1556
Death of St Ignatius of Loyola
Ignatius Loyola, ‘a Spanish soldier and hidalgo with hot Biscayan blood,’ was, in 1521, assisting in the defence of Pampeluna against the French, when a cannon-ball fractured his right leg and a splinter injured his left. He was carried to the neighbouring castle of Loyola, and in the weary months during which he lay stretched upon his couch, he tried to while away the time in reading the Lives of the Saints. He was only thirty; he had a strong and vehement will; he had led a wild and vicious life; and had burned for military glory. As it was evident that for him henceforward the part of the soldier was barred, the question arose, Why might he not be a saint, and rival St. Francis and St. Dominic?
He decided to try. He tore himself from his kindred and friends, and made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In the church of the Virgin at Mount Serrat, he hung up his arms, and vowed constant obedience to God and the church. Dressed as a beggar, and in the practice of the severest austerities, he reached Jerusalem on the 4th of September 1523. On his return to Spain, at the age of thirty-three, he resumed his education, which had been neglected from childhood, and laboriously from the rudiments of grammar worked his way through a full university course, making no secret of his ignorance. The rigour of his life, and the rebukes he administered to lax ecclesiastics, not unfrequently brought him into trouble as a Pharisaic meddler.
He went to Paris in 1528, and at the university he made the acquaintance of Xavier, Faber, Lainez, Bobadilla, and Rodriguez, five students whom he inspired with his own devout fervour. In an underground chapel of the church of Montmartre, on the 15th of August 1534, the six enthusiasts took the solemn vows of celibacy, poverty, and the devotion of their lives to the care of Christians, and the conversion of infidels. Such was the beginning of the famous Society of Jesus.
The plan of the new order was laid before Pope Paul III, who raised several objections to it; but, on the engagement that Jesuits should in all matters yield implicit obedience to the holy see, he granted them a constitution in a bull, dated the 27th of September 1540. Loyola was elected president, and was established at Rome as director of the movements of the society. Very opportunely did the Jesuits come to the service of the popedom. Unhampered by the routine of other ecclesiastical orders, they undertook services for which they alone were fit; and, as sharp-shooters and skirmishers, became the most annoying and dangerous antagonists of Protestantism. To a certain freedom of action the Jesuit united the advantages of perfect discipline; obedience was his primary duty. He used his faculties, but their action was controlled by a central authority; every command had to be wrought out with all his skill and energy, without questioning, and at all hazards. It was the aim of the society to discover and develop the peculiar genius of all its members, and then to apply them to the aggrandizement of the church. Soon the presence of the new order, and the fame of its missionaries, spread throughout the world, and successive popes gladly increased the numbers and enlarged the privileges of the society. Loyola brought more ardour than intellect to the institution of Jesuitism. The perfection of its mechanism, which Cardinal Richelieu pronounced a master-piece of policy, was due to James Lainez, who succeeded Loyola as president.
Worn out with labours and privations, Loyola died on the 31st of July 1556, aged sixty-five. He was canonised as a saint in 1622, and his festival is celebrated on the 31st of July. He is a patron saint of soldiers.