A Brief Life of St. Ignatius of Loyola

Early Life of St. Ignatius

Inigo de Loyola was born in 1491 in Azpeitia in the Basque province of Guipuzcoa in northern Spain. At the age of sixteen years he was sent to serve as a page to Juan Velazquez, the treasurer of the kingdom of Castile. As a member of the Velazquez household, he was frequently at court and developed a taste for all of court life.

Eventually, he found himself at the age of 30, in May of 1521, as an officer defending the fortress of the town of Pamplona against the French. During the battle, a cannon ball struck Ignatius, wounding one leg and breaking the other. The French soldiers carried him back to recuperate at his home, the castle of Loyola. Due to the wound and the various surgeries on his leg, he walked with a limp for the rest of his life.

Conversion of St. Ignatius

During the long weeks of his recuperation, Ignatius began to read a copy of the life of Christ and a book on the saints. The more he read, the more he considered the exploits of the saints worth imitating. However, at the same time, he continued to have daydreams of fame and glory, along with fantasies of winning the love of a certain noble lady of the court. He noticed, however, that after reading and thinking of the saints and Christ he was at peace and satisfied. Yet when he finished his long daydreams of his noble lady, he would feel restless and unsatisfied. Not only was this experience the beginning of his conversion, but it was also the beginning of spiritual discernment, or discernment of spirits, which is associated with Ignatius and described in his Spiritual Exercises.

The Experience of Manresa

He decided that he wanted to go to Jerusalem to live, where our Lord had spent his life on earth. As a first step, he began his journey to Barcelona. He first proceeded to the Benedictine shrine of Our Lady of Montserrat where he made a general confession.

He continued towards Barcelona but stopped along the river Cardoner at a town called Manresa. He stayed in a cave outside the town, intending to linger only a few days, but he remained for ten months. He spent hours each day in prayer and also worked in a hospice. While here, the ideas for what are now known as the Spiritual Exercises began to take shape. It was also on the banks of this river that he had a vision, an encounter with God as He really is, so that all creation was seen in a new light and acquired a new meaning and relevance, an experience that enabled Ignatius to find God in all things. This grace, finding God in all things, is one of the central characteristics of Jesuit spirituality.

He finally arrived in the Holy Land where he wanted to remain, but was told by the Franciscan superior, who had authority over Catholics there, that the situation was too dangerous. (At the time, the Turks were the rulers of the Holy Land.) The superior ordered Ignatius to leave. He refused, but when threatened with excommunication, he obediently departed.

The Return to School

By now he was 33 years old and determined to become a better educated person. However, he was ignorant of Latin, a necessary preliminary to university studies in those days. So he started back to school, studying Latin grammar with young boys in a school in Barcelona. Afterwards, he moved successively to the University of Alcala, the University of Salamanca, and the University of Paris.  

At the University of Paris, he began sharing a room with Francis Xavier and Peter Faber. He greatly influenced a few other fellow students, directing them all at one time or another in what we now call the Spiritual Exercises. Eventually, six of them plus Ignatius decided to take vows of chastity and poverty and to go to the Holy Land. If going to the Holy Land became impossible, they would go to Rome and place themselves at the disposal of the Pope for whatever he would want them to do. For a year they waited; however, no ship was able to take them to the Holy Land because of the conflict between the Christians and Muslims. It was during this time of waiting that Ignatius was ordained a priest.

The Company of Jesus

Ignatius, along with two of his companions, Peter Faber and James Lainez, decided to go to Rome and place themselves at the disposal of the Pope. It was a few miles outside of the city that Ignatius had the second most significant of his mystical experiences. At a chapel at La Storta where they had stopped to pray, God the Father told Ignatius, "I will be favorable to you in Rome" and that He would place him (Ignatius) with His Son.

When they met with the Pope, he very happily put them to work teaching scripture and theology and preaching. It was in Rome on Christmas morning, 1538, that Ignatius celebrated his first Mass at the church of St. Mary Major in the Chapel of the Manger which, it was thought, had the actual manger of Bethlehem.

During the Lent of 1539, Ignatius asked all of his companions to come to Rome to discuss their future. After many weeks of prayer and discussion, they decided to form a community, with the Pope's approval, in which they would vow obedience to a superior general who would hold office for life.   They would place themselves at the disposal of the Holy Father to travel wherever he should wish to send them for whatever duties. A vow to this effect was added to the ordinary vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Formal approval of this new order was given by Pope Paul III the following year on September 27, 1540. Since they had referred to themselves as the Company of Jesus (in Latin Societas Jesu), in English their order became known as the Society of Jesus. Ignatius was elected to be the superior. On the Friday of Easter week, April 22, 1541, at the Church of St. Paul Outside-the-Walls, the friends pronounced their vows in the newly formed Order.

Ignatius, whose love it was to be actively involved in teaching catechism to children, directing adults in the Spiritual Exercises, and working among the poor and in hospitals, would, for the most part, sacrifice this love for the next fifteen years, directing this new society throughout the world. He would spend years composing the Constitutions of the Society and would write thousands of letters to all corners of the globe to his fellow Jesuits dealing with the affairs of the Society, and to lay men and women directing them in the spiritual life. From his tiny quarters in Rome, he would live to see in his lifetime the Society of Jesus grow from eight to a thousand members. The Jesuits would found colleges and houses all over Europe and as far away as Brazil and Japan. Some of the original companions were to become the Pope's theologians at the Council of Trent, an event which played an important role in the Catholic Counter Reformation.

Last Illness

Ever since his student days in Paris, Ignatius had suffered from stomach ailments and they became increasingly troublesome in Rome. In the summer of 1556 his health grew worse, and he died shortly after midnight on July 31. Ignatius was beatified on July 27, 1609 and canonized by Pope Gregory XV on March 12, 1622, together with St. Francis Xavier. Ignatius' feast day is celebrated by the universal Church and the Jesuits on July 31.