starving 00:02:49.280 --> 00:02:51.759 boy from Fontiveros. Let's start right there. 00:02:52.419 --> 00:02:56.020 1542. Fontiveros, Spain. This is the Siglo de 00:02:56.020 --> 00:02:58.860 Oro, the Golden Age. Right. Spain is the superpower 00:02:58.860 --> 00:03:01.659 of the world. Gold is flowing in from the Americans. 00:03:01.840 --> 00:03:03.360 It should be a pretty good time to be Spanish. 00:03:03.560 --> 00:03:05.479 It should be, yeah, if you're the right kind 00:03:05.479 --> 00:03:08.300 of Spanish. But Juan, he's born on the wrong 00:03:08.300 --> 00:03:10.680 side of every single track you can imagine. Set 00:03:10.680 --> 00:03:13.180 the scene for his family dynamic. Because reading 00:03:13.180 --> 00:03:15.560 the notes, it honestly sounds like a soap opera 00:03:15.560 --> 00:03:18.379 right from the very start. It really is. I mean, 00:03:18.379 --> 00:03:21.219 his father, Gonzalo. He actually came from money. 00:03:21.300 --> 00:03:23.979 He was from a family of wealthy silk merchants 00:03:23.979 --> 00:03:26.180 in Toledo. So comfortable. Very comfortable. 00:03:26.400 --> 00:03:28.900 Upper middle class. Respectable. But Gonzalo 00:03:28.900 --> 00:03:31.960 commits the cardinal sin of 16th century social 00:03:31.960 --> 00:03:35.819 climbing. He falls in love. With the wrong woman, 00:03:35.860 --> 00:03:37.919 I take it? With the absolute wrong woman. Her 00:03:37.919 --> 00:03:40.139 name is Catalina. She's a weaver. She's poor. 00:03:40.599 --> 00:03:44.319 And crucially, she's an orphan. In a society 00:03:44.319 --> 00:03:46.460 that is completely obsessed with lineage and 00:03:46.460 --> 00:03:49.599 connections, she's a nobody. So when Gonzalo 00:03:49.599 --> 00:03:51.740 marries her, his family just goes nuclear. They 00:03:51.740 --> 00:03:53.680 disown him. They cut him off without a penny. 00:03:53.819 --> 00:03:55.939 That seems extreme even for the time. Was it 00:03:55.939 --> 00:03:58.039 just pure classism or was there something else 00:03:58.039 --> 00:04:00.659 going on there? It was likely a mix of that intense 00:04:00.659 --> 00:04:03.400 classism and just the sheer rigidity of the social 00:04:03.400 --> 00:04:05.979 structure. You did not marry down. It wasn't 00:04:05.979 --> 00:04:09.199 done. So Gonzalo goes from handling fine silk 00:04:09.199 --> 00:04:11.919 to weaving coarse cloth himself just to put bread 00:04:11.919 --> 00:04:14.520 on the table. That is a massive fall from grace. 00:04:14.939 --> 00:04:17.720 Huge. And it has lethal consequences for his 00:04:17.720 --> 00:04:20.980 family. It does. Juan is born in 1542. His father 00:04:20.980 --> 00:04:24.279 dies in 1545. So Juan is only three. And now 00:04:24.279 --> 00:04:26.240 you have a widow, Catalina, with three little 00:04:26.240 --> 00:04:29.779 boys in a country with absolutely no social safety 00:04:29.779 --> 00:04:32.279 net whatsoever. They aren't just poor in the 00:04:32.279 --> 00:04:34.819 modern sense. They're destitute. Utterly destitute. 00:04:34.899 --> 00:04:37.600 And the notes mentioned his brother, Luis. Yes. 00:04:37.819 --> 00:04:39.860 Juan's older brother, Luis, dies just two years 00:04:39.860 --> 00:04:42.040 after the father. And the historical consensus 00:04:42.040 --> 00:04:44.379 is really blunt about it. Yeah. He died of malnutrition. 00:04:44.379 --> 00:04:46.279 He starved to death. That is the context I think 00:04:46.279 --> 00:04:48.740 we miss when we read the theology later on. The 00:04:48.740 --> 00:04:51.319 man who wrote about the banquet of God literally 00:04:51.319 --> 00:04:54.459 watched his own brother die of hunger. Precisely. 00:04:54.740 --> 00:04:56.779 It traumatizes the family, as you can imagine. 00:04:57.279 --> 00:04:59.220 Catalina is desperate. She starts moving them 00:04:59.220 --> 00:05:01.980 around. First to Arevalo, then to Medina del 00:05:01.980 --> 00:05:05.519 Campo. chasing any kind of work. She's just trying 00:05:05.519 --> 00:05:08.199 to keep her remaining two sons Juan and Francisco 00:05:08.199 --> 00:05:11.410 alive. Now, there is another layer to this precarity 00:05:11.410 --> 00:05:13.569 that I really want to drill into. The sources 00:05:13.569 --> 00:05:16.250 all mention his Converso heritage. For anyone 00:05:16.250 --> 00:05:18.329 who doesn't know 16th century Spanish history, 00:05:18.490 --> 00:05:21.069 can you unpack that label? Yeah, this is absolutely 00:05:21.069 --> 00:05:24.750 crucial. Converso refers to families with Jewish 00:05:24.750 --> 00:05:27.589 roots who had converted to Catholicism, often, 00:05:27.750 --> 00:05:29.889 you know, under the threat of expulsion or death 00:05:29.889 --> 00:05:33.689 back in 1492. So Juan was from what they called 00:05:33.689 --> 00:05:36.660 a new Christian family. As opposed to an old 00:05:36.660 --> 00:05:39.040 Christian. Correct. And that distinction was 00:05:39.040 --> 00:05:41.399 everything back then. Spain was obsessed with 00:05:41.399 --> 00:05:43.879 something called limpieza de sangre, purity of 00:05:43.879 --> 00:05:46.680 blood. Right. If you were a new Christian, you 00:05:46.680 --> 00:05:49.339 were suspect. Always. You couldn't hold certain 00:05:49.339 --> 00:05:51.779 government jobs. You were watched more closely 00:05:51.779 --> 00:05:54.100 by the Inquisition. There was this constant low 00:05:54.100 --> 00:05:56.579 -level hum of anxiety that you could be denounced 00:05:56.579 --> 00:05:59.100 at any moment for anything. So John is growing 00:05:59.100 --> 00:06:02.189 up with a double target on his back. He's dirt 00:06:02.189 --> 00:06:05.149 poor and he's racially suspect in the eyes of 00:06:05.149 --> 00:06:07.550 the state. He is an outsider in every possible 00:06:07.550 --> 00:06:10.509 sense. He doesn't belong to the rich and he doesn't 00:06:10.509 --> 00:06:13.490 fully belong to the pure Spanish elite. And I 00:06:13.490 --> 00:06:16.170 think that outsider status is absolutely key 00:06:16.170 --> 00:06:18.709 to his psychology. He learns to be quiet. He 00:06:18.709 --> 00:06:20.769 learns to observe. He eventually catches a break, 00:06:20.810 --> 00:06:23.029 though. He gets into a school in Medina del Campo. 00:06:23.069 --> 00:06:25.529 He does. A charitable school. It was called the 00:06:25.529 --> 00:06:28.839 School of Doctrine. It was specifically for orphans 00:06:28.839 --> 00:06:30.560 and the desperately poor children of the town. 00:06:30.620 --> 00:06:32.579 And there was a deal, right? It wasn't just free 00:06:32.579 --> 00:06:35.839 education. No, the deal was, we feed you, we 00:06:35.839 --> 00:06:37.620 clothe you, we teach you to read and write the 00:06:37.620 --> 00:06:41.540 catechism, and in exchange, you work. What was 00:06:41.540 --> 00:06:45.040 his job? He was an acolyte, an altar boy, at 00:06:45.040 --> 00:06:48.399 a nearby convent of Augustinian nuns. But he 00:06:48.399 --> 00:06:50.709 also worked at a hospital. And this is important. 