Folk Art Retablo Saint John of the Cross Poets Contemplative Mystics Carmelites Garlick

Title: "Saint John of the Cross." St. John of the Cross was born into poverty in Avila, Spain. His father was disowned when he married a woman of low social stature. Compounding matters, his father died when John was three. John started on a religious path as a child: he was an acolyte at an Augustinian monastery, attended a Jesuit school and joined the Carmelite Order as a friar and then priest when he was able. He followed St. Teresa of Avila, his best friend and sought to restore the strict regimen of the original Carmelite rule in his monastery. For this he was tried for disobedience, punished by imprisonment in a tiny cell at his monastery, and publicly lashed each week by the friars from his own house. While imprisoned, he wrote poems on smuggled sheets of paper. After nine months he escaped. He returned to the Discalced Carmelites of St. Teresa of Avila and spent the rest of his life establishing new Discalced Carmelite houses across Spain. He influenced many poets, mystics and