José de Jesús María Quiroga

Quiroga was born at Castro Caldelas, in the province of Ourense, Galicia. His birth is usually placed around 1562, although the documentary basis for the exact year is uncertain.^[1][2] He studied at the University of Salamanca, probably in law, and was connected with the household and patronage of his uncle, Cardinal Gaspar de Quiroga y Vela, archbishop of Toledo. Before entering religious life, he obtained a benefice in the cathedral chapter of Toledo in 1592, but soon renounced this ecclesiastical prospect.^[2]

In 1595 he received the habit of the Discalced Carmelites at Madrid and made profession on 2 February 1596, taking the religious name José de Jesús María.^[2] Soon afterward, probably in 1597, he was appointed historian general of the Discalced Carmelite reform by the superior general, Elías de San Martín. In this role he travelled through Carmelite houses in Andalusia and Castile, collected testimony, and became acquainted with members of the first generation formed by John of the Cross and Teresa of Ávila.^[2]

From late 1603 to May 1607 Quiroga served as prior of the Discalced Carmelite convent at Toledo. Afterward he lived in several houses of the order, including Madrid, Pastrana, Toledo, and Alcalá, and devoted himself chiefly to writing.^[2]

Quiroga's chief historical work was the Historia de la vida y virtudes del V.P. Fray Juan de la Cruz, published in Brussels in 1628. Its full title presents John of the Cross as the first friar of the Discalced Carmelite reform and as a master of the contemplative life by which souls are transformed in God.^[3] The edition was printed by Juan de Meerbeeck and was associated with the patronage of Isabella Clara Eugenia, governor of the Spanish Netherlands.^[4]

The biography was based on witness testimony, Carmelite memories, and materials connected with the beatification process of John of the Cross. Quiroga gave particular attention to the saint's sufferings: the imprisonment at Toledo in 1577–1578 by members of the older Carmelite Observance, and the harsh treatment he received during his final illness at Úbeda in 1591. His account presents these events not merely as episodes in a saint's life, but as manifestations of John's doctrine of naked faith, passive purification, and contemplative surrender.^[3][4]

The publication caused difficulties within the Discalced Carmelite order. Quiroga had not obtained the required permission from his superiors, and the work touched sensitive matters concerning internal conflicts within the reform. His superiors judged him culpable and sent him to the convent of Cuenca, where he died on 13 December 1628.^[1][2] Later Carmelite writers produced other lives of John of the Cross, but Quiroga's biography continued to be used and translated. It appeared in Latin, Italian, and French, and remained a major early source for the reception of John of the Cross outside Spain.^[2]

Quiroga was among the more prolific writers of the early Discalced Carmel. His works include historical, ascetical, mariological, and mystical writings. Among his printed works were Primera parte de las excelencias de la castidad (Alcalá, 1601), Historia de Santa Catalina (Toledo, 1608), Historia de la vida y singulares prerrogativas del glorioso San José (Madrid, 1613), and Historia de la vida y virtudes del Venerable Hermano Fray Francisco del Niño Jesús (Uclés, 1624).^[2]

His posthumously published mystical writings include Subida del alma a Dios que aspira a la divina unión (Madrid, 1656) and its second part, Segunda parte de la Subida del alma a Dios y entrada en el paraíso espiritual (Madrid, 1659). These two parts form a large treatise on prayer: the first part treats ordinary prayer and the ascent from meditation to contemplation, while the second treats extraordinary prayer, infused recollection, prayer of quiet, rapture, spiritual betrothal, habitual union, and spiritual marriage.^[5][6]

Several shorter works defend and explain the doctrine of John of the Cross. Don que tuvo San Juan de la Cruz para guiar las almas a Dios presents John as having received a special divine gift for guiding souls from meditation to contemplation. Respuesta a algunas razones contrarias a la contemplación afectiva y oscura answers objections to the affective and dark contemplation taught by John. Respuesta a una duda de la doctrina de nuestro Santo Padre San Juan de la Cruz en materia de oración explains the saying in The Ascent of Mount Carmel that the Holy Spirit illumines the recollected understanding according to the mode of its recollection.^[7]

Quiroga's Apología mística en defensa de la Contemplación divina was written as a defence of divine contemplation against critics who suspected the Sanjuanist doctrine of passivity, darkness, and imageless prayer. The work distinguishes true contemplation from the errors of the Alumbrados, defends contemplative quiet as vigilant and loving rather than idle, and argues from Scripture, the Fathers, scholastic theology, and mystical authorities that contemplation belongs to the ancient doctrine of the Church.^[8][9]