00:06:50.790 --> 00:06:52.870 This wasn't a modern hospital. This was a place 00:06:52.870 --> 00:06:54.930 for people with syphilis, for the dying, for 00:06:54.930 --> 00:06:57.810 the contagious, the dregs of society. So as a 00:06:57.810 --> 00:07:00.009 teenager, he's washing the sores of the dying. 00:07:00.209 --> 00:07:02.870 He's intimate with suffering. He's intimate with 00:07:02.870 --> 00:07:05.230 the fragility of the human body from a very young 00:07:05.230 --> 00:07:08.930 age. But at the same time, his mind is just exploding. 00:07:08.949 --> 00:07:10.689 He turns out to be intellectually brilliant. 00:07:11.050 --> 00:07:13.910 And the Jesuits spot him. And the Jesuits at 00:07:13.910 --> 00:07:16.209 this point are sort of the Navy SEALs of the 00:07:16.209 --> 00:07:17.949 church's intellectuals, right? They absolutely 00:07:17.949 --> 00:07:20.029 are. They are the intellectual shock troops. 00:07:20.290 --> 00:07:22.750 The Society of Jesus is brand new, founded by 00:07:22.750 --> 00:07:25.509 Ignatius of Loyola. They are rigorous, aggressive, 00:07:25.889 --> 00:07:28.930 modern, and Juan studies humanities with them 00:07:28.930 --> 00:07:33.370 from 1559 to 1563. So he's getting a world -class 00:07:33.370 --> 00:07:36.550 education. Top of the line. Latin, Greek, rhetoric, 00:07:36.750 --> 00:07:39.470 all while still living in abject poverty. So 00:07:39.470 --> 00:07:43.110 he's 21 years old. He's smart. He's educated. 00:07:43.389 --> 00:07:46.649 He could have been a brilliant Jesuit, but he 00:07:46.649 --> 00:07:49.769 takes a left turn. He joins the Carmelites. Why? 00:07:50.069 --> 00:07:52.149 That is the million -dollar question. The sources 00:07:52.149 --> 00:07:55.149 aren't definitive on it. Maybe he wanted a life 00:07:55.149 --> 00:07:57.290 that was more contemplative than the Jesuits, 00:07:57.430 --> 00:07:59.769 who were very active out in the world. Right, 00:07:59.810 --> 00:08:02.790 more academic. Maybe. Or maybe he just liked 00:08:02.790 --> 00:08:05.810 the specific devotion to Mary that the Carmelites 00:08:05.810 --> 00:08:08.329 had. But for whatever reason, he joins them, 00:08:08.410 --> 00:08:11.069 takes the name John of St. Matthias, and then 00:08:11.069 --> 00:08:13.209 goes to the University of Salamanca. Salamanca 00:08:13.209 --> 00:08:15.250 is the Harvard of its day. It's the intellectual 00:08:15.250 --> 00:08:17.329 center of Europe. And he's not just sitting in 00:08:17.329 --> 00:08:19.370 the back row. He's interacting with absolute 00:08:19.370 --> 00:08:22.329 giants. The sources mentioned Fray Luis de Leon. 00:08:22.490 --> 00:08:25.170 Who was? A massive figure. A brilliant biblical 00:08:25.170 --> 00:08:27.990 scholar, an expert in Hebrew and Aramaic. The 00:08:27.990 --> 00:08:30.310 fact that John is in this orbit means he's being 00:08:30.310 --> 00:08:32.769 exposed to the absolute cutting edge of biblical 00:08:32.769 --> 00:08:34.789 interpretation. He's learning how to read the 00:08:34.789 --> 00:08:37.190 Song of Songs, how to read the prophets in a 00:08:37.190 --> 00:08:40.169 very deep way. So on paper, he's finally made 00:08:40.169 --> 00:08:44.059 it. He's a priest. He's ordained in 1567. He's 00:08:44.059 --> 00:08:46.200 a scholar. He has a career track ahead of him. 00:08:47.049 --> 00:08:50.870 But he's miserable. He is deeply, deeply unsatisfied. 00:08:51.049 --> 00:08:53.029 You have to understand, the Carmelite order he 00:08:53.029 --> 00:08:55.909 joined had, well, it had drifted. Drifted how? 00:08:56.210 --> 00:08:58.250 They had become comfortable. Over the centuries, 00:08:58.429 --> 00:09:01.029 the original, very harsh rules had been relaxed. 00:09:01.330 --> 00:09:03.129 They were allowed to eat meat. They could own 00:09:03.129 --> 00:09:05.309 property. They wore comfortable shoes. They could 00:09:05.309 --> 00:09:07.950 socialize. It was a pretty pleasant life for 00:09:07.950 --> 00:09:10.129 a bachelor scholar. But John didn't want a pleasant 00:09:10.129 --> 00:09:13.750 life. Not at all. He wanted God. And he felt 00:09:13.750 --> 00:09:15.710 that all this comfort was just a distraction. 00:09:15.990 --> 00:09:18.169 He was actually planning to quit the Carmelites 00:09:18.169 --> 00:09:21.049 entirely and join the Carthusians. And the Carthusians 00:09:21.049 --> 00:09:22.769 are the really intense ones, right? The ones 00:09:22.769 --> 00:09:24.929 who take a vow of silence and basically live 00:09:24.929 --> 00:09:27.710 in cells until they die. Total silence. Total 00:09:27.710 --> 00:09:30.090 solitude. They were the special forces of asceticism. 00:09:30.289 --> 00:09:32.950 John was packing his bags. He was ready to disappear 00:09:32.950 --> 00:09:34.970 into silence for the rest of his life. And then 00:09:34.970 --> 00:09:37.850 the plot twist. He meets a woman. He meets the 00:09:37.850 --> 00:09:40.889 woman. Yeah. Teresa of Avila. I love the contrast 00:09:40.889 --> 00:09:43.470 here. You have John, who by all accounts was 00:09:43.470 --> 00:09:46.950 physically small, short, quiet, intense, very 00:09:46.950 --> 00:09:50.029 introverted. And then you have Teresa, who is 00:09:50.029 --> 00:09:52.509 this absolute force of nature. She really is. 00:09:52.549 --> 00:09:54.289 She's charismatic. She's a leader. She's like 00:09:54.289 --> 00:09:57.230 a CEO in a habit. Yeah. She's 52. He's only 25. 00:09:58.049 --> 00:10:00.429 She comes to Medina del Campo to found a new 00:10:00.429 --> 00:10:03.309 convent. And she hears about this brilliant young 00:10:03.309 --> 00:10:06.029 friar who is about to leave the order. So she 00:10:06.029 --> 00:10:08.470 arranges a meeting. What's the pitch? I mean, 00:10:08.470 --> 00:10:10.509 how do you convince a guy who wants to join a 00:10:10.509 --> 00:10:13.809 completely silent order to stay in the messy 00:10:13.809 --> 00:10:16.409 one he's trying to leave? She essentially says 00:10:16.409 --> 00:10:18.370 to him, don't run away from the fight. Help me 00:10:18.370 --> 00:10:20.950 fix it. She tells him she has this vision. She 00:10:20.950 --> 00:10:22.789 wants to bring the Carmelites back to their roots. 00:10:23.259 --> 00:10:25.679 Beck, the primitive rule from 1209. Make Carmel 00:10:25.679 --> 00:10:28.460 great again, basically. In a way, yeah. But for 00:10:28.460 --> 00:10:31.460 her, great meant hard. She wanted to strip away 00:10:31.460 --> 00:10:34.639 all the comfort, no meat, fasting from the Feast 00:10:34.639 --> 00:10:36.700 of the Cross in September all the way to Easter. 00:10:36.860 --> 00:10:39.820 Wow. Total silence for long periods, coarser 00:10:39.820 --> 00:10:42.379 habits, and the symbol of it all, the shoes. 00:10:42.639 --> 00:10:44.720 This is the part that I think always confuses 00:10:44.720 --> 00:10:47.980 modern people. Why the obsession with footwear? 