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About St. John of the Cross

December 14 is the feast day of St. John of the Cross.  As with the short biography I did of St. Teresa of Avila some time ago, this one is longer than the others.

Juan de Yepes, known to us as St. John of the Cross, was born around1542 in a small town in Old Castile.  His father was Gonzalo de Yepes, orphaned at an early age.  He was from a wealthy family of silk merchants whose Jewish ancestry had been hidden to gain legal privileges.  John’s mother, Catalina, had been an orphan since infancy, and she was from a poor family thought possibly to have had Moorish ancestry.  She had supported herself by weaving textiles in Toledo before she met Gonzalo and they fell in love.  As a result of their marriage, in 1529, the Yepes family disinherited Gonzalo, leaving the two in poverty.

John was still a toddler when Gonzalo died in an epidemic.  Gonzalo was buried in the parish church next to John’s brother Luis, who is thought to have died of malnutrition.  Catalina was left with two sons, Francesco and John.  She went to her late husband’s family seeking help and found little.

They moved, first to Arevalo for four years and then, in 1551, to Medina del Campo, where Catalina continued to obtain necessities with her weaving, aided by the children.  During their time in Arevalo, Francesco was among the youth who roamed the streets late at night, playing a guitar and carousing, sometimes sleeping in a local church not from piety but rather because a local cleric would give him a place to sleep off his late night revelry.  Around that time, Francesco underwent a profound conversion.  Under the guidance of a priest in Arevalo, the eighteen year old Francesco developed the habit of going into the fields and vineyards at night, praying for long hours.  He married and settled into a stable life, an uneducated laborer who worked to help the sick and the poor.  John was six years old at the time of his brother’s conversion.  He remained close to his brother all his life.

John was 9 years old when his family moved to Medina del Campo, where he remained for 13 years.  There, he received an elementary education at the School of Doctrine, part of a program to educate poor children, expecting them to learn a trade and thus to be less prone to crime.  He quickly learned to read and write, but never settled on a trade.  Attempts at carpentry, tailoring, carving and painting all were unsuccessful, perhaps due to his greater interest in books.  After trying various trades, he took a job as a servant at the Hospital of the Conception, a charitable center that treated the poor and patients with sexually transmitted diseases.

The Jesuits had recently established a school for pre-university studies in Medina, the kind of school where Jesuits educated their members, paying students, and a few students accepted in charity.  The hospital administrator noticed his abilities, his dedication to his work, and his love for books, and gave him permission to take classes there while still working at the hospital.  He took classes there from about 1559 to 1563, studying a little in the morning and more in the evening.  His mother sometimes found him in the middle of the night studying in the hay stacks.

John’s teacher took particular interest in him, and he soon became a good Latinist and rhetorician.  The hospital administrator had hoped that when John finished his schooling with the Jesuits, he would become the hospital’s chaplain and confessor to the poor.

Instead, he was attracted to Carmel’s Marian character.  In 1563, he secretly went to the Carmelite Monastery of Santa Ana and asked for the habit, which they gave to him at once.  He took the name of Fray John of St. Matthias (Juan de Santo Matia). During his one-year novitiate, others noticed his love for solitude, prayer and repentance, although some considered him overly zealous.  After making his profession, he received permission to observe the order’s primitive European rule.

He then traveled to Salamanca for four years of study at the Carmelite College of San Andrés and the city’s celebrated university.  The university had one of the most renowned theological faculties in Spain.  He studied philosophy and theology, but he remained first and foremost a Carmelite contemplative, still spending long hours alone before the Blessed Sacrament.  He was appointed prefect of students, a position in which he gave lectures and debated with the faculty.  Although successful in that academic environment, he was not satisfied, perhaps feeling too much alone in living by the primitive European rule and in his zeal.

He was ordained in the fall of 1567 and went to his home monastery of Santa Ana in Medina to chant his first Mass.  While there, he met Teresa of Avila.  He confided that he was thinking of leaving the order for the Carthusians, who lived a life of greater solitude and contemplation.  Teresa asked him to wait until the Lord would provide a monastery for friars of her Carmelite reform. 

One year later, John and two other friars founded the first Discalced Carmelite house for friars, in a two-month novitiate in Valladolid.  In the fall, he set out to found a new house in a secluded place called Duruelo.  Teresa briefly visited that house, writing in her book The Foundations about a little cross made for the holy water fount there from sticks with a paper image of Christ. Although the happiness of the friars despite their environment impressed her, she asked them to be less severe in their penitential practices.  The reform was still built on austerity, which appealed to the mentality of the time.

On November 28, 1568, in the presence of the provincial, John accepted the Discalced Carmelite life, changing his name to Fray Juan de la Cruz (John of the Cross).  In May 1572, Teresa sought him out to be the confessor and spiritual director for the nuns at the Incarnation in Avila, where she had been made prioress in a controversial decision.  The Incarnation was not a monastery of the reform, but rather one of the mitigated rule.  Near collapse when Teresa arrived, the house began to transform.  Teresa credited John with the change, calling him a saint and her spiritual father, and saying that there was “no one like him in all Castile.” 

He could direct people with different temperaments differently, adapting what he did for each individual, secular people as well as religious.  He taught children who lived nearby how to read from a primer, and helped them with their catechism and prayers. 

When Teresa left the Incarnation, the nuncio ordered John to remain there, despite new political tension.  He lived in a hermitage with one other Discalced friar, isolated from the Carmelites of the mitigated rule, some of whom believed that he was destroying the order.  They arrested him for the first time in December 1575, releasing him in January 1576.

John offered to resign, but the nuns appealed for him to stay, and the papal nuncio Nicolas Ormaneto ordered him to remain there.  Ormaneto died in June 1577, leaving John vulnerable.  He was in his hermitage there on the night of December 2, 1577, when he and the other Discalced friar were both seized.  John was this time taken to Toledo and imprisoned for 9 months.  His imprisonment in the monastery was not uncommon for a friar accused of being rebellious and contumacious, as he was.  He was subjected to physical mistreatment intended to force him to abandon his rebellion.  However, he did not agree with the accusations. For the first six months, he had nothing but a tiny cell with an unsympathetic jailer who would not allow him to have a book, ink, paper, or change of clothing.  The jailer’s successor took more interest in John, allowing him to have writing materials so that he could begin to write down some of the poetry already partly composed in his head.  In a harsh prison cell, the beauty of God’s love enfolded him, and he wrote the first part of his poem Spiritual Canticle and his Romances on the Gospel.

By August, 1578, afraid he was dying, John made a plan of escape.  Little by little, he loosened the bolts on the lock, in such a way that it was concealed from his jailers.  One night, he broke it readily and tied linens together to a pre-measured length.  He climbed out of a window and slid down the linens, jumping the last few feet to the top of a wall, and eventually found his way to a house of Discalced nuns.  Finding him very weak and frail, they began to nurse him back to health.

The Discalced Carmelites then appointed John to be superior of the monastery of El Calvario in Andalusia, far to the south, where those seeking to re-arrest him would be unlikely to do so.  He was still weak when he began his journey in late 1578.  On June 13, 1579, he left El Calvario for Baeza, where he became the rector of a new house for Discalced Carmelite students.  Baeza had a deeply spiritual city life.  John was consulted by the clergy and also by ordinary people who wanted his instruction.  He showed charity toward the sick, especially during a flu epidemic of 1580, when his mother died, and in another epidemic in 1582.  On June 22, 1580, Pope Gregory XIII made the Discalced a separate province of the order, resolving much of the conflict that had led to John’s move south.  However, the province was still under the direction of the same general as the Carmelites of the mitigated rule until after John’s death.  John he did not return to live in Castile for another 8 years.

He began to write commentaries on his poetry and eventually wrote his great incomplete works, The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night of the Soul.  He completed his Spiritual Canticle and A Living Flame of Love.  Other writings from those years have been lost. He carried his Bible with him regularly, analyzing and meditating on it.  He continued to live an ascetic life rich in contemplation.  Yet, while in Baeza, he drew careful distinctions between the mysticism of Baeza’s Alumbrados and that of the Discalced Carmelites.  Applying what he knew of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Dominicans about the necessity of reason, he articulated the need to apply faith and reason to distinguish God’s true workings from false mysticism.

Teresa died in 1582.  Meanwhile, John moved further south.  He entered Granada in January 1582.  There, in the country, there were no students.  As superior, he first sought to build a relaxed and trusting atmosphere, observing that virtue cannot be fostered by harsh means.  He spoke of contemplation, the virtues, and other spiritual things.  One of the nuns in Granada kept a pile of notes from John’s talks and counsels about an inch high, but it was almost all lost or later destroyed for his protection in 1591.

In 1584, John became vicar provincial for Andalusia.  He traveled extensively during those years, covering at least 15,812 miles in the course of his life, and sometimes 30 miles a day.  He took his Bible, sometimes reading while on mule back on level ground.  He walked much of the way.  He sometimes had horses.  He took shortcuts through rough terrain, and many of the roads were not suitable for wheels.

On June 27, 1587, Pope Sixtus V approved Doria’s Constitutions, and the Discalced became a congregation.  While the conflict between the Discalced and the mitigated rule was ebbing, there was mounting conflict within the Discalced congregation.  A scandalous power struggle erupted for control in the wake of Teresa’s death.  Gracian, who had been her favorite, was seen as a threat by Doria, who took control.  John, too, had enemies, including some other friars who believed that he had disciplined them too harshly when they were younger. 

