Notes

REMINISCENCES

1 The stronghold in question was Pamplona, capital of Navarre, and the date is 20 May 1521. The incident takes its place in long-standing tensions between France and Spain. Legend has it that Ignatius was wounded by a cannonball, but his choice of words suggests something lighter. Recent research has established that Ignatius was probably wounded not during the major part of the battle, when heavy cannon was used, but in preliminary lighter skirmishes. See Luis Fernández Martín, ‘Rendición de la fortaleza de Pamplona’, in Ignacio de Loyola en Castilla, ed. Luis Fernández Martín and Rogelio García Mateo, Valladolid 1989, pp. 93–101.

2 It was standard medieval practice for lay Christians in danger, and in the absence of a priest, to confess to each other. See, for example, Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, supplement, q.8. Technically, such confession was non-sacramental.

3 Coudray’s Latin translation of c. 1560 adds that Ignatius remained in the same room he had occupied previously, and that he was looked after by the best doctors in the French army.

4 The two feast-days mentioned here are 24 June and 29 June.

5 Polanco’s 1547–48 account of Ignatius’s life mentions that, as a courtier, he had written poems in honour of Peter (FN II, p. 517).

6 According to Nadal (e.g. FN II, pp. 186–87) the life of Christ was that of Ludolf of Saxony (d. 1377), and the collection of saints’ lives was that known as the Golden Legend (or Flos Sanctorum) compiled by the thirteenth-century Dominican Archbishop of Genoa, Jacopo of Varazze. Spanish translations of both texts were in circulation by the early sixteenth century. Nadal’s witness is confirmed in part by the striking parallels between Ludolf’s Vita Christi and the Spiritual Exercises. See E. Raitz von Frentz, ‘Ludolphe le Chartreux et les Exercices de S. Ignace de Loyola’, Revue d’ascétique et mystique, 25 (1949), pp. 375–88; Gilles Cusson, Biblical Theology and the Spiritual Exercises, St Louis, MO 1988, pp. 10–19.

7 Motes. The translation is conjectural, and the identity of the lady in question (assuming she was not a creation of Ignatius’s fantasy) quite uncertain.

8 This word is being used in Ignatius’s technical sense. See Glossary, Exx. 316 and Letter 4.

9 Ignatius’s hyperbole here alludes to Aristotelian and Thomist theories of knowledge and sense-perception. We come to know a particular object through its interaction with a ‘likeness’ (species) stored in the mind. See, for example, Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q.84 a.7. obj.I and ad.I.

10 Note Ignatius’s characteristic link here between consolation and the desire for service.

11 There is a notable Charterhouse in Burgos, site of the grave of Queen Isabella.

12 Antonio Manrique de Lara, viceroy of Navarre 1516–21, in whose service Ignatius had fought at Pamplona. Later in the summer of 1521, the French victory in the May battle had been reversed and Manrique restored. However, he had been replaced in November 1521, and had thus moved from Pamplona to Navarrete. The probable date of the incidents recorded here is February 1522.

13 This name is Basque for ‘you are among thorns’. In 1468, Our Lady had appeared to a shepherd boy in a thornbush, and the place soon became a Basque national shrine.

14 In 1554 Francis Borgia was concerned with the restoration of a monastery next to this shrine. At this point Ignatius wrote to him as follows: ‘… when God our Lord did me the mercy of my making some change in my life, I remember having received some profit in my soul from keeping vigil by night in the main body of that church’ (Epist. VII, p. 422). Other early accounts of Ignatius’s life speak of a vow of perpetual chastity which he made on the journey from Loyola to Montserrat. It seems attractive to conjecture that this took place here.

15 The language here, especially in the marginal note, echoes the characteristically Reformation concern with justification, and the bitter disputes that concern stimulated. But the narrative’s theme here is probably not a technical one. Ignatius is charting his growth in the awareness of God by contrasting the rash and unreflective naïveté of this stage in his journey with the wisdom that comes later at Manresa.

16 This is the first point at which the text gives Ignatius this title.

17 The flesh of the gourd, a kind of pumpkin, would have been scraped out, and the rind used as a water container.

18 Amadis of Gaul was probably the most famous of the so-called ‘tales of chivalry’ in Spain at the time, and had been published in 1508. At one point, Amadis’s son, Esplandián, keeps watch by night at the Virgin Mary’s altar. See Pedro de Leturia, Iñigo de Loyola, trans. Aloysius J. Owen, Chicago 1965, p. 143.

19 The confessor was a Frenchman, Jean Chanon; the three days probably includes time taken for prayerful preparation. Montserrat, a Benedictine monastery on a Catalan mountain with striking rock-formations, was at this time in the vanguard of the Catholic Reformation. This was chiefly thanks to the initiatives of Abbot García de Cisneros (abbot from 1493 to 1510), whose spiritual treatise Ejercitatorio de la vida espiritual, published in 1500, was widely influential. The abbey was a major centre of the so-called devotio moderna, with its renewed stress on the interior life and a methodical approach to prayer. In the abbey church there is a famous statue of Our Lady with the face in black.

20 Here Nadal added ‘having received the holy Eucharist’ to the early Latin translation.

21 This passage suggests that Ignatius’s original intention was to stay only a few days in Manresa. Why his stay was extended can only be conjectured. It may be that Ignatius wanted to avoid the retinue of the newly elected Adrian VI (Adrian Dedal, a Dutchman, formerly tutor to Charles V and regent of Spain), who had passed through the territory of Navarre (hence perhaps the shortage of money referred to in §13), and who left Barcelona for Rome in the spring of 1522.

22 The first of many sentences ending with ‘etc.’. It is not clear whether this usage goes back to Ignatius himself or whether it indicates that Gonçalves da Câmara is conscious of having left something out.

23 Passages such as this and the vision of Our Lady recounted in §10 obviously suggest the possibility of a psychoanalytic interpretation. For an initial discussion of the issues involved, see W. W. Meissner, Ignatius of Loyola: The Psychology of a Saint, 1992.

24 Compare Letter 4.5.

25 The identity of this woman is unknown. Lay women – beatas – played a significant role in the Spanish spiritual renewal of this period. See Mark Rotsaert, Ignace de Loyola et les renouveaux spirituels en Castille au début du XVIe siècle, Rome 1982, pp. 66–72.

26 Weekly communion was in fact a rarity in the sixteenth-century Church. Later the Society of Jesus would become noted for encouraging the practice.

27 This reference to an agujero (literally ‘hole’) is curious. Perhaps Ignatius’s memory is at this point so painful that he loses his grip on circumstantial detail and conflates his room with a cave outside.

28 See Exx. 87. The Golden Legend tells of how St Andrew once fasted for five days in order to obtain God’s pardon for a hardened, long-standing sinner.

29 See Exx. 319.

30 The most attractive interpretation of the passage, though by no means the only possible one, is as an illustration of the general principles outlined in Exx. 333–34, 346–48. Ignatius’s scruples are revealed as a strategy of the enemy’s. Initially they seemed to proceed from a sensitive piety, and it is only at a later stage, when Ignatius realizes that they culminate in making him feel like reneging on his conversion, that their destructive effect becomes apparent. Painful though an experience of this kind always is, it yields its own wisdom. Through it one gains insight into how the destructive forces within the self characteristically work.

31 ‘ayudar algunas almas’ or, elsewhere, ‘ánimas’. Though (or because?) no human being is able to help Ignatius as he is seized by God, the experience leads him to offer spiritual help to others. This is the first explicit use (but cf. §11, note 10) of a formula dear to Ignatius. It is quite wrong to interpret this phrase in terms of a Platonic or Cartesian dichotomy between soul and body; a case indeed can be made for translating alma or ánima as ‘person’. The principal reason for maintaining the term ‘soul’ in translation is to preserve, however inadequately, the sense that the help in question is motivated by the Gospel. See Constitutions, pp. 77–78, n. 10.

32 It is in this kind of detachment from particular experiences that Karl Rahner, the noted twentieth-century theologian, locates Ignatius’s original contribution to the spiritual life.

33 See Exx. 175, 330. Ignatius writes in these passages of an unquestionable divine irruption into consciousness, without reflecting on how such an event is to be understood theoretically. Commentators are seriously divided on the speculative issues raised by such claims.

34 According to Gonçalves da Câmara the major hiatus in the dictation process came after Ignatius had been ‘in Manresa for some days’. On stylistic grounds it seems likely that the break came here or hereabouts. But see note 40 below.

35 ‘en figura de tres teclas’. This is a puzzling and obscure expression, and it may not be appropriate to seek out a precise meaning. The analogy may be with how three individual notes can contribute to a chord.

36 See Exx. 237.

37 In the manuscripts the ‘3’ comes earlier (before the parenthesis immediately preceding). It has been transferred here first because it makes much better sense in this new position, secondly because it is clear that the copyists rearranged the material from which they were working at this point. Two of the most authoritative manuscripts have the following note: ‘The three things following (referring to the incidents recounted in paragraphs 32–33) are interspersed between these five points. In the copying they will be placed after all five are finished, below’ (FN I, p. 402).

38 These incidents are noted subsequently: §§ 41, 48.

39 Compare the testimony of Diego Laínez: ‘I remember … having heard Fr Ignatius say, when speaking of the gifts our Lord gave him there in Manresa, that it seemed to him that, if, per impossibile, the Scriptures and the other documents of the faith were to be lost, the idea and the impression of things which our Lord had imparted to him in Manresa would be enough for him as regards the things pertaining to salvation’ (FN I, p. 84).

40 Assuming that the date of dictation is 1555, this indicates that Ignatius was born in 1492 or 1493, and is therefore mistaken. If this passage was dictated in 1553 the reference would indicate what is probably the correct date: 1491. However, the context of the passage from Gonçalves da Câmara’s Notebook cited in the following note and the evidence of his preface tell in favour of dictation in 1555. As noted above, there is some evidence that the arrangement of material here is the responsibility of the scribes; they may be drawing on information given during both periods of dictation.

41 This vision by the River Cardoner is clearly a high point in Ignatius’s life, and one which he saw as decisively formative. On 17 February 1555 Gonçalves da Câmara asked Ignatius a number of questions about why he had laid down particular directives for life in the Society: no fixed dress, no office in choir, sending new recruits on pilgrimage, etc. ‘And to all these things the reply is going to be, “through something that happened to me at Manresa”’ (Notebook, n. 137; FN I, p. 610).

Some Jesuit commentators have held that Ignatius at this point received a kind of detailed revelation of the Society’s future constitution. Ignatius’s own account underplays any sense that God revealed particular information, and stresses the total transformation of the understanding, the change of identity wrought by conversion. Interpreters do well to respect his reticence.

42 Ignatius returns to the mysterious vision he recounted at the beginning of his time at Manresa, as if to show us that the purpose of his deepening in prayer was a growth in ability to discern the forces operating in his psyche. Ignatius’s concern is not that we banish the evil spirit from our hearts, because this does not lie within our power. Rather, we are to learn to deal appropriately with it.

43 Behind Ignatius’s horror of vainglory lies one of the convoluted issues of the Reformation, that of the senses in which we may and may not say with assurance that we are justified by God’s grace. It is anachronistic to distinguish positions along official confessional lines prior to the first session of the Council of Trent in 1546. Trent’s decree on justification presents a nuanced position: ‘… just as no devout person ought to doubt the mercy of God, the merit of Christ and the power and efficacy of the sacraments, so it is possible for anyone, while regarding themselves and their own weakness and lack of dispositions, to be anxious and fearful about their own state of grace, since no one can know, by that assurance of faith which excludes all falsehood, that he or she has obtained the grace of God’ (Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Washington and London 1990, p. 674 – translation slightly adapted).

For a telling account of how Ignatius is caught up in this religious upheaval, see Terence O’Reilly, ‘The Spiritual Exercises and the Crisis of Medieval Piety’, The Way Supplement, 70 (Spring 1991), pp. 101–13.

44 Baltasar de Faria was Portuguese ambassador to the Holy See from 1543 till 1551, and as such a significant figure in the early development of Jesuit ministries. Francisco Ferrer, born in Manresa in 1528, was a servant in his household.

45 Pilgrim ships normally left Venice in the early summer. Ignatius had also to fit in a visit to Rome in order to get the necessary permit. Allowing for unexpected delays, he needed to leave Manresa at roughly the turn of the year.

46 One of the principal nobles of Catalonia. His sister was married to the Duke of Nájera, in whose service Ignatius had been at Pamplona.

47 A small coin.

48 See §21.

49 Townspeople were nervous of visitors because of the plague.

50 Ignatius’s application for permission to visit the holy places, together with a Curial indication of approval, has been preserved in the Vatican Archives and recently edited (FD, pp. 289–90). Here Ignatius is described as a ‘cleric of the diocese of Pamplona’, a point which is corroborated by documents from a 1515 legal process in which he claimed clerical status in order to escape the jurisdiction of the civil court (FD, pp. 229–46). Ignatius was therefore not, as many have claimed, a lay person during his most formative years, and he may in fact have had a significant religious history before the Battle of Pamplona.

51 §29.

