Saint Ignatius of Loyola: Founder of the Jesuits

Saint Ignatius of Loyola is the Spanish soldier-turned-saint who founded the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) in 1540 and authored the Spiritual Exercises, the foundational Catholic retreat manual that has shaped the prayer life of millions of Catholics over five centuries. The Jesuit order he founded was, and remains, one of the most influential religious communities in the Catholic Church.

Early life as a Basque soldier

Iñigo López de Oñaz y Loyola was born on October 23, 1491, at the family castle of Loyola in the Basque province of Gipuzkoa, the youngest of thirteen children of a minor noble family. His early education was in arms and courtly etiquette; he served as a page in the court of the treasurer of Castile and then entered military service. By his late twenties he was a courtier-soldier of vain ambition, given to dueling and to romance.

The pivotal moment of his life came on May 20, 1521, at the siege of Pamplona. A French cannonball shattered Ignatius's right leg and seriously wounded his left. He was carried back to his family castle at Loyola, where he endured a long and excruciating convalescence. The leg was operated on multiple times without anesthesia in the period's primitive surgery.

Conversion at Loyola

During his recovery, the bored Ignatius asked his sister-in-law for chivalric novels to read; she gave him instead what was on hand: The Life of Christ by Ludolph of Saxony and the Golden Legend lives of the saints. As Ignatius read, he found himself caught between two desires: the desire to perform great deeds of arms for the lady he had courted, and the desire to perform great deeds of penance and prayer in imitation of Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Dominic de Guzmán.

He noticed that the worldly desires left him empty and the spiritual ones left him at peace. This experiential discernment, refined through years of subsequent reflection, became the heart of his Spiritual Exercises.

After his recovery, Ignatius made a pilgrimage to the Marian shrine at Montserrat in Catalonia, where he placed his sword on the altar of the Black Madonna and exchanged his courtier's clothes for a pilgrim's robe. He then spent ten months at Manresa, a nearby town, in intense prayer, asceticism, and the contemplative struggle that produced the first version of the Spiritual Exercises.¹

Years of study and the founding of the Society of Jesus

Ignatius spent eleven years in the schools, first studying basic Latin alongside boys at Barcelona (he was thirty-three), then at the universities of Alcalá and Salamanca, and finally at the University of Paris, where he completed his Master of Arts degree in 1535 at age forty-four. In Paris he gathered around himself six companions who would form the nucleus of the Society of Jesus: Saint Francis Xavier, Saint Peter Faber, Saint Diego Laínez, and three others. They took private vows of poverty and chastity at Montmartre in 1534.

In 1537 Ignatius and his companions arrived in Rome. They placed themselves at the service of Pope Paul III, who in 1540 formally approved the Society of Jesus through the bull Regimini Militantis Ecclesiae. Ignatius was elected the first Superior General; he held the office until his death in 1556.

The distinctive marks of the Jesuit order Ignatius founded:

A fourth vow of obedience to the pope, in addition to the standard religious vows, committing the order to apostolic missions wherever the pope sent them.
Apostolic mobility: no fixed conventual residence, no choir office (the Jesuits would not chant the Liturgy of the Hours in choir, freeing them for active ministry).
Education as a principal apostolate, with Jesuit colleges and universities established across Catholic Europe and the missions within a generation.
The Spiritual Exercises as the foundation of Jesuit spiritual formation.

The Spiritual Exercises

The Exercitia Spiritualia is not a treatise but a manual for the director of a retreat. The standard form is a thirty-day silent retreat divided into four "weeks" (not seven-day weeks but four spiritual movements):

First Week: meditation on sin, judgment, hell, the love of God who pursues the sinner. Conclusion: contrition and a general confession.
Second Week: contemplation of the life of Christ from the Annunciation through the Wedding at Cana and the public ministry. Conclusion: an "election" of one's state of life.
Third Week: contemplation of the Passion.
Fourth Week: contemplation of the Resurrection and the Ascension. Conclusion: the "Contemplation to Attain Love."

The full thirty-day Exercises remain the gold standard of Jesuit formation; abbreviated forms (eight-day retreats, retreats in daily life over many months) are widely practiced in Catholic spirituality today.

Death and patronage

Ignatius died at Rome on July 31, 1556, at sixty-four years of age. He was beatified by Pope Paul V in 1609 and canonized by Pope Gregory XV on March 12, 1622, together with Saint Francis Xavier (his Jesuit companion who had evangelized India and Japan), Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint Philip Neri, and Saint Isidore the Farmer.

Saint Ignatius is patron of the Society of Jesus, of retreats, of soldiers (from his pre-conversion vocation), of the Basque Country, and of spiritual directors. His feast on July 31 is celebrated as a Memorial in the universal Roman Calendar.

The Ignatian "election" framework for discernment (notice consolations and desolations, attend to the movements of the spirit, choose toward what gives lasting peace) has been adopted well beyond the Jesuit order and remains one of the most influential Catholic contributions to the practice of personal vocation. The motto Ad maiorem Dei gloriam ("for the greater glory of God"), abbreviated AMDG, is the Jesuit charism in three Latin words.

For the broader Catholic prayer practice that the Spiritual Exercises presupposes, see the Anima Christi (the favorite prayer of Saint Ignatius, often introduced at the start of an Ignatian retreat) and the foundational Catholic prayers.

Sources

For the principal autobiographical source, see The Autobiography of Saint Ignatius of Loyola (dictated 1553-1555 to Father Gonçalves da Câmara). Modern critical biography: John W. O'Malley, The First Jesuits (Harvard University Press, 1993), and Pierre Emonet, Ignatius of Loyola: Legend and Reality (Saint Joseph's University Press, 2016). ↩