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