Despite John’s opposition to Doria’s mistreatment of Gracian, John was given high positions of authority.  In 1588, he was elected third councilor to the vicar general for the discalced.  Also superior of the central house of Segovia, he finally returned to Castile.  The positions gave him great administrative duties and left no time for writing.  His great books remained unfinished.  He developed an enthusiasm for a building project for the monastery, and he built a garden for meditation.  He spent long hours in prayer in a cave, or on his knees by the Blessed Sacrament at night, and working with directees.  As before, both religious and secular people sought his guidance.  Students came to him during the summer.

His time in a position of prominence did not last long.  At the chapter of 1591, John was made provincial of Mexico.  He had volunteered for the missionary journey, but there were some who had seen it as a convenient way to remove the threat he posed to the direction Doria wanted to take the order.  John’s health began to deteriorate soon after the appointment, and he was moved instead to a small community at La Penuela, where he could again devote himself to prayer and spiritual direction.  At the same time, he was subjected to a campaign seeking to destroy his reputation.  One of those friars who held a grudge against him for a past rebuke assisted Doria in that effort.  On July 6, 1591, John wrote in a letter not to let what had happened to him cause grief.  Rather, “Think nothing else but that God ordains all, and where there is no love put love, and you will draw out love.”  Many of his letters and other writings were then destroyed by correspondents who feared that John’s political enemies might use them against him.

On September 12, 1591, John began to suffer from a fever prompted by an infection in his leg.  The infection spread, and he had to leave La Penuela to seek medical treatment.  He chose to go to Ubeda, where no one knew him.  The prior in Ubeda was reluctant to spend money on medical care and healthy food.  Some of the friars disagreed.  They complained to the provincial, who happened to be Anthony of Jesus, one of the other two friars who had lived with John in founding the first Discalced house for friars 23 years earlier.  The young friars at Ubeda listened as John and Anthony spoke, mentioning the order’s earliest days.  The prior, Crisostomo, became one of John’s admirers and later died with a reputation for holiness.

As doctors concluded that John’s decline was irreversible, he knew that death was approaching.  He wanted the letters about the persecution burned to preserve the reputations of all concerned.  In his last hour, he asked to hear a reading from the Song of Songs.  He asked to have the bell rung for Matins, and said he would be chanting Matins in heaven.  The bell rang at midnight.  He died in the first minute after midnight on December 14, 1591, at the age of 49.  People sought relics from his body.  Litigation ensued over which city would keep it.  Nine months after John’s death, his tomb was opened for the move to Segovia.  His body was found to be fresh and was returned to the tomb.  Again, on April 28, 1593, his body was found to be incorrupt and fragrant when finally moved to Segovia.  His body was viewed for 8 days before being re-buried.

He was beatified in 1675, canonized in 1726, and declared a doctor of the church in 1926. 

Bibliography

Dodd, Michael, O.C.D., “John of the Cross: The Person, His Times, His Writings” from Carmelite Studies VI: John of the Cross (available for free download online).

Kavanaugh, Kieran, O.C.D., Introduction to The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross.

Kavanaugh, Kieran, O.C.D., John of the Cross: Doctor of Light and Love

Ruiz, Federico, O.C.D., ed, God Speaks In the Night: The Life, Times and Teaching of St. John of the Cross (a collection of biographical and historical essays by various authors).

About Pope Sylvester II (Gerbert of Aurillac)

Pope Sylvester II, better known as Gerbert of Aurillac, has no feast day.  He has never been beatified or canonized.  Pope John Paul II gave a tribute to him on April 7, 1999, by a Message on the 1000th Anniversary of his Election to the Papacy.  He was the pope of the year 1000, mentioned in several earlier articles on this blog.  His importance to intellectual history draws me to post this biographical sketch now, while the era when he lived is under some blogosphere attack.  (See this for the latest.)  His influence on the blend of faith and reason in Christian philosophy also makes him important in connection with the recent feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas and the references to faith and reason made by Pope Benedict XVI.

Gerbert was born around the year 945 in Aquitaine, in an area now called southern France.  He was a boy from a poor family, in an era when being well born often determined a person’s future.  As a child, he entered the monastery of St. Gerald in Aurillac and received his early education there.  He was exceptionally brilliant and absorbed learning as a rare genius.

In 967, the count of Barcelona visited the monastery and was impressed by Gerbert, who was by then in his twenties.  The count arranged for Gerbert to obtain further education at a monastery in Spain.  In 970, he accompanied the count to Rome, as the count expected Gerbert’s rhetoric to assist him in an appeal to Pope John XIII.  The pope was so impressed that he kept Gerbert in Rome and later sent him to Emperor Otto I, expecting that the emperor would also enjoy Gerbert’s intellectual company.

In Otto’s court, Gerbert became the teacher of the 16-year old Otto II who would succeed his father as emperor.  Gerbert thus attained the respect of both pope and emperor, and entered a life in which he would serve simultaneously as instructor of the quadrivium (mathematics, geometry, astronomy and music) and as statesman and abbot for 30 years.  Translations of Boethius's work, combined with Arab influence, increased his interest in the study of science and mathematics.  Music was both a science (a mathematical aspect of the quadrivium) and a practical art, with the line between the two not well defined.  Gerbert constructed an instrument called the "monochord" to use to teach both music theory and chant.  He had an abacus constructed -- a particular form of abacus that was his own invention -- to teach arithmetical functions.  His students followed in writing texts on the use of the abacus.  He developed an instrument to assist in determining the time during the night.  A Benedictine, he may have seen the use of his inventions in liturgy and in the nighttime prayers of the Benedictine hours.

However, the era was one of grisly turmoil.  Otto II replaced his father as emperor, a pious man but one with imperial ambitions who sought to control Italy as well as Germany and France.  His son, Otto III, officially became the emperor at the age of three, prompting more power struggles.  Church figures sided with one competing claim to power or another, sometimes assisting in political upheaval, and the political figures sometimes rewarded allies with Church positions.  Gerbert may have seen the world in part through his admiration for the works of Boethius, whose work for Church unity involved work in both Church and State.

From 972 to 989, Gerbert was the abbot at the Abbey of St. Remi in Reims, France, and he also became abbot at the Italian monastery at Bobbio.  While Bobbio had an extensive library, but the monastery itself was in disrepair, and the political situation pressed him to leave.  Gerbert returned to Reims, and collected a library there, which was significant enough that he later complained of the inadequacy of his library in Rome.  The initial impetus for his collection of manuscripts at Reims, he wrote in 985, was that he felt he must be prepared for diplomacy.  “For speaking effectively to persuade and restraining the minds of angry persons from violence by smooth speech are both of the greatest usefulness.”.  Adalbero, the Archbishop of Reims, took Gerbert as his secretary and protégé, while Gerbert also worked as secretary to King Hugh Capet, learning to lead Church and State.

While Gerbert was encouraged to believe that he would become archbishop upon the death of Adalbero, it was not easily to be.  Conflict raged over the French crown.  King Hugh Capet had come to power elected by the nobility, partly with the support of Archbishop Adalbero, but he faced threats from the Carolingians who were heirs to the throne.  In the resulting political wrangling, the archbishop’s position was awarded to Arnulf, the 24-year old son of the Carolingian king, in exchange for Arnulf’s promise to support Hugh Capet’s claim to the throne.  Archbishop Arnulf did not wait long before he betrayed the king.  In 989, Arnulf gave the keys to the city gates to one of his priests and ordered the priest to open the gates for the Carolingian army.  The Carolingians captured the abbot Gerbert and other supporters of Hugh Capet.  They violated the Cathedral of Reims and plundered the city. Gerbert was then forced to take on civil and church administration of Reims, effectively as a prisoner, for 8 months until he gained his release. 

A regional council of bishops then voted to imprison Arnulf and appointed Gerbert as archbishop.  The council, however, had no papal authority to replace an archbishop and was eventually declared illegal.  Gerbert was removed from his position as archbishop and, in 997, fled to Germany. While awaiting a final decision from Rome, he wrote, “Against all schisms I will defend the unity of the Church, even by my death, if so decreed.”

Gerbert then immersed himself in his intellectual interests, took on Otto III as a student and played pipe organ, taking a role of influence in Church music.  Eventually, at Otto III’s urging, Pope Gregory V appointed Gerbert as Archbishop of Ravenna.

In 999 Pope Gregory V died.  On April 9, 999, With Otto III’s support, Gerbert became the first French pope.  He took the name of Pope Sylvester II.  He held a high moral code, worked to correct financial and moral abuses, and gained the respect of those who knew him.  He made peace with Arnulf, re-appointing him as Archbishop of Reims.

On May 3, 1003, Pope Sylvester II became ill while celebrating mass at the Church of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem (a church in Rome), and he died in Rome on May 12, 1003.  A century after his death, legends sprang up accusing him of magic and other bizarre acts, none of which are supported by his writings or by other documents from those who knew him.  Present day historians reject the legends, and some view them as an indication that the vast intellectual changes he brought about were far more important than we may ever fully understand.

