22 pages • 44 minutes read
John of the CrossDark Night of the Soul
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1583A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context: The Counter-Reformation in 16th-Century Spain
The publication of the visionary writings of St. John of the Cross coincides with the historical era during which the Roman Catholic Church in Spain reacted against the challenge raised by Martin Luther, a renegade German monk, who, in 1517, openly challenged the Church to reform itself. That challenge, which precipitated a break from the Church and the beginnings of the Protestant movement, provoked nearly a century of theological wrangling and Church-wide discussions into the institution and its protocols. Luther and his followers charged the Church with corruption and even heresy, arguing that the Church across Europe was inconsistent in the gospel message it preached, in the dispensation of the foundational sacraments, in the training of its own clergy, and in the day-to-day practices of the clergy as they ministered to their congregations. In rejecting the institutional Church as corrupt, Luther and his followers argued that individuals, without the assistance of the Church, could find their way to salvation through their faith alone.
John represents one of the purest expressions of a branch of what came to be called the Counter-Reformation (roughly 1540-1640) when the institutional Church sought to respond to the charges of its spiritual decline by reinvigorating its own spiritual life, reanimating the faith through the re-discovery of old-school devotional Catholicism. In Spain, the purest expression of that return to devotional Catholicism was found in the copious writings (diaries, letters, theological treatises, poetry) of what were later grouped as mystics, devout and exemplary clergy whose visions were driven by the affirmation of the ecstasy they found in their embrace of the power of the soul’s ascent to real-time union with God. These mystics, among them Teresa of Ávila and Ignatius of Loyola (both later canonized), found in using the vernacular of writing in their native Spanish the ability to reach and inspire entire generations of Spanish Catholics.
Literary Context: 20th-Century Mystics
John of the Cross accepted without question the reality of the soul. In his vision offered in the poem, he attempts to chart how the soul itself ascends to union with God. Although the idea of mystics and the philosophy of direct emotional experience of the supranatural world of spirit and soul seems to fit most conveniently in the literature and theology before the rise of industrialism and the modern world of scientific investigation, which conventionally dismisses mysticism as harmless fantasy at best and aggressive hypocrisy at worst, the reach and continuing influence of John of the Cross can be suggested by examining the strength and viability of traditional mystics in the philosophy and literature of the 20th century.
Despite or perhaps because of the rise of science and the sprawling reality of the dehumanizing techno-industrial world, mysticism maintains its position as the potent instrument of revelation, opening up radiant worlds impossible to measure, define, or entirely understand.
The range and reputation of contemporary mystics investigating the spiritual dimension with visionary wonder and radiant optimism are impressive, reflecting humanity’s continuing fascination with the soul and with the kind of insights not available through the intellect or through the agency of the imagination. The most widely known would include American Transcendentalist Walt Whitman (1819-1892); Nobelist Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), a Bengali poet and composer; Russian spiritualist Rasputin (1869-1916); Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945); French essayist and missionary Nobelist Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965); the best-selling Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931); Catholic missionary and Nobelist Mother Teresa (1910-1997); Swiss philosopher and Nobelist Hermann Hesse (1871-1967); prolific British novelist and essayist Aldous Huxley (1894-1963); Irish spiritualist, mythologist, and Nobelist William Butler Yeats (1865-1939); and American nature poet Mary Oliver (1935-2019).
