Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 6 and 7 (of 7) / The Catholic Reaction

by John Addington Symonds

He could boast but little education; and his favorite reading was in Amadis of Gaul. That romance appeared during the boy's earliest childhood, and Spain was now devouring its high-flown rhapsodies with rapture. The peculiar admixture of mystical piety, Catholic enthusiasm, and chivalrous passion, which distinguishes Amadis, exactly corresponded to the spirit of the Spaniards at an epoch when they had terminated their age-long struggle with the Moors, and were combining propagandist zeal with martial fervor in the conquest of the New World. Its pages inflamed the imagination of Ignatius. He began to compose a romance in honor of S. Peter, and chose a princess of blood royal for his Oriana. Thus, in the first days of youth, while his heart was still set on love and warfare, he revealed the three leading features of his character—soaring ambition, the piety of a devotee, and the tendency to view religion from the point of fiction.

Ignatius was barely twenty when the events happened which determined the future of his life and so powerfully affected the destinies of Catholic Christendom. The French were invading Navarre; and he was engaged in the defense of its capital, Pampeluna. On May 20, 1521, a bullet shattered his right leg, while his left foot was injured by a fragment of stone detached from a breach in the bastion. Transported to his father's castle, he suffered protracted anguish under the hands of unskilled medical attendants. The badly set bone in his right leg had twice to be broken; and when at last it joined, the young knight found himself a cripple. This limb was shorter than the other; the surgeons endeavored to elongate it by machines of iron, which put him to exquisite pain. After months of torture, he remained lame for life.

During his illness Ignatius read such books as the castle of Loyola contained. These were a 'Life of Christ' and the 'Flowers of the Saints' in Spanish. His mind, prepared by chivalrous romance, and strongly inclined to devotion, felt a special fascination in the tales of Dominic and Francis. Their heroism suggested new paths which the aspirant after fame might tread with honor. Military glory and the love of women had to be renounced; for so ambitious a man could not content himself with the successes of a cripple in these spheres of action. But the legends of saints and martyrs pointed out careers no less noble, no less useful, and even more enticing to the fancy. He would become the spiritual Knight of Christ and Our Lady. To S. Peter, his chosen protector, he prayed fervently; and when at length he rose from the bed of sickness, he firmly believed that his life had been saved by the intercession of this patron, and that it must be henceforth consecrated to the service of the faith. The world should be abandoned. Instead of warring with the enemies of Christ on earth, he would carry on a crusade against the powers of darkness. They were first to be met and fought in his own heart. Afterwards, he would form and lead a militia of like-hearted champions against the strongholds of evil in human nature.

It must not be thought that the scheme of founding a Society had so early entered into the mind of Ignatius. What we have at the present stage to notice is that he owed his adoption of the religious life to romantic fancy and fervid ambition, combined with a devotion to Peter, the saint of orthodoxy and the Church. Animated by this new enthusiasm, he managed to escape from home in the spring of 1522. His friends opposed themselves to his vocation; but he gave them the slip, took vows of chastity and abstinence, and began a pilgrimage to our Lady of Montserrat near Barcelona. On the road he scourged himself daily. When he reached the shrine he hung his arms up as a votive offering, and performed the vigil which chivalrous custom exacted from a squire before the morning of his being dubbed a knight. This ceremony was observed point by point, according to the ritual he had read in Amadis of Gaul. Next day he gave his raiment to a beggar, and assumed the garb of a mendicant pilgrim. By self-dedication he had now made himself the Knight of Holy Church.

His first intention was to set sail for Palestine, with the object of preaching to the infidels. But the plague prevented him from leaving port; and he retired to a Dominican convent at Manresa, a little town of Catalonia, north-west of Barcelona. Here he abandoned himself to the crudest self-discipline. Feeding upon bread and water, kneeling for seven hours together rapt in prayer, scourging his flesh thrice daily, and reducing sleep to the barest minimum, Ignatius sought by austerity to snatch that crown of sainthood which he felt to be his due. Outraged nature soon warned him that he was upon a path which led to failure. Despair took possession of his soul, sometimes prompting him to end his life by suicide, sometimes plaguing him with hideous visions. At last he fell dangerously ill. Enlightened by the expectation of early death, he then became convinced that his fanatical asceticism was a folly. The despair, the dreadful phantoms which had haunted him, were ascribed immediately to the devil. In those rarer visitings of brighter visions, which sometimes brought consolation, bidding him repose upon God's mercy, he recognized angels sent to lead him on the pathway of salvation. God's hand appeared in these dealings; and he resolved to dedicate his body as well as his soul to God's service, respecting both as instruments of the divine will, and entertaining both in efficiency for the work required of them.