52 Rhodes had been captured by the Turks on 12 December 1522.

53 Now Larnaka.

54 Two of Ignatius’s fellow pilgrims have also left accounts of this journey, though neither expressly mentions Ignatius: Peter Füessli, a bell-maker from Zurich; and Philipp Hagen, a canon from Strasbourg. Peter Knauer, in his German translation of the Reminiscences (see Bibliography), gives a modern German version of part of Füessli’s account, with details of the original texts (pp. 129–39 and P. 64 n. 131). According to Füessli they arrived at Jaffa on 25 August 1523 but were not allowed to leave the ship until 31 August. The master of the ship had to inform those in charge of the shrines that the pilgrims had arrived, and also to negotiate an escort through what was territory controlled by Turks.

55 Contrast this account of his purpose with what he envisaged on his Loyola sickbed (§9); and see note 31 above.

56 At this time the care of the holy places was entrusted to the Franciscans. ‘Guardian’ is a technical term for the superior of a Franciscan house.

57 ‘a estas partes’ – to Europe, where the story is being narrated.

58 The Franciscan Provincial in question lived in Cyprus, but was visiting the houses in the Holy Land at the time of Ignatius’s pilgrimage. See BAC, pp. 112–113, nn. 18–19.

59 22 September. There are references in the early sources to a fuller account of this pilgrimage written by Ignatius, but unfortunately the text is lost. See FN I, pp. 1–4.

60 A village near the Mount of Olives from which the Palm Sunday procession began. See Mt. 21:1 and parallels.

61 A name given to Syrian Christians, a group which did not accept the understanding of Jesus Christ defined at the Council of Chalcedon (451). The name evokes the belt with which they tied in their loose Arabic cloak. The circumlocution allows the narrative to suggest Ignatius’s continuing attachment to the suffering Christ even as he has to leave the holy places.

62 According to Füessli they left Jerusalem on 23 September 1523, Lut were prevented by the Turks from reaching Jaffa before 3 October. They arrived in Cyprus on 14 October.

63 According to legend, the body of St James was miraculously transported from Jerusalem to Compostela. See Larrañaga, p. 233, n. 5.

64 ‘tomar una tierra de la Pulla’. From Coudray onwards (c. 1560), translators have taken this as a reference to Apulia. Knauer, however, conjectures that Ignatius landed at Pula, south of Trieste. Füessli also landed in this area, and the journey from Apulia to Venice could not have been covered on foot in the short time suggested by §50.

65 Ignatius has made explicit mention only of one person (§42), though it may be that he was taken into a house in St Mark’s Square.

66 The relative values of the coins mentioned here and below have to be deduced from the text. Quattrino is a word still existing in modern Italian. Etymologically, it corresponds to the English ‘farthing’; in terms of usage, it is sometimes simply the equivalent of ‘cash’ or ‘coppers’. The marchetto was a copper coin minted in Venice during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The giulio was a more valuable, silver coin struck in 1504 by Pope Julius II (1503–13).

67 The war in question was once again the struggle between Francis I of France and Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. At this point the dispute centred on possession of the Duchy of Milan. In 1525, after the Battle of Pavia, Francis was captured and taken to Madrid as a prisoner.

68 Contrast the visions of Christ as a white body (§29), a gold object (§44) or a sun (§99). It is not clear whether the ‘representation’ here is something distinct from a vision or merely a different kind of vision.

69 The point being made here depends on the different, more or less formal, modes of address still preserved in modern European languages other than English.

70 An interestingly down-to-earth and tiny example of discernment of spirits issuing in a decision. One presumes the cap is metaphorical.

71 In reality Portuondo. In 1524 Rodrigo de Portuondo had overseen the return of the Imperial fleet from Marseilles to Genoa after its admiral had been defeated and taken prisoner (FN II, p. 435). A letter of Charles V, written from Genoa in 1529, discusses the maintenance of ships under the supervision of ‘Rodrigo de Portuondo, captain general of our galleys’ (García-Villoslada, p. 257, n. 45). Note how Ignatius’s ideals of strict poverty coexist quite unselfconsciously with his ability to draw on his courtly past in order to find powerful patrons.

72 Andrea Doria (1466–1560), a legendary Genoese seaman and mercenary, who fought for France from 1522, but by 1528 had switched allegiance to Charles V. Even as Ignatius was dictating his narrative, Doria, now more than eighty years old, was commanding a naval expedition in Corsica.

73 Ignatius would have arrived in Barcelona in late February or early March 1524. On Isabel Roser, see Letter 3, note 2; Letter 19, note 8. Jeroni Ardèvol held the chair of grammar at the Barcelona Estudi General in the academic year 1525–26, and may have been teaching there in a subordinate role in the years before. It is uncertain whether his teaching Ignatius without charge simply reflects the fact that students at the college customarily did not pay, or whether alternatively Ignatius is here remembering some kind of extra private tuition for which Ardèvol would normally have been remunerated. For an account of the documentary evidence, see two articles in Spanish by Cándido de Dalmases, the second of which he co-authored with José M. Madurell Marimón: AHSI 10 (1941), pp. 283–93; 37 (1968), pp. 370–407.

74 The identity of the monk remains uncertain. Contrast §37, where Ignatius speaks of how unsatisfied he was with the spiritual help available in Manresa and Barcelona.

75 But see §82, and compare §26, Exx. 326.

76 See §34.

77 The university of Alcalá had been established by Cardinal Jiménez de Cisneros in 1508, and quickly became a major centre of humanist learning. In the usage of medieval and Renaissance universities ‘arts’ was the name given to a general course of studies, including material we would now include under the heading of ‘science’. From this course a student could proceed to one of the higher faculties: law, medicine or theology.

78 These are named later in the narrative (§58). It may be significant that one of the manuscripts omits the whole section from here to §70, replacing it with a brief summary.

79 Named after its founder, and also known as the almshouse of Our Lady of Mercy.

80 Domingo Soto (1494/5–1560) had taught at Paris and Alcalá before entering the Dominican order in 1524. The Albert mentioned may be Albert the Great (1193–?1280), another Dominican, who wrote a commentary on book 8 of Aristotle’s Physics. However, one source (FN II, p. 154) suggests that he could have been Albert of Saxony (1316?–90), rector of the universities of Paris and Vienna and later bishop of Halberstadt, who wrote a commentary on Aristotle’s Physics. Peter Lombard, a twelfth-century theologian, was enormously influential, especially for his Sentences, a synthesis of scholastic theology. Ignatius was probably a private student in the city, since his name appears on no surviving university register. The range of material may have been over-ambitious (see below, §73).

81 Ignatius’s ministry at Alcalá, as we shall see, was controversial and led to a trial. From the records of that trial it seems that he was giving only parts of what we now know as the Spiritual Exercises to the women who came to him. See note 105 below.

82 Gonçalves da Câmara has a marginal note here: ‘I must remember the fear which he himself went through one night’. This may be elucidated by another marginal insertion, this time added by Polanco himself to the manuscript of his 1574 Latin life of Ignatius: ‘However, he had a room in the part of that house which was infested with ghosts. He was thus agitated by some kind of terror during the night, which he decided was vacuous and not to be given in to, entrusting himself to God. He began to provoke the demons both mentally and vocally: “if you’ve got any power from God against me, use it. I’ll willingly put up with whatever God pleases. You can’t do anything more than God allows you”. And that steadfastness of mind and heart, that steady faith and confidence in God, did not merely free him from every terror of the enemy then, but rendered him immune, with God’s help, from nocturnal terrors of this kind subsequently.’ (FN II, p. 545.)

83 Diego de Eguía later joined Ignatius in Venice, and as a Jesuit was to become Ignatius’s confessor. His brother Miguel was responsible for printing Erasmus’s Enchiridion militis christiani in Spanish translation, a book that was clearly both influential and controversial, and had also recently brought out a version of the Imitation of Christ (Exx. 100). The family was related to Francis Xavier. Scholars have sometimes picked up on this kind of reference to show how Ignatius at this stage was allied to expansive rather than repressive religious currents in Spain, and have contrasted this with his reserved attitude towards Erasmus in later years. Perhaps, however, the really significant point is how closely Ignatius is related to agencies carrying through a cultural and religious revolution through the new medium of the printed book.

On the complicated history of how Erasmus’s writings were received in Spain, the standard work is Marcel Bataillon, Érasme et l’Espagne (Paris 1937), available also in Spanish. On how Ignatius may have interacted with this process, see two essays in English: John C. Olin, ‘Erasmus and St Ignatius Loyola’, in Six Essays on Erasmus (New York 1979); and Terence O’Reilly, ‘Saint Ignatius Loyola and Spanish Erasmianism’, AHSI 43 (1974), pp. 301–21.

84 At this point some currents of spiritual renewal in Spain were beginning to fall foul of authority, represented by the Inquisition. The term alumbrado or ‘illuminist’ was used legally to denote those adjudged heretics. Its theological content was shifting and imprecise, rather like ‘modernist’ in the early part of the twentieth century. The underlying problem is that of how to relate charismatic inspiration and ecclesial authority: a problem which is still unresolved in the Christian Churches. How far Ignatius and his companions were associated with alumbrados is a complex theoretical and historical question which awaits further research.

85 From this first process, we have records of testimony given in closed session by four witnesses, and of the interview described below. Further documentary evidence suggests that this first investigation, despite what Ignatius says, was not in fact provoked by his activity, but rather was part of a general systematic investigation of people suspected of illuminism. The inquisitors were simply gathering information, and leaving action to be taken by officials in the various towns. See FD, pp. 322–31, and Luis Fernández Martín, ‘Iñigo de Loyola y los alumbrados’, in Ignacio de Loyola en Castilla (as cited in note I above), pp. 155–264, here pp. 241–42.

86 From the official record: ‘that for just causes leading him to this, he was commanding them and did command them, each one, by virtue of holy obedience and under pain of major excommunication which they would ipso facto incur if they did the opposite, to relinquish within the next eight days their said habit and mode of dress, and conform to the normal dress which clerics and lay people wear in these kingdoms of Castile’ (FD, p. 331 – 21 November 1526). This may be reconcilable with Ignatius’s account if one takes it that he and Arteaga were clerics; alternatively, Figueroa may have moderated the sentence on account of the companions’ lack of means to buy new clothes (see §64). On Figueroa, cf. Letter 10 (with note 10).

We learn from the testimony of the almshouse warden that Juanico – Jean de Reynald – was a page of the then Viceroy of Navarre. He was injured in an Alcalá brawl and taken to the almshouse to recover (FD, pp. 329–30). Ignatius had presumably acquired the other companions in Barcelona.

87 At this point Gonçalves da Câmara wrote in the margin ‘about what Bustamente told me’. Bartolomé de Bustamente, a controversial Provincial in Andalucía in the mid-1550s, joined the Society of Jesus in 1552. Prior to that he had been secretary to the Archbishop of Toledo, and hence was in a position to provide Gonçalves da Câmara with information relevant here.

88 Three women were interrogated on 6 March 1527 and asked about what Ignatius did when conversing with women. ‘And he has spoken with them, teaching them the commandments, and the mortal sins, and the five senses and powers of the soul, and he explains this very well. He explains it through the gospels and St Paul and other saints, and he says they should examine their consciences in front of a holy picture every day, bringing to mind things in which they have committed sin; and he advises them to go to confession every week and receive the Sacrament at the same time’ (FD, p. 332).

89 The third process finished on 1 June 1527, and must therefore, if Ignatius is right about a confinement of six weeks, have begun in mid-April, a mere six weeks after the second.

90 Here Gonçalves da Câmara has a marginal note, ‘M^a uno, y era confesor’. The MHSI editors conjecture, reasonably, that this should be translated ‘Miona one of them, and he was his confessor’. Manuel Miona, a learned Portuguese priest, was Ignatius’s confessor both here and in Paris, and joined the Society in 1545. See Letter 6.

91 This lady was noted as one concerned for prisoners and for the poor, and also for her devotion to the Eucharist, so much so that she was called ‘the madwoman of the Sacrament’. For further information, see FN I, pp. 447–48.

92 A cryptic way of asking if Ignatius was a secret Jew. According to Polanco’s 1547–48 account, Ignatius answered ‘that on Saturday he had a devotion to Our Lady; he didn’t know any other feasts, nor were there Jews in his part of the world’ (FN I, p. 174). In 1492 Spanish Jews were faced with a choice between conversion or deportation, and in later years the religious authorities were permanently concerned with Jews who might outwardly have converted but who continued to practise their Judaism in secret. See James W. Reites, ‘St Ignatius of Loyola and the Jews’, Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits, 13.4 (September 1981).

93 According to ancient Christian legend, a woman (known as Veronica – ‘true image’) wiped the face of Christ as he was carrying his cross, and the image of his face remained on the cloth. Jaén, in southern Spain (hence a long way from Alcalá), was one of a number of shrines purporting to possess this cloth.

94 A senior professor at the University, who had been nominated by Cardinal Jiménez himself as the first occupant of the chair named after Thomas Aquinas.

95 It was a pious custom for people to accompany the priest on his visits to the sick with the consecrated host.

96 According to Polanco’s account of 1547–48, Ignatius had been visiting Calisto in Segovia when the two women had departed.

97 From the trial documents we learn that the two ladies indeed corroborated what Ignatius had said, and the accounts of the verdict correspond. However, it is clear that the authorities investigated Ignatius’s dealings with a wider circle of women than the mother and daughter mentioned here (FD, pp. 333–44).

