Saint Ignatius of Loyola | Biography & Facts

In December 24, 1491 Ignatius of Loyola, Spanish founder of the Jesuit order, was born in Azpeitia, Spain (d. 1556)

"Saint Ignatius of Loyola | Biography & Facts
St. Ignatius of Loyola, Spanish San Ignacio de Loyola, baptized Iñigo, (born 1491, Loyola, Castile [Spain]—died July 31, 1556, Rome [Italy]; canonized March 12, 1622; feast day July 31), Spanish theologian and one of the most influential figures in the Catholic Reformation of the 16th century, founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in Paris in 1534.

Early life
Ignatius was born in the ancestral castle of the Loyolas in the Basque province of Guipúzcoa. The youngest son of a noble and wealthy family, Ignatius became, in 1506, a page in the service of a relative, Juan Velázquez de Cuéllar, treasurer of the kingdom of Castile. In 1517 Ignatius became a knight in the service of another relative, Antonio Manrique de Lara, duke of Nájera and viceroy of Navarre, who employed him in military undertakings and on a diplomatic mission.

While defending the citadel of Pamplona against the French, Ignatius was hit by a cannonball on May 20, 1521, sustaining a bad fracture of his right leg and damage to his left. This event closed the first period of his life, during which he was, on his own admission, “a man given to the vanities of the world, whose chief delight consisted in martial exercises, with a great and vain desire to win renown” (Autobiography, 1). Although his morals were far from stainless, Ignatius was in his early years a proud rather than sensual man. He stood just under five feet two inches in height and had in his youth an abundance of hair of a reddish tint. He delighted in music, especially sacred hymns.

Spiritual awakening
It is the second period of Ignatius’s life, in which he turned toward a saintly life, that is the better known. After treatment at Pamplona, he was transported to Loyola in June 1521. There his condition became so serious that for a time it was thought he would die. When out of danger, he chose to undergo painful surgery to correct blunders made when the bone was first set. The result was a convalescence of many weeks, during which he read a life of Christ and a book on the lives of the saints, the only reading matter the castle afforded. He also passed time in recalling tales of martial valour and in thinking of a great lady whom he admired. In the early stages of this enforced reading, his attention was centred on the saints. The version of the lives of the saints he was reading contained prologues to the various lives by a Cistercian monk who conceived the service of God as a holy chivalry. This view of life profoundly moved and attracted Ignatius. After much reflection, he resolved to imitate the holy austerities of the saints in order to do penance for his sins.

In February 1522 Ignatius bade farewell to his family and went to Montserrat, a place of pilgrimage in northeastern Spain. He spent three days in confessing the sins of his whole life, hung his sword and dagger near the statue of the Virgin Mary as symbols of his abandoned ambitions, and, clothed in sackcloth, spent the night of March 24 in prayer. The next day he went to Manresa, a town 30 miles from Barcelona, to pass the decisive months of his career, from March 25, 1522, to mid-February 1523. He lived as a beggar, ate and drank sparingly, scourged himself, and for a time neither combed nor trimmed his hair and did not cut his nails. Daily he attended mass and spent seven hours in prayer, often in a cave outside Manresa.

The sojourn at Manresa was marked by spiritual trials as well as by joy and interior light. While sitting one day on the banks of Cardoner River, “the eyes of his understanding began to open and, without seeing any vision, he understood and knew many things, as well spiritual things as things of the faith” (Autobiography, 30). At Manresa, he sketched the fundamentals of his little book The Spiritual Exercises. Until the close of his studies at Paris (1535), he continued to make some additions to it. Thereafter there were only minor changes until Pope Paul III approved it in 1548. The Spiritual Exercises is a manual of spiritual arms containing a vital and dynamic system of spirituality. During his lifetime, Ignatius used it to give spiritual retreats to others, especially to his followers. The booklet is indeed an adaptation of the Gospels for such retreats.

The remainder of the decisive period was devoted to a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Ignatius left Barcelona in March 1523 and, traveling by way of Rome, Venice, and Cyprus, reached Jerusalem on September 4. He would have liked to have settled there permanently, but the Franciscan custodians of the shrines of the Latin church would not listen to this plan. After visiting Bethany, the Mount of Olives, Bethlehem, the Jordan River, and Mount of Temptation, Ignatius left Palestine on October 3 and, passing through Cyprus and Venice, reached Barcelona in March 1524.

Period of study
“After the pilgrim had learned that it was God’s will that he should not stay in Jerusalem, he pondered in his heart what he should do and finally decided to study for a time in order to be able to help souls” (Autobiography, 50). So Ignatius, who in his Autobiography refers to himself as the “pilgrim,” describes his decision to acquire as good an education as the circumstances permitted. He probably could have reached the priesthood in a few years. He chose to defer this goal for more than 12 years and to undergo the drudgery of the classroom at an age when most men have long since finished their training. Perhaps his military career had taught him the value of careful preparation. At any rate, he was convinced that a well-trained man would accomplish in a short time what one without training would never accomplish.