00:10:48.200 --> 00:10:50.500 It's symbolic. It's about being grounded, literally. 00:10:50.990 --> 00:10:55.149 It's about poverty. The mitigated or calced friars 00:10:55.149 --> 00:10:57.809 wore calzes. That's shoes and stockings. Okay. 00:10:57.870 --> 00:11:00.629 Teresa wanted them to go discalced, which means 00:11:00.629 --> 00:11:03.350 barefoot, or wearing only simple hemp sandals. 00:11:03.409 --> 00:11:05.690 So the visual market that said we are rejecting 00:11:05.690 --> 00:11:08.009 the softness of the world. It's counterculture. 00:11:08.070 --> 00:11:11.250 It's almost punk rock for the 1500s. It is. It's 00:11:11.250 --> 00:11:13.570 a statement. It's saying you guys in your soft 00:11:13.570 --> 00:11:16.450 leather shoes have sold out. We are the real 00:11:16.450 --> 00:11:19.049 deal. And John buys it. He buys it completely. 00:11:19.549 --> 00:11:23.039 Hook. Line and sinker. He agrees to become the 00:11:23.039 --> 00:11:26.159 very first friar of this new reform. So in 1568, 00:11:26.320 --> 00:11:29.159 he goes to a place called Durelo. And monastery 00:11:29.159 --> 00:11:31.460 is a very generous word for it. He was a shack, 00:11:31.600 --> 00:11:34.019 a derelict farmhouse that someone had donated. 00:11:34.139 --> 00:11:36.879 It was falling apart. But he's happy. He is ecstatic. 00:11:37.100 --> 00:11:39.059 He's finally found the rigor he was looking for. 00:11:39.179 --> 00:11:41.639 He sweeps the floor. He builds a tiny chapel. 00:11:41.779 --> 00:11:44.679 And on November 28, 1568, he changes his name. 00:11:45.240 --> 00:11:47.919 No more John of St. Matthias. He becomes John 00:11:47.919 --> 00:11:51.840 of the Cross. That name. It's so heavy. It feels 00:11:51.840 --> 00:11:54.179 like foreshadowing. It's a declaration of intent. 00:11:54.460 --> 00:11:57.019 And the cross was coming for him much sooner 00:11:57.019 --> 00:11:59.059 than he thought. Because you can't just start 00:11:59.059 --> 00:12:01.620 a revolution within the church without making 00:12:01.620 --> 00:12:04.320 a lot of very powerful enemies. Let's talk about 00:12:04.320 --> 00:12:06.539 those enemies. Because usually when we hear about 00:12:06.539 --> 00:12:08.960 saints, we think everyone must have loved them. 00:12:09.259 --> 00:12:12.980 But John was hated. Hated. You have to look at 00:12:12.980 --> 00:12:15.299 the politics of it. You have the Kelskarmelites, 00:12:15.440 --> 00:12:19.080 the traditional ones, and the Diskelst, the barefoot. 00:12:19.740 --> 00:12:22.340 Right. The Kall's friars looked at these barefoot 00:12:22.340 --> 00:12:25.220 upstarts and they felt judged. They felt threatened. 00:12:25.399 --> 00:12:27.580 Their way of life was being called into question. 00:12:27.740 --> 00:12:30.720 You think you're holier than us. Exactly. And 00:12:30.720 --> 00:12:33.179 as the reform started to grow, and it did grow, 00:12:33.340 --> 00:12:35.379 a lot of people were attracted to that intensity. 00:12:35.559 --> 00:12:37.259 The old guard decided they had to stamp it out. 00:12:37.440 --> 00:12:39.740 It turns into a kind of Carmelite civil war. 00:12:39.879 --> 00:12:42.440 And like any civil war, it's full of confusing 00:12:42.440 --> 00:12:45.289 jurisdictions and shifting alliances. It's an 00:12:45.289 --> 00:12:47.990 absolute mess. There are papal nuncios, that's 00:12:47.990 --> 00:12:50.230 the pope's ambassadors involved. The king of 00:12:50.230 --> 00:12:52.629 Spain is involved. There are different overseers 00:12:52.629 --> 00:12:55.070 for different regions. But the real turning point 00:12:55.070 --> 00:12:58.629 is in 1576. The Carmelite leadership meets in 00:12:58.629 --> 00:13:01.029 Piacenza, Italy, and they decide to drop the 00:13:01.029 --> 00:13:03.250 hammer. What do they do? They issue an order 00:13:03.250 --> 00:13:05.610 for the total suppression of the discalced houses. 00:13:05.830 --> 00:13:08.809 So basically, shut it all down, go home, put 00:13:08.809 --> 00:13:11.870 your shoes back on. Pretty much, yeah. But John 00:13:11.870 --> 00:13:14.480 and Teresa, they kind of ignore it. They have 00:13:14.480 --> 00:13:16.740 backing from the papal linceo in Spain, a man 00:13:16.740 --> 00:13:18.899 named Ormaneto, so they think they're safe. Keep 00:13:18.899 --> 00:13:22.700 on working. John is in Avila, serving as a confessor 00:13:22.700 --> 00:13:25.080 and spiritual director for the nuns at the Convent 00:13:25.080 --> 00:13:27.059 of the Incarnation. But then their protector 00:13:27.059 --> 00:13:30.279 dies. Yes. The linceo, Ormaneto, dies in June 00:13:30.279 --> 00:13:33.639 of 1577. The shield is gone, and the wolves come 00:13:33.639 --> 00:13:37.139 out. So December 2, 1577, take us there. It's 00:13:37.139 --> 00:13:39.379 night. John is staying in a small cottage near 00:13:39.379 --> 00:13:41.960 the Convent in Avila. Suddenly the door is smashed 00:13:41.960 --> 00:13:45.279 in. It's a group of Chalced Carmelites. His own 00:13:45.279 --> 00:13:48.279 order, but the opposing faction. And they brought 00:13:48.279 --> 00:13:50.220 some men -at -arms with them. So this is a straight 00:13:50.220 --> 00:13:52.440 -up kidnapping. It's an extraordinary rendition 00:13:52.440 --> 00:13:55.059 is what it is. They grab him. He tries to argue. 00:13:55.200 --> 00:13:57.639 He says, I answered to the Pope's new representative. 00:13:58.019 --> 00:13:59.960 But they don't care. They ignore his claims. 00:14:00.000 --> 00:14:01.940 They bundle him up. And they take him to Toledo. 00:14:02.039 --> 00:14:04.279 And Toledo is the headquarters of the enemy. 00:14:04.460 --> 00:14:06.820 It is the heart of darkness for him. The main 00:14:06.820 --> 00:14:09.830 Carmelite monastery in the region. He is brought 00:14:09.830 --> 00:14:13.250 before a tribunal of his fellow friars. They 00:14:13.250 --> 00:14:15.990 demand that he renounce the reform. And he refuses. 00:14:16.289 --> 00:14:19.669 He refuses. So they classify him as a rebel and 00:14:19.669 --> 00:14:22.029 an apostate. Yeah. And rebels need to be broken. 00:14:22.210 --> 00:14:24.929 And this brings us right back to that box we 00:14:24.929 --> 00:14:27.750 started with. The cell. It was barely large enough 00:14:27.750 --> 00:14:29.830 to lie down in. It might have been a former closet 00:14:29.830 --> 00:14:33.110 or even a privy. No window. Just that tiny little 00:14:33.110 --> 00:14:34.970 slit high up in the wall. He had the clothes 00:14:34.970 --> 00:14:37.830 on his back. And that was it. For eight months. 00:14:38.320 --> 00:14:40.100 Talk to me about the circular discipline. What 00:14:40.100 --> 00:14:42.620 was that? It's just brutal. Once a week, sometimes 00:14:42.620 --> 00:14:45.399 more, the friars would all gather in the refectory, 00:14:45.399 --> 00:14:48.539 the dining hall, to eat. They would drag John 00:14:48.539 --> 00:14:50.279 out of his cell. They would strip him to the 00:14:50.279 --> 00:14:53.059 waist. And then, while the entire community watched, 00:14:53.360 --> 00:14:55.580 they would whip him. This is psychological torture. 