This autumn marks the 400th anniversary of Miguel de la Fuente O.Carm’s death on 27 November 1625. Miguel was a Spanish Carmelite, who lived at the end of the so-called ‘golden age’. He belongs to the generation immediately after Teresa and John, who established the historical context in which their works were first received. But he is worth remembering in his own right, even if less illustrious than his immediate predecessors. His surviving works, and what we know about his life, tell us much about the richness of Carmelite spirituality in his day.
Miguel was born in 1573, in a village near Madrid. He was one of five siblings, and his elder brother Juan joined the Carmelites before him. They were followed by a nephew, also named Miguel, who later became a professor at the University of Toledo. To distinguish them within the Order, they acquired nicknames. The younger was known as Miguel ‘el maestro’; The uncle was Miguel ‘el santo’.
When he was about fifteen, Miguel began to study at the Jesuit college in Madrid. While there he became attracted to the Carmelite Order. He was drawn to the simple life of prayer and recollection practised at the Madrid Carmel, together with the ‘careful’ celebration of the liturgy and great Marian devotion.
In 1593, Miguel entered the Carmelite novitiate at Valdemoro, south of Madrid. This house had been founded just five years previously, according to the principles promoted by Giovanni Battista Rossi, who had been Prior General of the Carmelite Order from 1564 until his death in 1578. Early in his term of office he had visited the Order in Spain, where he had met and been impressed by Teresa of Avila. He continued the work of renewal begun by his predecessors, Nicholas Audet and John Soreth. This meant that, according to the Carmelite historian Pablo Garrido, Miguel was able to ‘see and live fully the Carmelite ideal of which he would become enamoured.’1
After professing vows as a Carmelite, Miguel moved to Salamanca, arriving at the Carmelite house thirty years after John of the Cross had begun his own studies there. Miguel’s early years in the Order were characterised by frequent changes of community. He moved to Valladolid and then, a couple of years later, to Avila. However, things went wrong there, and Miguel’s preaching was regarded as disastrous. His early biographer, the Jesuit Pedro Oxea published a biography of Miguel in 1674, where he hints that Miguel may have been excessively attached to academic learning, without consideration for his listeners. Oxea saw this failure in the pulpit as providential, leading him to ‘renounce all deceptive appetites and little vanities.’ Miguel resolved to ‘leave behind his scholastic studies and to devote himself to mystical theology and to morality, so that he could benefit his neighbours.’ We might remember here the particular way that Teresa uses the phrase ‘mystical theology’ in her writings: not an academic discipline, but a way of life, learning first-hand of the transformative nature of God’s presence.
After more moves of community, in 1609 Miguel arrived in Toledo, where he spent the rest of his life and played an important part in the Carmelite community. At different times he was responsible for the novices and the Carmelite students. He worked as a spiritual director for many religious and lay people, and the evidence gathered to support his beatification shows how wise and highly regarded he was in this role. He worked to create a number of associations of lay people connected to the Toledo Carmelites. This type of activity was characteristic of the time, and the Jesuits in particular were known for furthering their mission through creating associations of lay people.
At the time, there were many alumbrados and beatas, men and women who were dedicated to prayer and to their spiritual lives, but with a somewhat ambiguous connection to the institutional Church. By creating these groups, with a written Rule and an established place in the Church, he and others like him could ensure a place for lay people and lay spirituality within the post-Tridentine Church.
Miguel and other members of his community also undertook apostolic work amongst the very poor. He imitated John of Avila’s example, travelling around villages and rural areas in the mountains around Toledo, preaching the gospel and bringing the sacraments to the rural poor. Within the city, he particularly worked with poor women at risk of needing to resort to prostitution. The Carmelites provided food to help them make ends meet and feed their children.
Miguel died on the 27th of November, 1625, at the age of 52. He was known throughout Toledo for his sanctity, and a process for his beatification was begun. This was never completed, and so he remains one of the less-known holy men and women, who never received official approval from the Church.