The experiences of Manresa proved eminently fruitful for the future method of Ignatius. It was here that he began to regard self-discipline and self-examination as the needful prelude to a consecrated life. It was here that he learned to condemn the ascetism of anchorites as pernicious or unprofitable to a militant Christian. It was here that, while studying the manual of devotion written by Garcia de Cisneros, he laid foundations for those famous Exercitia, which became his instrument for rapidly passing neophytes through spiritual training similar to his own. It was here that he first distinguished two kinds of visions, infernal and celestial. Here also he grew familiar with the uses of concrete imagination;, and understood how the faculty of sensuous realization might be made a powerful engine for presenting the past of sacred history or the dogmas of orthodox theology under shapes of fancy to the mind. Finally, in all the experiences of Manresa, he tried the temper of his own character, which was really not that of a poet or a mystic, but of a sagacious man of action, preparing a system calculated to subjugate the intelligence and will of millions. Tested by self-imposed sufferings and by diseased hallucinations, his sound sense, the sense of one destined to control men, gathered energy, and grew in, solid strength: yet enough remained of his fanaticism to operate as a motive force in the scheme which he afterwards developed; enough survived from the ascetic phase he had surmounted, to make him comprehend that some such agony as he had suffered should form the vestibule to a devoted life. We may compare the throes of Ignatius at Manresa with the contemporary struggles of Luther at Wittenberg and in the Wartzburg. Our imagination will dwell upon the different issues to which two heroes distinguished by practical ability were led through their contention with the powers of spiritual evil. Protagonists respectively of Reformation and Counter-Reformation, they arrived at opposite conclusions; the one championing the cause of spiritual freedom in the modern world, the other consecrating his genius to the maintenance of Catholic orthodoxy by spiritual despotism. Yet each alike fulfilled his mission by having conquered mysticism at the outset of his world-historical career.

Ignatius remained for the space of ten months at Manresa. He then found means to realize his cherished journey to the Holy Land. In Palestine he was treated with coldness as an ignorant enthusiast, capable of subverting the existing order of things, but too feeble to be counted on for permanent support. His motive ideas were still visionary; he could not cope with conservatism and frigidity established in comfortable places of emolument. It was necessary that he should learn the wisdom of compromise. Accordingly he returned to Spain, and put himself to school. Two years spent in preparatory studies at Barcelona, another period at Alcala, and another at Salamanca, introduced him to languages, grammar, philosophy, and theology. This man of noble blood and vast ambition, past the age of thirty, sat with boys upon the common benches. This self-consecrated saint imbibed the commonplaces of scholastic logic. It was a further stage in the evolution of his iron character from romance and mysticism, into political and practical sagacity. It was a further education of his stubborn will to pliant temper. But he could not divest himself of his mission as a founder and apostle. He taught disciples, preached, and formed a sect of devotees. Then the Holy Office attacked him. He was imprisoned, once at Alcala for forty-two days, once at Salamanca for three weeks, upon charges of heresy. Ignatius proved his innocence. The Inquisitors released him with certificates of acquittal; but they sentenced him to four years' study of theology before he should presume to preach. These years he resolved to spend at Paris. Accordingly he performed the journey on foot, and arrived in the capital of France upon February 2, 1528. He was then thirty-seven years old, and sixteen years had elapsed since he received his wounds at Pampeluna.