98 Alfonso de Fonseca, Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain 1523–34, a patron of humanism and Erasmianism. He was in Valladolid for the baptism of the new prince, later to become Philip II. It is noteworthy that Ignatius is in a position to make this kind of contact over the heads of officials such as Figueroa. Fonseca had founded a house in Salamanca for poor students, known either as the College of St James or as the Archbishop’s College.

99 See §52. In the next sentence, ‘on realizing … said’ is supplied by the MHSI editors from the early Latin version.

100 Ignatius uses the same word, ‘society’ – compañía – to refer both to his group in Alcalá and Salamanca here and to what was to become the Society of Jesus.

101 In this same summer of 1527, there was a major meeting of theologians at Valladolid under the chairmanship of the Grand Inquisitor to consider Erasmian ideas. Dominicans from the Salamanca faculty were among the sharpest critics of Erasmus.

The name of the subprior was Nicolás de Santo Tomás. From his point of view Ignatius and his companions cannot but have resembled a number of heretical, indeed bizarre religious figures in the 1520s, and his suspicion is at least understandable. See V Beltrán de Heredia, ‘Estancia de San Ignacio de Loyola en San Esteban de Salamanca’, Ciencia Tomista, 83 (1956), pp. 507–28.

One reason Ignatius expands so much on this incident may be that at the time of dictation the Spiritual Exercises were under suspicion in Spain, and Dominicans were in the forefront of those raising sharp questions. Moreover, Dominicans were raising campaigns against the Jesuits at the Spanish court as early as 1542, when there were only two members of the Society in Spain. Whatever happened at Salamanca, and at Alcalá beforehand, was remembered in influential places.

102 Ignatius stresses that this Frías is a bachelor in order to distinguish him from another Frías with a doctorate, mentioned below at §68. On the identity of the judges see B. Hernández Montes, ‘Identidad de los personajes que juzgaron a San Ignacio en Salamanca’, AHSI 52 (1983), pp. 3–51 (with summary in English, p. 51).

103 Other sources indicate he became a Franciscan.

104 See §62.

105 Exx. 35–37. We are in no position to assess how similar the Salamanca papers were to the text we now know as the Spiritual Exercises. In general the supple use of the word ‘exercise’ in the text (e.g. §67) should alert us to how Ignatius’s method in the strict sense shades into everyday pastoral care. An editor or translator has to make a decision about capitalizing the word which a narrator can avoid. It is clear from the Alcalá trial records that Ignatius was at this stage making this distinction in his dealings with people (FD, p. 334), and the point may also be linked to his experience of scrupulosity at Manresa.

106 Francisco de Mendoza (1508–66), at that time a teacher of Greek in the University, later Archdeacon of Toledo, Bishop of Coria, and Cardinal. He was appointed to the see of Burgos in 1550.

107 By founding the Society of Jesus, Ignatius realized elements of both these visions. In this linguistically difficult passage Ignatius shows how he connected the ideals of following the suffering Christ (see, for example, Exx. 147) and apostolic service.

108 In the late summer and autumn of 1527 tensions between France and Spain were escalating, and war was declared on 22 January 1528.

109 From a letter we know that Ignatius arrived on 2 February 1528. Gonçalves da Câmara is obviously uncertain here. A marginal note refers to the birth of Philip II in 1527: ‘When he was a prisoner in Alcalá the prince of Spain was born; from this one can calculate everything, also for the period before.’

110 One of approximately sixty colleges at the University of Paris, known for its strict discipline. Other students included Erasmus, Calvin and Rabelais.

‘Humanities’ here refers to the study of Latin, more linguistic than literary. Ignatius was repeating some of the material he had studied back in Barcelona. Later, at the College of Ste Barbe, he proceeded to the Arts course (see note 77 above).

111 According to the most recent French commentary on this text, that of Jean-Claude Dhôtel, one écu would have maintained a student for a month.

112 A regent would have been a teacher in charge of a number of students and sharing living-quarters with them.

113 Juan de Castro, who obtained a doctorate in 1532. See below, §§77–78, and Letter 4, note 9.

114 Ignatius needed to make only three such trips, in 1529 and the two following years, going to London during the last of these. According to the elderly Polanco, there were circles of merchants in Bruges, Antwerp and London who were accustomed to supporting students. In subsequent years the merchants simply sent Ignatius money, which enabled him also to help others. Ignatius is also said to have met the noted humanist, Luis Vives, on the first of these trips, and there was a slight altercation between them regarding Lenten fasts (FN I, p. 179; FN II, pp. 556–58). Unfortunately, none of the primary sources enables us to expand on Ignatius’s visit to London.

115 Nothing further is known of Amador, except that he came from Pamplona and his fuller name was Amador de Elduayen; Pedro de Peralta was later a canon of Toledo cathedral.

116 Diego de Gouveia (?1470–1557), a Portuguese, and principal of the College of Ste Barbe, to which Ignatius indeed later moved. The threat recorded here came to nothing, but on a later occasion, when Ignatius began to acquire the companions who definitively stayed with him, Gouveia did get as far as summoning all the students to witness Ignatius being beaten. However, at the last minute he relented, and later became a significant patron of the Society. On him, see Letter 10 and Schurhammer, pp. 101–02, 136–43.

Magister Noster (‘our master’) was a conventional way in which students at Paris referred to their teachers. It recurs at §81.

117 From this point onwards the original is in Italian, and the narrative becomes noticeably more sketchy.

118 There was a Benedictine abbey at Argenteuil, eventually suppressed in 1791. It possessed what was thought to be a seamless garment woven for Christ by his mother. The garment is now in the parish church.

119 Leonor de Mascarenhas (1503–84), a Portuguese noblewoman and long-standing friend of the Society. She had been governess to the infant prince Philip, and Ignatius probably first met her when he went to Valladolid in 1527 to meet the Archbishop. See Hugo Rahner, Saint Ignatius Loyola: Letters to Women, PP. 417–33.

120 Original – ‘India dello imperatore’. The lady has been identified as one Catalina Hernández, a beata, one of six who sailed to Mexico in 1531 in the hope that they would direct a kind of school for native girls. The relationship between Calisto and Catalina gave rise to scandal, and he was banished from Mexico City to the interior of the country. He refused to comply and instead returned to Spain. See Marcel Bataillon, ‘L’iñiguiste et la beata’, Revista de historia de América, 31 (June 1951), pp. 59–75.

121 Comendador was the title given to a cleric granted the honours and salary of a knight. He in fact became tutor to one of Prince Philip’s pages. In 1540 Paul III appointed him, at Charles V’s behest, to the new diocese of Chiapas. Arriving ill at Veracruz, he journeyed towards Mexico City in order to recuperate, and on the journey the curious incident occurred that is recounted below. He died on 8 September 1541, and his replacement was the famous Dominican defender of the rights of the native population, Bartolomé de las Casas.

122 A colourless solution of mercuric chloride in water. Medically, such a toxic compound would probably have been used in an attempt to kill infections.

123 Matthieu Ory (d. 1557) from Brittany. In 1536 he was appointed by Francis I inquisitor for the whole of France, and in 1538 a canon penitentiary at St Peter’s. He gave witness in favour of the companions during the Roman process in 1538 (see Letter 10; FD, pp. 553–56). From the report of his testimony: ‘and, though the said witness told them [Ignatius and his companions] that they could not institute a new form of living without permission from pontifical authority, nevertheless, having learnt of and seen their habits, way of life and teaching, he declared them free from all suspicion of heresy, and drew up letters patent for the said Ignatius in his justification …’

124 1 October 1529. At this point Ignatius changed college from Montaigu to Ste Barbe.

125 Contrast §71.

126 It is noteworthy that Ignatius presents this momentous fact quite so baldly, though we can only speculate as to why. Favre and Xavier are referred to in several of the Letters (cf. 8, 32).

127 Jerónimo Frago was then a teacher of Scripture in the university. He died as a canon at Pamplona in 1537. The reference as it stands would have meant nothing to almost any Jesuit apart from the first companions: perhaps an indication of how the narrative at this stage loses focus.

128 ‘quelli che studian le arti … pigliano una pietra’ – a piece of university jargon, the significance of which has not come down to us. Presumably it refers either to an examination or to some kind of graduation ceremony. For a discussion of various suggested interpretations, see FN I, pp. 478–79, n. 20.

129 On the basis of an autopsy performed after Ignatius’s death we know that the pain was caused by gallstones.

130 Ignatius became a Bachelor of Arts in 1532, and was thirtieth out of about a hundred candidates in the licentiate examination of 1533. He passed the examination for the master of arts degree in 1534, but delayed actually taking the degree until the following year. In October 1536, the university issued a certificate to the effect that he had studied theology for a year and a half. See FD, pp. 384–92, 395–97, 523.

131 On 15 August 1534 Ignatius and six others (Favre, Xavier, Laínez, Salmerón, Rodrigues and Bobadilla) had made some kind of joint commitment to a life of poverty and service. The commitment made reference to a journey to Jerusalem, and also to the service of the Pope. The text of the commitment has not been preserved, and the early sources vary as to the precise details. See FN I, p. 37 for a list of further references. Again it is noteworthy that Ignatius does no more than allude to an event of capital importance for the founding of the Society. Cf. Letter 8.4.

132 ‘Vicar of Christ’ is a set phrase referring to the Pope, but the root meaning of the word ‘vicar’ – substitute – may be operative here.

133 Other sources indicate that Ignatius also wanted to correct the bad example he had given in his home area (FN II, p. 568).

134 25 January.

135 The inquisitor on this occasion was a Dominican called Valentin Liévin. The judgment has not survived.

136 The province of Guipúzcoa, in which Loyola is situated.

137 predetti. An authoritative manuscript reads preti – priests. It is uncertain which of these two should be preferred.

138 From a contemporary official document: ‘Since, as experience shows us, there result many troubles and excesses from there not being an orderly way in which the poor, in each jurisdiction and parish, are sustained and fed … we therefore order, legislate and command that the mayors, faithful and governors of this town henceforth should elect and nominate every single year two good, conscientious persons, one clerical, one lay, from the jurisdiction of this town, who are to have charge of asking for and receiving alms on Sundays and feasts for all the poor in the jurisdiction’ (FD, p. 457).

139 Ignatius’s sojourn at home lasted around two months, and ended in July 1535. There is abundant independent documentation on the visit, in the forms of legal ordinances and of beatification processes, now edited in the Fontes Documentales and the Scripta de S. Ignatio. Indeed, Ignatius here omits at least one important achievement: that of bringing about a settlement in a long-standing dispute between the local clergy and a convent of Franciscan nuns. (See Dalmases, Ignatius of Loyola, pp. 133–34.)

The narrative as we have it sets a programme of catechetical and social ministry within a frame of marked expressions of detachment from his family, though another source does tell us that his sister-in-law persuaded him to visit the family house once in order to expel a concubine (FN III, p. 333). Currently we are learning to understand Christianity, and religion in general, not simply as matters of theoretical belief but also as social institutions. In this light, the Azpeitia documentation appears as, at least potentially, a richly significant resource for the understanding of Ignatius, and one that has been largely neglected. Two interesting pioneer attempts to draw on this material are: Dominique Bertrand, La politique de S. Ignace de Loyola, pp. 367–71; Norbert Brieskorn, ‘Ignatius in Azpeitia 1535: Eine rechtshistorische Untersuchung’, AHSI 49 (1980), pp. 95–112. On Ignatius’s relations with his brother, see Letter 2.

140 See §78. Other sources indicate that Ignatius’s visit to the Charterhouse at Segorbe lasted a week.

141 Kahyr-Al-Dîn (1476–1546), one of a family of Turkish sea-warriors known in Europe as Barbarossa (Red Beard).

142 See §33.

143 Polanco’s 1547–48 account adds that eventually Ignatius found his way to a Spanish college in Bologna, where he was fed and cared for. Ignatius continued his theological studies in Bologna, moving to Venice on account of the climate in December 1535 (FN I, p. 188).

144 On Pietro Contarini see Letter 9. Gasparo de Dotti was Vicar General to the Papal Nuncio in Venice. It was he who issued the document clearing Ignatius of the charges mentioned below at §93 (FD, pp. 535–37). In 1556, as governor of Loreto, he took some private version of Jesuit vows enabling him to have a personal link with the Society while not abandoning his official position. Rozas (‘Roças’ in the manuscript) cannot be identified.

145 Diego Hoces was a noble cleric from Andalucía. On his death at Padua in 1538 see §98. We know from other sources that Ignatius was joined at this point also by Diego de Eguía (see §57) and his brother Esteban.

146 Original ‘Cette’. Though some commentators have suggested that this may refer to Ceuta in North Africa, it seems preferable to take it as Chieti. The bishop of Chieti was none other than Gian Pietro Carafa, of whom there is in any case mention below (§93), and who was at this stage resident in Venice. He was founder of the Theatines (a name based on the Latin form of Chieti); he was made Cardinal in December 1536, and was later to become Pope Paul IV in 1555. See Letter 7, and Peter A. Quinn, ‘Ignatius Loyola and Gian Pietro Carafa: Catholic Reformers at Odds’, Catholic Historical Review, 67 (1981), pp. 386–400.

