Book I
"He soars on the wings of Divine love
"It is perhaps not an exaggeration to say that the verse and prose works combined of St. John of the Cross form at once the most grandiose and the most melodious spiritual canticle to which any one man has ever given utterance.
The most sublime of all the Spanish mystics, he soars aloft on the wings of Divine love to heights known to hardly any of them. . . . True to the character of his thought, his style is always forceful and energetic, even to a fault.
When we study his treatises—principally that great composite work known as the Ascent of Mount Carmel and the Dark Night—we have the impression of a mastermind that has scaled the heights of mystical science;and from their summit looks down upon and dominates the plain below and the paths leading upward. . . . Nowhere else, again, is he quite so appealingly human; for, though he is human even in his loftiest and sublimest passages, his intermingling of philosophy with mystical theology; makes him seem particularly so. These treatises are a wonderful illustration of the theological truth that graced far from destroying nature, ennobles and dignifies it, and of the agreement always found between the natural and the supernatural—between the principles of sound reason and the sublimest manifestations of Divine grace."
E. ALLISON PEERS
DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL
Saint John of the Cross
DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH
THIRD REVISED EDITION
Translated and edited, with an Introduction,
by E. ALLISON PEERS from the critical edition of P. SILVERIO DE SANTA TERESA, C.D.
IMAGE BOOKS
A Division of Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Garden City, New York
IMAGE BOOKS EDITION 1959 by special arrangement with The Newman Press
Image Books edition published February 1959
1st printing January 1959
Electronic edition scanned by Harry Plantinga, 1994
This electronic text is in the public domain.
NIHIL OBSTAT: GEORGIVS SMITH, S.T.D, PH.D.
CENSOR DEPVTATVS IMPRIMATVR: E. MORROGH BERNARD
VICARIVS GENERALIS WESTMONASTERII: DIE XXIV SEPTEMBRIS MCMLII
TO THE
DISCALCED CARMELITES OF CASTILE,
WITH ABIDING MEMORIES OF THEIR HOSPITALITY AND KINDNESS
IN MADRID, ÁVILA AND BURGOS, BUT ABOVE ALL OF THEIR DEVOTION TO
SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS,
I DEDICATE THIS TRANSLATION
CONTENTS
PREFACE TO THE ELECTRONIC EDITION
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
PRINCIPAL ABBREVIATIONS
INTRODUCTION
DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL
PROLOGUE
BOOK I
CHAPTER I.—Sets down the first line and begins to treat of the imperfections of
beginners