Bibliography:

Gerbert of Aurillac, Letters, with introduction and footnotes by Harriet Lattin

John Paul II, Message on the 1000th Anniversary of the Election of the Papacy of Gerbert of Aurillac

Montmorency, J.E.G., Thomas à Kempis: His Age and His Book

Riché, Pierre, Gerbert d'Aurillac: Le Pape de l'An Mil

Riché, Pierre, Les Grandeurs de l'An Mille

Photo: Statue of Gerbert in Aurillac, France, photo kindly taken and provided by a reader, Georg.

About St. Francis de Sales

January 24 is the memorial of St. Francis de Sales.

François-Bonaventure de Boissy, known to us as St. Francis de Sales, was born on August 21, 1567, two months earlier than expected, delicate, but alive.  His mother was about15 years old, 30 years younger than his father, the powerful Lord François de Boissy.  The castle of Sales was the finest in Savoy.

His young mother had promised God, before he was born, that if she had a son she would raise him for God.  However, by the time the child Francis was six years old, Lord Francis thought his young wife was babying him too much.  He sent the child to school at the nearby College of La Roche.  Two years later, with Sales threatened by military plans against Geneva, the family left the castle and moved to Brens.  Francis, 8 years old, was moved to the prestigious College of Annecy.  At 11, he was tonsured, gaining his father’s permission only because his father thought it was a passing phase.

At 15, Francis was sent to Paris.  While his father preferred the College of Navarre, Francis sought his mother’s help in gaining permission to attend the Jesuit College of Clermont, a more devout school.  He had become an athletic young man, skilled in horsemanship and fencing.  He was also well read, quoting the Latin classics from memory while yet perfecting his use of the French language.  He was one of the university’s top students, excelling in philosophy.

Having gained his master of the arts, Francis began the study of law in Padua.  There, he found a Jesuit spiritual director who counseled him that it was God’s will for him to work seriously at the study of law.  Yet, in late 1590, he became so ill that he was expected to die.  Recovering his health, he returned to his studies, but determined more than ever to give his life to the Church.  He gained his doctorate and left Padua.

In February 1592, he returned home, now at a castle south of Lake Annecy, as the region of Bren had become too dangerous in the ongoing military strife, the “War of the Castles.”  Francis’ father bought him an estate, and he became known as Seigneur de Villaroget.  In November, he was called to the bar and pleased the examiners so that there was talk about him becoming a judge.  Soon afterward, he received letters making him a senator at the age of 24, but he refused the offer.  On May 9, 1593, he finally asked his father for permission to enter the Church.  A friend with contacts in Rome had already obtained bulls and went with him to seek his father’s permission.  Francis renounced his right as the oldest son, and his title, and he was known from then on as Francis of Sales. 

On December 18, 1593, he was ordained a priest, and he was soon provost of the Geneva chapter.  Geneva was then much influenced by Calvinism.  Churches had been destroyed, crosses and castles had been burned.  Few Catholics remained.  “We must regain Geneva,” he said.  “We must bring down the walls of Geneva with charity.”  In 1595, he wrote a series of Meditations, posted copies in public places, and slid them under people’s doors.  Yet, as he described it himself, he was practically preaching to bare walls.  After a brief return to Annecy, he set out for Chablais, where he wrote a new leaflet each week, delivered to the houses in town and countryside.  He prayed, fasted, and did penance, celebrating daily Mass, and he took seriously the Protestants he encountered, preaching the Gospel and the Scriptures for them.  While he was pressed by some people to take a more aggressive approach, he responded  that “Men accomplish more by love and charity than by severity and rigor.”

The bishop of Geneva persuaded Francis to become coadjutor bishop.  In August, 1597, that initiated an approval process which was delayed when Francis again fell ill for several months.  Not until November 12, 1598 did Francis depart for Rome to face an examining board.  On March 24, 1599, Pope Clement VIII signed a decree making Francis the coadjutor bishop of Geneva, a post that Francis held for less than 4 years, time spent in diplomacy and evangelism.  On September 29, 1602, he was passing through Lyons when he learned that the Bishop of Geneva had died.  He grieved, and then prepared to become the bishop.  He took a 20 day retreat almost in solitude, in prayer and fasting and general confession, and then, on December 8, 1602, he was consecrated Bishop of Geneva.

The remainder of his life, he would be a very busy bishop with a large diocese, in an era of religious and political conflict.  He traveled, regularly preaching a Lenten series and an Advent series.  He was giving a series of Lenten sermons in Dijon in 1604 when he first met Jeanne Frémont de Chantal, the 32 year old widow of Baron Christophe de Chantal and mother of four.  He became her spiritual director and close friend, his spiritual counsel preserved in letters.  In time, he would counsel her to enter religious life, which she did in 1610.  She would later found houses for women with Constitutions that he wrote.  By Francis’ death in 1622, she had founded 13 monasteries.

Meanwhile, Francis continued to travel, once writing that he had preached every day and sometimes twice a day, and that he had no leisure to consider his own heart.  In his years as a bishop, he ordained nearly 900 priests.  By 1607, he had begun to write books, telling Mme. de Chantal that whenever he had 15 minutes to spare, he spent it writing a long-term project that others had proposed to him. In the middle of his hectic days, he explained, he always had some treatise of piety that he was writing “to revive and relax my mind.”  His book Introduction to the Devout Life appeared in shops in December, 1608 and was an immediate success, going into a second edition in early 1609.  It had 40 editions during his lifetime. Treatise on the Divine Love appeared in August, 1617.

Meanwhile, he also became engaged in such diplomatic issues as controversial marriage negotiations affecting the king’s family, which drew him to Paris.  There, in late 1619, he learned that the Archbishop of Paris wanted him to become the coadjutor bishop of Paris and his successor.  But Francis' health was failing.  Instead, he obtained permission to continue at Annecy.  He had grown weary of writing, but he still preached an Advent series at Annecy that year, and agreed to preach a Lenten series the following year.  He continued to travel, despite bronchitis, stomach pains, open sores, and eventually kidney problems. 

He celebrated Christmas Masses in Lyons in 1621, followed by the Feast of St. Stephen and the Feast of St. John the Evangelist.  On the feast of St. John the Evangelist, December 27, his eyesight started to fail.  He started to write some letters.  At two o’clock in the afternoon, he said he felt ill, he stood, and he collapsed.  Half an hour later, he suffered a stroke.  He died on the Feast of the Holy Innocents, December 28, 1621, 55 years old.  His death was treated as a saint's death.  When his coffin was moved from Lyons to Annecy, crowds pressed close by, seeking to touch it.  His solemn funeral took place on January 24, 1622.  That evening, his body was taken to the Monastery of the Visitation, where Mme. de Chantal awaited, and he was interred in the church there.  Mme. de Chantal continued to found more monasteries -- a total of 69 during her lifetime.   She died December 13, 1641.

St. Francis de Sales was beatified on January 8, 1662, and canonized on April 19, 1665, both by Pope Alexander VII.  St. Jeanne ("Jane") de Chantal was canonized July 16, 1767.

Bibliography:

Henri-Coüannier, Maurice, St. Francis de Sales and His Friends

Ravier, André, Francis de Sales: Sage and Saint

About St. Ignatius of Antioch

October 17 is the memorial of St. Ignatius of Antioch.

Ignatius was born in the middle or second half of the first century, probably somewhere in Syria.  His epistle to the Romans suggests that Ignatius, like Paul, was a Jewish convert to Christianity in adulthood.

In Ignatius’ letter to the church at Rome, written around 108 to 115 A.D., he called himself the Bishop of Syria.  He was a contemporary of St. Polycarp, who was then the bishop of Smyrna. 

The church he pastored had historic importance, dating back to even before St. Paul’s missionary journeys.  Acts 11:19-21 records that some of the earliest Jewish Christians left Jerusalem for Antioch in the days following the stoning of the first martyr, Stephen.  Some of the earliest Greek converts were there.  Peter is thought to have pastored the church at Antioch at one time.  Ignatius no doubt had heard stories from first-hand witnesses of Peter’s confrontation with Paul in Antioch, recorded in Gal. 2:11.  However, the Book of Revelation mentions a church in nearby Laodicea, described as “lukewarm,” and does not include a letter to a church in Antioch at all.  Had that church waned during the Domitian persecution?  Whatever might account for the omission, by the time of St. Ignatius’ letters, Antioch was again the center of the Syrian church, and Ignatius was anything but lukewarm.

Jean Daniélou somewhat explains the difference between St. John and St. Ignatius.  The Judaeo-Christian community of Ephesus "found in John its true direction," he says. "Literarily, the Apocalypse and the Gospel of John stem from this Judaeo-Christian milieu, where Essene influences are evident.  The first of these works is stamped by the upheaval resulting from the profanation of the Temple in 70. . . .The counterpart of John's evidence is to be found in the Epistles of Ignatius of Antioch; the latter crossed Asia at the end of Trajan's reign.  The Letters he addressed to the Churches show the persistence of these Judaising tendencies, in fact they seek to curtail their excessive growth; these tendencies appeared in Ephesus. . . . We may wonder whether, especially in Ephesus, there was not a kind of coexistence between two communities, a Judaeo-Christian and a pagano-Christian."