00:14:55.820 --> 00:14:58.120 These are men he knows, men he probably prayed 00:14:58.120 --> 00:15:00.519 with at some point. Of course. And they would 00:15:00.519 --> 00:15:02.139 taunt him while they did it. They'd tell him 00:15:02.139 --> 00:15:04.779 the reform was dead, that Teresa had abandoned 00:15:04.779 --> 00:15:07.259 the cause, that nobody knew where he was and 00:15:07.259 --> 00:15:08.700 nobody was coming for him. They were trying to 00:15:08.700 --> 00:15:11.399 make him feel utterly abandoned by both God and 00:15:11.399 --> 00:15:13.899 man. And what about his physical condition? He 00:15:13.899 --> 00:15:16.470 was rotting. The lights were so bad he couldn't 00:15:16.470 --> 00:15:19.909 sleep. The cold in Toledo in winter is a biting, 00:15:19.990 --> 00:15:23.669 damp cold. He got frostbite on his toes. And 00:15:23.669 --> 00:15:26.409 then in the summer, the heat in that unventilated 00:15:26.409 --> 00:15:29.389 stone box was suffocating. He was suffering from 00:15:29.389 --> 00:15:31.629 dysentery. He was, for all intents and purposes, 00:15:31.809 --> 00:15:34.669 dying. And this is the moment. If you or I were 00:15:34.669 --> 00:15:36.690 in that box, we'd be thinking about survival, 00:15:36.850 --> 00:15:39.549 maybe revenge, or we'd just go insane. Most people 00:15:39.549 --> 00:15:41.990 would break. There's no question. But John. John 00:15:41.990 --> 00:15:44.149 goes somewhere else entirely. And this is where 00:15:44.149 --> 00:15:45.950 we have to talk about how he composed his poetry. 00:15:46.289 --> 00:15:48.350 Because he didn't have paper. He didn't have 00:15:48.350 --> 00:15:50.629 ink. At least not for the first several months. 00:15:50.870 --> 00:15:53.070 So where does the poetry come from? His mind. 00:15:53.210 --> 00:15:56.590 He composed verse after verse of his most famous 00:15:56.590 --> 00:15:59.610 poem, The Spiritual Canticle, entirely in his 00:15:59.610 --> 00:16:03.230 head. He memorized them. He recited them to himself 00:16:03.230 --> 00:16:06.169 in the dark to keep his sanity. That is an unbelievable 00:16:06.169 --> 00:16:08.970 level of discipline, to build a cathedral of 00:16:08.970 --> 00:16:11.490 words in your head while your body is literally 00:16:11.490 --> 00:16:13.929 falling apart. And the content of those words, 00:16:13.990 --> 00:16:15.730 let's just stop and unpack the irony here for 00:16:15.730 --> 00:16:18.389 a second. Yeah. He is in a place of hatred, of 00:16:18.389 --> 00:16:21.350 stench, of total confinement. Right. But he is 00:16:21.350 --> 00:16:24.409 writing about... The mountains, the lonely wooded 00:16:24.409 --> 00:16:26.889 valleys, the rushing rivers, the whistling of 00:16:26.889 --> 00:16:29.429 love -stirring breezes. It's all about freedom 00:16:29.429 --> 00:16:31.629 and nature and beauty. He's mentally escaping 00:16:31.629 --> 00:16:34.090 his physical prison. I think it's more than escapism. 00:16:34.210 --> 00:16:37.029 He is actively asserting that the reality of 00:16:37.029 --> 00:16:39.149 God's love is more real than the reality of the 00:16:39.149 --> 00:16:42.129 prison walls. He is finding a vast, expansive 00:16:42.129 --> 00:16:45.070 freedom inside his own soul that his captors 00:16:45.070 --> 00:16:47.179 couldn't touch. Eventually, he does get paper, 00:16:47.259 --> 00:16:50.440 right? The sources mention that. Yes. After several 00:16:50.440 --> 00:16:53.279 months, a new jailer took over, a younger friar, 00:16:53.299 --> 00:16:56.580 who was apparently a bit more sympathetic. He 00:16:56.580 --> 00:16:58.659 saw the state John was in and took pity on him. 00:16:59.019 --> 00:17:01.500 He managed to smuggle in some paper and a quill 00:17:01.500 --> 00:17:03.899 and some ink, and John was finally able to write 00:17:03.899 --> 00:17:05.700 down all the verses he had been carrying in his 00:17:05.700 --> 00:17:08.799 head for months. But paper or no paper, eight 00:17:08.799 --> 00:17:11.660 months is a long time to rot. John has to realize 00:17:11.660 --> 00:17:13.779 he's going to die if he stays there. He does. 00:17:13.920 --> 00:17:16.740 He knows they have no intention of ever releasing 00:17:16.740 --> 00:17:20.359 him. So the mystic becomes the action hero. He 00:17:20.359 --> 00:17:22.460 starts planning an escape. This is the great 00:17:22.460 --> 00:17:25.319 escape section. I'm fascinated by this. How does 00:17:25.319 --> 00:17:28.740 a starving, physically weakened man break out 00:17:28.740 --> 00:17:31.559 of a monastery fortress? Well, he was observant. 00:17:31.579 --> 00:17:33.380 He was a great observer of his surroundings. 00:17:33.559 --> 00:17:35.500 He noticed that during the day when the cell 00:17:35.500 --> 00:17:37.220 door was open for a moment for him to receive 00:17:37.220 --> 00:17:41.660 his megal food, Well, they were a bit loose. 00:17:41.720 --> 00:17:43.559 At least how? They weren't modern hinges. They 00:17:43.559 --> 00:17:46.859 were basically large pins. He realized that if 00:17:46.859 --> 00:17:49.059 he could somehow loosen the screws or the pins 00:17:49.059 --> 00:17:51.119 while the guards weren't looking, he could just 00:17:51.119 --> 00:17:53.420 lift the whole door off its frame later on. So 00:17:53.420 --> 00:17:56.660 on August 15th, 1578, which is the Feast of the 00:17:56.660 --> 00:17:59.519 Assumption, a big holiday, he spent the day secretly 00:17:59.519 --> 00:18:01.920 working on those hinges. Talk about nerves of 00:18:01.920 --> 00:18:04.460 steel. I mean, if he gets caught tampering with 00:18:04.460 --> 00:18:06.880 the door, the beatings would probably kill him 00:18:06.880 --> 00:18:09.710 in his state. Absolutely. It was a huge risk. 00:18:09.930 --> 00:18:13.410 But he waits. Night falls. The monastery goes 00:18:13.410 --> 00:18:16.230 quiet. He gives the door a push. It gives. He 00:18:16.230 --> 00:18:18.049 lifts it off the hinges. He steps out into the 00:18:18.049 --> 00:18:20.869 corridor. But now he has a much bigger problem. 00:18:21.069 --> 00:18:23.069 He's on the second floor of a fortress that's 00:18:23.069 --> 00:18:25.109 built on a cliff overlooking a river? Exactly. 00:18:25.230 --> 00:18:27.069 He has to creep through the silent monastery. 00:18:27.289 --> 00:18:29.369 He gets to a gallery that overlooks a courtyard. 00:18:29.890 --> 00:18:32.230 Now, the courtyard isn't the street. It belonged 00:18:32.230 --> 00:18:35.380 to the convent of nuns next door. But... It's 00:18:35.380 --> 00:18:37.299 his only way out. And he obviously didn't bring 00:18:37.299 --> 00:18:39.759 a ladder with him. No, but he brought his blankets 00:18:39.759 --> 00:18:42.519 and his tunic. He tore them into strips and tied 00:18:42.519 --> 00:18:44.859 them all together to make a makeshift rope. Wow. 00:18:45.039 --> 00:18:47.079 He tied one end to a lamp hook on the gallery 00:18:47.079 --> 00:18:49.660 wall and started to lower himself out the window. 