[1]It will be seen from what follows that in practice the Saint preserves the strictly tripartite division given in the text above, supernatural knowledge being found in each of the sections.
[4]P. JosŽ de Jesœs Mar’a, in his Vida y excelencias de la Sant’sima Virgen Mar’a (I, xl), quotes this and part of the last paragraph from what he claims to be an original MS. of St. John of the Cross, but his text varies considerably from that of any MS. now known. [P. Silverio considers that this and other similar citations are quite untrustworthy.]
[5]The reference is to the drawing of the Mount of Perfection. Cf. The General Introduction, I, above.
[7][Lit., 'which cannot be' (que no puede ser), but this is a well-known Spanish hyperbole describing what is extremely difficult.]
[8]E.p. omits all the rest of this paragraph, substituting the following passage, which it introduces in order [says P. Silverio] to describe the scope of the Saint's teaching, and which is copied in the edition of 1630:
In [treating of] this purgation of the memory, I speak here only of the necessary means whereby the memory may place itself actively in this night and purgation, as far as lies in its power. And these means are that the spiritual man must habitually exercise caution, after this manner. Of all the things that he sees, hears, smells, tastes or touches he must make no particular store in the memory, or pay heed to them, or dwell upon them, but must allow them to pass and must remain in holy oblivion without reflecting upon them, save when necessary for some good reflection or meditation. And this care to forget and forsake knowledge and images is never applicable to Christ and His Humanity. For, although occasionally, at the height of contemplation and simple regard of the Divinity, the soul may not remember this most sacred Humanity, because God, with His own hand, has raised the soul to this, as it were, confused and most supernatural knowledge, yet it is in no wise seemly to study to forget it, since looking and meditating lovingly upon it will aid the soul to [attain] all that is good, and it is by its means that the soul will most readily rise to the most lofty state of union. And it is clear that, although other bodily and visible things are a hindrance and ought to be forgotten, we must not include among these Him Who became man for our salvation, and Who is the truth, the door, the way and the guide to all good things. This being assumed, let the soul strive after complete abstraction and oblivion, so that, in so far as is possible, there may remain in its memory no more knowledge or image of created things than though they existed not in the world; and let it leave the memory free and disencumbered for God, and, as it were, lost in holy oblivion.
[30][The two verbs, in the original, have very definite and concrete meanings, 'sweetened with honey' and 'dazzled by a lamp' respectively.]
[57][Lit., 'things or blessings.' The word here translated 'blessings' is bienes, often rendered 'goods.' I use 'blessings' or 'good things' in the following chapters, according as best suits the context.]
[99][The word 'sin' is not in the original of this sentence, which reads 'the small . . . the great . . .' etc.]
[131][Lit., pol’tica, the 'political' virtue of Aristotle and St. Thomas -- i.e., the 'social,' as opposed to the 'moral,' 'intellectual' and 'theological' virtues. P. Silverio glosses the word as meaning 'good government in the commonweal, courtesy and other social virtues.']
[165]'Nec fides habet meritum cui humana ratio praebet experimentum.' St. Gregory, Hom. 26 in Evang. (Migne, Vol. LXXVI, p. 1,137).
[178][In spite of this promise, the Saint does not return to this subject at such length as his language here would suggest.]
[181][In this and the next paragraph the Saint is more than usually personal in his approach to the reader. The word tœ(you) is repeated many times, and placed in emphatic positions, in a way which cannot be exactly reproduced in English.]
[184][Again the Saint begins, repeatedly and emphatically, to employ the pronoun tœ. Cf. Bk. III, chap. xxxvi, ¤ 7, above.]
[202]With the last word of this chapter, which is also the last word of the page in Alc., the copy of P. Juan Evangelista comes to an end. The remainder of Alc. comes from another very early copy which, in the time of P. AndrŽs, existed at Duruelo (cf. Outline of the Life of St.John of the Cross, above).
[219]E.p. adds: 'End of the Ascent of Mount Carmel.' The treatise thus remains incomplete, the chapter on the preacher being unfinished and no part of any chapter upon the hearer having come down to us. Further, the last two divisions of the four mentioned in Chap. xxxv, ¤ 1 are not treated in any of the MSS. or early editions.
The fragments which P. Gerardo [Obras, etc., I, 402-10] added to the Ascent, forming two chapters, cannot be considered as a continuation of this book. They are in reality a long and admirable letter [Letter XI in The Complete Works of St. John of the Cross: Vol. III, p. 255], written to a religious, who was one of the Saint's spiritual sons, and copied by P. Jer—nimo de San JosŽ in his History of St. John of the Cross (Bk. VI, Chap. vii). There is not the slightest doubt that the letter which was written at Segovia, and is fully dated, is a genuine letter, and not an editor's maltreatment of part of a treatise. Only the similarity of its subject with that of these last chapters is responsible for its having been added to the Ascent. It is hard to see how P. Gerardo could have been misled about a matter which is so clear.
[This question was re-opened, in 1950, by P. Sobrino (see Vol. III, p. 240), who adds TG and a codex belonging to the Discalced Carmelite Fathers of Madrid to the list of the MSS. which give the fragments as part of the Ascent, making six authorities in all, against which can be set only the proved and admitted reliability of P. Jer—nimo de San JosŽ. P. Sobrino, who discusses the matter (Estudios, etc., pp. 166-93) in great detail, hazards a plausible and attractive solution, which he reinforces with substantial evidence -- that of a 'double redaction.' According to this theory, the Saint, in writing to the religious of Letter XI, made use, for the substance of his instruction, of two fragments which were to have gone into the Ascent. Considering how often in his writings he doubled passages, to say nothing of whole works, it is quite understandable that he should have utilized two unincorporated, and indeed unfinished, passages for a private letter.]