In the early years of the second century, churches were still synagogues, meeting in homes.  Ignatius’ church, or churches, would have been among those, but he was also concerned about those aspects of Judaism that posed difficulties for the Gentile world, preventing some Gentiles from accepting the faith.  Christianity was gradually moving away from its conflict with the Pharisees for recognition as the True Israel.  The Christians had begun to see Judaism as a separate religion from Christianity.  Luke reported that the disciples were first called “Christians” at Antioch in Paul’s day (Acts 11:26).  Ignatius’ letter to the church at Smyrna contains the first use of the phrase “the catholic Church.”  Ignatius wrote, “Where the bishop is to be seen, there let all his people be; just as wherever Jesus Christ is present, we have the catholic Church.” (Epistle to the Smyrneans).

Although the Church suffered less persecution under Trajan (98 to 117 A.D.) than it had under Nero and Domitian, persecution did not cease. Christianity was illegal.  To deny the power of the gods was “atheism,” and those convicted were executed.  Christians who refused to recant, were punished.

Ignatius was convicted in Antioch.  He was then transported from Antioch to Rome for execution.  During a stop at Smyrna, he wrote letters to the churches at Rome, Ephesus, Magnesia and Tralles.  During a stop at Troas, he wrote letters to the churches at Philadelphia and Smyrna and a personal letter to Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna. 

Syria was the eastern end of the church then, and Rome was the western end.  Ignatius described himself in his epistle to the Romans as "Syria's bishop, summoned from the realms of the morning" and traveling toward "the land of the setting sun."  In writing his last thoughts to five churches, much of what he said centered on the importance of unity and avoidance of heresy.  In his Epistle to the Ephesians, Ignatius emphasized that Jesus was both human and divine, calling Him "Very Flesh, yet Spirit too; Uncreated, and yet born; God-and-Man in One agreed."  He cautioned Christians to unite behind their bishops and to avoid the teaching of their heretical opponents.

Ignatius’ letter to the Romans differed in its emphasis from the other letters.  Rather than cautioning against heresy, Ignatius asked the Romans not to deprive him of martyrdom by their pleas to the Roman government on his behalf.  He asked the Roman church to pray for his own church in Syria, saying that his Syrian congregation now had God for their pastor, and had Jesus Christ to look over them in his absence.

Eusebius wrote that Ignatius died in Rome, killed by wild beasts in the amphitheater.  The date of Ignatius’s death could be placed at 108 or 115 A.D.

Ignatius' letters were preserved at Polycarp's request, providing reason to believe that Ignatius was martyred as Eusebius reported.  The church at Antioch survived.  It continued to develop a Jewish Christianity while churches elsewhere became more Hellenistic.

Unfortunately, in the fourth century, Ignatius’ epistles were edited, by interpolation and by the addition of spurious epistles.  The original, authentic writings of Ignatius were lost until the seventeenth century, when Archbishop Usher of Armagh discovered two manuscripts of a Latin translation of the original epistles.  The Greek text was discovered not long afterward.  The letters are widely regarded as authentic.

Bibliography:

Bettenson, Henry, The Early Christian Fathers

Daniélou, Jean, and Henri Marrou, The First Six Hundred Years

Eusebius, The History of the Church

Frend, W.H.C., The Rise of Christianity

Ignatius of Antioch, Epistles, from  Early Christian Writings

Louth, Andrew, Notes and Biographical Introductions in Early Christian Writings 

About St. Teresa of Avila

October 15 is the feast day of St. Teresa of Avila.  Although saints' days are superseded by Sunday, her day will be observed this Sunday in some Carmelite houses.

The short biographies that I write are usually about half the size of this one.  It is longer for several reasons, the most obvious ones being that she is my favorite saint and my namesake.  In addition to those, I had more that I wanted to say because of recent biographies that overemphasize her feminism and minimize the massive support that she had from many men during her lifetime.  Another is a news report about a movie being made that overemphasizes her sex appeal, suggesting that the men who helped her were responding to her sexuality.  Hopefully, in responding to those characterizations of her life, I have not overcompensated by overemphasizing something else.  In any event, it is my view of my favorite saint.

Teresa de Ahumada y Cepeda was born on March 28, 1515 in Avila, Castile, Spain.  Her mother was from the Spanish nobility.  Her father’s father had been a Jewish textile merchant and had converted to Catholicism to marry her father’s mother.  His "pure blood" status was once upheld by a court, in an era of prejudice, probably because of his popularity among the nobility and because his conversion to Catholicism had been real.  Teresa's father was a devout Catholic with a preference for the Dominican clergy and for the Dominican theologians who had a seminary in Avila. 

Her mother had a devotion to the rosary and a love for reading books about chivalry and romance.  She taught Teresa to read, and Teresa soon shared her mother’s love for books, beautiful clothing and jewelry.  Teresa was her father’s fifth child, with seven younger siblings.  Six of the younger ones were boys.  She was 13 years old when her mother died giving birth to her only younger sister.  Her only older sister, Juana, married in 1531, leaving the single father alone to care for the younger children.  At 15, she formed a friendship with a female cousin she later remembered as a bad influence, lost part of her childhood faith, and had a brief romance with a boy cousin that was probably innocuous by today’s standards.  Her scrupulous father knew only a little about it, but sensed that something was wrong.

All of Avila was planning for great festivities that year, when the future King Phillip II was expected to arrive for the celebration of the day when he would leave his baby clothes to take on the attire of a young boy.  The feast had already begun, two weeks before the imperial procession was to arrive, when Teresa’s father moved her into the convent of St. Mary of Grace, a strict, Augustinian house in Avila with 40 nuns and room for 10 girls living as borders.  The girls were taught reading, writing, needlework, and music, watched over by Mother Maria de Briceño, a mystic with a devotion to the Eucharist.  Mother Maria de Briceño was known for having once held back from the Eucharist when she did not think herself worthy, only to have the host miraculously fly from the ciborium into her mouth.  Teresa was at first outraged by the penances forced on her, but later delighted in  Mother de Briceño’s talk about God.  Teresa lived there 18 months before a serious illness required her to return home.  Along the way, she visited her father’s brother, who introduced her to the Letters of St. Jerome.  Later, the same uncle, a widower living alone, introduced her to the Third Spiritual Alphabet by Spanish mystic Francisco de Osuna.

In 1535, then 20 years old, Teresa wanted to become a Carmelite nun at the monastery where her friend Juana Suarez lived, but it was largely because her fear of hell outweighed her desire for marriage.  Her father forbade it.  She persuaded one of her brothers, who would eventually become a Dominican, to help her.  On November 2, 1535, they slipped out of their father’s house one morning at sunrise and walked down the hill to Our Lady of the Incarnation.  Her father accepted her choice only after the fact.

The Incarnation was then home to 150 nuns as well as boarders and domestic servants living under a Carmelite rule that had been relaxed, or "mitigated", since the order's original founding.  A lively social life could be had there, and the sisters could entertain friends and family in the parlor.  However, Teresa’s illness and emotional turmoil plagued her early years at the Incarnation.  For several months in 1538, she left to seek treatment elsewhere, and at one point was near death.  When she returned to the Incarnation, she still lingered in the infirmary, nearly paralyzed, for the next few years.  Frustrated, she sought healing from St. Joseph.  She was freed and able to walk again.  Nonetheless, she continued to suffer from poor health for the rest of her life.

Her father having provided for her, Doña Teresa (as she was still known) could have had a relatively comfortable apartment.  Still, the Incarnation as a whole was impoverished, depending upon resources from the city of Avila, whose 10,000 people were a source of limited donations for many local convents and churches.  Nuns were encouraged to spend time with their families outside of the monastery.  Some of them also spent time living in houses of the wealthy nobility, who believed that they would be rewarded in heaven for taking care of a needy nun.  Teresa’s younger sister moved into the Incarnation and grew up there with Teresa, who still was involved in meeting family obligations as the oldest single daughter.  Her bubbly personality soon made her a welcome house guest of the nobility of Spain’s Golden Age, and she formed a close friendship with an affluent woman who later helped her.

She remained an avid reader, and some spiritual books were available in the Spanish vernacular that she could read.  She read St. Augustine's Confessions at least two times.  Her devotion to St. John Cassian's Conferences was mentioned by Petronila Bautista in her beatification process, and it is possible that she read from his work each day as St. Thomas Aquinas is said to have done, following St. Benedict's recommendation of the work in The Rule.  Some of her writings suggest the influence of Dominican thinking of her day.  Her father's confessor, and one of her brothers, were Dominicans, and she once had the Dominican theologian Domingo de Yanguas as her confessor.  She must have discussed her ideas with them.  Yet, in an environment in which women were not taught to read Latin, and Scripture was only legally available in Latin, she often downplayed the extent of her own knowledge in her writings.

In 1545, Teresa began to have mystical experiences.  In 1554, a sense of the wounded Christ transformed her motivation into love for Christ that surpassed the fear that had been her earlier motivation.  In 1555, she had her first great ecstasy.  Her first real vision occurred on June 29, 1559.  In 1560, she had her first levitation, the transverberation of her heart, and a terrifying vision of hell.  In 1561, she miraculously restored her sister’s little boy to life, her first miracle.  Despite that, as soon as one of her ecstasies ended, she went back to being an ordinary, humble Carmelite nun who was very friendly, extroverted, and yet who loved to pray.  Talk of her experiences spread, some people beginning to regard her as a saint while others wondered if she was an impostor or a person under demonic deception.

