… I tell you that ever-present to me is what they did with Fray John of the Cross, for I don’t know how God bears with things like that; even you don’t know everything about it.

For all these nine months he was held in a little prison cell where small as he is, he could hardly fit. In all that time he was given no change of tunic, even though he had come close to the point of death. Only three days before his escape the subprior gave him one of his shirts. He underwent harsh scourges, and no one was allowed to see him.

I experience the greatest envy. Surely our Lord found in him the resources for such a martyrdom. And it is good that this be known so that everyone will be all the more on guard against these people. May God forgive them, amen.

An investigation should be conducted to show the nuncio what those friars did to this saint, Fray John, without any fault on his part, for it is a pitiful thing. Tell this to Fray Germán; he will do it because he’s quite mad about this …

Saint Teresa of Avila

Letter 260 to Father Jerónimo Gracián, Madrid
Avila, 21–22 August 1578

Saint John of the Cross escaped from his prison cell in Toledo during the night of 17-18 August 1578. #StJohnOfTheCross

Tweet

Learn more about Fray Jerónimo Gracián on the outstanding Discalced Carmelite blog from Spain, “Teresa, de la rueca a la pluma”

Discalced Carmelite scholar, translator, and editor of the collected works of Saints John and Teresa, Father Kieran Kavanaugh offers his analysis of Saint Teresa’s letter to Father Gracián:

“These are two fragments from one letter. They reflect Teresa’s first impressions on learning of St. John of the Cross’s escape from his prison cell in Toledo and of what he suffered there.”

The nuncio at the time was the Italian Archbishop Filippo (Felipe) Sega. Father Kavanaugh’s editorial note is too tantalizing to excerpt, so we present it in its entirety.

Born in Bologna, he became Bishop of Ripa and nuncio to Flanders before being appointed nuncio to Spain in 1577 as successor to Ormaneto. He entered Spain with a bias against Teresa and her reform, the source of which was Cardinal Buoncompagni, a relative of his and nephew of the pope.

But the entire conflict that had developed in Spain among the Carmelites was so complex that he had little inkling of what he was getting into. He supported Tostado who was seeking to put into effect the decisions of the chapter of Piacenza. It was he [Sega] who called Teresa “a restless, gadabout woman.”

Sega considered the discalced friars who took part in the chapter of Almodóvar in 1578 delinquents and rebels, never listened to their defense, and imprisoned their leaders in different monasteries of the observant Carmelites.

Through the intervention of the king, an investigating committee was set up, and the friars as a result were placed under the care of Angel de Salazar, a former provincial of the observant Carmelites in Castile. Salazar dealt with the matter gently and promoted greater peace between the two groups of friars.

Sega then mellowed somewhat and acquiesced when the discalced formed a separate province. After leaving Spain, he served in Portugal, Germany, and France. He was made a cardinal in 1591 and died in Rome.

Finally, we share Father Kavanaugh’s note concerning Fray Germán:

“Fray Germán de San Matías was a confessor for the nuns at the Incarnation along with John of the Cross. He was taken prisoner at the same time as John, but very soon afterward broke free from his captors.”

Cardinal Filippo Sega (1537–1596)
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Teresa of Avila, St. 1985, The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, translated from the Spanish by Kavanaugh, K; Rodriguez, O, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: View of Toledo is an oil on canvas painting executed ca. 1599–1600 by Domenikos Theotokopoulos, better known as El Greco (Greek, 1541–1614). This artwork is found in Gallery 619 of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue in New York. The Met’s gallery label provides the following details:

Writing to the sculptor Auguste Rodin after having been astonished by this painting in Paris in 1908, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke described how “splintered light tills the ground, turning it over, tearing into it and bringing up here and there pale green meadows behind the trees standing like insomniacs.” Regarded as El Greco’s greatest landscape, it portrays Toledo, the city where he lived and worked for most of his life. But it is an emotive rather than a documentary vision that not only imaginatively revises the skyline—most notably, the cathedral has been moved—but also distorts architecture and landscape such that they are fully in service of the kind of drama Rilke and other modernists appreciated in his work.

Image credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art (Public domain)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir-J6a635UM

https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/08/16/stj-ltr260-2/

#Carmelites #escape #FilippoSega #FrKieranKavanaughOCD #FrayJerónimoGracián #friars #nuncio #prison #StJohnOfTheCross #StTeresaOfAvila #StJohnOfTheCross #Toledo