147 The six companions remaining in Paris had been joined by three others: Claude le Jay, Paschase Broët and Jean Codure. Unlike the Eguía brothers, these three French recruits seemed to count as full members of the companions in the various deliberations that took place leading up to the formal establishment of the Society of Jesus in 1540, perhaps because they had taken part in renewals of the Montmartre vows in the years 1535 and 1536.

The narrative in this part of the Reminiscences is often elliptical, and some passages make sense only in the light of information given in Letter 8.

148 The year 1537 saw a heightening of tension in the Mediterranean involving the Turks and France on one side, the Emperor, Venice and the papacy on the other. 1537–38 was the only year in several decades when pilgrimages to the Holy Land were impossible.

149 The house was an abandoned monastery about a mile north-west of the city, San Pietro in Vivarolo.

150 The companion in question was Simão Rodrigues.

151 According to Polanco’s life of 1547–48, it was during this time when the companions were all together at Vicenza that they decided that their group was to be called the Compañía de Jesús (FN II, p. 204).

152 See §93.

153 In fact the other companions did not go directly to Rome at the beginning of winter in 1537, but rather occupied themselves with ministry in Siena, Bologna, Ferrara and Padua, meeting up in Rome in the spring of 1538 (FN I, pp. 120–24). The precise interpretation of this passage is uncertain, given that we do not know the details of the commitment made by the companions at Montmartre.

The vision that follows took place at La Storta, ten miles north of Rome on the Via Cassia, and Jesuit tradition has seen it as centrally important. Motifs from it recur both in the Exercises (§147) and in the Spiritual Diary (e.g. 8, 23 February). Laínez’s account of the matter, referred to in the interpolation below, is probably best represented in a talk he gave in 1559: ‘As we were coming to Rome along the road from Siena, our Father … told me that it appeared to him that God the Father was imprinting in his heart these words: “Ego ero vobis Romae propitius” (I shall be favourable to you in Rome). And our Father, not knowing what this was meant to mean, said, “I don’t know what will become of us. Perhaps we’ll be crucified in Rome”. Then another time he said that he seemed to see Christ with the cross on his shoulder. And the eternal Father was close by, saying, “I want you to take this person as your servant”. And thus Jesus took him, and said, “I want you to serve us”.’ (FN II, p. 133.) See Spiritual Diary, 23 February, and note 30.

For a classic discussion of the vision, see Hugo Rahner, The Vision of St Ignatius in the Chapel of La Storta, Rome 1979.

154 i.e. Francis Xavier.

155 Francisco de Estrada (?1519–84), a connection of Ortiz’s. He had been dismissed from the service of Cardinal Gian Pietro Carafa, and was on his way to Naples to become a soldier when Ignatius persuaded him to return to Rome and make the Exercises. As a result he joined the Society.

156 The reference is to a house on Monte Pincio, placed at the companions’ disposal when they first arrived in Rome by a nobleman named Quirino Garzonio. The companions moved from there in June 1538.

157 This suggests that Ignatius was walking for roughly four hours daily.

158 For a fuller and clearer account of the events recounted here, see Letter 10. ‘Miguel’ refers to Miguel Landívar, on whom see in particular note 8 to the Letter.

159 Ignatius here refers to the establishment of houses for Jewish and Muslim prospective converts to Christianity unable to remain in their homes, for reforming prostitutes, and for the relief of orphans.

160 At this point the style of the text changes. Gonçalves da Câmara’s own presence becomes more explicit, and the writing resembles that in his Notebook. Though there is a case for not counting these exchanges as part of the Reminiscences, they are retained here partly for convention’s sake, partly because of the important information they give.

161 i.e. three days before his departure (1555).

162 Exx. 28–31.

163 There is in fact no explicit mention earlier of such a vision, but it may be that the reference is to §29. The difficulty led two early translators and copyists to read ‘sole’ not as a noun meaning ‘sun’, but as an adverb meaning ‘as was his norm’.

164 Ignatius must here be referring to what we now have as the Spiritual Diary (as the description makes clear), but it is uncertain how many, if any, papers were lost.

PROS AND CONS

1 This is the decision (taken in 1541) mentioned in the Introduction.

2 A new section began here, but was then crossed out: it seems to read: ‘THE DISADVANTAGES ARISING FROM THE POSSESSION OF A PARTIAL INCOME (QUITE APART FROM BEING THE ADVANTAGES OF NOT HAVING ANYTHING) ARE THE FOLLOWING: 1st One Superior would have charge over those who are allowed this income, for he would superintend the distribution of it, and he would also have charge over those who are not allowed it; also he would have to take from the same house what is necessary for himself or for those of the Society; this does not seem right.’

3 Ignatius added one more argument, but then crossed it out: ‘16th There are three ways of maintaining the Society: 1st all members, or nearly all, should be men of letters; 2nd some means could probably be found to house and clothe the scholastics, and to pay their travelling expenses; 3rd for the equipment and other things the Society needs, even some of those who will probably enter could help.’

THE SPIRITUAL DIARY

PART I

1 Ignatius began by writing a whole paragraph at the start of this entry, but then crossed it all out: it reads: ‘Last night I was greatly weakened by bad sleep; at prayer this morning, a quiet mind and considerable devotion; I felt moved in spirit, experiencing warmth and the impulse to weep. Later, on rising, I twice lost the feeling of weakness; later, on going to mass, devotion in prayer and the same on vesting, with an impulse to feel like weeping. During mass, continuous devotion, weakness, various impulses of spirit, a tendency to weep. The same after mass [‘my will ever set on poverty’, added then crossed out], peaceful throughout the whole day. Contrary to the tendency that formerly seemed predominant, all desire to continue with this election left me completely: the solution seemed plain, viz. complete poverty.’

2 Ignatius first added here ‘and the Father and the Son’ (as if he had perceived them also, and not just the Holy Spirit), but then crossed out these words. Fr Iparraguirre calls this correction ‘the most mysterious and important’ in the text: how could Ignatius have thought at one moment that he had seen the Father and Son, only to change his mind on further reflection? However the same editor points out that the passage has been altered in other ways: the reference to ‘seeing in some way’ was added, and originally Ignatius wrote only of ‘perceiving’ (feeling). Clearly he realized on reflection that a quite special contact had been momentarily established with the Holy Spirit, which was not the case with the other Persons.

3 This heading, along with the entries for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, seem to have all been written on the evening of Thursday, and describe a phase that was caused by an event on Tuesday (see notes 6, 9), rather than something that had occurred the previous day.

4 ‘Wednesday’ before correction (see note 9).

5 Probably Francisco Vanucci, Chief Almoner of Paul III.

6 A complete paragraph, which may be crucial for understanding the text, was added and then crossed out: ‘Afterwards I disposed of a question or temptation that had occurred at dawn that morning, viz. if income might not be allowed for the church alone: I saw my path with great clarity and insights, and with considerable devotion. I wished most earnestly to refuse entry to such a suggestion: in great peace, understanding and thankfulness of heart towards the Divine Persons and also considerable devotion. The occasion of the temptation had been my rising from prayer to see if I could stop the noise or if it was inevitable, owing to the position of my room. Later, when I went to mass and during it, I felt that the warmth within was beset by the cold wind from outside; I could see that the clarity within was good and that the evil was without: so in the middle of mass I felt warmth and some devotion, not coldness, yet disturbances from those in the room and from whoever was hearing mass. When mass was over and I considered the matter, I remained undisturbed and with the same interior devotion.’

7 ‘Thursday’ before correction (see note 9).

8 ‘Wednesday and Thursday’ are an error (not noticed by Ignatius) for ‘Tuesday and Wednesday’ (as is clear from the corrections he made to the headings of the entries: see note 9).

9 Ignatius wrote the first letters of the word for ‘Friday’, realized his mistake and, having crossed them out, wrote the word for ‘Thursday’. At this moment he made the corrections to the headings of the two previous entries.

10 Literally, ‘Our Lady of the Temple’, but the meaning is ‘Mass of Our Lady, votive mass of the Presentation in the Temple, with the gospel account of Simeon’.

11 The brackets are Ignatius’s, probably underlining the importance of this intuition.

12 Ignatius added here and then crossed out: ‘at times my mind wandered, but not to evil things; towards the end there was very great calm and a certain sweetness: I rose and dressed, and nothing worth mentioning occurred either one way or the other’.

13 Probably a reference to the annuities belonging to the Church of Our Lady of the Way; by a bull of Paul III these were transferred to the sacristy of the church when the Jesuits took it over.

14 On the Wednesday Ignatius had decided to delay before saying more masses of the Trinity; yet he feels his election must end with a mass in their honour.

15 Clearly a reference to the end of the election process, and not simply to the end of the prayer period: cf. Monday 18 Feb.

16 ‘You gladly bear with fools’ (2 Cor. 11.19), from the readings of the mass of this Sunday.

17 Ignatius is premature in writing these words; the following morning he will change his mind, and the election process will continue until 12 March.

18 The word ‘abraçándome’ written by Ignatius here is ambiguous since it can derive from abrasar (‘to burn’) or from ‘abrazar’ (‘to embrace’). All the interpreters seem to have opted for the latter sense, but Ignatius’s frequent references to ‘warmth’ make the former sense more likely. The only other passage sometimes mentioned in support of ‘embracing’ is a non-starter: cf. 19 Feb. (with note 23).

19 ‘less than during the previous twenty days’ (added then crossed out; only seventeen days have been recorded so far in this fragment of Ignatius’s notes).

20 Probably the patriarchs of the Old Law.

21 Ignatius separated this paragraph from the preceding section with two lines: the notes now concentrate more on Trinitarian revelations, to which he appears to have attached particular importance. Cf. note 24 below.

22 Exceptionally this entry begins with the day of the week and the mass is written on the same line immediately after it, instead of above it in first place.

23 The words ‘asta apretarme en los pechos’ have been interpreted through a misreading of an earlier passage (18 Feb. §4, where see note 18) as a reference to Ignatius hugging himself for joy, but the more obvious parallels are with the frequent references to breathing difficulties he experienced.

24 This passage, and others in italics, were encircled by Ignatius with a line and then copied out by him on a separate sheet of paper now in Madrid (bound with other Jesuit documents, Biblioteca Nacional no. 692 Cartas de Jesuitas: cf. MHSI 63, pp. CCXLI–CCXLII).

25 A difficult passage: ‘el apropiar las oraciones’ has been interpreted ‘with the appropriation for my own purposes of the mass prayers’, but it probably refers to the attribution of operations in the Trinity.

26 2 Cor. 12:2.

27 The Gospel text for this votive mass is Mt. 28:18–20.

28 Ignatius added, then crossed out, the words: ‘of salvation, and others at times wiping them out and at others preserving them’, but this last phrase has been interpreted by the German translator as, ‘at times thinking that the soul would be wiped out, at others that it would be preserved’, and the Spanish is far from clear.

29 These words were added by Ignatius in the margin; cf. note 32 below.

30 The end of the italicized sentence is a reference to the vision at La Storta; cf. Rem. 96.

31 In the preliminary outline of the Constitutions it had been decided that the sacristies of churches should possess income.

32 Once again Ignatius added these words in the margin; cf. note 29 above.

33 He seems to mean the brazier placed in his room during the winter months.

34 Cardinal Rodolfo Pió da Carpi (1500–64): he was the Cardinal Protector of the Society of Jesus.

35 Filippo Archinto (1495–1558).

36 Cardinal Gian Domenico de Cupis, Archbishop of Trani (d. 1553): he was the Protector of the house of catechumens founded by Ignatius.

37 Cf. Mt. 11:25.

38 Literally, ‘contradiction’ (‘contradiçión’), viz. between his desire for a conclusive Trinitarian consolation and the apparent reluctance on the Trinity’s part to work in exactly that way.

39 The text is ambiguous as it is not clear if Jesus is to do the service (the interpretation adopted here), or if Ignatius is somehow to enter into service (sic Giuliani); however, the reflexive (‘se hiciese’) is probably one more example of Ignatius confusing his grammar.

40 One of the three prayers said by the priest before the communion in the former Latin liturgy.

41 A difficult passage because Ignatius seems at first sight to be saying that he has already referred to a vision of Jesus in which the colour white was involved: but there has been no such reference, as Knauer (in a note to the German translation, p. 280, n. 107) points out. Later, in 1555, when dictating his Reminiscences, Ignatius once more speaks of the humanity of Christ ‘like a white body’ (§29), and says that such was a frequent vision at Manresa (in 1522).

42 The liturgy of this mass was formerly used on the first Friday after Ash Wednesday.

43 Probably the church of Our Lady of the Way (S. Maria della Strada), the church entrusted to the early Jesuits.

44 Ignatius uses the Latin tag ‘ad utramque pattern’ (literally, ‘to both parts’), which here seems to mean that neither consolation nor desolation was predominant.

45 The Gospel for the day’s mass dealt with Christ’s temptations in the desert (Mt. 4:1–11).

46 In the Latin liturgy this prayer (‘Placeat tibi Sancta Trinitas’) was said by the priest before the final blessing: cf. 4 March.

47 Ignatius writes ‘at the 10th hour’, but one calculated then from sunset of the previous day, which in March would have been about 6.30 p.m.