These mystical experiences caused great concern among the clergy who knew her.  In the early 16th century, a mystical movement of illuminism had developed in Spain including mental prayer, with a belief in the free access of the entire population to the Scriptures.  A self-proclaimed prophetess and fraudulent visionary, Magdalena de la Cruz, had drawn much public support.  The reaction of the Inquisition, while the Reformation was spreading through France, Germany and England, was often severe.  In 1559, the former priest of Charles V was burned with 110 accused heretics.  The same year, more than 700 books were burned on the pretext that writings in the Spanish vernacular might contain heretical ideas.  The archbishop of Toledo was imprisoned.  No one could feel secure.  At times, even priests who were her supporters cautioned her to stop, in fear for their own safety as well as for hers.  Suggestions that Teresa’s opponents were merely male misogynists, or that her efforts were essentially a feminist movement, disregard the true position of both men and women in that era of Spanish history. 

By 1558, Teresa was suspected of demonic illusions.  Even clergy she admired were concerned about the source of her mystical experiences.  However, she had both men and women who supported her efforts in what was, indeed, an age of reform through much of Europe.  By the age of 45, she was already known as “the Madre” throughout Spain.  That year, she began to write her first work, The Spiritual Testimonies.  In 1561, as a few friends and family members encouraged her to form a new, smaller monastery committed to a more ascetic Carmelite life of prayer, a priest asked her to write the story of her life and mystical experiences.  After a vision of St. Clare on August 12, 1561, she wrote the first rule of the Discalced Carmelite order that she wanted to found. 

In 1562, she was sent to Toledo, to the home of the wealthy Luisa de La Cerda for six months, a plan that some thought would end her plans for a new monastery.  There, she completed the first draft of her autobiography ("The Life") and met with Fray Garcia de Toledo, who asked her to rewrite it.  Whenever Scripture or the Church, or those in authority over her, told her to do something different from what she had believed God was asking her to do, she always took the guidance of Scripture and the Church as more powerful evidence of God's will than were her feelings and mystical experiences.  She regularly made the changes that those in authority over her asked her to make.  She did not finish the final draft until 1565. 

Meanwhile, an ascetic widow, Maria de Yepes, found her in Toledo and told her by memory the primitive rule of Carmel, which further inspired her reform.  Maria had become a Carmelite and had left the order because of its laxity.  She reported that she had had gone to Rome, speaking favorably about the planned reform of Carmel, and that she had obtained from Pope Pius IV a brief authorizing the reform.  While in Italy, Maria had spent time in an Italian Carmelite monastery that had already begun to follow the more severe primitive rule.

The provincial father then authorized Teresa’s return to Avila.  While Teresa had her opponents within Castile, Pope Pius IV was seeking to reform those monastic orders that had been living under a relaxed rule.  It was part of an effort to counteract the Lutheran Evangelical movement.  Orders other than the Carmelites had already undergone reforms.  On February 6, 1562, Pope Pius IV indeed had authorized the founding of her reformed monastery, although his brief was not accepted by opponents who believed that the Pope did not have accurate information about the Madre.  She then won the approval of St. Peter of Alcantara not long before his death.  On August 24, the Monastery of San Jose of Avila was begun amid much opposition.  On December 5, 1562, a second papal brief authorized Teresa, by name, to found a monastery in strict poverty.  Not until the following year would Teresa be allowed to leave the Incarnation and join the nuns at San Jose.  That year, she also wrote the first draft of The Way of Perfection, a book of her teaching and counsel for the nuns at the new Carmel. 

In February 1567, Teresa received a visit from Father Juan Bautista Rossi, known as Rubeo de Ravenna, the Carmelite prior general who had just arrived from Rome.  King Phillip II had invited him to Spain.  The king shared the Pope’s interest in reforming the relaxed orders.  Father Rubeo’s mission was the reform of the Carmelite order, but the mitigated Carmelite monasteries of Spain had no interest in his plans.  After visiting the monastery of San Jose, he instructed Teresa to found more monasteries for women and, soon afterward, authorized her to reform two monasteries for men.

That year,  Antonio de Heredia, the former prior of the Carmelite monasteries in Avila, became the prior general of Carmel in Medina del Campo and soon surprised Teresa by telling her that he wanted to be the prior of her first Discalced Carmelite foundation for men!  She thought he was too old and too accustomed to comfort and beautiful art.  Yet he, together with St. John of the Cross and two others, formed the first Discalced Carmelite house for men.  It drew much attention in that day as a house for men whose formation was attributed to a woman.  On her part, Teresa believed that she had found in St. John of the Cross asceticism coupled with great theological knowledge and expertise as a Latinist: the sort of priest who she hoped would lead the Carmelite friars.  Father Antonio became the first prior on the provincial’s order.  While the nuns’ houses were established as cloistered houses of contemplation, in poverty, the friars were free to leave their house, and they served as priests to nearby parishes in need of clergy.  For all of them, Teresa insisted that the spirit of Carmel must be the spirit of love, a life of joy and not of suffering.

Teresa was increasingly considered to be a saint.  Her mystical graces continued.  She began to draw unwanted crowds when she entered towns.  She sometimes traveled by wagons, together with other nuns who created a sort of cloister inside a wagon for the journey.  When required by the treacherous road conditions, she was sometimes on mule-back or horseback.  She twice took carriages offered by the nobility.  Her health always a concern, her preferred mode of transportation beginning in 1570 was a tartana, a covered wagon drawn by one mule.  Sometimes traveling through snowfall, often entering towns during the night to avoid the attention of those who opposed her foundations, and several times in danger of life in precarious roads and weather conditions, she continued to found new houses when invited by someone with the financial means to establish a new monastery.

Her opponents continued their efforts.  In 1571, she was ordered to return to Avila and to take the role of prioress of the Incarnation – a matter that did not sit well with her or with the nuns there who opposed her reforms.  She remained prioress for 3 years, bringing John of the Cross to be chaplain in 1572.  In 1573, she began to write the book of her Foundations, the history of her founding the houses other than San Jose, a book that she completed in 1582.

Inevitably, part of the opposition to her foundations was financial.  Cities were always concerned about the financial burden of another monastery.  Other monasteries that were already drawing from the alms given by city residents were concerned that they would have too little financial support to survive if the celebrated nun founded a monastery in competition for those donations.  A wife or heir of a property owner could oppose the sale or rental of a house to a monastery because, once it was consecrated as a chapel and the Blessed Sacrament was in place, it could not readily revert to its use as a family home.  Teresa quickly gained an expertise in the real estate market, shrewdness in negotiation, and experience in dealing with lawyers and courts involved in a series of lawsuits.

Another source of conflict was a struggle between Phillip II, who supported Pius IV’s desire for monastic austerity and reform, and the Carmelite general who wanted to protect the casual, relaxed rule that had been the norm for Carmel.  At the end of 1574, Phillip II succeeded in having the Pope appoint Father Jeronimo Gracian and two Dominicans as reformers of Castile and Andalusia.  In April, 1575, Father Gracian met Teresa and soon became her closest confidant and ally.

Then, after leaving the Incarnation for the second time, a crisis erupted when Teresa founded a monastery in Seville, outside of the area where she was authorized to found new houses.  At the time, the Inquisition was looking for her autobiography to investigate her for possible heresy. 

She was ordered to stop making foundations and to settle in the monastery of her choice.  She chose Toledo, as the persecutions against the Discalced intensified to a new level.  In 1577, while The Life was in the hands of the Inquisition, she wrote The Interior Castle at Father Gracian’s suggestion.  On December 4, 1577, St. John of the Cross was captured by mitigated Carmelites and imprisoned in Toledo, as the persecution against the Discalced Carmelites intensified.  The Discalced Carmelites were placed under the jurisdiction of the mitigated.  In March, 1578, Father Gracian went into hiding and lived as a hermit in a grotto. 

However, one year later, the king appointed four assessors who removed the Discalced from the jurisdiction of the mitigated Carmelites.  Shortly afterward, the king’s assessors supported the creation of a separate Discalced Carmelite province, a plan that would become official in 1580.

Her foundations continued until 1582.  Still traveling, Teresa arrived at the monastery at Alba de Tormes on September 21, 1582.  She died there on October 4.  She was buried the next day for fear that the people of Avila would come to claim her.  A later reform of the calendar moved the date of her death to October 15, 1582. 

Her death drew much public attention.  The nuns noticed a fragrance coming from the grave, the same fragrance that they said had been noticeable around her during the last days of her life and around her body after her death.  On July 4, 1583, her coffin was opened.  Although the coffin lid had rotted and smelled of mildew, her body was found to be as incorrupt as it was the day she was buried.  The nuns washed her and prepared to dress her in a new habit.  Father Gracian cut off her left hand, which he took to Avila.  From it, he kept one finger, which he wore around his neck for the rest of his life.  In 1585, Father Gracian and another man opened her grave again cut off what remained of her left arm, finding it still incorrupt, bleeding from the cut, with the fragrance.  They took her body back to Avila.  On the Pope’s order, her body was returned to Avila the following year.  Her body was exhumed again, and her transverberated heart, right arm, right foot, a piece of her jaw, and bits of flesh were taken as relics at various times.  Most of her remains are now in Alba.   

Teresa of Jesus was beatified in 1614 and canonized in 1622.  In 1970, Pope Paul VI proclaimed her a Doctor of the Church.

