JOHN (MOULIN) of Saint Samson. - A mystical Carmelite, highly esteemed, born in Sens on 19 November 1571, died in Rennes on 14 September 1636. Having become blind at the age of three, he devoted himself, even as a young man, to the spiritual life, having the works of the great masters of the spiritual life read to him. Having renounced his family’s wealth in order to practice evangelical poverty in the world, he came into contact with the Carmelites in Paris; from there he went to the convent in Dol, where he was received as a lay brother at the age of thirty-five. At that time the Touraine reform was being completed, and he became its spiritual master through his oral teaching and his many writings; a host of distinguished mystics were formed at his school. G. has been called the “French John of the Cross.”
A characteristic of his spirituality is the decisiveness with which he carries the foundations of Catholic mysticism to their ultimate conclusions. God is an infinite sea to which all creatures, like rivers, must return; a consuming table of love in which we must all be burned. The indispensable condition is the death and spiritual annihilation of the creature. Mystical life is nothing other than God experienced ineffably; his soul is a burning love, whence a certain voluntarism in G. Mystical life is necessary for Christian perfection; outside of it, only one path remains open to holiness: the path of tribulations. Thus G. extends the call to mystical life to all, and assures that it will be granted to all who faithfully practice virtue, at least at the end of life.
The works of G. were collected by the Carmelite Dozziano of Saint Nicholas in two volumes in-folio: *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 are those of M. Van den Bossche, *Actes de la vie chrétienne* (Paris 1938), and S. M. Boucheraux, *Directions pour la vie intérieure* (IV 1947).
Bartolomeo M. Xiberta