48 This curious distinction between the clarity with which he understood and the light that flooded his mind is noted by the editors of the editio princeps (p. 113, n. 61).

49 ‘Blessed be the Holy Trinity and the undivided Unity’.

50 Cf. 2 March, with note 46 above.

51 Cardinal Juan Alvarez de Toledo, then Archbishop of Burgos, a Dominican friend of Ignatius: as Inquisitor General he examined the Spiritual Exercises.

52 The autograph is full of corrections at this point, and Iparraguirre justly remarks: ‘Nearly always when Ignatius adds many corrections to a phrase it is because a special mystical grace is being mentioned’ (p. 350 [392], n. 208).

53 The first words of the former Canon of the mass, now the first eucharistic prayer.

54 The holder of the title ‘de Sancta Cruce’ in 1544 was Cardinal Cervini, later Pope Marcellus II (cf. MHSI 63, pp. XCII-XCIV).

55 This number is a mistake for 35, the first of several errors made by Ignatius in the numbering of the entries.

56 Jer. 1:6.

57 He is quoting (incorrectly) from memory the opening words of the Introit: ‘Benedicta sit sancta Trinitas’ (Mass of the Blessed Trinity).

58 Ignatius has found a middle region in which to keep his attention floating, avoiding both the presumption of forcing a revelation of the Trinity and the despondency of clinging to dead letters: it is the state of true indifference, poised to respond to God’s will.

59 The prayer before the consecration in what is now the first eucharistic prayer.

60 Many have interpreted the reference to the ‘fire’ here as metaphorical, but Ignatius always uses the word ‘fuego’ to mean the brazier except on one occasion (22 Feb.) where he makes it quite clear that a simile is being used.

61 Ignatius is here putting into practice the third degree of humility, as outlined in his Spiritual Exercises §167.

PART II

1 Second Week in Lent (1544).

2 The interpretation is difficult because the verbs ‘tener’ and ‘no tener’ may refer to the having of tears (sic Knauer and Giuliani) rather than of income and other possessions. The present entry replaces an earlier one: ‘… to the Divine, and reflected that for me it would be something of a rest to say mass without searching for tears and not having them. During …’, where there is clearly no reference to anything but tears. On the other hand, the verbs mentioned are a sort of shorthand for the list of pros and cons used in the previous election period, and if Ignatius did decide to stop weighing up the phenomenon of tears, the entries for the following three days make very odd reading. Incidentally there are signs that he wrote up the entries for these three days all together on the Saturday.

3 The editors of the editio princeps have shown that these letters were used to signify: ‘a’ – tears before mass; ‘I’ – tears during mass; ‘d’ – tears after mass.

4 Third Sunday in Lent.

5 Giuliani draws attention to the use of the word ‘sacrifice’ instead of ‘mass’ at this point.

6 A reference to the parts of the Constitutions dealing with the Papal ‘missions’, i.e. the readiness to be sent wheresoever the Pope desires: cf. Constitutions, Exam. Gen., 1, 5; V 3, 3C; VII, 1 (tr. G. E. Ganss, pp. 79–80, 239, 267–71).

7 This sign indicates that the tears were less copious.

8 Ignatius added in the margin the sign for a vision.

9 Fourth Sunday in Lent.

10 Once more the marginal sign for a vision.

11 The Latin term Secreta was used until the Second Vatican Council for the ‘prayer over the oblation’ said by the priest immediately before the beginning of the Preface.

12 In the margin the sign for a vision.

13 Fifth Sunday in Lent.

14 The word for ‘vision’ in the margin.

15 ‘I should be a liar like you’, John 8:55 (where the context well repays examination).

16 In the margin the word for ‘vision’.

17 Palm Sunday, 1544.

18 Two numbered but blank spaces appear here; in 1544 Good Friday and Holy Saturday, when no private masses are celebrated, fell on these days. Ignatius separated the spaces from the other entries with two single lines.

19 First Sunday after Easter; the lines separating §§34 and 35 are in the autograph.

20 In the autograph appears, with lines drawn around it in an oblong, the solitary word ‘Preparar’: it seems to refer back to the heading above 17 March.

21 It is impossible to say precisely what Ignatius had in mind. He seems to be referring to some point of the Constitutions.

22 Ignatius repeats the numbers 30–39; similarly below he writes 40 instead of 60 after 59, and then continues 41 etc. All of these seem to be simply errors.

23 Second Sunday after Easter.

24 The first mention in the Diary of this mysterious loquela (a Latin/Italian word that means ‘speech’, ‘discourse’, ‘talking’): the commentators discuss its possible classification among the mystic gifts mentioned by St John of the Cross, and the MHSI editors refer to the Imitation of Christ (III 1–3). References to it stop after 28 May.

25 Rogation day before the Ascension.

26 Whit Sunday, 1544.

SELECT LETTERS

1 Advice to a good woman (Inés Pascual 1524)

1 One of the first women to recognize the sanctity of Ignatius, and one of the most generous of his benefactresses; she helped him first in Manresa, and then in Barcelona, where he lodged in her house.

2 See note 5 below.

3 The sole copy of this letter notes that a few words in the original were illegible at this point.

4 Calisto de Sá (see Rem. 58, 80) was the first of several young men who were attracted by Ignatius and followed him during several years in Spain; but none went with him to Paris, and subsequently they followed different careers.

5 A later hand added here the year 1525, but the editors argue convincingly that the previous year is more likely to be correct.

6 The exact spelling (Ynigo, Iñigo, Inigo, Ignacio, Ignatius?) is rarely given here, as copyists and editors felt free to ‘correct’ as they thought best. G. Schurhammer (Francis Xavier, I, p. 562, n. 29) assures us that the Ynigo spelling was regularly used by Ignatius until he moved to Rome, but subsequent scholars have questioned this. He matriculated in Paris with the Latin name Ignatius, perhaps because it approximated to his Basque name, perhaps out of devotion to the first-century martyr whose works had been published shortly before (1498/9), and used this form for official occasions and in some of his private letters. But his friends continued to call him Iñigo in Rome.

2 Dealings with brother and nephew (1532)

1 Despite the confusing name the addressee is the second eldest brother of Ignatius; in 1507 on the death of his father, Martin inherited the title of Lord of the castle-tower of Loyola as his elder brother had already died.

2 A reference to some unknown good fortune that had befallen one of Martín’s five daughters.

3 It is ten years since Ignatius left Loyola; he mentions below that for some five or six years he has thought of writing more frequently to his brother.

4 2 Cor. 12:7; in this and other quotations Ignatius seems to be writing from memory and the translation reflects his lapses.

5 Rom. 7:23.

6 Gal. 5:17.

7 Rom. 7:15.

8 Rom. 8:38–39.

9 Psalm 150:1.

10 1 Cor. 7:29–31.

11 These enigmatic words added to the Pauline quotation are far from clear.

12 Parish priest of Loyola, a nephew of Ignatius.

13 Magdalena de Araoz, wife of Martín and sister-in-law of Ignatius.

14 The first appearance of what will be a favourite closing formula for Ignatius.

3 Comfort among calamities (Isabel Roser 1532)

1 See H. Rahner, St Ignatius Loyola: Letters to Women for this letter, pp. 262–68, and his Introduction (pp. 10–11) on the circle of benefactresses in Barcelona.

2 This form of the surname is now commonly accepted, but the forms Rosés and Rosel(l) are also found (Ignatius himself is a most unreliable informant on the spelling of names). The lady addressed here (married into a well-known Barcelona family) helped Ignatius before his Jerusalem pilgrimage (1523) and became a close friend and admirer. As a widow she attempted (1543–47) to found a female branch of the Society in Rome (see Letter 19, note 8). Her friendship survived its failure and she entered a convent in Barcelona, dying in 1554.

3 In the following year Ignatius would finish his licentiate studies; he had the option of going on for an MA or not.

4 The honorific Catalan title meaning ‘Mr’, Isabel’s husband.

5 Juan de Arteaga was one of the young men who joined Ignatius in his very early student days in Barcelona (where Isabel would have known him) and then moved with Ignatius to Alcalá and Salamanca, but did not follow him subsequently to Paris. For an account of his tragic death, see Rem. 80.

6 To judge from the sole surviving copy, Ignatius misspelt most of the names in the postscript.

4 Steps in discernment (Teresa Rejadell 1536)

1 Available in English translation, H. Rahner, St Ignatius Loyola: Letters to Women, pp. 329–68, with both the letters of Ignatius and those of Sister Rejadell (he always referred to her by her family name).

2 Exx. 313–36, 345–51; these Rules and Notes were not part of the first drafts of the Exercises, and their final formulation seems to date from as late as 1539 (when Ignatius reached Rome).

3 A nun at the Benedictine convent of Santa Clara mentioned in another letter (MHSI I, pp. 93–99), though it is not clear if she is the person mentioned there, nor if Ignatius had ever met her. Until her death (1553) Sister Rejadell was one of the leaders of a reform group within the convent, and thus in conflict with others there. Her group repeatedly sought some kind of incorporation into the Society, but Ignatius always refused.

4 Lope de Cáceres (to be distinguished from Diego de Cáceres who knew Ignatius in Paris, see MHSI I, pp. 132–34) is one of the three companions from Barcelona, Alcalá and Salamanca mentioned in Rem. 58. He returned with Ignatius to Barcelona, but did not accompany him to Paris. Eventually he returned to his home city, Segovia (Rem. 80).

5 See Rem. 20 for a similar experience.

6 This Latin tag (= ‘Do the opposite’) encapsulates the teaching of Annotation 16 (Exx. 16).

7 Ecclus. 13:10 (Vulgate).

8 One scrupulous copyist baulked at the mention of an ‘involuntary sin’ and crossed out the words in brackets.

9 Juan de Castro had been one of Ignatius’s professors in Paris (see Rem. 75), experienced a conversion while dealing with Ignatius, and subsequently (in 1542) became Prior of the Carthusian monastery near Valencia, where Ignatius visited him in 1535.

5 Prayer made easy (Teresa Rejadell 1536)

1 See Letter 4.

2 Mentioned in the previous letter to Sister Rejadell (Letter 4, note 4).

6 In praise of The Spiritual Exercises (Fr Miona 1536)

1 A devout Portuguese priest, professor at Alcalá (1526–27) where he became Ignatius’s spiritual father and close friend. In 1532 he came to Paris for further studies, still acting as Ignatius’s confessor. In 1544 he entered the Society in Rome, becoming professed in 1549. He worked for several years in Sicily before returning ill to Rome, where he died in 1567 (G. Schurhammer, Francis Xavier, I, PP. 239–40).

2 The word here (centella) would mean in Spanish something like a ‘spark’ or ‘glitter’, but Ignatius seems to have been influenced by the Italian cento.

3 Pierre Favre, the first priest-companion among the Paris friends of Ignatius.

4 Cf. Mt. 18:24f.; 25:15f

5 Luke 19:22–23.

7 Blueprint for a religious order (Mgr Carafa 1536)

1 The text of this letter has survived in Ignatius’s own hand. However, the copy lacks the name of the addressee and the date, both conjectured by the editors (MHSI). In a detailed study Georges Bottereau has argued against the probability of the letter ever having been sent, but also indicates the importance Ignatius himself attached to the letter, as a sort of blueprint for his own order: Georges Bottereau, ‘La “lettre” d’Ignace de Loyola á Gian Pietro Carafa’, AHSI 44, 1975, PP. 139–52.

2 At this point still known as Bishop of Chieti, a member of a powerful Neapolitan family, who had renounced his ecclesiastical privileges (as archbishop and bishop) to spearhead the reform movement with the Theatines (see note 4 below). He was nominated a Cardinal in December, and there is a hint at Ignatius’s problems with him in Rem. 93.

3 Cf. Mt. 19:30 and parallels.

4 The Theatines were a group of clerks regular founded partly by St Cajetan and partly by Carafa in 1514; they practised strict poverty and worked for the internal reform of the Church.

5 The text here, as indeed in the previous two lines, is very obscure.

6 Again an ambiguous phrase.

7 In 1536 Carafa was about sixty years of age; he became Pope Paul IV in 1555 when nearly eighty, dying in 1559.

8 1 Cor. 6:12.

9 The term is used in a technical, canon law, sense.

8 Early years in Italy (1536—37)

1 First edited in vol. I, pp. 118–23; the second edition used the autograph copy that had been discovered in Spain, and is now in Salamanca, cf. B. Hernández Montes, ‘Original de la carta de San Ignacio a Mosén Verdolay’, Manresa 56 (1984), pp. 321–43.

2 The recipient of this letter, a young Aragonese priest and ‘Master’ in theology active in Barcelona, who had befriended Ignatius and knew his other friends there, eventually joined the Society, but only in 1556 when 52 years of age, shortly after the death of Ignatius. Some seven years later he left the Jesuits to become a Carthusian monk (cf. B. Hernández Montes, loe. cit., pp. 334–35).

3 In 1535 Ignatius had visited Spain (moving down from Loyola to Toledo and then across to Valencia), but not Barcelona (as far as one can judge from the records): see Rem. 90.