Bibliography:

Teresa of Avila, The Life and The Foundations are her two primary autobiographical books.

Antier, Jean-Jacques, Thérèse d'Avila: De la crainte à l'amour.  This book is now available in English translation under the title God Alone Suffices, published by the Daughters of St. Paul.  I strongly recommend this book in preference over the other two biographies cited in this bibliography.  It places the emphasis on her spiritual development -- prayer, her relationship with God, and the spiritual motivation for her new foundations.  Some of the other biographies on the market today compromise historic fact in order to serve a feminist agenda, overlooking those things that Teresa herself would have seen as central to her life and mission.  Antier has an interest in mysticism and adventure, sets her mystical life in its historic context, and writes beautifully.   

Auclair, Marcelle, St. Teresa of Avila/La Vie de sainte Thérèse d'Avila.

Du Boulay, Shirley, Teresa of Avila: An Extraordinary Life.

Photo: Statue of St. Teresa of Avila from the Carmelite Monastery in San Diego, California.  Photo by me.

About Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite

October 9 is the memorial of both St. Dionysius the Areopagite and St. Denis (Dionysius) of France.  St. Dionysius the Areopagite was one of the people gathered with philosophers at the Areopagus, when St. Paul preached there, as described in Acts 17.  According to Acts 17:34, some of those there gathered became Christians, including "Dionysius, a member of the Court of the Areopagus," a woman named Damaris and others.  St. Denis of France was the first bishop of Paris, who was beheaded ca. 258 at Montmartre (Mount of Martyrs).  Later writers confused them with each other.

About 250 years after St. Denis, an anonymous monk wrote books under the fictitious name of "Dionysius the Areopagite."  In the ninth century, that author's work was translated from Greek to Latin by John Scotus Eriugena.  At that time, the author was mistakenly believed to have actually been the first century St. Dionysius the Areopagite.  In the thirteenth century, St. Thomas Aquinas drew from his writings, believing that the author was St. Paul's convert.

The following information is drawn from what little is known about the author known as "Pseudo-Dionysius," and not about either of the two saints named "Dionysius" whose memorials fall on October 9.

The influential writer was born around the mid to late fifth century.  His true name is unknown.  His writings can be placed during the late fifth to early sixth century.  They reflect and quote ideas from the Pagan neo-platonic philosopher Proclus, who began his work in Athens in the 430’s A.D.  Dionysius’s writings are first known to have been cited at the Council of Constantinople in 532.  Between those two dates, he created a series of books and writings, under the name of "Dionysius."

This writer, often called “Pseudo-Dionysius,” claimed in his writings that he was in fact the convert of the Apostle Paul, named in Acts 17:34.  By that fictitious method, he fully concealed his true identity.  He wrote of Paul as his mentor; he included letters addressed to Timothy, Titus and John in exile at Patmos; he mentioned the time of the crucifixion.  Such means of anonymity continued afterward within a Syrian monastic tradition.

Dionysius’s writings about God’s Divine Names drew from earlier sources.  Another Syrian, Ephrem the Syrian, composed Christian hymns in the fourth century considering the divine names.  Part of the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great also centered on a consideration of the divine names.  In "The Divine Names," Dionysius undertook a study of the names used for God in the Bible, acknowledging that, as God has no true name, we must rely upon the names He gave to us in Scripture as symbols to describe Him, and yet God transcends all symbols.  Dionysius’ other works include "Concerning the Mystical Theology," "Concerning the Heavenly Hierarchy," and "Concerning the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy." 

His church was a highly structured community whose members had clearly defined roles.  It was an ancient hierarchical society of monks and solitaries with common values.  He never mentioned the world of work and play, never mentioned political authority, and never mentioned women’s position in the Church.  His worship was highly liturgical.

Syrian monasticism in the late fifth century varied from community to community, but it was very hierarchical.  Late fifth century Syrian monasteries often had several hundred monks in a communal residence called a “dayra” or “umra.”  They were usually close to villages and agricultural areas.  In a dayra, the monks were divided into 3 or 4 classes, and further divided into various ranks within each class, based upon seniority.  The dayra would be headed by a risdayra, who in turn was subordinate to the bishop, archdeacon and chorepiscopa.

In most monasteries, the monks spent part of each day in some form of manual labor, while other monasteries devoted themselves entirely to spiritual things and relied  entirely upon contributions for their survival.  They had a daily routine of services, reading, work, eating and rest.  They met daily for common prayer.  Monastic rules varied, but existed for both Monophysite and Nestorian communities.

His church seems to have sung the Creed in the middle of the liturgy, as introduced by Peter the Fuller around 476.  Dionysius might have been a bishop, but he more probably was a monk writing about the notions of divine darkness and divine transcendance.  The first four of his letters are addressed to a monk named Gaius.  He may have also intended to influence the fifth century conflict between Monophysites (who believed that Christ had only one nature or hypostasis once His divinity was united with human form) and Nestorians (who believed the Antiochene concept that Christ had two natures, human and divine).  “The Mystical Theology” related to “the inner nature of what is accomplished in the liturgy: union with God and deification.”  It was ostensibly addressed to Timothy, a hierarch, or bishop. 

Dionysius mentioned his teacher, called “Hierotheus.”  C.E. Rolt concluded that Hierotheus actually was the Syrian mystic Stephen bar Sudaili, while Andrew Louth concluded that bar Sudaili’s “Book of Hierotheus” was written later than Dionysius’s work, and that it only purported to come from Dionysius’ teacher.  As Louth saw it, Stephen bar Sudaili’s work borrowed from Dionysius, and was part of the Syrian monastic tradition of Evagrianism which carried on Dionysius’s use of pseudonyms.  Stephen bar Sudaili had studied in Athens and Alexandria, but his intellectual ideas encountered stiff opposition in early sixth century Syria.

Between 509 and 512, Stephen bar Sudaili was forced to flee his Syrian city of Edessa when he was reproached for his Origenist thinking, which opposed the Monophysites.  Bar Sudaili then settled in a monastery near Jerusalem, an area that then remained more tolerant toward clandestine Origenists.  Dionysius was misquoted at the Council in 532 in support of the Monophysite view (which would have been at odds with the views of the Origenists).  However, scholars disagree over whether Dionysius was in fact a Monophysite.

Dionysius sought to base his understanding of God entirely on the Bible, saying "Now concerning this hidden Super-Essential Godhead we must not dare, as I have said, to speak, or even to form any conception thereof, except those things which are divinely revealed to us from the Holy Scriptures" (Divine Names 1:2).  However, he was also Neo-Platonic, standing “at the point where Christ and Plato meet.”  (Louth at 11)  His work influenced later Christians, including the eighth century's St. John of Damascus in the East and the anonymous fourteenth century author of The Cloud of Unknowing in the West, as well as St. Thomas.  He probably lived at least until 522.

Bibliography:

Chadwick, Henry, The Early Church

Louth, Andrew, Denys the Areopagite (Outstanding Christian Thinkers)

Louth, Andrew, St. John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology, Oxford Early Christian Studies, Oxford University Press, 2002.

Patrich, Joseph, Sabas, Leader of Palestinian Monasticism: A Comparative Study in Eastern Monasticism, Fourth to Seventh Centuries, Dumbarton Oaks Studies XXXII, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1995.

Rolt, C.E., Introduction to Dionysius the Areopagite: On the Divine Names and the Mystical Theology.

About Pope/Saint Gregory the Great

September 3 is the memorial of Pope/Saint Gregory the Great.

Gregory was born in Rome around 540.  His father, Gordianus, was an official of the Church in Rome, and his prominent family owned extensive property in Rome and Sicily.  The old Roman education system had collapsed, and Gregory was one of the few who still received an elite education.  It was still possible to obtain such an education in Rome and Ravenna, in private libraries, in a monastic community in Southern Italy, and possibly in Provence and Northern Africa.

The western empire had fallen into war and instability.  Seven years earlier, Emperor Justinian had begun to retake lands from Germanic control, and had quickly retaken Africa from the Vandals.  Gothic control of much of the western empire was overthrown around 550, and the wars officially ended in 554, but Arian Lombards attacked Italy repeatedly for the rest of Gregory’s life. 

Gregory was about two years old when plagues struck parts of the empire.  The first epidemic in 542 took the lives of a third of the affected population.  Many aristocratic families fled to Constantinople.  The Senate more or less collapsed, replaced in some regions by local authorities.    

In 573, Gregory became the Prefect of Rome.  By then, the role of Prefect was no longer the role of wealth and power that it once had been.  His only documented act as prefect was to sign an undertaking related to a church financial transaction.  Moreover, Gregory longed for a life of contemplation.  He soon left his position to become a monk.  Around 575, he established a monastery in Rome dedicated to St. Andrew, where he lived much of his life, probably under the Rule of St. Benedict, or a modified form of it. 

Although Gregory preferred a contemplative life, the pope called him into service as a deacon by 580.  He was sent to Constantinople as the pope’s representative.  He gave talks on the Book of Job, which he would later revise into the form of a book.  The aristocracy sought out Gregory as a spiritual guide, but he encountered a heated theological dispute with Eutychius, patriarch of Constantinople, over the nature of bodily resurrection.  Both Gregory and Eutychius fell sick, the conflict ending with Eutychius’ death in 582.

