Saint John Joseph of the Cross

(Literally.)

Saint John Joseph of the Cross

The prolific chronicler of saints Rev. Butler’s 1864 telling of the life of John Joseph of the Cross is awfully poetic: “When death came to pluck him from the tree,” Butler writes, “he dropped like a ripe fruit, smiling, into his hands.” The saint’s self-imposed tortures will strike the reader as a bit more violent.

When John Joseph was 40, in the late 17th century, the superior in his Naples monastery told him he needed to start wearing sandals; the saint placed a handful of small nails on the soles them before he put them on. Later, he nailed a foot-long cross directly into his back, the wounds from which never healed.