IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA, Saint. - Last son of Beltrán Yáñez de Oñaz y Loyola and of Marina Sáenz de Licona y Balda, born in 1491 before 23 October in the palace-fortress of Loyola near Azpeitia (Guipúzcoa, Spain), died in Rome on 31 July 1556. He was called Iñigo López de Loyola (not Recalde), although he almost never used the López, and changed the Iñigo to I. between 1537-42.
Educated until the age of 12-13 in the deeply Catholic faith and in the Basque customs of the family at Loyola, he was then (1506?-17) page of Juan Velázquez de Cuéllar, minister of Finance of King Ferdinand the Catholic, residing with the court at Arévalo and Valladolid. To these years belong his readings of books of chivalry and his sinful adventures (process of Azpeitia, 1515), but also his love for music and for sacred songs (poem to St. Peter and prayers to the Madonna at tournaments). After the fall of Velázquez (1517), he became not a captain, as has been said, of the royal army, but a gentleman of his relative the duke of Nájera, viceroy of Navarre. In this capacity he took part with prudence and loftiness of spirit in the pacification of Nájera and Guipúzcoa and in the defense of the fortress of Pamplona, where he was gravely wounded by the French (20 May 1521).
During his convalescence at Loyola, while in his worldly dreams he aspired to the hand of an Infanta (doña Catherine, sister of Charles V?), divine Grace transformed him into that perfect knight of Christ described in the Flos sanctorum and in the Vita Christi of Ludolph of Saxony, which he was reading. For love of the new king, he began the pilgrimage to Jerusalem at the beginning of 1522; but he interrupted it for almost a year, leading first, after a brief stay at Manresa, a solitary life on the mountain of Montserrat and in a cave near Manresa, and then dwelling for many months in this Catalan city. There he was transformed into one of the most authentic mystics of the Church, and into the author of the Spiritual Exercises (v.), perfected later at Alcalá, Paris, Venice and Rome (1522-41). After the pilgrimage to the Holy Land (1523), he began his long studies to prepare himself to help souls and to gather companions of apostolate, first at Barcelona (1524-26), then at Alcalá and Salamanca (1526-27), later at Paris (1528-35), Bologna and Venice (1535-36). At Alcalá and Salamanca he was imprisoned, judged and acquitted by the diocesan vicars Figueroa and Frías, not, as is often said, by the Inquisition. At the University of Paris, which he highly praised, he obtained, after the visit to Flanders and London, the degree of master in Arts (Apr. 1534). Also at Paris he finally succeeded in gathering the first great companions (Faber, Xavier, Laínez, Salmerón, Bobadilla, Rodrigues) and in instilling in them through the Exercises the spirit of the vow of Montmartre (15 Aug. 1534): apostolate in poverty and chastity, if possible in Palestine unto martyrdom for Christ; if this should not succeed, there where the vicar of Christ wills, among the faithful, the infidel or the Protestants, though without a directly anti-Protestant design. I. avoided until 1539 the founding of an Order, not (as has sometimes been said) out of a certain Erasmian spirit, but out of fear that some ancient rule might be imposed on him that would clip the wings of the realization of his apostolic ideal of a new type. The impossibility of passing into Palestine (May 1537-May 1538), the example of the very recent Clerics Regular first known at Venice (the Theatines), the protection of Paul III through the good offices of Dr. Ortiz and Cardinal Contarini, finally the mystical experience of the Storta (Nov. 1537), made him in 1539 attempt the founding of the new Order: the Society of Jesus (v.). There follow the first verbal approval of Paul III at Tivoli (3 Sept. 1539), the written one of the bull of 27 Sept. 1540, then the election of I. as general and the first solemn profession at St. Paul Outside the Walls (8 and 22 Apr. 1541).
His activity as founder and general develops in two stages, divided by the Holy Year 1550. In the first (1541-49) he carries out the apostolate to make Rome the example, no longer the scandal, of the world: Exercises, catechism, preservation of girls in danger, conversion of courtesans, Baptism and defense of the Jews, intense pastoral life at St. Mary of the Way near the Palazzo Venezia, the usual residence of the Pope. I. establishes at the same time the first novitiate of the Order, personally forming his sons in the new spirit (Ribadeneira, Domenech, Polanco, Nadal, Canisius, Manare, Palmio, Mercurian and the first Japanese to come to Europe, Bernard...), and then sending them to Portugal, to the Indies, to Spain, to Paris, to Venice, to Germany, to Flanders, to Trent, priestly formation of Jesuits and non-Jesuits, which would make
the city of the popes a center of ecclesiastical learning
(1549). He composes finally, with the help of Polanco, the first and second draft of the Constitutions of the
Society (1546-49), convoking at Rome to approve them,
during the Holy Year, all the professed of the Order.
The second stage (1550-56) begins with the new
approval of the Society, made by Julius III
(21 July 1550) with a more explicit description of its
end - now consciously also anti-Protestant -
and of its internal structure. There follow the
approval of the Constitutions by the professed and the renunciation
of the generalate by I., on account (the Saint maintains) of
his sins and his illnesses (30 Jan. 1551).