In 585, Gregory was called back to Rome and happily returned to St. Andrew’s Monastery, reflecting and meditating on the scriptures.  He knew the works of Origen, Augustine of Hippo, Pseudo-Dionysius and Cassian.  However, this was not a time of peace outside of monastery walls.  In 587, war resumed against the Arian Lombards.  Along with the damage of war, heavy rains caused the Tiber to burst its banks, flooding the area around Rome.

In February, 590, Pope Pelagius died of the plague.  In September, 590, Gregory sincerely wished to decline the office of the papacy, but was persuaded, and held the position for 13-1/2 years.  During his first year as pope, he completed Pastoral Care (a book about Church servant-hood and leadership, and about the contemplative and active life) and his Morals on the Book of Job.  He began to give a series of homilies on the Gospels, followed by a series on Hezekiah.  However, he thought the end of the temporal world was near.  Another storm during Advent destroyed houses and churches in Rome, plagues continued, and by 593, Gregory preached, “a deserted Rome is burning . . . we see buildings destroyed, ruins daily multiplied.”

In 592, Gregory began to issue orders to the local militia in defense of the city, as he and his fellow bishops gradually assumed such secular responsibilities, paying daily expenses in Rome when impoverished public finances left inadequate military power.  When Roman troops were left unpaid, Gregory filled the void, the Church’s funds procuring peace.

Gregory began to reshape the focus of Christian thinking.  He thought the age of martyrdom and the age of miracles had passed – an opinion he would later revise.  The surrounding world was officially Christian, but the Church’s privileged place had brought evil men to adopt the outward appearance of Christianity for personal gain.  In that environment, Gregory sought to call the Church to holiness, making holiness the central achievement of saints’ lives, rather than martyrdom.  In his Dialogues, he offered the lives of saints as holy people, not necessarily martyrs.  St. Benedict was such a saint, and Gregory included his own biography of St. Benedict in his Dialogues.  Gregory urged that all authority, secular or spiritual, should serve the good of the people and not the good of the ruler. 

His reforms also allowed people other than deacons to sing parts of the mass, which may have reflected his love of music as well as his intent to free deacons for preaching and the administration of alms.  In the eighth century, his name would be invoked to identify a new form of chant that developed in the Carolingian era (“Gregorian chant”), as a tribute to his memory.

Gregory’s era was not without its successes.  The Frankish kingdom was Catholic, and Frankish men began to become bishops alongside the Gallo-Romans.  In 596, Gregory sent the monk Augustine (of Canterbury) to evangelize the heathen English.  Augustine reported miracles in England, which Gregory then concluded were given to help our unbelief and to manifest holiness.  Augustine’s mission was successful, and the English Church was firmly re-established by 601.  Meanwhile, in 587, the Spanish king – the son of an Arian Visigoth – converted to Catholicism, and in 589, the Kingdom of Spain publicly became Catholic, ending the last great vestige of Arianism.  The African Church remained strong, albeit independent in spirit from both Rome and Constantinople.

Having long suffered from indigestion, fevers, and later gout, while still working with little rest, Gregory died in March, 604.

Bibliography:

Davis, Henry, Introduction and notes to Pastoral Care (Ancient Christian Writers Series).
Hudleston, G. Roger, "Pope St. Gregory I ('the Great") in the Catholic Encyclopedia.
Markus, Gregory the Great and His World.

About St. Augustine of Hippo

The feast day of St. Augustine of Hippo is August 28.

St. Augustine was born in Tagaste, on November 13, 354, in a northern African region of farms and olive trees.  His pagan father, Patricius, was a city official with little money, who wanted Augustine to have a good education.  His mother, Monica, was a devout Catholic.  She wept to God on his behalf, Augustine later said, "more than mothers are accustomed to weep for the bodily deaths of their children."

Augustine studied rhetoric in Carthage, and later taught rhetoric in Carthage, Tagaste, Rome and Milan.    While in Milan, he began to listen to the sermons of its Bishop Ambrose.  Augustine's Confessions recount his extensive philosophical analysis of Christianity as well as Platonism, astrology, and Manichaeism in his early adult years.   

From the age of about 15 to 30, Augustine lived with a woman from Carthage.  His son was born during that time.  However, when Augustine decided he wanted to be married, he did not consider his mistress to be a suitable wife under the standards of his day.  He then became engaged to marry a young girl, too young to legally marry.  His mistress left and returned to Africa, and Augustine took another mistress.  Ultimately, his good friend Alpius talked him out of the engagement.  While Augustine considered Christianity, he prayed, "Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet."

In 387, torn between his perverse lifestyle and Christianity, Augustine received a visit from an African Christian named Ponticianus.  Ponticianus described the life of Egyptian monk Abba Anthony of the Desert, and Augustine became greatly disturbed at himself for rejecting God's will.  He flung himself under a fig tree and wept to God, asking "How long, O Lord? . . . . Why not this very hour make an end to my uncleanness?"  Augustine then read from St. Paul's Epistles "Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof." (Rom. 13:13). 

Instantly, his doubt disappeared.  His friend Alpius joined him in committing his life to the Lord.  On Holy Saturday, 387, Augustine, his son, and his friend Alpius were all baptized by Bishop Ambrose.

About one year later, Augustine gave up his teaching career and returned to Tagaste, Africa.  There, he started a small ascetic community.  In 391, he traveled to the African seaport of Hippo looking for one of his friends, and planning to find a place for a new monastery.  He went to church, and as was then common, he was grabbed by the congregation during a sermon by bishop Valerius and forced to become a priest.  In 395, Valerius consecrated him as coadjutor bishop.

The Roman Empire culture was in decline, and corrupt Roman courts were no longer trusted by the public.  Bishops like Augustine provided an alternative means of deciding civil cases.  He often spent all morning, and sometimes the entire day, arbitrating cases.  He wrote theology extensively, sometimes devoting every Saturday and Sunday night to his writing.  In 397, he finished his book Confessions, the story of his conversion and highly analytical praise for God.  In 15 years, from 395 to 410, he wrote 33 books and long letters.

The extroverted Augustine kept his bishop’s house as a monastic community, living there together with most of his priests, all of them giving up worldly goods.  He was seldom alone, and did most of his thinking out loud, talking through ideas with friends.  His sermons were almost like dialogues with congregation, sometimes reducing his listeners to tears.

Despite the decadence of fourth century Rome and the declining trust of the citizenry in the Roman judicial system, most of Augustine's life was lived in a time of optimism for the Church's future.  He had lived through a rapid transition from a persecuted church to a church whose bishops were influential social figures in the community.  In the late fourth century, that inspired such optimism that he thought the Church might eventually encompass all of human society.  His orthodox views prevailed over the Donatists.  Pagan shrines were closed in 399.

However, Augustine did not see how fast the Western Empire was collapsing.  On August 24, 410, Alaric's army of Goths entered Rome and sacked it for three days.  Immersed in the ensuing crisis, the Roman government lost interest in Africa and its Church.  Refugees from the beleaguered city streamed into Africa, and Christians became disillusioned.  Another heresy appeared: Beginning in 411, Augustine struggled against the Pelagians, bringing him international recognition.

On September 26, 426, the nearly 72-year old Augustine decided to resign his role as bishop.  He nominated the priest Eraclius to be his successor.  In the presence of his congregation, after announcing his resignation, Augustine sat down.  Eraclius came forward and preached, “The cricket chirps, the swan is silent.”  Augustine spent his last years in his library, editing and listing his writings for future generations.  In 429 and 430, Vandals invaded northern Africa, and Roman rule of Africa collapsed.  In August, Augustine fell ill with a fever, knew he was dying, and chose to spend his last days crying deeply in penitence.  He died on August 28, 430.  The Dark Ages he had not foreseen followed soon after his death.

Bibliography:

Augustine of Hippo, Confessions
Brown, Peter Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, Revised Edition with a new Epilogue
Chadwick, The Early Church
Dudden, F. Homes, The Life and Times of St. Ambrose

Stained glass window: From the Cathedral Parish of St. Augustine, Florida (photo).

About St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)

August 9 is the memorial of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein).

Edith Stein was born on October 12, 1891 in Breslau, Germany, the youngest of seven children.  Her father, Siegfried Stein, was an observant Jew who owned a lumber business.  Her mother, Auguste, lived by careful Jewish observance.  Edith was in fact her eleventh child, but four of Auguste's and Siegfried's children had died in the early days of their marriage, so that there were seven when Edith was born.

Edith was less than two years old in July, 1893, when her father died of sunstroke.  Her mother took over the struggling lumberyard and was successful in the work.  Auguste took Edith’s oldest brother into the business, while Edith’s oldest sister, Else, took care of the youngest children.  The school the children attended provided a religious education, but of poor quality.  Edith later wrote that during her teens, she gave up praying until she was 21 years old.  Some people have construed that to mean that she became an atheist, although others think it more likely that she simply became indifferent to her Jewish faith for a time.

She then attended two years at the university in Breslau and then went to the University of Gottingen.  In 1905, Edmund Husserl arrived at Gottingen, and other phenomenologists followed, beginning the “Gottingen School” of phenomenology.  Several of the phenomenologist philosophers were returning to their faith, and Edith began to pray again.  Her longing for truth, she later said, was “a prayer in itself”.