4 One of the different forms of this name (Roser, Rosell) found in the letters.

5 Francis Xavier, Diego Laínez, Alfonso Salmerón, Nicolás Bobadilla (the four Spaniards); Paschase Broët and Jean Codure (Frenchmen); Pierre Favre and Claude Le Jay (from Savoy); Simão Rodrigues (Portuguese). A tenth companion was already in Venice, Diego Hoces (a Spaniard). See Rem. 93.

6 Dr Pedro Ortiz, Ignatius’s former professor and harsh critic in Paris, was in Rome as an agent for the Emperor Charles V over the question of Catherine of Aragon’s marriage to Henry VIII. He became a warm friend and supporter of the Society, right up to his death (1548). See Rem. 93 for a passing reference.

7 Ignatius himself, Francis Xavier, Diego Laínez, Nicolás Bobadilla, Jean Codure and Simão Rodrigues were ordained priests; Alfonso Salmerón, who was too young for the priesthood, was ordained deacon.

8 These technical Latin phrases express the Canon Law requirement that a new priest should have some sort of economic support, usually from his local bishop or from a personal benefice; ‘voluntary poverty’ or ‘adequate learning’ or ‘both of these’ can be accepted by the officiating bishop as a replacement.

9 The solution found was to ask Bishop Vincenzo Nigusanti to perform the ordination, and the Papal Legate, Bishop Girolamo Veralli, to receive their vow of poverty, to which was added, although not mentioned here, one of chastity.

10 Cf. Mt. 25:18.

11 Cf. Luke 12:48.

9 Thanks for support (Mgr Contarini 1538)

1 Then in charge of the Hospital of the Incurables in Venice, this noble and kindly cleric was related to the Cardinal Contarini mentioned in the letter. The latter had been made a Cardinal only in 1535 and is generally regarded as one of the most progressive of the humanist group that rose under Paul III to key positions and headed the reform movement. His admiration for Ignatius (under whose guidance in Rome he made the full Exercises) led him to present the initial draft of the new order’s Institute to the Pope, even if he failed to win outright the approval he wanted.

2 Diego Hurtado de Mendoza was then Charles V’s ambassador in Venice; he was later transferred to Rome, also as ambassador.

10 Roman trials and tribulations (1538)

1 New edition, Fontes Narrativi, I (MHSI 66), Rome 1943, pp. 6–14, used here. The incidents related here are alluded to very briefly in Rem. 98.

2 See Letter 3.

3 Paul III travelled to Nice on 23 March 1538 to arrange a peace agreement between Charles V and Francis I; he did not return to Rome until 24 July. In his absence Cardinal Vincent Carafa was appointed Papal Legate, and Bishop Benedict Conversini continued as City Governor.

4 Towards the end of November 1537.

5 Ignatius himself and two companions, Pierre Favre and Diego Laínez.

6 One month-long retreat was given in Monte Cassino.

7 Shortly after Easter, which fell on 21 April 1538.

8 Miguel Landívar gave testimony in Rome, found himself playing the role of accused instead of accuser, and was then banished. His previous relations with Ignatius were tempestuous: he had been a servant of Francis Xavier and at one time attempted to murder Ignatius, later joined him in Venice and went with the first companions to Rome but soon left them. The other, Lorenzo García, was questioned outside Rome; he subsequently became a Jesuit.

9 Other sources indicate that the Pope went to Frascati and that the interview was conducted in Latin.

10 Juan Rodríguez de Figueroa had been the Archbishop of Toledo’s Vicar General in Alcalá (cf. Rem. 58); later he became Charles V’s Regent for the Kingdom of Naples and afterwards (in 1363) President of the Council of Castile.

11 Gasparo de Dotti was later put in charge of the Sanctuary of Loreto and in 1556, shortly before Ignatius died, given permission to make simple vows in the Society while retaining his post at Loreto until his death in 1563.

12 Matthieu Ory (spelt ‘Ori’ by Ignatius), the Dominican who had taught Ignatius in Paris and held the post of Inquisitor there (see Rem. 81, with note 123).

13 Probably Bishop Francesco Varchioni, who was standing in as suffragan for the absent Cardinal Rodolfo.

14 Hercules II d’Este, 1508–59.

15 Jaime Cazador, at this time an archdeacon in Barcelona, son of a wealthy German family (the Jaegers, they translated their surname into Castilian) and a generous benefactor of Ignatius; in 1546 he became Bishop of Barcelona.

11 Benighted obedience (Fr Viola 1542)

1 A young Italian priest from Parma, Viola did the Exercises with Favre or Laínez (1540) and joined Ignatius in Rome (1541), being sent shortly afterwards with some eight other students to Paris (Collège des Lombards). He later became Superior of the Paris house (1552) but made a hash of the negotiations with the Parlement, so that the Society was banned. In 1556 he was Rector of the College at Billon. Despite his poor health and rather gauche ways he was an exceptional retreat giver.

2 Probably the initial logic course, based on the text of Peter Hispanus, Summulae logicales.

12 Vocation doubts of a young man (1544)

1 Cf. Mt. 16:26 and parallels.

2 An application of a rule for the discernment of spirits (Exx. 318).

13 Borgia’s early steps (1545)

1 Eldest son of the Duke of Gandía (b. 1510), at the court of Charles V since 1528, married 1529 and father of eight children by 1539 when he was profoundly affected by the sudden death of the Empress; appointed Viceroy of Cataluña the same year, inherited the Ducal title in 1543, when he moved to his palace in Gandía and ceased to be Viceroy. His spiritual interests had developed since 1539, partly under the guidance of a Franciscan, Fray Tejeda, but in 1542 he established contacts with the Jesuits (Pierre Favre, who saw him again in 1544 with Antonio Araoz). He is known to have consulted Ignatius by letter about the use of frequent communion, and then about the foundation of a college (later a university) in Gandía.

2 Cf. Rom. 8:28.

3 Antonio Araoz, a nephew of Ignatius’s sister-in-law, and thus ‘one of the family’; born in 1516, he studied in Salamanca and went to Rome when he was 23, joining the nascent Society in 1539. He was sent to Spain and developed an intense programme of preaching and foundation work, so that he was appointed the first Provincial (1547–54) for the Spanish area, and later for Castile. He died in 1573.

4 Psalm 18 (Vulgate):13.

5 1 Cor. 4:4.

6 John 14:6.

7 Ignatius gives this spelling; she is usually known as Juana de Meneses.

8 The first community (set up on 18 November 1545) consisted of five members: Andrés de Oviedo and François Onfroy (see Letters 22 and 23), Ambrose de Lyra, Pierre Canal and Alberto Cavallino. Later they were joined by Jacobo Marín and Jean de la Goutte.

9 A Portuguese nobleman, Antonio Munís (or Moniz), who joined the Society in 1544 and accompanied Fr Mirón to Valencia to start the college there. A little later he abandoned the order for a series of long pilgrimages, then repented and by 1546 was in Rome seeking re-admission and practising dramatic public penances. Ignatius treated him kindly, but at a certain distance. He died shortly afterwards.

14 Conduct at Trent (1546)

1 In May Laínez and Salmerón arrived in Trent as theologians appointed by Pope Paul III. Claude Le Jay was already there representing a German bishop.

15 Refusing episcopal dignities (1546)

1 Ferdinand I (1503–64), a staunchly Catholic prince, brother of Charles V and Holy Roman Emperor 1556–64; within the federation of the Empire he was elected King of the Romans, ruling over parts of modern Germany.

2 Claude Le Jay (1504–52), a Savoyard and friend of Pierre Favre, one of the first companions, active in Germany (since 1542) and at the Council of Trent, known to King Ferdinand since the Diet of Worms, 1545. He had already refused the King’s invitation to become Bishop of Trieste, but Ferdinand appealed to the Pope in the winter of 1546, and Ignatius then intervened.

3 In the prologue to the 1540 Bull, Regimini militantis ecclesiae, approving the Society, the first companions are described in this way.

4 St Francis Xavier (1506–52), another of the first companions, despatched to India as early as 1540 and very active throughout the Far East; see Letter 32; full information in G. Schurhammer’s biography (see Bibliography).

5 Simão Rodrigues, see Letter 16. On the College of Coimbra, see Letters 16, 20, 31

6 Ignatius seems to avoid calling them ‘members of the Society’, perhaps because at this stage he was still not clear in his own mind about the status of the non-professed; it is only in 1548 that the first ‘spiritual coadjutors’ will be formally acknowledged, and even then only for India.

7 Of the original ten (six together in Rome and two more in 1541, the others later), one (Jean Codure) had died.

8 Apart from Le Jay, attempts were made to make bishops of Bobadilla, Broët, Laínez, and Rodrigues, and moves had already started to appoint a Jesuit Patriarch (with coadjutor bishops) for Ethiopia.

16 Ideals for newcomers (Coimbra 1547)

1 Inspired by the ‘folly of the cross’, and a misinterpretation of certain passages in the Exercises (e.g. Exx. 98, 146), some of the students had been parading through the streets of Coimbra carrying skulls and dressed in ridiculous fashion.

2 In 1547 a city with a recently founded university; the first Jesuit house there was set up in 1542.

3 Fr Simão Rodrigues (1510–79), a Portuguese nobleman, joined Ignatius while a teen-age university student in Paris and was one of the founding group. A man of outstanding social gifts, and later a favourite at the Portuguese court, he was always treated by Ignatius with great affection, despite their radical differences of view and the major disturbances he caused. He was made a superior as early as 1540, and appointed Provincial of Portugal from 1546 to 1553 when his idiosyncratic form of government had brought the Province to the brink of disaster. He was moved to Italy, trying once more to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and stayed there (causing considerable tremors in the handover of power on Ignatius’s death) until 1564, when he moved to Spain and (1573) Portugal.

4 Letters from this young priest scholastic (a member of the Society only since 1540), sent by Ignatius to help start the new house in Coimbra, still exist; Ignatius had great difficulty in persuading Rodrigues to write letters.

5 Mt. 5:48.

6 1 Peter 2:9.

7 Col. 1:13.

8 See Luke 16:8.

9 Source not identified.

10 See Proverbs 13:4 (Vulgate).

11 Rev. 2:17.

12 Rom. 8:18.

13 2 Cor. 4:17.

14 See Dan. 12:3.

15 Jer. 48:10.

16 1 Cor. 9:24.

17 2 Tim. 2:5.

18 For all this paragraph, see the ‘Contemplation for attaining love’ (Exx. 230–37). Later paragraphs in this letter recall other meditations from the Spiritual Exercises, especially that on the Incarnation (Exx. 101–09).

19 Ignatius plays here on the double meaning of the word compañía, both a ‘society’ (hence the normal English name for the Society of Jesus), which does not have a military connotation, and a military detachment, a ‘company’ of soldiers.

20 See Heb. 1:14.

21 See Phil. 2:21.

22 Rom. 12:1.

23 Psalm 98:4 (Vulgate).

24 See Lev. 2:13. Salt symbolizes here for Ignatius the virtue of obedience (one should not be misled by associations with ‘a pinch of salt’), see Letter 20.6.

25 St Bernard, In Canticum 19, 7, PL 183, 866D.

26 See Eccles. 7:17 (where the Latin Vulgate seems to mean, ‘Do not play the wise man to excess’ [tr. R. Knox]).

27 Prov. 13:11.

28 Prov. 19:2.

29 Rom. 6:6.

30 The work De vita solitaria ad FF. de Monte Dei I 11 (PL 184, 328C), attributed in Ignatius’s day to St Bernard, is now recognized as the work of William of St Thierry.

31 St Bernard, Epist. 82, PL 182, 203C.

32 1 Kings (Samuel) 17:38–40.

33 Really William of St Thierry, loc. cit. I1, 9, PL 184, 324A.

34 Ecclus. 14:5.

35 Perhaps a reminiscence of St Bernard, In circumcisione 3, PL 183,142B.

36 St Bernard, In Canticum 19, 7, PL 183, 866B.

37 See 1 Kings 15:23, and Letter 20.6 for a fuller quotation of the passage.

38 John 15:12.

39 Ecclus. 30:24.

40 Aristotle, Physics 2, 11, 194b 12, quoted by Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, 76, 1 ad 1.

17 Need for structures of government (Gandía 1547)

1 The Spanish word here (‘prepósito’) would be used in the Constitutions to mean ‘Superior’; the word ‘general’ is not a military term, but simply means ‘overall’ as opposed to ‘local’.

2 See Letter 19.

3 Luke 2:51.

4 Mt. 2:13.

5 John 21:17.

6 Heb. 13:17.

7 1 Kings 15:22.

8 Perhaps a reminiscence of Gregory the Great, Moralia, 35, 14:28, PL 76, 765B, quoted below, Letter 31 (see note 4). But a more exact verbal parallel is to be found in Augustine, Contra adversarium legis et prophetarum, I 14, PL 42, 613.

9 This quotation, formerly attributed to Gregory, is to be found in Augustine, Sermones ad Fratres in eremo, 61, PL 40,1344.

10 Josh. 10:12.

11 Josh. 10:14.

12 Source not identified.

13 Prov. 21:28 (Vulgate).

14 St Bernard, In Canticum, 19, 7, PL 183, 866B.

15 Gal. 2:20.

16 The title ‘Minister’ is given to the official in a Jesuit house subordinate to the Superior and responsible for material well-being.