Intense apostolic activity did not prevent him from living a life of deep prayer. This was needed for his activity in spiritual direction, and his experience of God can be seen in his writings. A number of his minor works survive, aimed at encouraging and directing the members of the fraternities and other religious groups he was involved with. However, he is primarily remembered for his master work of spirituality, Las tres vidas del hombre (The Three Lives of Man).
In this book, Miguel systematically describes the spiritual life, and how transformation in God may occur through prayer. Through his ministry Miguel saw the need for a manual by which people could orient themselves within the spiritual life. He outlines his approach, demonstrating how far he has come since his early preaching in Avila:
‘We will not explain it with the meticulousness and rigour that scholars use in the schools, as this is not appropriate for those who do not study literature. We will speak clearly, simply, and straightforwardly, with what is necessary to explain the matter.’2
He divides the spiritual life into three stages, or lives. The first is that of the senses, where the exterior life of the person is dominant. The second is the rational life, where the person is governed by the mind and its will and understanding. The third and final stage is that of pure spirit. Love and grace are at their most fully developed, leading towards the different degrees of union with God.
The book was first published in Toledo in 1623. It was praised by Maria de Jesus, Teresa of Avila’s contemporary, who lived 63 years in the Toledo Carmel. She said, ‘…it speaks to the heart and the truth of what happens for souls when God calls them to states of prayer and contemplation.’ The book was published again in Madrid in 1710, with an introduction describing the life of its author, and a third time in Barcelona in 1887. The most recent edition was in 2002.
Discussion of The Three Lives has centred around the originality of its author’s views. E. Allison Peers, best known for his translations of Teresa and John, harshly criticised Miguel as: ‘Derivative, repetitive, and either hopelessly vague or meaninglessly meticulous, he represents, as regards exposition of mystical theology, an advanced stage of decline.’3 However, other writers have seen a different side to Miguel and his writing. For them, the originality of his work lies not in the specifics of its content, but in the way in which he developed a systematic way of organising related concepts from dissimilar authors.4 This was always marked by the overriding purpose of the book, which was to teach the path of prayer to as many people as possible. This reflects Miguel’s life experience, having spent many years guiding inexperienced Carmelites and accompanying lay people along their spiritual path.
Miguel lived at the end of Spain’s spiritual ‘Golden Age’, a period of great religious and spiritual renewal. Teresa and John are pre-eminent among the many significant spiritual teachers of this period, but there were many others. As this burst of creativity came to an end, it required someone to take these disparate teachings and to integrate and systematise them. Most of the time Miguel keeps to the task of receiving the wisdom of his immediate predecessors and to his role as a consolidator, but sometimes his own deep experience of the spiritual life breaks through.
Four hundred years after his death, Miguel de la Fuente has settled into a place as one of a number of lesser lights in the history of Spanish and Carmelite spirituality. He may be outshone by the brilliance of others, but together with his contemporaries he contextualises the time and the first reception of these spiritual stars. He still provides an example of how Carmelite life can be lived, showing how a life of prayer can be integrated with service of others so that each of these aspects illuminates and reinforces.
- Pablo M. Garrido O.Carm., Miguel de la Fuente O.Carm (1573–1625): Un maestro de oración, in Carmelus, Vol. 17, No. 2 (1970), pp. 242–279. — Followed in the same issue (pp. 280–309) by the text of one of Miguel’s shorter works, Los Ejercicios de oración mental (1615). ↩︎
- Miguel de la Fuente, Las tres vidas del hombre: Corporal, racional y espiritual, ed. Pablo M. Garrido, Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, Madrid, 2002. ISBN: 978-84-7914-521-7. ↩︎
- E. Allison Peers, Studies of the Spanish Mystics, Vol. III (1930), pp. 54–58.— Contains a highly critical assessment of Miguel’s work. ↩︎
- For a recent assessment, see: Xavier Varella Monzonís, Miguel de la Fuente (1573–1625): Las tres vidas del hombre. Análisis, estructura y fuentes de la oración, Licence Thesis, Gregorian University, Rome, 2013. ↩︎