At Paris he had to go to school again from the beginning. The alms of well-wishers, chiefly devout women at Barcelona, amply provided him with funds. These he employed not only in advancing his own studies, but also in securing the attachment of adherents to his cause. At this epoch he visited the towns of Belgium and London during his vacations. But the main outcome of his residence at Paris was the formation of the Company of Jesus. Those long years of his novitiate and wandering were not without their uses now. They had taught him, while clinging stubbornly to the main projects of his life, prudence in the choice of means, temperance in expectation, sagacity in the manipulation of fellow- workers selected for the still romantic ends he had in view. His first two disciples were a Savoyard, Peter Faber or Le Fèvre, and Francis Xavier of Pampeluna. Faber was a poor student, whom Ignatius helped with money. Xavier sprang from a noble stock, famous in arms through generations, for which he was eager to win the additional honors of science and the Church. Ignatius assisted him by bringing students to his lectures. Under the personal influence of their friend and benefactor, both of these men determined to leave all and follow the new light. Visionary as the object yet was, the firm will, fervent confidence, and saintly life of Loyola inspired them with absolute trust. That the Christian faith, as they understood it, remained exposed to grievous dangers from without and form within, that millions of souls were perishing through ignorance, that tens of thousands were falling away through incredulity and heresy, was certain. The realm of Christ on earth needed champions, soldiers devoted to a crusade against Satan and his hosts. And here was a leader, a man among men, a man whose words were as a fire, and whose method of spiritual discipline was salutary and illuminative; and this man bade them join him in the Holy War. He gained them in a hundred ways, by kindness, by precept, by patience, by persuasion, by attention to their physical and spiritual needs, by words of warmth and wisdom, by the direction of their conscience, by profound and intense sympathy with souls struggling after the higher life. The means he had employed to gain Faber and Xavier were used with equal success in the case of seven other disciples. The names of these men deserve to be recorded; for some of them played a part of importance in European history, while all of them contributed to the foundation of the Jesuits. They were James Lainez, Alfonzo Salmeron, and Nicholas Bobadilla, three Spaniards; Simon Rodriguez d'Azevedo, a Portuguese; two Frenchmen, Jean Codure and Brouet; and Claude le Jay, a Savoyard. All these neophytes were subjected by Ignatius to rigid discipline, based upon his Exercitia. They met together for prayer, meditation, and discussion, in his chamber at the College of S. Barbe. Here he unfolded to them his own plans, and poured out on them his spirit. At length, upon August 15, 1534, the ten together took the vows of chastity and poverty in the church of S. Mary at Montmartre, and bound themselves to conduct a missionary crusade in Palestine, or, if this should prove impracticable, to place themselves as devoted instruments, without conditions and without remuneration, in the hands of the Sovereign Pontiff.

The society was thus established, although its purpose remained indecisive. The founder's romantic dream of a crusade in Holy Land, though never realized, gave an object of immediate interest to the associated friends. Meanwhile two main features of its historical manifestation, the propaganda of the Catholic faith and unqualified devotion to the cause of the Roman See, had been clearly indicated. Nothing proves the mastery which Ignatius had now acquired over his own enthusiasm, or the insight he had gained into the right method of dealing with men, more than the use he made of his authority in this first instance. The society was bound to grow and to expand; and it was fated to receive the lasting impress of his genius. But, as though inspired by some prophetic vision of its future greatness, he refrained from circumscribing the still tender embryo within definite limits which might have been pernicious to its development.

The associates completed their studies at Paris, and in 1535 they separated, after agreeing to meet at Venice in the first months of 1537. Ignatius meanwhile traveled to Spain, where he settled his affairs by bestowing such property as he possessed on charitable institutions. He also resumed preaching, with a zeal that aroused enthusiasm and extended his personal influence. At the appointed time the ten came together at Venice, ostensibly bent on carrying out their project of visiting Palestine. But war was now declared between the Turks and the Republic of S. Mark. Ignatius found himself once more accused of heresy, and had some trouble in clearing himself before the Inquisition. It was resolved in these circumstances to abandon the mission to Holy Land as impracticable for the moment, and to remain in Venice waiting for more favorable opportunities. We may believe that the romance of a crusade among the infidels of Syria had already begun to fade from the imagination of the founder, in whose career nothing is more striking than his gradual abandonment of visionary for tangible ends, and his progressive substitution of real for shadowy objects of ambition.