He indeed believed he had completed his personal
mission, and perhaps also wished to remove every
present and future pretext for the suspicion that he had
introduced the perpetual generalate in his own interest,
against the current of the other Orders and of Gian Pietro
Carafa. But the renunciation was rejected by all the professed, except Oviedo, and he had to continue the office,
certainly with an even broader help from Polanco and
Nadal. In these last years he founded the Roman College
(1551) and the German College (1552); he developed so amply
the pedagogical apostolate as to make the Society (with a new design) a teaching Order;
he had the Constitutions promulgated for the provinces (1553-
1555), giving the third hand to his text and adding
the letter of obedience (26 March 1553),
the Summary of the Constitutions and a great part of the
Rules; at the request of his disciples, he dictated the account of his life to Fr. González de Cámara (1553-
1555) in a prose that creates a new type of autobiography, no longer humanist; he extended finally important norms
on the manner of giving the Exercises, of attracting
the Protestants by conviction and by love, and of
obtaining the union of the heretics and schismatics of Ethiopia.
Thus, when I. died, he had done for the Society
what perhaps no other founder had the time
and the fortune to do for his own Order. And he had
done it in the firm persuasion of rendering thereby to the
Church and to the pontificate the greatest possible service. By means of the Society, he in fact added
to the program of reform of the Church two notes,
which for the most part were lacking in the celebrated Consilium
reformationis of 1537, and which were afterwards of the greatest
influence: the diffusion of a spirituality in the Congo, in
Brazil, in Ethiopia.
He also obtains, by
means of Francis
Borgia, who had recently
entered the Order,
one of his most
ardent wishes on behalf of the Catholic
Reform, the papal approval
of the Spiritual
Exercises (31 July
1548). After several pedagogical
experiments in the
provinces (Goa, Gandia, Ingolstadt,
Messina) he conceives
the founding
at Rome of a college for the forma-
organic and transformative as that of the Exercises and the wise organization of the education and instruction of youth, in the first place of that destined for the priesthood; this simultaneously in Europe, America and the Far East.
As in the Theatines and the other Regular Clerics, so too in the Ignatian creation it is the priestly apostolate that is the soul informing the juridical structure of the Order; but in it with more original and consistent traits, such as the obligatory ecumenicity of the apostolate itself, the absence of choir and of common penances, the renunciation of ecclesiastical dignities and of the government of nuns, the prolongation of the novitiate and the long delay of solemn profession, the canonical figure of the simple vows that precede it, and the monarchical and lifelong government of the general, subject however always to the General Congregation, which can be convoked in grave cases even against his opinion. The efficacy that this juridical structure has given and still gives today to the functioning of the Society is well known, as is the influence it has exercised on the later development of religious Orders and Congregations, indeed, in some points, of canon law itself.
I. is one of the most genuine mystics of the Church, as revealed by the almost habitual Trinitarian experiences recorded in his Diario espiritual (from 2 Feb. 1544 to 27 Feb. 1545). From these loftiest heights one understands his strong and tender love toward Jesus and the Madonna, toward the hierarchical Church "quae Romano est," the Mystical Body of Christ, Spouse of the Holy Spirit and our Mother; and toward the souls redeemed by the blood of the divine Son. But his personal mysticism must be joined to a supreme reserve in speaking of it, and to a great insistence on founding the Exercises on the most conscious self-abnegation and solid asceticism: it is precisely there that the soul, with the help of Grace, gives to God what it can or prepares itself for the true apostolate. Also characteristic of I. is the union of the supernatural with the highest esteem and use of natural forces, indeed of all those honest means (languages, science, the art of conversation, penetration of the spirit of the age, suitable and flexible organization, etc.) that often serve evil, but can and must rather serve good. Loyola also succeeded in fusing into a unity of action the supreme appreciation of the ultranational universality of the Church with the esteem and use of many national values, often opposed to one another. See his relations with the contrasting Catholic sovereigns of his time and with the often rival universities, the understanding he succeeded in establishing in his communities among Frenchmen, Italians, Flemings, Germans and Spaniards. In unifying these forces for the Catholic Reformation, overcoming their antagonisms, he revealed himself a true practical genius of organization. It is true that in the whole of his character the ingenuous and gentle spontaneity of a Francis of Assisi or a Philip Neri stands out less; but not even his reflective consistency lacked a flexible and amiable attraction. Proof of this is the cordial love that his sons professed for him, even though they were often strongly reproved by him, such as Lainez, Nadal, Loarte. The latter beautifully defined him: "Fr. I. is a fountain of oil." From the point of view of national psychology, I. knew how to bring about the most successful union of the realistic, reflective and tenacious spirit of the Basques with the ideally chivalric and ecumenical spirit of the Castilian nobility of the sixteenth century.
St. I. was beatified on 27 July 1609, canonized on 12 March 1622. Feast on 31 July.
ICONOGRAPHY
There is the wax mask, taken immediately after death, and the plaster one which is reproduced in these columns. The oldest and most authentic paintings are three: the first, made in Rome by Jacopino del Conte, a spiritual son of Ignatius; the second, executed in Madrid by Alonso Sánchez Coello under the direction of Ribadeneira; the third, by an anonymous artist highly esteemed by Manareo and by the fathers of Belgium. In the rich Ignatian artistic iconography, the statues of Montañés, Hernández and P. Le Gros stand out, as do the bas-reliefs of Alessandro Algardi and Renato Fremin, and finally the paintings of Rubens, Roelas, Carracci, Gaulli, Brother Pozzo and Salaverria. - See plate XCVIII.
Bibliography33 works
Pietro de Leturia