In 1529 Gonzalo married John's mother, Catalina, who was an orphan of a lower class; he was rejected by his family and forced to work with his wife as a weaver.

[12][13] In Medina, John entered a school for 160[14] poor children, mostly orphans, to receive a basic education, mainly in Christian doctrine.

Under the Rule, much of the day and night was to be divided between the recitation of the Liturgy of the Hours, study and devotional reading, the celebration of Mass, and periods of solitude.

After a spell at Teresa's side in Valladolid, learning more about the new form of Carmelite life, John left Valladolid in October 1568 accompanied by Fray Antonio de Jesús de Heredia [es; fr], intending to found a new monastery for Carmelite friars — the first to follow Teresa's principles.

Soon after, in June 1570, the friars found the house at Duruelo was too small, and so moved to the nearby town of Mancera de Abajo, midway between Ávila and Salamanca.

In Castile, the Visitor was Pedro Fernández, who prudently balanced the interests of the Discalced Carmelites with those of the nuns and friars who did not desire reform.

[25] In Andalusia to the south, the Visitor was Francisco Vargas, and tensions rose due to his clear preference for the Discalced friars.

Vargas asked them to make foundations in various cities, in contradiction to the express orders from the Carmelite Prior General to curb expansion in Andalusia.

As a result, a General Chapter of the Carmelite Order was convened at Piacenza in Italy in May 1576, out of concern that events in Spain were getting out of hand.

King Philip II of Spain was supportive of Teresa's reforms, and so was not immediately willing to grant the necessary permission to enforce the ordinance.

The Discalced friars also found support from the papal nuncio to Spain, Nicolò Ormaneto [it], Bishop of Padua, who still had ultimate power to visit and reform religious orders.

[12] When Ormaneto died on 18 June 1577, John was left without protection, and the friars opposing his reforms regained the upper hand.

[citation needed] On the night of 2 December 1577, a group of Carmelites opposed to reform broke into John's dwelling in Ávila and took him prisoner.

He was jailed in a monastery where he was kept under a brutal regime that included public lashings before the community at least weekly, and severe isolation in a tiny stifling cell measuring barely 10 by 6 feet (3.0 by 1.8 m).

)[citation needed] After being nursed back to health, first by Teresa's nuns in Toledo, and then during six weeks at the Hospital of Santa Cruz, John continued with the reforms.

[12] At that meeting John was appointed superior of El Calvario, an isolated monastery of around thirty friars in the mountains about 6 miles (9.7 km) away[33] from Beas in Andalusia.

[citation needed] In 1579 he moved to Baeza, a town of around 50,000 people, to serve as rector of a new college, the Colegio de San Basilio, for Discalced friars in Andalusia.

On 22 June, Pope Gregory XIII signed a decree, entitled Pia Consideratione, which authorised the separation of the old (later "calced") and the newly reformed, "Discalced" Carmelites.

At the first General Chapter of the Discalced Carmelites, in Alcalá de Henares on 3 March 1581, John of the Cross was elected one of the "Definitors" of the community, and wrote a constitution for them.

[12] The morning after John's death huge numbers of townspeople in Úbeda entered the monastery to view his body; in the crush, many were able to take home bits of his habit.

The people of Úbeda, however, unhappy at this change, sent a representative to petition the pope to move the body back to its original resting place.

[40][3] In 1926, he was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius XI after the definitive consultation of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange OP, professor of philosophy and theology at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum in Rome.

Although his complete poems add up to fewer than 2,500 verses, two of them, the Spiritual Canticle and the Dark Night of the Soul, are widely considered masterpieces of Spanish poetry, both for their formal style and their rich symbolism and imagery.

The first redaction of the commentary on the poem was written in 1584, at the request of Madre Ana de Jesús, when she was prioress of the Discalced Carmelite nuns in Granada.

[12] The Ascent of Mount Carmel is a more systematic study of the ascetical endeavour of a soul seeking perfect union with God and the mystical events encountered along the way.

[44] These, together with his Dichos de Luz y Amor or "Sayings of Light and Love" along with Teresa's own writings, are the most important mystical works in Spanish, and have deeply influenced later spiritual writers across the world.

[56] It has rarely been disputed that the overall structure of John's mystical theology, and his language of the union of the soul with God, is influenced by the Pseudo-Dionysian tradition.

[citation needed] The possibility of influence by the so-called "Rhineland mystics" such as Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, Henry Suso and John of Ruysbroeck has also been mooted by many authors.

This case was first made in detail by Dámaso Alonso, who believed that as well as drawing from scripture, John was transforming non-religious, profane themes, derived from popular songs (romanceros) into religious poetry.

This was first proposed in detail by Miguel Asín Palacios and has been most recently put forward by the Puerto Rican scholar Luce López-Baralt.