—that is, St. Ignatius ill.
At the foot of the bed is another:
Hæc omnia evenervnt 22 Ivlii anno 1522.
—All these things took place July 22, 1522. His illness, by this, appears to have occurred about four months after his arrival at Manresa.
The honor of having St. Ignatius was disputed by many noble families of the place. In the patio of one of the houses he sometimes visited, in the street called Sobreroca, is a picture of him, now indulgenced by the diocesan authority.
The college of St. Ignatius was founded in 1603. The ayuntamiento of Manresa, touched by a discourse during the Lent of 1601 at the Seo, purchased the ancient hospital of Santa Lucia, and established the Jesuits here soon after. The college became a flourishing institution, and they were before long able to build a new church and adorn the precious chapel of the Rapto.
When Carlos III. issued the decree for the expulsion of the Jesuits, April 3, 1767, the residence at Manresa was at first overlooked, and the fathers, as usual, celebrated the octave of the Maravilloso Rapto. On the very day it ended, April 11, the eve of Palm Sunday, at the same hour when St. Ignatius awoke from his mysterious trance, crying: “Ay Jesus! Ay Jesus!” the venerable fathers were seized and carried away amid the tears of the citizens to Tarragona, where they were put on a vessel of war, and, with nine hundred from Aragon, were transported to Ajaccio. The island of Corsica had on it at one time three thousand Jesuits who, for no crime, had been barbarously torn from their native land. Among them were the venerable Pignatelli and several who were eminent for letters. But on the 15th of August, 1769, Napoleon Bonaparte was born at Ajaccio, who proved the scourge of Spain.
The churches of the Jesuits were dismantled and the temporalities sold. The vestments and sacred vessels were given to poor churches of the diocese, but even these were mostly sold afterwards to help to defray the expenses of the war of independence. The chalice of Philip V., given to the Santa Cueva, was, however, saved.
Manresa has the glory of having been the first city in Catalonia to sound the war-cry against Bonaparte, and by the battle of Bruch, in which a handful of men routed the French army, to convince Spain that the Great Captain’s troops were not invincible. After the French had captured Tortosa they came to Manresa, and the house of the Santa Cueva was turned into a barrack and the church into a stable. With the restoration of the Bourbons returned the Jesuits. At Manresa the people rang the bells, and went out to meet them with cries of Viva la Compañia! The mules were taken from their carriages, and men drew them to the Seo, where the clergy and people with tears of emotion chanted the Te Deum. On July 25, 1816, they were reinstated in their former places, the keys of the Santa Cueva were presented to them in a silver basket, and on the 31st of July the festival of St. Ignatius was celebrated with solemn pomp in the Seo, with a congratulatory discourse on the restoration of the society.
Manresa has always been a religious city, as is to be seen by the number of solidly-built churches and the remains of its monastic institutions. When St. Ignatius quitted the place it is said there was hardly a person left unconverted. And when he was canonized there was a general explosion of joy, exhibited in Spanish fashion by dances, comedies, Moorish fights, illuminations, fireworks, salvos of artillery, triumphal arches and bowers—all of which contrast strangely with the penitential life of the saint in his cave.