00:18:49.859 --> 00:18:53.119 I'm just picturing this, this frail skeletal 00:18:53.119 --> 00:18:56.460 figure dangling against a stone wall in the dead 00:18:56.460 --> 00:18:58.660 of night. And of course, the rope was too short. 00:18:58.960 --> 00:19:01.980 It's never easy, is it? Never. He had to drop 00:19:01.980 --> 00:19:04.500 the last few feet. He landed in the courtyard 00:19:04.500 --> 00:19:07.400 of the Conceptionist nuns. But he was still walled 00:19:07.400 --> 00:19:10.140 in. He had to scramble over piles of rubble and 00:19:10.140 --> 00:19:12.559 climb more walls to finally get out into the 00:19:12.559 --> 00:19:15.740 city streets of Toledo. So he's out, but he's 00:19:15.740 --> 00:19:18.400 wearing a tattered Carmelite habit. He looks 00:19:18.400 --> 00:19:20.160 like a convict. It's the middle of the night. 00:19:20.299 --> 00:19:23.099 Where does he even go? He goes to the only safe 00:19:23.099 --> 00:19:26.180 house he can think of, the Monastery of Teresa's 00:19:26.180 --> 00:19:29.059 Discalced Nuns in Toledo. Imagine the scene. 00:19:30.210 --> 00:19:32.309 It's almost dawn, the nuns are getting ready 00:19:32.309 --> 00:19:34.769 for their first prayers, and there's this desperate 00:19:34.769 --> 00:19:37.789 weak knocking at the door. It's me, John! I'm 00:19:37.789 --> 00:19:39.970 alive! They open the door and they see a ghost. 00:19:40.170 --> 00:19:43.329 He was so weak he could barely stand. They immediately 00:19:43.329 --> 00:19:45.710 took him in, they hid him, and they began to 00:19:45.710 --> 00:19:47.630 nurse him back to health. This is the point where 00:19:47.630 --> 00:19:49.990 I would expect him to retire. Okay, God, I did 00:19:49.990 --> 00:19:51.650 my bit for the cause. I'm going to a nice farm 00:19:51.650 --> 00:19:54.509 now. You would think. But that is not John of 00:19:54.509 --> 00:19:57.359 the Cross. He spent just six weeks recovering, 00:19:57.660 --> 00:20:01.140 mostly at the Hospital Santa Cruz, and then right 00:20:01.140 --> 00:20:03.960 back to work. Immediately. No time off. Immediately. 00:20:04.279 --> 00:20:08.259 In October of 1578, just two months after his 00:20:08.259 --> 00:20:12.000 escape, he travels to Almodovar del Campo for 00:20:12.000 --> 00:20:15.000 a meeting of the reform's leaders. He's not quitting. 00:20:15.099 --> 00:20:17.680 He's doubling down. And that meeting was pivotal, 00:20:17.819 --> 00:20:20.779 wasn't it? It was. They realized that coexistence 00:20:20.779 --> 00:20:22.619 with the Calcid Carmelites was simply impossible. 00:20:23.309 --> 00:20:26.049 The kidnapping and imprisonment of John proved 00:20:26.049 --> 00:20:28.529 it beyond a doubt. So they decided to petition 00:20:28.529 --> 00:20:31.049 the Pope for a formal separation. They wanted 00:20:31.049 --> 00:20:33.130 to be their own independent order. And John, 00:20:33.309 --> 00:20:35.769 having just escaped their dungeon, was living, 00:20:35.869 --> 00:20:37.950 breathing proof of why they needed that separation. 00:20:38.329 --> 00:20:41.029 He was Exhibit A. And eventually, after a lot 00:20:41.029 --> 00:20:44.150 of politics, they got it. In 1580, Pope Gregory 00:20:44.150 --> 00:20:47.490 III signed the decree. The Discalced Carmelites 00:20:47.490 --> 00:20:49.839 were officially their own order. They were free. 00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:51.700 Okay, let's pivot. We've covered the action movie 00:20:51.700 --> 00:20:53.940 part of his life. Now we need to cover the mind. 00:20:54.000 --> 00:20:55.740 Because this is why he's a deep dive subject. 00:20:56.059 --> 00:20:58.099 It's the writing. The writing is extraordinary. 00:20:58.440 --> 00:21:00.440 And here's a fun fact for you. In terms of sheer 00:21:00.440 --> 00:21:03.140 volume, he didn't write that much poetry. If 00:21:03.140 --> 00:21:04.940 you count up all the verses, it's less than 2 00:21:04.940 --> 00:21:07.819 ,500 lines total. That's like, what, a few chapbooks? 00:21:07.960 --> 00:21:11.829 Not a lot. Very little. But the density. It's 00:21:11.829 --> 00:21:14.490 diamond hard. And the way he structured his work 00:21:14.490 --> 00:21:16.930 is really unique. He would write a poem and then 00:21:16.930 --> 00:21:19.869 he would write a massive theological book explaining 00:21:19.869 --> 00:21:22.849 that same poem line by line, sometimes word by 00:21:22.849 --> 00:21:24.990 word. So The Dark Knight of the Soul is actually 00:21:24.990 --> 00:21:27.890 a book commenting on a poem called The Dark Knight. 00:21:28.150 --> 00:21:30.369 Precisely. It's like a director's commentary 00:21:30.369 --> 00:21:33.049 track for his own mystical experience. But the 00:21:33.049 --> 00:21:35.329 director is a genius. Let's start with the spiritual 00:21:35.329 --> 00:21:38.029 canticle. You mentioned earlier it has this almost 00:21:38.029 --> 00:21:41.660 erotic imagery. The bride and the bridegroom. 00:21:41.799 --> 00:21:44.579 Yes. It's structured as an eclogue, which is 00:21:44.579 --> 00:21:47.519 a kind of dialogue. And it's heavily, heavily 00:21:47.519 --> 00:21:49.720 influenced by the Song of Songs in the Bible. 00:21:50.079 --> 00:21:52.299 The soul is the bride. Jesus is the bridegroom. 00:21:52.359 --> 00:21:54.339 And the language is incredibly physical, very 00:21:54.339 --> 00:21:56.859 sensual. How so? I mean, there are references 00:21:56.859 --> 00:21:59.980 to breasts, to wine, to pomegranates, to entering 00:21:59.980 --> 00:22:02.740 the inner cellar. Which feels a little spicy 00:22:02.740 --> 00:22:05.480 for a celibate monk. It does to our modern ears, 00:22:05.619 --> 00:22:09.119 for sure. But in the mystical tradition. The 00:22:09.119 --> 00:22:12.720 intensity of romantic or sexual union is the 00:22:12.720 --> 00:22:15.960 closest human analogy they have for the intensity 00:22:15.960 --> 00:22:19.490 of spiritual union. It's all about desire. John 00:22:19.490 --> 00:22:21.569 is saying, you know that feeling of being desperately 00:22:21.569 --> 00:22:24.269 in love, of checking your phone every two seconds, 00:22:24.309 --> 00:22:26.630 of feeling sick when they aren't there. That 00:22:26.630 --> 00:22:28.970 is a shadow of how the soul feels about God. 00:22:29.190 --> 00:22:31.490 So he's using the language of human romance to 00:22:31.490 --> 00:22:33.750 describe a spiritual reality because regular 00:22:33.750 --> 00:22:37.069 language just fails. Exactly. He is pushing language 00:22:37.069 --> 00:22:39.930 to its absolute breaking point to try and describe 00:22:39.930 --> 00:22:42.369 the indescribable. Now let's get to the big one. 00:22:42.650 --> 