Ignatius studied at Barcelona for nearly two years. In 1526 he transferred to Alcalá. By this time he had acquired followers, and the little group had assumed a distinctive garb; but Ignatius soon fell under suspicion of heresy and was imprisoned and tried. Although found innocent, he left Alcalá for Salamanca. There not only was he imprisoned but his companions were also apprehended. Again he won acquittal but was forbidden to teach until he had finished his studies. This prohibition induced Ignatius to leave his disciples and Spain.

He arrived in Paris on February 2, 1528, and remained there as a student until 1535. He lived on alms, and in 1528 and 1529 he went to Flanders to beg from Spanish merchants. In 1530 he went to England for the same purpose. In Paris Ignatius soon had another group of disciples whose manner of living caused such a stir that he had to explain himself to the religious authorities. This episode finally convinced him that he must abstain from public religious endeavour until he reached the priesthood.

During his long stay in the French capital, Ignatius won the coveted M.A. at the Collège de Sainte-Barbe. He also gathered the companions who were to be cofounders with him of the Society of Jesus, among them Francis Xavier, who became one of the order’s greatest missionaries. On August 15, 1534, he led the little band to nearby Montmartre, where they bound themselves by vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, though as yet without the express purpose of founding a religious order.

Ordination
Early in 1535, before the completion of his theological studies, Ignatius left Paris for reasons of health. He spent more than six months in Spain and then went to Bologna and Venice where he studied privately. On January 8, 1537, his Parisian companions joined him in Venice. All were eager to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but war between Venice and the Turkish Empire rendered this impossible. Ignatius and most of his companions were ordained on June 24, 1537. There followed 18 months during which they acquired experience in the ministry while also devoting much time to prayer. During these months, although he did not as yet say mass, Ignatius had one of the decisive experiences of his life. He related to his companions that on a certain day, while in prayer, he seemed to see Christ with the cross on his shoulder and beside him the Eternal Father, who said, “I wish you to take this man for your servant,” and Jesus took him and said, “My will is that you should serve us.” On Christmas Day 1538 Ignatius said his first mass at the Church of St. Mary Major in Rome. This ends the third period of his life, that of his studies, which were far from a formality. Diego Laínez, a cofounder of the Society of Jesus and an intelligent observer, judged that despite handicaps Ignatius had as great diligence as any of his fellow students. He certainly became in the difficult field of ascetic and mystical theology one of the surest of Catholic guides.

Founding of the Jesuit order
The final period of Loyola’s life was spent in Rome or its vicinity. In 1539 the companions decided to form a permanent union, adding a vow of obedience to a superior elected by themselves to the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience to the Roman pontiff that they had already taken. In 1540 Pope Paul III approved the plan of the new order. Loyola was the choice of his companions for the office of general.

The Society of Jesus developed rapidly under his hand. When he died there were about 1,000 Jesuits divided into 12 administrative units, called provinces. Three of these were in Italy, a like number in Spain, two in Germany, one in France, one in Portugal, and two overseas in India and Brazil. Loyola was, in his last years, much occupied with Germany and India, to which he sent his famous followers Peter Canisius and Francis Xavier. He also dispatched missionaries to the Congo region and to Ethiopia. In 1546 Loyola secretly received into the society Francis Borgia, duke of Gandía and viceroy of Catalonia. When knowledge of this became public four years later it created a sensation. Borgia organized the Spanish provinces of the order and became third general.

Loyola left his mark on Rome. He founded the Roman College, embryo of the Gregorian University, and the Germanicum, a seminary for German candidates for the priesthood. He also established a home for fallen women and one for converted Jews.

The Jesuit Constitutions
Although at first Loyola had been somewhat opposed to placing his companions in colleges as educators of youth, he came in the course of time to recognize the value of the educational apostolate and in his last years was busily engaged in laying the foundations of the system of schools that was to stamp his order as largely a teaching order.

Probably the most important work of his later years was the composition of the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus. In them he decreed that his followers were to abandon some of the traditional forms of the religious life, such as chanting the divine office, physical punishments, and penitential garb, in favour of greater adaptability and mobility; they also renounced chapter government by the members of the order in favour of a more authoritative regime, and their vows were generally of such a nature that separation from the order was easier than had been usual in similar Catholic groups. The Society of Jesus was to be above all an order of apostles “ready to live in any part of the world where there was hope of God’s greater glory and the good of souls.” Loyola insisted on long and thorough training of his followers. Convinced that women are better ruled by women than by men, after some hesitation he resolutely excluded a female branch of the order. The special vow of obedience to the pope was called by Loyola “the cause and principal foundation” of his society.

While general of the order, Loyola was frequently sick. In January 1551 he became so ill that he begged his associates, though to no purpose, to accept his resignation as superior. Despite his condition he continued to direct the order until his death in July 1556. Since his days at Manresa, Loyola had practiced a form of prayer that was later published in The Spiritual Exercises and appears to have rivaled that of the greatest mystics.

Ignatius Loyola was beatified by Pope Paul V in 1609 and canonized by Pope Gregory XV in 1622. In 1922 he was declared patron of all spiritual retreats by Pope Pius XI. His achievements and those of his followers form a chapter in the history of the Roman Catholic church that cannot be neglected by those who desire to understand that institution. English translations of Ignatius’s two most important works are The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, trans. by L.J. Puhl (1951); and The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus: Translated, with an Introduction and a Commentary, by G.E. Ganss (1970)."