GIOVANNI (MOULIN) di SAN SANSONE. – Carmelite mystic, highly esteemed, born in Sens on 19 Dec. 1571, died in Rennes on 14 Sept. 1636. Having become blind at the age of three, he devoted himself, while still a youth, to the spiritual life, having the works of the great masters of the spirit read to him. Having divested himself of his family possessions in order to practise evangelical poverty in the world, he came into contact with the Carmelites of Paris; from there he went to the convent of Dol, where he was received as a lay brother at the age of 35. The Turonense reform was then being brought to completion, and he became its spiritual master through oral teaching and numerous writings; a host of eminent mystics were formed at his school. G. has been called the French «John of the Cross».
Characteristic of his spirituality is the decisiveness with which he carries the foundations of Catholic mysticism to their ultimate consequences. God is an infinite sea to which all creatures, like rivers, must return; an immense furnace of love in which we must all be burned. An indispensable condition is the death and spiritual annihilation of the creature. The mystical life is nothing other than God ineffably apprehended; its soul is fervent love, hence a certain voluntarism in G. The mystical life is necessary for Christian perfection; outside it, only one path to holiness remains open: the way of tribulations. Thus G. extends the vocation to the mystical life to all, and assures that it will be granted to all if they have faithfully exercised themselves in virtue, at least at the end of life.
G.’s works were collected by the Carmelite Donaziano di S. Nicola, in 2 vols. in-fol.: Les oeuvres spirituelles et mystiques du divin contemplatif f. Jean de St-Samson (Rennes 1658-59). Among the many other partial editions and collections of sayings, the two most recent deserve mention: M. Van den Bossche, Actes de la vie chrétienne (Paris 1938), and S. M. Boucheraux, Directions pour la vie intérieure (ibid. 1947).
Bertolomeo M. Xiberta