00:22:45.130 Dark Night of the Soul. We need to clear this 00:22:45.130 --> 00:22:47.210 up, because I feel like I see this phrase used 00:22:47.210 --> 00:22:49.589 on Twitter or Instagram to mean, you know, I'm 00:22:49.589 --> 00:22:52.970 having a bad week. Yes, my Wi -Fi is down, I'm 00:22:52.970 --> 00:22:54.450 having a dark night of the soul. Or people use 00:22:54.450 --> 00:22:56.829 it as a synonym for depression. But John isn't 00:22:56.829 --> 00:22:58.970 talking about clinical depression, is he? No, 00:22:58.990 --> 00:23:00.789 and this is a really critical distinction to 00:23:00.789 --> 00:23:03.769 make. Depression is a malady. It's a state of 00:23:03.769 --> 00:23:07.190 stagnation or a kind of crushing heaviness. The 00:23:07.190 --> 00:23:10.910 dark night, for John, is a journey. It is a purposeful 00:23:10.910 --> 00:23:13.480 movement. A movement from where to where? From 00:23:13.480 --> 00:23:16.220 the self to God. And he breaks it down into two 00:23:16.220 --> 00:23:18.799 main phases. First, there's the night of sense. 00:23:19.039 --> 00:23:21.920 Okay, night of sense. Unpack that for us. So 00:23:21.920 --> 00:23:24.250 imagine you're learning to ride a bike. At first, 00:23:24.269 --> 00:23:25.910 you have training wheels. Your parents are holding 00:23:25.910 --> 00:23:28.089 the handlebars. You feel safe. You're having 00:23:28.089 --> 00:23:30.650 fun. That's the early spiritual life for many 00:23:30.650 --> 00:23:32.869 people. You get good feelings. You feel comforted 00:23:32.869 --> 00:23:35.930 by prayer. You enjoy the music at church. Spiritual 00:23:35.930 --> 00:23:38.670 sugar, the treats. Exactly, the spiritual treats. 00:23:38.869 --> 00:23:41.150 But to really learn how to ride, the training 00:23:41.150 --> 00:23:43.650 wheels have to come off. The night of sense is 00:23:43.650 --> 00:23:46.660 when God takes away the sugar. You pray and you 00:23:46.660 --> 00:23:48.519 feel nothing. You go to church and you're just 00:23:48.519 --> 00:23:50.720 bored. You lose all the sensory satisfaction 00:23:50.720 --> 00:23:53.200 you used to get from religion. And most people 00:23:53.200 --> 00:23:55.319 would interpret that as, I'm doing something 00:23:55.319 --> 00:23:58.779 wrong or God has abandoned me. Precisely. They 00:23:58.779 --> 00:24:02.700 panic. But John says, no, this is good. This 00:24:02.700 --> 00:24:05.339 is a necessary step. You are being weaned off 00:24:05.339 --> 00:24:08.220 spiritual milk and onto solid food. You are learning 00:24:08.220 --> 00:24:11.500 to love God for who he is, not for the good vibes 00:24:11.500 --> 00:24:14.099 he gives you. So the darkness is actually a sign 00:24:14.099 --> 00:24:18.200 of progress, not failure. Yes. It's the darkness 00:24:18.200 --> 00:24:20.559 of the womb before birth or the darkness of a 00:24:20.559 --> 00:24:23.220 seed underground before it sprouts. It feels 00:24:23.220 --> 00:24:25.720 like death, but it's actually a prelude to a 00:24:25.720 --> 00:24:27.819 new kind of life. Then there is the second phase, 00:24:28.119 --> 00:24:30.859 the night of the spirit. This is the heavyweight 00:24:30.859 --> 00:24:33.190 division. This is for the soul that's much further 00:24:33.190 --> 00:24:36.410 along the path. This is a profound deep purification 00:24:36.410 --> 00:24:39.430 where not just the senses, but the intellect, 00:24:39.670 --> 00:24:43.109 the will, and the memory are stripped bare. It 00:24:43.109 --> 00:24:45.549 is a total detachment from everything that isn't 00:24:45.549 --> 00:24:48.190 God. It's terrifying. It feels like annihilation. 00:24:48.329 --> 00:24:50.849 But the destination makes it worth it. The destination 00:24:50.849 --> 00:24:53.670 is union. That's the sunrise after the long night. 00:24:53.849 --> 00:24:56.049 And John insists that the light and love you 00:24:56.049 --> 00:24:59.250 find at the end is worth every single second 00:24:59.250 --> 00:25:01.740 of the darkness. It's just so interesting that 00:25:01.740 --> 00:25:03.700 he wrote about this after being in a literal 00:25:03.700 --> 00:25:05.940 dark cell. Do you think he was mapping his prison 00:25:05.940 --> 00:25:08.319 experience onto his theology? I don't think it's 00:25:08.319 --> 00:25:10.720 possible to separate them. He learned in that 00:25:10.720 --> 00:25:13.059 cell in Toledo that when you take away light, 00:25:13.240 --> 00:25:16.400 food, comfort, and human friendship, when you 00:25:16.400 --> 00:25:18.940 strip the senses down to nothing, you find God 00:25:18.940 --> 00:25:22.000 in the silence that's left. He turned his personal 00:25:22.000 --> 00:25:25.960 trauma into a universal map for others. Let's 00:25:25.960 --> 00:25:28.140 touch on his other works just briefly. What about 00:25:28.140 --> 00:25:30.609 Ascent of Mount Carmel? That's the companion 00:25:30.609 --> 00:25:33.750 piece to The Dark Knight. It's the how -to manual, 00:25:33.970 --> 00:25:36.250 in a way. It's very systematic. It explains the 00:25:36.250 --> 00:25:38.250 active part of the journey, what you can do to 00:25:38.250 --> 00:25:40.670 detach yourself from things, whereas The Dark 00:25:40.670 --> 00:25:42.930 Knight is more about the passive side, what God 00:25:42.930 --> 00:25:44.930 does to you in the darkness. And the living flame 00:25:44.930 --> 00:25:48.049 of love. That's the endgame. He supposedly wrote 00:25:48.049 --> 00:25:50.690 the first draft in just two weeks. It describes 00:25:50.690 --> 00:25:52.730 the state of the soul that has passed through 00:25:52.730 --> 00:25:54.750 the night and is now burning with the love of 00:25:54.750 --> 00:25:57.599 God. It's not a painful fire anymore. It's a 00:25:57.599 --> 00:26:00.640 fire that illuminates, heals, and unites. It's 00:26:00.640 --> 00:26:03.259 ecstatic. We should also mention he wasn't just 00:26:03.259 --> 00:26:05.660 a writer. He drew a little. One specific drawing, 00:26:05.799 --> 00:26:08.799 yeah. It's a very small, simple sketch of the 00:26:08.799 --> 00:26:12.380 crucifixion. But the angle is what's so bizarre. 00:26:12.559 --> 00:26:14.500 It's not looking up at Jesus from the ground 00:26:14.500 --> 00:26:17.019 like every other crucifixion painting. It's looking 00:26:17.019 --> 00:26:19.619 down on the cross from above. The God's eye view. 00:26:20.039 --> 00:26:22.700 Exactly. It's a shocking perspective. And that 00:26:22.700 --> 00:26:25.339 little sketch traveled through history. In the 00:26:25.339 --> 00:26:27.940 20th century, the surrealist painter Salvador 00:26:27.940 --> 00:26:31.339 Dali saw it in a convent. The famous surrealist. 00:26:31.500 --> 00:26:33.940 The one and only. And Dali was completely blown 00:26:33.940 --> 00:26:36.759 away by the perspective. He used it as the direct 00:26:36.759 --> 00:26:40.180 model for his own famous 1951 painting, Christ 00:26:40.180 --> 00:26:42.440 of St. John of the Cross. Oh, wow. I know that 00:26:42.440 --> 00:26:44.859 painting. Where Christ is floating over the landscape, 00:26:45.099 --> 00:26:47.259 seen from above, with no nails and no blood. 