Quiroga's mystical theology is especially concerned with the passage from discursive meditation to simple contemplation. Following Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Thomas Aquinas, he describes the soul's ascent to God through three movements: a straight movement from creatures to God by reasoning and comparison, an oblique movement beginning from God and returning to him through creatures, and a circular movement in which the soul passes beyond discursive steps into a simple, loving, faith-filled contemplation of God.^[5]

He does not reject meditation. For beginners, imaginative representation of the mysteries of Christ, intellectual ponderation, and affective prayer are necessary. Yet he argues that meditation should mature into a simpler loving attention. Once God begins to recollect the soul and communicate himself in contemplation, the soul should not be forced back into the discursive acts proper to beginners.^[5][7] Blessed Marie-Eugène de l'Enfant-Jésus later cited Quiroga as an early Carmelite witness to the danger that formation after John of the Cross could overemphasize discursive methods of mental prayer, leaving novices insufficiently instructed in the passage to contemplation.^[10]

A recurring formula in Quiroga's doctrine is the advertencia amorosa, or loving attention. By this he means a simple, obscure, faithful, and loving awareness of God, in which the understanding is quieted and the will is moved by love. He insists that such prayer is not idleness. The soul remains active as living receptivity: it consents, loves, attends, and receives the divine action. Its passivity is relative to God as principal mover, not the absence of spiritual operation.^[7][8]

Quiroga also insists on moral purification. Contemplation requires virtue, humility, detachment, and the uprooting of disordered affections. His doctrine of passive prayer is therefore joined to an ascetical programme of self-reform. In the higher stages, he describes purgations of the sensible and spiritual parts, infused recollection, prayer of quiet, spiritual inebriation, wounds of love, raptures, divine touches, actual union, habitual union, and spiritual marriage.^[6]

His treatment of Christ's humanity is also characteristic. Quiroga rejects the charge that John of the Cross neglects Christ or the mysteries of the Incarnation. Rather, he argues that beginners should meditate on Christ's life and Passion, while advanced contemplatives should hold these mysteries in a more spiritual, simple, and loving mode, without multiplying images or discursive acts when God is drawing the soul into deeper contemplation.^[8]

Quiroga's writings have been studied not only as works of Carmelite spirituality but also as witnesses to the early textual transmission of John of the Cross. José Vicente Rodríguez considered Quiroga especially important for the textual history of the Cántico espiritual, because his writings quote the poem extensively and appear to reflect a manuscript tradition used before later printed editions.^[11] Eulogio Pacho likewise emphasized the importance of consulting Quiroga's manuscripts in the Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid for identifying the Sanjuanist texts on which he depended.^[12]

Modern scholarly attention to Quiroga has been shaped especially by Fortunato de Jesús Sacramentado, who devoted a doctoral thesis and several studies in Monte Carmelo to Quiroga's literary inheritance, ascetical-mystical doctrine, and the textual problems surrounding the Subida del alma a Dios.^{[13][14][15][16]} Jean Krynen later edited the Apología mística from manuscript 4478 of the Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid and published a French study and translation of the work.^[8][9]

Dominique and Murielle Tronc place Quiroga among the Spanish mystical authors who helped form the later French and European reception of contemplative prayer. In their account, before Miguel de Molinos, two Spanish figures were especially important for later generations and were read by Jeanne Guyon and her circle: the Mexican hermit Gregorio López and Quiroga, as defender of John of the Cross.^[17] Guyon's Justifications cited Quiroga's life of John of the Cross when discussing the persecution John suffered at the end of his life.^[18]

Quiroga's writings also form part of the wider seventeenth-century reception of Carmelite mysticism. His defence of simple, loving, and affective contemplation stands within the early interpretation of John of the Cross and the post-Teresian development of Discalced Carmelite spirituality.^[2][8]

• Primera parte de las excelencias de la castidad (Alcalá, 1601)
• Historia de Santa Catalina (Toledo, 1608)
• Historia de la vida y singulares prerrogativas del glorioso San José (Madrid, 1613)
• Relación sumaria de la vida de San Juan de la Cruz (published anonymously in the first edition of the works of John of the Cross, Alcalá, 1618)
• Historia de la vida y virtudes del Venerable Hermano Fray Francisco del Niño Jesús (Uclés, 1624)
• Historia de la vida y virtudes del V.P. Fray Juan de la Cruz (Brussels, 1628)
• Historia de la Virgen María (Antwerp, 1652)
• Subida del alma a Dios que aspira a la divina unión (Madrid, 1656)
• Segunda parte de la Subida del alma a Dios y entrada en el paraíso espiritual (Madrid, 1659)
• Don que tuvo San Juan de la Cruz para guiar las almas a Dios
• Respuesta a algunas razones contrarias a la contemplación afectiva y oscura
• Respuesta a una duda de la doctrina de nuestro Santo Padre San Juan de la Cruz en materia de oración
• Apología mística en defensa de la Contemplación divina