17 The model used here is that employed in the election of the first ‘superior’ in the Society, that of Ignatius in 1541.

18 Experience of poverty (Padua 1547)

1 Compare Letter 30.

2 Andrea Lippomani, Prior of the Holy Trinity in Venice.

3 Cf. Ecclus. 11:14.

4 Cf. Wisd. 18:15.

5 Cf. Exx. 116.

6 Mt. 8:20.

7 Bernard, Sermon 1 on the Eve of the Nativity, 1, 5, PL 183, 89C.

8 Mt. 5:3, 6.

9 Psalm 12:5 (Vulgate 11:6).

10 Luke 4:18.

11 Mt. 11:5.

12 Mt. 19:28.

13 Mt. 5:3.

14 These last words, also in Latin, may not be a quotation, but simply a comment by Polanco, to whom Latin came easily.

15 Luke 16:9.

16 Augustine, Sermo 245, 4, PL 39, 1520.

17 Mt. 25:40.

18 Mt. 13:44.

19 ‘Poverty has no resources to sustain its amours’, a quotation from Ovid, Remedia amoris, V 749, and a curious example of what was considered polite learning at the time. One suspects that it came more naturally to Polanco’s mind than to that of Ignatius.

20 Psalm 10:17 (the Vulgate version 9:38, adapted by Polanco, differs from the Hebrew).

21 Eccles. 10:19.

22 See Mt. 19:29.

23 ‘Poverty, fertile in men of valour’, Lucan, Pharsalia, 1165–66.

24 Prov. 27:21.

25 Mt. 19:2.1.

26 Psalm 18:27 (17:28 Vulgate, where Polanco has added the words in brackets).

27 Cf. Mt. 5:3.

28 ‘Saepius pauper et fidelius ridet; nulla sollicitudo in alto est,’ Seneca, Letter 80, 6, ed. R. M. Gummere, Seneca ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales (Loeb Classical Library), II, London and New York 1920, pp. 214–16.

19 En route to the Constitutions (Louvain 1547)

1 This metaphor of the ‘glue’ of love may derive from St Augustine, De Trinitate X, v, 7.

2 Mt. 5:16.

3 James 1:17.

4 1 Peter 4:10.

5 James 1:17.

6 Mt. 18:19.

7 Cf. Is. 9:3.

8 On Christmas Day 1545 Ignatius, under strong pressure from Paul III, had accepted the vows of Isabel Roser, then a widow without children, and two other women, but it soon became clear that this female branch of the Society of Jesus could not continue and a Brief of Paul III (May 1547) abolished it – clearly to Ignatius’s great relief. As an exception to prove the rule, one woman was accepted as a member of the Society of Jesus (27 October 1554), but only under conditions of strict secrecy and as an exceptional case: this was the formidable Juana of Austria, daughter of Charles V and Regent of Spain.

9 2 Cor. 10:8 and 13:10.

10 The privileges in question (e.g. allowing all fathers of the Society, and not only the professed, to grant absolution in certain reserved cases) did not appear in a Papal bull until 1549 (Licet debitum of Paul III).

11 This date is mistaken.

20 Defining obedience as an ideal (Coimbra 1548)

1 See Letter 16, note 3. The letter mentioned proposes that the King of Portugal be approached concerning a possible foundation in Sicily using Portuguese Jesuits.

2 Early in 1544 Ignatius was confined to bed for four months, the most acute crisis since his attacks of fever in Venice (1537), but he suffered on and off continually while in Rome from stones in the liver (several were extracted in the autopsy of 1556). In 1548 he had to keep indoors for much of April.

3 Prov. 4:18 (tr. R. Knox).

4 Song of Songs 1:6 (Vulgate).

5 Is. 9:6.

6 Fr Rodrigues.

7 St Bernard, De oboedientia et eius gradibus, Sermo de diversis 41, 4, PL 183, 656A.

8 Luke 10:16.

9 1 Kings 15:15, 19, 22–23. The last verse, in a less literal form, occurs in Letter 16.23.

10 See Gen. 4:1–7, especially v. 4.

11 Gen. 8:21.

12 Lev. 2:13, and see Letter 16.17, for this and the following text.

13 Rom. 12:1.

14 St Bernard, In Canticum 19, 7, PL 183, 866C.

15 See Rom. 15:4.

21 Developments in the spiritual life (Borgia 1548)

1 See Letter 13, note 1.

2 The archive copy of this letter kept in Rome is unusual in that it has Ignatius’s corrections and additions written in his own hand; they are printed here in italics.

3 ‘Mens sana in corpore sano’, the well-known Latin tag (Juvenal, Satires, 10, 356).

22 Dealing with a radical crisis (Borgia 1549)

1 Ignatius’s original hand-written note was still extant, with the signature picked out in gold, in a convent in Spain when the first edition was published.

2 See Letter 13 for the previous history of the Duke and Letter 21 for his spiritual development. By the time of the present letter he was a fully professed member of the Society.

3 The use of initials (both here and in the following letter) occurs in other letters, and is clearly a security measure. The two persons are François Onfroy (B) and Andrés de Oviedo (C): see Letter 23.

4 Exx. 332.

23 On prophecies and revelations (Gandía 1549)

1 Andrés de Oviedo (1517–80), mentioned frequently in these Letters, entered the Society as a priest (1541) and was sent to help found the College in Gandía, being elected Superior (Letter 17); his lack of balance was soon noted, but he weathered the crisis of 1549 (Letters 22 and 23), moving to Tivoli in 1551. He was later ordained bishop (1555) as coadjutor to the Patriarch of Ethiopia, becoming Patriarch himself and living in Abyssinia in great hardship until his death.

2 Exx. 314–36.

3 Further detailed information available in the article by M. Ruiz Jurado, ‘Un caso de profetismo reformista en la Compañía de Jesús: Gandía 1547–1549’, AHSI 43, 1974, pp. 217–66.

4 See Letter 22. In this case, as with Letter 21, the archive copy has Ignatius’s corrections and additions written in his own hand. Once again they are printed in italics.

5 Rev. 1:3.

6 Acts 11:28.

7 Acts 21:9.

8 1 Thess. 5:20 (Vulgate).

9 1 John 4:1.

10 Ecclus. 19:4.

11 In other words, a charism given as a ‘bonus’, which cannot be ‘earned’ in any sense.

12 1 Cor. 12:10 (Vulgate).

13 Jonah 3:4.

14 See 1 Chron. 22:8.

15 This young Frenchman (at this point aged about 28) had joined the Society and then studied in Coimbra (1542); he had been teaching philosophy at Gandía since the foundation of the house (1545), was ordained a priest in Valencia (1547), but soon gave signs of suffering from tuberculosis and had been transferred to Valencia when this letter arrived, dying there in 1550. The use of initials (see Letter 22) is a security measure.

16 Here is the clearest indication that a group had been deputed to consider the case, although the members are not known. There are several instances indicating that it was Ignatius’s standard procedure to set up small consultative committees to consider important questions.

17 This tell-tale phrase seems to point back, at least remotely, to the influence of the twelfth-century Joachim of Fiore (see Marjorie Reeves, Joachim of Fiore and the Prophetic Future, SPCK, London 1976), and may have reached Fr Onfroy through the Franciscan, Fray Tejeda, mentioned below.

18 The Portuguese founder of the ‘Amadeites’, and confessor to Sixtus V, Joâo da Silva e Menezes (1431–82), is said to have written a ‘New Apocalypse’ largely about the angelic pope of the future. His congregation was later incorporated into the Observantine Franciscans and his writings were largely discredited.

19 Part of the campaign that led to his execution (1498) originated because of his impassioned preaching in favour of the reform of the Church. The relatively favourable account of him here is surprising.

20 Cardinal Pietro Columna or Colonna, called Galatino after his place of birth (Galatina de la Apulia), author of works on the Joachite prophecy in the 1520s.

21 A cryptic phrase, but probably a sarcastic reference to Ambrogio Recalcati, secretary to Paul III and chief of the Apostolic Chancery, arrested in December 1537 and accused of extortion and high treason, who was rumoured to have sold Papal secrets to Charles V

22 The Minims were members of a religious order founded by St Francis of Paola in 1435.

23 This brilliant scholar and linguist from the Low Countries joined the Roman novitiate under Ignatius in 1543. Although ordained a priest in 1544 he was not allowed to enter the Society and left in 1545, subsequently writing violent criticisms of Ignatius.

24 Deut. 3:23–28.

25 A nephew of Pope Paul III.

26 Provincial of all Spain (see Letter 13, note 3). In a letter to Rome ‘10 March 1549) Araoz reported on the long hours of prayer (three in the morning) and Friday use of the discipline in Gandía, but seems to suggest that he is not prepared to stand up to Borgia and Oviedo to restrain them. There is no record of his direct intervention in this case.

27 John 7:17 (quoted in the Latin).

28 See 1 Cor. 12, for example.

29 See note 11 above.

30 From here the general headings are those given in the document.

31 In letters to Rome (3 November 1547 and 8 February 1548) Fr Oviedo had described Onfroy as ‘of a speculative bent, but confused’, and as ‘learned … but I doubt if he will make a good teacher as order is needed for the latter …’

32 A first reference to a lost document containing statements by Frs Onfroy and Oviedo considered by the committee set up by Ignatius.

33 Is. 24:16 (Vulgate).

34 See §4 above.

35 The contention seems to have been that the Society should take part in an uprising to replace the Pope, and that those who died in the undertaking would be martyrs.

36 Mt. 7:16.

37 John 15:26.

38 Wisd. 1:7.

39 The term seems to refer to the overall Superior (later to be called in the Constitutions the Superior General), rather than to the local or provincial superior.

40 John 3:20; and see Exx. 326.

41 See note n on a similar scholastic term, part of the developed medieval teaching on grace.

42 The exact topic discussed here is not clear.

43 Fray Tejeda had visited Rome and stayed at the Jesuit house in 1547 while seeking permission to be ordained a priest; he did so independently of his superiors, but under the patronage of none other than Borgia.

44 Unfortunately the reaction of Borgia himself to this notion is now lost. In a conversation reported by Nadal the key word used by Borgia to describe Tejeda’s visions is illegible.

45 The initial ‘R’ is due to the code name ‘Raphael’ used by and of Borgia in the letters.

46 See 2 Cor. 12:2 and Gal. 2:1.

47 See Cassian, Collationes 24, 21, PL 49,1313A–14A.

48 See note 26 above.

49 SeeMt. 13:25.

50 See John 8:44.

51 Probably a reference to a measure taken by Polanco on Ignatius’s instructions (29 March 1548), when Borgia was given carte-blanche (quite literally in the form of two blank sheets of paper with Ignatius’s signature at the foot) to settle the troubles at Gandía, if necessary sending away Oviedo, Onfroy and Tejeda. It is not known what use he made of these powers, which overrode those of the local elected Superior (Fr Oviedo).

52 See John 14:17.

53 A fifteenth-century Franciscan mystic; his works had been edited in 1536 and became very influential (the third edition by the Carthusians in Cologne, 1556, was dedicated to Ignatius), but by the end of the century they were on the Index apparently because of his bold language about the sensible effects of grace, the vision of God, and the annihilation of the self in union with God (cf. Dict. Sp., 7, cc. 346–66).

54 Cassian, De coenobiorum institutis, II, 4, 10, PL 49, 78B–C, 83A, 99A. Cassian mentions that thirty or twenty Psalms at one session are too many; twelve were more normal in Egypt.

55 The classical definitions to be found in Aquinas and in John Damascene (De fide orthodoxa, III, 24) quoted in Aquinas.

56 Augustine, Ad Probam, Ep. 130, 10:20, PL 33, 1075.

57 Luke 18:1.

58 See §40 on Nos 20, 21 above.

59 Psalm 33:6.

60 At this point the office copy of the letter (11 folios long) breaks off, but editors and commentators agree that not much has been lost.

24 Spreading God’s word in a German university (1549)

1 William IV of Bavaria died in 1550 before the projected college was under way; his son and successor, Albert V, started new negotiations and eventually a Jesuit college was founded in Ingolstadt in 1556.

2 Phil. 2:21.

3 1 Cor. 9:22.

4 The future St Peter Canisius (1521–97).

5 Mt. 9:17 and parallels.

6 Cf. 2 Cor. 10:8 and 13:10.

7 Leonard Eck, one of the Duke’s counsellors, had been sent to Rome to negotiate the sending of Jesuit theologians to Ingolstadt.

8 The College of Coimbra.

9 The organization and study methods that Ignatius had experienced in Paris remained his educational model: cf. G. Codina Mir, Aux sources de la pédagogie des jésuites: le ‘modus Parisiensis’, Bibl. Inst. Hist. SI, Rome 1968.

25 Placating a parent over a son’s vocation (1549)

1 This priest, a great benefactor and friend, had donated a house in Tivoli to the Society.

2 He had died at about this time, although his brother, Lucio, was to learn of this in Sicily only a couple of months later.

