The memorial of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, priest, who, a Spaniard born in the Basque country, spent his life at the royal court and in military service, until, converted to God after receiving a grave wound, he completed his theological studies at Paris and gathered to himself his first companions, whom he afterward established at Rome as the Society of Jesus, where he himself exercised a fruitful ministry both in writing works and in forming disciples, for the greater glory of God.
Lifespan: 1491–1556
Beatified: 27 July 1609 by Pope Paul V
Canonized: 12 March 1622 by Pope Gregory XV, Vatican Basilica
Memoria liturgica: 31 July
“Much wisdom joined with moderate holiness is preferable to great holiness with little wisdom”
Íñigo López de Loyola
Íñigo López de Loyola was born in 1491 at Azpeitia, in the Basque Country. As a younger son, he was destined for the priestly life, but his aspiration was to become a knight. His father therefore sent him to Castile, to the court of don Juan Velázquez de Cuéllar, minister to King Ferdinand the Catholic.
Court life shaped the character and manners of the young man, who took to reading poetry and attending upon the ladies. On the death of don Juan, Íñigo transferred to the court of don Antonio Manrique, Duke of Nájera and Viceroy of Navarre, and in his retinue took part in the defense of the castle of Pamplona, then besieged by the French. There, on 20 May 1521, he was struck by a cannonball that left him lame for the rest of his life.
The long convalescence gave him the opportunity to read the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine and the Life of Christ by Ludolph the Carthusian — texts that exerted an enormous influence on a personality formed by chivalric ideals, persuading him that the only Lord worth following was Jesus Christ.
Resolved to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Íñigo stopped at the shrine of Montserrat, where he took a vow of chastity and exchanged his rich garments for those of a beggar. Barcelona, from which he was to embark for Italy, was in the grip of a plague epidemic, and Íñigo was compelled to remain at Manresa. This enforced halt consigned him to a long period of meditation and solitude, during which he wrote a series of counsels and reflections that, later revised and developed, would form the basis of the Spiritual Exercises.
He finally arrived in the Holy Land and would have wished to settle there, but the Franciscan superior forbade it, judging his theological knowledge too slender. Íñigo accordingly returned to Europe and took up studies in grammar, philosophy, and theology — first at Salamanca and then in Paris. It was in the French capital that he changed his name to Ignatius, in homage to the Saint of Antioch whose love for Christ and obedience to the Church he so admired, qualities that would become founding characteristics of the Society of Jesus.
In Paris, Ignatius met those who would become his first companions; with them he took a vow of poverty and planned to travel once more to the Holy Land, but this plan came to nothing because of the war between Venice and the Turks. Ignatius and his companions therefore presented themselves to the Pope to place themselves at his disposal. The Pope said to them: “Why go to Jerusalem? To bear fruit in the Church, Italy is a good Jerusalem.”
In 1538 Pope Paul III gave canonical approval to the Society of Jesus, which from the outset was animated by missionary zeal: the Pilgrim Priests, or the Reformed — only later did they take the name Jesuits — were sent throughout Europe and then into Asia and the rest of the world, carrying everywhere their charism of poverty, charity, and absolute obedience to the will of the Pope.
One of the principal challenges that Ignatius faced was the cultural and theological formation of the young: for this reason he assembled a corps of teachers and founded several colleges that over the years gained an international reputation, owing to the exceptionally high level of scholarship and a curriculum taken as a model even by non-religious educational institutions.
In obedience to the Pope, Ignatius remained in Rome to coordinate the activities of the Society and to attend to the poor, the orphaned, and the sick, earning the epithet “Apostle of Rome.” He slept no more than four hours a night, and continued his work and his engagements despite the sufferings caused by hepatic cirrhosis and gallstones, until he was utterly spent.
He died in his austere cell on 31 July 1556, and his remains are enshrined in the altar of the left transept arm of the Church of the Gesù in Rome, one of the finest monuments of Roman Baroque.