In 1916, Husserl was called to a full professorship at the University of Freiberg.  Edith, who had received her doctorate from him summa cum laude, became his assistant.  She spent her time organizing Husserl’s manuscripts and notes, while longing to do her own work.  After 1-1/2 years, she resigned, but maintained her academic friendships.

Around the age of 30, she read The Life of St. Teresa of Avila and was captivated by it.  She began to study the Catechism and a missal.  Only after she had mastered those, she went into a Catholic church for the first time and asked a priest to baptize her.  This began a theological discussion that covered the range of Catholic doctrine.  He soon scheduled her baptism for New Year’s Day, 1922.

Edith wanted to quickly enter a religious order, but her spiritual advisor thought better of that.  Yet she was given a job teaching at the Dominican convent school of St. Magdalena in Speyer.  There, she taught German classes and later gave instruction in Latin, English and French.  She lived in the convent, ate convent food, received a modest salary, and studied the works of St. Thomas Aquinas.  She often knelt in prayer for hours at a time alone in addition to attending the services.  She began the work of translating, from Latin to German, St. Thomas’s Disputed Questions on Truth.

Her friend, Father Erich Przywara, S.J., suggested to her the Benedictine Abbey of Beuron, where she spent Holy Week and Easter 1928.  Rising usually before 4:00 a.m., she prayed the Office daily and continued to spend hours alone in prayer and meditation.

Her translation of St. Thomas’s work appeared in two volumes in 1931 and 1932, in current German, together with notes that described St. Thomas’s terms in a way that made his thinking understandable from the perspective of contemporary phenomenology.  She was becoming known for her work.  She began to help others who wanted to know more about Christianity, and became godmother to several of her Jewish friends who were baptized.  Her sister Rosa, who was then taking care of their aging mother, prayed and waited until their mother’s death before she was baptized.

In early 1932, Edith accepted a position on the faculty of the German Institute for Scientific Pedagogy at Munster, where she lived in simplicity in the Collegium Marianum, being watched as her reputation was increasingly well known for her knowledge of both Thomist philosophy and phenomenology.

The Third Reich was established in early 1933.  Soon, news reports began to filter in about the oppression of the Jewish people.  Edith began to see, as she said, “that God had put a heavy hand upon His people, and that the fate of this people would also be mine.”  She believed it was the Cross that was being placed on them, and that most of them did not understand it, and that she would willingly take it up “in the name of all.”  She wrote to the Pope warning him that Catholics would also be persecuted.  She received in response a blessing, and she wondered if he thought about her letter later.

Before long, Jews were no longer able to lecture.  No longer able to help others through that work, she was finally allowed to become a Discalced Carmelite nun, her longtime wish.  Her Jewish mother wept at the news, and did not write to her for some time before finally resuming their correspondence.  On October 2, 1933, she accompanied her mother to the synagogue for the last time, and two days later, she entered the Cologne Carmel.  As a nun, she took the name of Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.

Living as a Discalced Carmelite nun in enclosure, she expected to give up her scholarly writing, but she was soon encouraged to resume her writing.  Although she was cut off from most of the news of events outside of the convent, she was kept informed of Jewish affairs.  She believed that she had been called to suffer for her people, as a mission to bring many home.  By 1936, she completed reworking Potency and Act into her master work of Finite and Eternal Being, and her life’s work was done.  She continued to write, including her book about St. John of the Cross, titled The Science of the Cross. That year, her mother died, and her sister Rosa was baptized.

As Hitler was elected in 1938, Edith became outspoken against the National Socialists.  In November of that year, as synagogues were burned, she had to leave her convent for one in the Netherlands.  By late 1941, the prioress ordered Edith’s letters burned to protect against their revealing her new location.  Holland was becoming too dangerous, and a move to Switzerland was proposed for both Edith and Rosa, who had become a Third Order Carmelite.  The move was not approved by the civil authorities in time.

By July 1942, the deportation of Jewish families to Polish concentration camps had begun, except for Jews who had been part of Christian communities before January 1941. Dutch bishops decided that a joint letter of protest against the deportations would be read in all Catholic parishes in Holland on Sunday, July 26, 1942. 

The following Sunday, the government reacted.  Without warning, all non-Aryan members of Dutch religious communities were arrested, including Edith and Rosa.  They spent August 5 to August 6 or 7 at Westerbork, where 1200 Jewish Catholics were interned.  Afterward, they were taken to Auschwitz, where they died in the gas chambers, probably on August 9, 1942.

She was beatified by Pope John Paul II on May 1, 1987.  At the time, some of her Jewish family members would have preferred that she be remembered as one of many Jews who died in the concentration camps.  She was canonized October 1, 1998.

Bibliography:

Herbstrith, Waltraud, Edith Stein: a Biography, Ignatius Press, 1985.

Posselt, Teresia Renata, O.C.D., Edith Stein: The Life of a Philosopher and Carmelite (ed. Susanne M. Batzdorff, Josephine Koeppel and John Sulllivan, with text, commentary, and explanatory notes), ICS Publications, 2005.

Stein, Edith, Selected Writings, with Comments and Reminiscences by her neice Susanne M. Batzdorff, Templegate, 1990.

About St. Benedict

July 11 is the memorial of St. Benedict.

Benedictus (known to us as “St. Benedict”) was born around 480 in the province of Nursia, in Italy.  He was free, from a good family, but not from one of the great families of the area. 

He spent his childhood in Rome, where he received his early education in the study of humanity.  However, he saw that those who pursued a traditional education often fell into dissolute behavior, and he decided to abandon that life.  Before he began the study of law, Benedict left his father’s house and fled to a place called Sublacum, 40 miles from Rome.  There, a monk named Romanus introduced Benedict to a monk’s habit and to the life of a cave dwelling monk.  Living under the rule of abbot Theodacus, Romanus assisted Benedict as much as he could in Benedict’s early years of monasticism. 

Benedict was in his early 20’s when he became the abbot of a nearby monastery at Subiaco.  From around 500 to 515, he worked as the abbot of a rapidly expanding community of monks.  Over time, he founded thirteen monastic cells with a total of about 150 monks.  Benedict appointed a superior called a “Pater” for each cell and returned to his cave, where he received an increasing number of visitors from the nobility, who offered their sons to him as monks.  His monks read for two hours each day, and for two more hours on Sundays.  In addition to the seven daily offices already established by John Cassian, Benedict introduced an additional daily prayer service called “Compline,” so that his monks prayed together eight times each day in addition to their meditative reading and personal prayer.  They worked as copyists and engaged in other work necessary to make the monasteries self-sufficient, with their own bakery, mill, masonry workers, and other necessary trades.

He drew increasing attention in those early years from the number of monks who surrounded him and from his growing reputation as a miracle worker.  It was told that when he made the sign of the cross to bless a glass of wine, the drinking glass broke in pieces, the wine having been poisoned without his knowledge; it was told that when it became too difficult for the monks in some monasteries to obtain water from a location down a steep hill, Benedict told them where to dig a small hole, and from the hole there miraculously flowed an abundant spring that ran from the monastery to the bottom of that hill from then on. 

In around 520, when he was about 40 years old, Benedict moved to a place called Montecassino, which lay on a main road, about 86 miles south of Rome.   The land was probably donated by a noble family for use as a monastery, as was common in that era.  By 523, he began to work toward compiling a new monastic rule, a project that took him three years.  The abbot John Chapman, an authority on St. Benedict and the sixth century church, hypothesized that the original idea for a rule for all monks came from Dionysius Exiguus in around 522, as Dionysius had collected councils and decretals and may have recognized the need for a uniform rule.  Benedict quoted Dionysius’s books, and the two monks may well have known each other in the early sixth century.  Dom Chapman also concluded that Pope/St. Hormisdas, who died on August 7, 523, had possibly requested the rule not long before his death. 

Benedict thus compiled the rule known as the “Rule of Saint Benedict”, compiled from more than 300 probable sources, with Benedict having probably added some of his own original work.  He conducted a review of all monastic literature going back to St. Anthony of the Desert.  He considered the writings of St. Jerome, St. Augustine, John Cassian and others, as well as Greek councils, imperial laws, the canons and the decretals. 

By 526, he had published his Rule.  Its impact went far beyond Benedict’s own monasteries, which were populated by monks from the nobility and middle classes.  The Rule was written to be adaptable for monasteries with diverse populations, as a permanent code of religious law. 

Labor on the Code of Justinian began in 530.  By that time, the Rule of St. Benedict was already famous in Constantinople.  It was used by Justinian in legislation dealing with some specific cases in 531, and it was used by St. Caesarius of Arles around 532 to 534.

Benedict continued his life as abbot in Montecassino until his death in around 553 to 555.  The Monastery at Montecassino was destroyed in an attack by the Lombards in the 580’s, and Benedict’s autograph was given to the papal treasury.

By the time St. Gregory the Great became pope, the Rule was well established in Rome, and in 598 St. Gregory called it “the Rule of Monks,” accepting it as the only one rule.  As pope, St. Gregory the Great compiled information about St. Benedict from various witnesses and published his Life of St. Benedict as Book II of his Dialogues, presenting him as the model of a saint’s life.

Bibliography:

Chapman, Abbot John,  Saint Benedict and the Sixth Century.

Pope/St. Gregory the Great, Second Dialogue (The Life of St. Benedict), Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham University website.