" Carmelites sprang up all over Spain as
the result of his labours. These monks and nuns slept upon bare
boards, fasted eight months in the year, never ate meat, and wore the
same serge dress in winter and summer. In some of these new
foundations the Brethren even vied with each other in adding voluntary
austerities to this severe rule. It was all part of the campaign
against Protestantism. The worldliness and luxury of the Renaissance
period were to be atoned for by a return to the purity and devotion of
earlier centuries. The older Catholic ideal--the mediaeval type of
Christianity--was to be restored in all its completeness in the
seventeenth century. This essentially militant character of the
movement among the Carmelites must not be lost sight of: the two great
Spanish mystics were before all things champions of the
counter-Reformation.

The two chief works of St. Juan are _The Ascent of Mount Carmel_, and
_The Obscure Night of the Soul_. Both are treatises on quietistic
Mysticism of a peculiar type. At the beginning of _La Subida de Monte
Carmelo_ he says, "The journey of the soul to the Divine union is
called _night_ for three reasons: the point of departure is privation
of all desire, and complete detachment from the world; the road is by
faith, which is like night to the intellect; the goal, which is God,
is incomprehensible while we are in this life."

The soul in its ascent passes from one realm of darkness to another.
First there is the "night of sense," in which the things of earth
become dark to her. This must needs be traversed, for "the creatures
are only the crumbs that fall from God's table, and none but dogs will
turn to pick them up." "One desire only doth God allow--that of
obeying Him, and carrying the Cross." All other desires weaken,
torment, blind, and pollute the soul. Until we are completely detached
from all such, we cannot love God. "When thou dwellest upon anything,
thou hast ceased to cast thyself upon the All." "If thou wilt keep
anything with the All, thou hast not thy treasure simply in God."
"Empty thy spirit of all created things, and thou wilt walk in the
Divine light, for God resembles no created thing." Such is the method
of traversing the "night of sense." Even at this early stage the forms
and symbols of eternity, which others have found in the visible works
of God, are discarded as useless. "God has no resemblance to any
creature." The dualism or acosmism of mediaeval thought