00:26:47.460 --> 00:26:50.279 That's the one. That iconic image comes directly 00:26:50.279 --> 00:26:52.579 from John's little pen and ink sketch. It's this 00:26:52.579 --> 00:26:56.119 amazing connection between a 16th century mystic 00:26:56.119 --> 00:26:58.920 and 20th century modern art. It just shows how 00:26:58.920 --> 00:27:01.460 timeless his vision was. Speaking of his vision, 00:27:01.559 --> 00:27:03.440 there is a big debate about where John got his 00:27:03.440 --> 00:27:05.680 ideas. We know he read the Bible. We know he 00:27:05.680 --> 00:27:07.940 read the church fathers. But some scholars think 00:27:07.940 --> 00:27:10.019 there's another secret ingredient in the mix. 00:27:10.259 --> 00:27:12.819 The Islamic theory. This is fascinating stuff. 00:27:13.299 --> 00:27:16.200 Scholars like Miguel Asim Palacios and later 00:27:16.200 --> 00:27:18.880 Lucy Lopez Baralt. have argued that a lot of 00:27:18.880 --> 00:27:22.119 John's imagery is incredibly similar to Sufism, 00:27:22.140 --> 00:27:25.799 that is, Islamic mysticism. Which isn't a crazy 00:27:25.799 --> 00:27:28.119 idea considering the history of Spain. Not at 00:27:28.119 --> 00:27:31.180 all. Spain had been a landless, a center of Islamic 00:27:31.180 --> 00:27:33.720 culture for centuries. The culture was deep in 00:27:33.720 --> 00:27:36.039 the soil. The theory points to metaphors John 00:27:36.039 --> 00:27:38.680 uses, like the solitary bird, the lamps of fire, 00:27:38.759 --> 00:27:41.079 and this whole concept of mystical intoxication 00:27:41.079 --> 00:27:43.990 or being drunk on God's love. These are all standard 00:27:43.990 --> 00:27:46.190 Sufi tropes. I am drunk on the wine of love. 00:27:46.369 --> 00:27:49.250 That sounds like Rumi or Hafiz. It does. And 00:27:49.250 --> 00:27:51.769 the idea of the dark night itself has parallels 00:27:51.769 --> 00:27:55.150 in the Sufi concept of quib spiritual contraction 00:27:55.150 --> 00:27:58.210 or darkness and vast, which is spiritual expansion 00:27:58.210 --> 00:28:00.690 and light. But John probably wasn't sitting in 00:28:00.690 --> 00:28:02.670 his cell reading the Quran. Highly unlikely. 00:28:02.849 --> 00:28:05.109 But the argument is that these symbols were in 00:28:05.109 --> 00:28:07.450 the air. They were part of the cultural and linguistic 00:28:07.450 --> 00:28:10.390 vocabulary of Andalusia, left over from centuries 00:28:10.390 --> 00:28:13.130 of Islamic presence. Is there a counter -argument 00:28:13.130 --> 00:28:16.829 to this theory? Oh, yes. Very much so. Other 00:28:16.829 --> 00:28:20.190 scholars, like Peter Tyler, argue that you don't 00:28:20.190 --> 00:28:22.309 need to go to Mecca to explain John the Cross. 00:28:22.410 --> 00:28:25.269 You can go to the Rhineland. The German mystics. 00:28:25.430 --> 00:28:28.390 Exactly. The medieval German mystics, like Meister 00:28:28.390 --> 00:28:31.589 Eckhart or Johannes Thaler, also used the language 00:28:31.589 --> 00:28:35.200 of darkness. Nothingness and negation. So they 00:28:35.200 --> 00:28:38.740 argue John is firmly in a pre -existing Christian 00:28:38.740 --> 00:28:41.079 tradition. And there's also the idea that he 00:28:41.079 --> 00:28:43.299 was just remixing pop culture, right? The old 00:28:43.299 --> 00:28:46.460 Divino style, yeah. This theory from Demis Alonso 00:28:46.460 --> 00:28:48.720 suggests that John would take popular secular 00:28:48.720 --> 00:28:51.220 love songs, the Romanceros that people sang in 00:28:51.220 --> 00:28:53.279 the streets, and he would just rewrite the lyrics 00:28:53.279 --> 00:28:55.970 to be about God. So he was taking the top 40 00:28:55.970 --> 00:28:58.869 hits of 1570 and turning them into hymns. Basically, 00:28:59.009 --> 00:29:01.390 yeah. He knew that the devil shouldn't have all 00:29:01.390 --> 00:29:03.890 the best tunes. He co -opted the passion and 00:29:03.890 --> 00:29:06.509 melody of human romance to hook people into thinking 00:29:06.509 --> 00:29:08.990 about divine romance. Okay, so let's head toward 00:29:08.990 --> 00:29:10.710 the end of his life. The reform is established. 00:29:11.009 --> 00:29:12.730 The great books are written. You'd really hope 00:29:12.730 --> 00:29:14.829 for a peaceful retirement for the guy. You would 00:29:14.829 --> 00:29:17.710 hope. But John was just a magnet for trouble. 00:29:18.029 --> 00:29:20.369 He held a series of high positions in the new 00:29:20.369 --> 00:29:23.069 order rector of colleges, Vicar Provincial of 00:29:23.069 --> 00:29:26.819 Andalusia. But in 1590, the political winds changed 00:29:26.819 --> 00:29:29.039 again. Who was the problem this time, not the 00:29:29.039 --> 00:29:31.859 Kelsed Carmelites again? No, this time the problem 00:29:31.859 --> 00:29:34.859 came from within the reform itself. The Diskelst 00:29:34.859 --> 00:29:37.559 Carmelites started fighting internally. A man 00:29:37.559 --> 00:29:39.980 named Father Nicholas Doria became the vicar 00:29:39.980 --> 00:29:42.420 general. And what was Doria's vibe? He was a 00:29:42.420 --> 00:29:45.539 centralizer, an authoritarian. He wanted total 00:29:45.539 --> 00:29:48.000 control. He wanted to change the government of 00:29:48.000 --> 00:29:50.259 the order to be more monarchical, and he wanted 00:29:50.259 --> 00:29:53.400 to limit the freedom of the nuns. John disagreed. 00:29:53.440 --> 00:29:55.980 He stood up for the original, more democratic 00:29:55.980 --> 00:29:58.380 spirit of Teresa's vision. And Doria didn't like 00:29:58.380 --> 00:30:01.299 that one bit. Not at all. Doria began a smear 00:30:01.299 --> 00:30:03.579 campaign against John. He stripped him of all 00:30:03.579 --> 00:30:06.599 his offices. In 1591, the great founder of the 00:30:06.599 --> 00:30:09.299 reform was effectively exiled. He was sent to 00:30:09.299 --> 00:30:12.400 a lonely, isolated monastery in Andalusia called 00:30:12.400 --> 00:30:15.039 La Pinduera. Talk about gratitude. Thanks for 00:30:15.039 --> 00:30:16.799 the prison break. Thanks for the theology. Now 00:30:16.799 --> 00:30:20.019 get out. It gets worse. There was serious talk 00:30:20.019 --> 00:30:22.579 of expelling him from the order entirely. He 00:30:22.579 --> 00:30:25.019 was treated as a pariah and a failure. But then 00:30:25.019 --> 00:30:27.440 his body finally gave out. He developed a case 00:30:27.440 --> 00:30:30.240 of erysipelas in his leg. I looked this up. It's 00:30:30.240 --> 00:30:33.299 nasty. It's a severe bacterial infection of the 00:30:33.299 --> 00:30:37.059 skin. In a world without antibiotics, it just 00:30:37.059 --> 00:30:39.900 spreads. It causes massive inflammation, high 00:30:39.900 --> 00:30:42.440 fevers, and eventually necrosis of the tissue. 