27 Consoling a sister on her brother’s death (1551)

1 The de Vega family were all very close to Ignatius, especially the father, Don Juan, one of Charles V’s outstanding generals, a former ambassador in Rome, later Viceroy in Sicily. In March 1550 the wife of Don Juan died, and then in September the eldest son, Hernando, died unexpectedly after a short illness. Hernando’s sister, Isabel, the only daughter and the youngest in the family, was particularly affected, and wrote to Ignatius fearful for her brother’s eternal salvation. There is a full account of the very close friendship that developed between Ignatius and Isabel in Hugo Rahner, Saint Ignatius Loyola: Letters to Women, pp. 452–78.

2 Wax candles figure among these Lenten gifts.

3 He had accompanied Don Juan on his recent North African campaign and assisted the mother of Isabel on her deathbed.

4 Francis Borgia, who had come to Rome in October 1550, set out for Spain, where he was to be ordained priest, in February 1551. He first appeared as a Jesuit a few days after his ordination.

28 Refusing a Cardinal’s hat (Borgia 1552)

1 Both Ignatius and Borgia feared that when Paul III learned of Borgia’s decision to enter the religious life he would insist on making him a Cardinal, but the Pope’s death in 1549 removed the immediate threat and Borgia ventured to visit Rome and call on Julius III in 1550. Two years later it was his friend, Charles V, who proposed to the Pope that Borgia be made a Cardinal. With some difficulty Ignatius was able to persuade Julius III that the hat should be offered but not imposed.

2 Borgia had left Oñate shortly after his ordination in May 1551 and was preaching in various places in Spain; in 1553 he entered Portugal.

3 One revealing remark contained in this letter of Polanco (who describes Ignatius’s visit to the Pope) is that of Julius III, that the Emperor seriously doubted if Borgia would accept, and had taken the precaution of sending three other names so that the Spanish contingent of Cardinals would be adequate, cf. Epist., No. 2620, IV 2.57.

30 Agreeing to be royal confessors (1553)

1 A Spanish Jesuit, born in Valencia, he was appointed Provincial of Portugal, where he became well known for his piety and well-meaning meticulousness, but less admired for his administration (he preferred to spend his time preaching among the needy).

2 On his role in requesting the Reminiscences, see the introduction to Reminiscences earlier in this volume.

3 The project for a mission to Ethiopia was first mooted in 1546, and although Ignatius at first resisted any member of the Society being given a dignity, he was convinced by the special mission conditions to accept this drawback and flung himself whole-heartedly into the plan. The Portuguese Jesuit Joâo Nunes Barreto, who had worked in North Africa for the liberation of captives and was familiar with Islam and the Arab world, was chosen as first Patriarch. He sailed for Abyssinia in 1555 but was refused permission to enter, landing in Goa and working there till his death (1562). He was succeeded as Patriarch by his coadjutor, Andrés de Oviedo (see Letter 23, note 1), who had been allowed entry, and had survived the death of the Emperor Claudius and the transfer of power to a Negus much more hostile to the Roman Church. The subsequent history of the mission, ending in débâcle in 1633, has been admirably recounted by Philip Caraman, The Lost Empire: The Story of the Jesuits in Ethiopia 1555–1634, London 1985.

4 See 1 Cor. 9:22.

5 See Phil. 2:21.

31 The final word on obedience (1553)

1 Many paragraphs are expanded from (i) Letter 16 (7 May 1547); (ii) Letter 17 (29 July 1547); (iii) Letter 20 (14 January 1548); (iv) a letter from Polanco (27 March 1548, No. 295) to the local superior of Gandía; (v) a letter (1 June 1551, No. 1854) to a Portuguese scholastic. The paragraph numbering was introduced by the MHSI editors.

2 See Rem., Introduction.

3 E.g. Letter 16.

4 Gregory the Great, Moralia, 35, 14:28, PL 76,765B. The same quotation may be that referred to in the earlier letter to the Jesuit community at Gandía (Letter 17.9).

5 Phil. 2:8.

6 Luke 10:16.

7 Mt. 23:2–3.

8 Eph. 6:5.

9 1 Sam. 15:22.

10 Gregory the Great, Moralia, 35, 14:28, PL 76, 765B.

11 Cassian, Collationes 4, 20, PL 49, 608C–09A.

12 See Luke 10:38–42; Ignatius presumes that Mary the sister of Martha and Mary Magdalene are the same person.

13 See John 11:2 and 12:3, with Mt. 26:7.

14 St Bernard, Sermo ad milites templi, 13, PL 182, 939B.

15 St Bernard, Sermo de diversis, 35, 4, PL 183, 636A–B.

16 Prov. 3:5.

17 Cassian, Collationes, 2, 11, PL 49, 541B.

18 St Bernard, Sermo 3 de circumcisione, 8, PL 183,140C.

19 Rom. 15:5.

20 Cf. Rom. 12:1.

21 St Leo, Sermo 5 de epiphania, 3, PL 54, 252A.

22 Col. 3:23–24.

23 St Bernard, De praecepto et dispensatione, 9,19, PL 182, 871D.

24 St Leo, Sermo 4 de jejunio septimi mensis, 1, PL 54, 444B.

25 Gen. 22:2–3.

26 Cassian, De institutis, 4, 24, PL 49,183D–84B.

27 Cassian, De institutis, 4, 26, PL 49,185B–86A.

28 St Gregory, Dialogues, 2, 7, PL 66, 146A–B.

29 De vitis Patrum, 3, 27, PL 73, 755D–56B.

30 Normally Ignatius went to great pains to avoid confrontations, and a favourite ploy was to appoint Vice-Rectors (to act as buffers between subjects and superiors), or Visitors (with powers over Provincials), or to give special powers (Borgia, Nadal). This introduced some confusion into the linear model sketched here. Cf. A. Ravier, Ignatius of Loyola and the Founding of the Society of Jesus, p. 369.

31 Wisd. 8:1.

32 The last call to Francis Xavier (Japan 1553)

1 The true date was 29 January, when Xavier happened to be in Cochin (South India); he then wrote three letters, one to Ignatius, one to Simão Rodrigues in Portugal, and one long ‘open letter’ to the companions in Europe.

2 This plan had to be altered, and Fr Gaspar Barzaeus (a convert soldier from Flanders) was brought from Ormuz and appointed Vice-Provincial in Goa while Xavier was away in Japan (1552). For more information on him, see Schurhammer, Francis Xavier, III, pp. 496f.

3 Two letters were dispatched by Polanco (Nos 3521 and 3604), 5 and 30 July, the latter referring explicitly to Ignatius’s affectionate desire to see Xavier (‘this affection alone has the value for us of many, very strong reasons’).

33 Criteria in the choice of parish work (1554)

1 Nothing is known about this correspondent, who may have been a cleric, apart from his name and residence.

2 Situated in the Valtellina, north of Bergamo.

3 Posted for a five–six months’ period to Morbegno, Fr Galvanello became so dear to the local community that the municipal authorities wrote to Ignatius and to some of the Roman Cardinals requesting that he be left there permanently. It took several letters (one threatening Fr Galvanello with dismissal) to extract him.

4 The Latin version of Romans 14:5 (‘in sensu suo abundare’) had become a cliché in the sense, ‘Let each be allowed to have his own opinion.’

34 Financial worries (1555)

1 See Letter 40.

2 About five months earlier Princess Juana of Austria, a widow at the age of nineteen, had been secretly admitted to be a member of the Society of Jesus (see Letter 19, note 8). Early in January Ignatius had written to her confirming that the difficult legal process was under way (Epist. VIII 235, No. 5066).

35 Norms for dealing with superiors (1555)

1 After his appointment as Secretary in 1547 Polanco began to keep records of the correspondence despatched from Rome, at first with summaries of letters, later with full copies, entered in the Regestes, still extant in five volumes. In addition there was a special volume, entitled Instructiones, where the present document has been entered.

36 The Society and the Inquisition (1555)

1 See Letter 30 for another example of this Provincial’s ingenuousness.

2 The key ‘arrangement’, as becomes clear in the next sentence, is that if the King is not willing to write to the Pope, the latter is to be approached directly for an explicit order.

37 Catechizing the sign of the cross

1 In Spain one still sees people making the sign of the cross, then kissing the crossed thumb and first finger, which are then raised to the mouth to complete the gesture.

38 Consoling the mother of a student (1556)

1 Both are contained in Hugo Rahner, St Ignatius Loyola: Letters to Women, pp. 391–95.

2 Once ordained Fr Fadrique was put in charge of the main Jesuit house in Rome; he died ‘after a virtuous life’ in 1588. According to Fr Rahner he never returned to Spain.

39 Norms for food in Louvain (1556)

1 Exx. 210–17.

2 1 Cor. 8:13, and Rom. 14:21.

THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES

1 These introductory notes are referred to as the ‘Preface’ in one of Ignatius’s letters (No. 5150).

2 Cf. ‘affections’ in the Glossary.

3 For convenience sake the person giving the Exercises is sometimes designated in this translation as the ‘director’, but it should be noted that this term does not occur in the vocabulary of Ignatius, who consistently refers to ‘the one who gives’. Similarly ‘exercitant’ is not found in the original text, but rather ‘the one who makes’ or ‘the one who receives’.

4 The standard expression is ‘the illuminative way’ (in contrast to the purgative and the unitive ways).

5 Reading ‘abrasándola’ instead of ‘abrazándola’: cf. Diary, 18 Feb.

6 The Latin version adds in brackets, ‘and it is advisable to write down a summary of the things so that they do not slip one’s memory‘.

7 Ignatius wrote the letter ‘g’ at the head of each line, ‘which seems to stand for “gluttony”’ (Dalmases, ed., Exx. pp. 60–61). It is not clear if he envisaged the pairs of lines growing shorter (as in the Latin edition) or thinner (as in the Spanish Autograph).

8 See Mt. 12:36.

9 The classical translation of this word is ‘Prelude’, which reflects the Latin version of the Exercises more than the original Spanish. The detailed explanations given by Ignatius for this First Exercise are intended to introduce a complete beginner to the sort of methods that can be used throughout the Exx. He would not want to apply this elaborate structure in a mechanical way (see Exx. 162), but unfortunately his text can easily give the impression of inhibiting prayer by an excessive stress on system and procedure; hence his insistence on the ‘giver’ of the Exx.

10 See Glossary.

11 See Glossary.

12 See Glossary.

13 The last two words are added from the Latin version.

14 The text of this and the other prayers mentioned is given in the Appendix to Additional Material.

15 The Latin translation adds here: ‘In the opinion of the one giving the Exercises it might be of benefit to the exercitant to add other meditations, e.g. on death and other punishments of sin, on judgement, etc. It should not be thought that such meditations are not allowed, even though they are not given here.’

16 Although marked as part of the Second Week, this contemplation takes place on a transition day (see Exx. 99) before the full first day of that week (Exx. 101).

17 The phrase ‘in Their eternity’ was a later addition by Ignatius in place of ‘among themselves’, and similarly the phrase ‘when the fullness of time came’ was also added later.

18 Gal. 4:4.

19 A marginal note added by Ignatius to the Autograph.

20 Cf. Glossary, ‘application of the senses’.

21 The ‘and’ translates the comma after ‘divinity’ found in the MHSI edition, but some editors omit the comma and would translate ‘the divinity of the soul [of Christ]’.

22 Ignatius uses the curious term ‘binario’, explained as a late Latin synonym for a ‘person’ (i.e. one made up of two parts, the body and the soul), used in moral teaching at the time when various ‘cases’ were being presented.

23 This contemplation includes the events that happened in the desert, events which are, in fact, the main subject of contemplation on this day.

24 ‘Point 1’ appears here in the Autograph, but seems to have been misplaced from below.

25 On ‘spirits’ see Glossary; the rules for the discernment of spirits are given later.

26 The Spanish text reads: ‘the divinity goes into hiding … but allows … the sacred humanity to suffer’. It is clear however, despite the concision here, that Ignatius is referring to one person, Jesus Christ, whom he does not name as such; he would not want to imply an independent pair of agents (the divine and human natures).

27 The word for ‘delicacies’ (manjares) can mean simply ‘dishes’ or ‘foods’ in general (cf. Exx. 215); however, as dishes that are especially attractive are being mentioned, the more general sense is less appropriate here.

28 The words ‘of a fire’ are added (appropriately) in the Latin version.

29 The Spanish here is ambiguous (‘your love and grace’ or ‘love of you and grace’), but the Latin translation approved by Ignatius reads ‘amorem tui solum cum gratia tua’ (‘love of you alone with your grace’), which reveals better the true meaning.

30 This phrase is in Latin, ‘habet se ad modum laborantis’, in the original text.

31 Ignatius, translating from the Latin Vulgate, gives the Gospel words, which are translated here into English.

32 The term used for ‘rational moral judgement’ is sindéresis, a technical Thomistic term, deriving from the Greek philosophers.

33 In Latin in the text; cf. 2 Cor. 11:14.

34 Cf. Letter 4.

35 The bracketed words are in Latin in the text: ‘iuxta illud Gregorii: Bonarum mentium est ibi culpam cognoscere ubi culpa nulla est’, cf. Gregorius Magnus, Epistolarum Libri, XI, 64 (PL 77,1195).

36 Once again a Latin text: ‘iuxta Bernardum eidem respondentem: Nee propter te incepi, nee propter te finiam’, but this time taken from the Golden Legend that Ignatius knew in Loyola; see Rem. 5 with note 6.

* Numbers in square brackets are those of the letters in the MHSI edition.