00:30:42.880 --> 00:30:46.019 It is excruciatingly painful. He was moved to 00:30:46.019 --> 00:30:48.940 the town of Ubeda for treatment. Yes. And the 00:30:48.940 --> 00:30:50.680 local prior there didn't like him either. He 00:30:50.680 --> 00:30:52.579 gave him the worst room in the monastery and 00:30:52.579 --> 00:30:54.599 openly complained about the cost of his medicine. 00:30:54.920 --> 00:30:57.900 So John is literally dying in agony, being treated 00:30:57.900 --> 00:31:00.759 like a burden by his own brothers. Again. It's 00:31:00.759 --> 00:31:02.599 just a dark night right to the very end of his 00:31:02.599 --> 00:31:05.980 life. It is. He died on December 14, 1591. He 00:31:05.980 --> 00:31:08.500 was only 49 years old. And as soon as he takes 00:31:08.500 --> 00:31:11.660 his last breath, the story shifts from just tragedy 00:31:11.660 --> 00:31:15.019 to, well, just plain weird. Fanaticism is the 00:31:15.019 --> 00:31:17.519 only word for it. The moment the townspeople 00:31:17.519 --> 00:31:19.559 of Ubeda heard that the saint had died, they 00:31:19.559 --> 00:31:21.420 rushed the monastery. They didn't just want to 00:31:21.420 --> 00:31:23.559 pray, they wanted relics. And when you say they 00:31:23.559 --> 00:31:26.960 wanted relics... What does that mean? It means 00:31:26.960 --> 00:31:28.940 they started tearing his clothes off his body. 00:31:29.039 --> 00:31:31.160 Yeah. Snipping off pieces of his habit. They 00:31:31.160 --> 00:31:32.559 were trying to pull hair from his head. They 00:31:32.559 --> 00:31:34.619 were trying to take pieces of him. That is horrifying. 00:31:34.619 --> 00:31:37.220 It was a mob frenzy fueled by a very strange 00:31:37.220 --> 00:31:39.819 kind of devotion. Anyway, they buried him there 00:31:39.819 --> 00:31:42.740 in Ubita. But remember, he was a superstar saint 00:31:42.740 --> 00:31:45.700 by this point. The monastery in Segovia, where 00:31:45.700 --> 00:31:48.819 he had served as prior, felt that they had a 00:31:48.819 --> 00:31:51.140 stronger claim on his body. He belongs to us. 00:31:51.400 --> 00:31:55.480 Exactly. So in 1593, Two years after his death, 00:31:55.700 --> 00:31:58.279 permission was given to secretly exhume the body 00:31:58.279 --> 00:32:02.180 and move it to Segovia. Secretly? A body snatching? 00:32:02.339 --> 00:32:04.500 Under the cover of night, yeah. They dug him 00:32:04.500 --> 00:32:06.839 up, and according to reports, from the time the 00:32:06.839 --> 00:32:09.509 body was incorrupt. It hadn't decayed at all. 00:32:09.609 --> 00:32:12.009 It supposedly smelled sweet like flowers. Okay, 00:32:12.049 --> 00:32:14.349 so they load the saintly body onto a cart. And 00:32:14.349 --> 00:32:16.210 they sneak it out of town. Yeah. But when the 00:32:16.210 --> 00:32:18.450 people of Ubeda woke up and found out, they went 00:32:18.450 --> 00:32:20.609 ballistic. They had been robbed of their saint. 00:32:20.710 --> 00:32:22.670 They were so angry, they petitioned the pope 00:32:22.670 --> 00:32:25.190 himself. So now the pope has to play King Solomon, 00:32:25.430 --> 00:32:28.470 but with a corpse? Pretty much. Pope Clement 00:32:28.470 --> 00:32:32.549 VIII issued a decree in 1596 saying, return the 00:32:32.549 --> 00:32:35.089 body to Ubeda. So Segovia had to give him back 00:32:35.089 --> 00:32:38.119 the whole thing. Well. They negotiated. They 00:32:38.119 --> 00:32:40.519 used to compromise. Segovia got to keep the head 00:32:40.519 --> 00:32:43.480 and the torso. Ubeda received one leg and one 00:32:43.480 --> 00:32:45.660 arm. One arm? Where was the other one? Someone 00:32:45.660 --> 00:32:47.500 had already chopped it off and taken it as a 00:32:47.500 --> 00:32:49.599 relic while the body was passing through Madrid 00:32:49.599 --> 00:32:52.599 on its way to Segovia. This is literally dismemberment. 00:32:52.599 --> 00:32:55.359 It's gruesome. It is. The man who preached about 00:32:55.359 --> 00:32:57.779 the perfect unity of the soul with God ended 00:32:57.779 --> 00:33:00.200 up physically scattered all across the map of 00:33:00.200 --> 00:33:02.559 Spain. So if I go to Spain today, can I still 00:33:02.559 --> 00:33:05.210 see these parts? You can. In Ubeda, there is 00:33:05.210 --> 00:33:06.970 a reliquary where you can see the leg in the 00:33:06.970 --> 00:33:10.089 hand. And in Segovia, his body, or what's left 00:33:10.089 --> 00:33:13.210 of it, is in a grand marble tomb. It's a grotesque 00:33:13.210 --> 00:33:15.509 ending, but in a strange way, maybe it's fitting, 00:33:15.670 --> 00:33:18.710 he gave everything. He held nothing back. Not 00:33:18.710 --> 00:33:20.910 his comfort, not his reputation, and in the end, 00:33:20.910 --> 00:33:23.150 not even his own physical integrity. He was poured 00:33:23.150 --> 00:33:25.589 out completely. So let's try to land the plane 00:33:25.589 --> 00:33:29.170 here. Why does this 16th century Spanish friar 00:33:29.170 --> 00:33:32.849 still matter to a listener in 2026? I think it's 00:33:32.849 --> 00:33:36.430 because we are, as a culture, allergic to darkness. 00:33:36.789 --> 00:33:39.390 Explain what you mean by that. Look at our lives. 00:33:39.910 --> 00:33:43.769 We have lights on 2037. If we feel a moment of 00:33:43.769 --> 00:33:46.970 boredom, we reach for our phone and scroll. If 00:33:46.970 --> 00:33:49.549 we feel a moment of sadness, we try to medicate 00:33:49.549 --> 00:33:51.710 it or distract ourselves from it immediately. 00:33:52.289 --> 00:33:56.269 We treat pain and boredom and silence as errors 00:33:56.269 --> 00:33:58.769 to be fixed. We're terrified of the void. Exactly. 00:33:59.009 --> 00:34:00.829 St. John of the Cross comes along and tells us 00:34:00.829 --> 00:34:03.180 that the void isn't empty. He tells us that if 00:34:03.180 --> 00:34:05.599 you can just stop running away from the darkness, 00:34:05.799 --> 00:34:08.119 if you can sit in the silence, if you can bear 00:34:08.119 --> 00:34:10.639 the feeling of the training wheels falling off, 00:34:10.820 --> 00:34:13.219 you will find something much more real and durable 00:34:13.219 --> 00:34:15.840 than the noise. So the darkness is the tunnel, 00:34:16.000 --> 00:34:19.059 not the dead end. Right. He is the patron saint 00:34:19.059 --> 00:34:21.460 of hanging in there when things make no sense. 00:34:21.800 --> 00:34:24.380 He validates the difficult, confusing seasons 00:34:24.380 --> 00:34:27.860 of our lives. He says, you aren't crazy. You 00:34:27.860 --> 00:34:29.559 aren't failing. You're just traveling at night. 00:34:29.800 --> 00:34:31.880 And the dawn is coming. The dawn is coming. That 00:34:31.880 --> 00:34:33.599 feels like a very good place to leave it. A little 00:34:33.599 --> 00:34:36.639 bit of hope from a very, very dark cell. Absolutely. 00:34:37.500 --> 00:34:39.420 This has been The Deep Dive. Thanks for listening.