Ignatius Loyola : an attempt at an impartial biography

Front matter

Division JJZ _

Books by

HENRY DWIGHT SEDGWICK

Table Of Contents

PAGE

Preface . vii

CHAPTER

Chapter I

Ignatius Loyola was born in the Basque province of Guipuscoa, at the castle of Loyola, not far from the little town of Azpeitia. This province lies between the Bay of Biscay and what was at that time the Spanish portion of the Kingdom of Navarre. His father, Don Beltran Yanez de Onaz y Loyola, belonged to the principal nobility of the province, and was of kin in some degree to a great nobleman, Don Alonso Manrique, duke of Najera. Don Beltran had eight sons, of whom Ignatius was the youngest, and five daughters. The date of Loyola’s birth is usually given as 1491; how¬ ever, for reasons set forth in the appendix, I incline to think that 1495 is the true year. He was baptized Inigo but in manhood took the name Ignacio, or in its Latin form Igna¬ tius, for the reason that it was more generally known, and for some years used one or the other indiscriminately, and then finally dropped Inigo entirely.

Of his doings during boyhood and youth few facts are known, and those vaguely. On the other hand, of his dis¬ position and general behaviour the evidence is definite enough. Late in life he dictated to one of his disciples, Father Luis Gonzalez de Camara, a brief memoir of his career, in which all he says concerning his youth is, that it was given over to vanity, adding, in explanation, that he entertained a “love of martial exercises and a vainglorious desire for fame.” His earliest biographer, Father Polanco, another of his disciples, says: “Like other young men bred in court to a military life” he was keenly interested in sports

l and contests. Father Nadal, also a disciple, records that Ignatius “took no thought of religion or piety/' and Polanco adds that “he was free in making love to women," an accusa¬ tion that is fully borne out by his own acknowledgment after conversion. The morals of the time were not puritanical, and, except by the religious-minded, sins of the flesh were deemed very venial. The gist of the evidence is that Loyola lightly adopted the contemporary standards of young gentle¬ men who were quite free from any thought of becoming saints.

As to the events of his early years these disciples seem to have been as much in the dark as we are; but certain details have been brought to light. While still a young boy, he left his father's castle and went to live in the town of Arevalo in Old Castile, not very far from Salamanca. An important personage, at one time governor of Arevalo, Don Juan Velaz¬ quez de Cuellar, for some motive that is not apparent, in¬ vited his friend Don Beltran to send him one of his sons that he might bring him up in his house like a child of his own, proposing to procure for him by and by a place in the king's household. The offer was accepted; Ignatius was selected and sent. He lived with this nobleman, as it seems, until the latter’s death, though perhaps with interruptions and not all the time at Arevalo. There is no satisfactory evi¬ dence that Ignatius was ever attendant upon the king's court, although he may have visited it in the train of Don Juan.

It has been repeated often that Ignatius in his youth was very wild, and it is true, as I have said, that according to his own confession, his personal morals were loose, but there is no evidence of this beyond what he himself told his dis¬ ciples ; and one must remember that it is customary for great saints, who in their serious years set a very high standard of human perfection, to see the irregularities of their youth in colors far blacker than they look to less scrupulous eyes. There is, in addition to his self-accusation, one other bit of evidence of wild oats. This evidence is found in some docu¬ ments of an incomplete judicial record of the year 1515, when, as I think, Ignatius was in his twentieth year. Only the accusation is given; the documents on behalf of the defendant were either destroyed or lost. What is left of the record suggests some carnival frolic, an escapade such as Prince Hal and Poins might have engaged in without the least smirch upon their reputations, certainly no worse than the foolish frolic of many a young soldier. As there is so little information concerning his youth, I will quote this record.

It appears that at Azpeitia, there was a dispute over an ecclesiastical benefice, or something of the sort, in which the Loyola family took part. On Shrove Tuesday a fracas oc¬ curred. Nothing is known of the affair beyond the accusa¬ tion that Ignatius and his elder brother, Pedro Lopez de Loyola, who was in clerical orders, had committed, in the language of the prosecuting attorney, some offense “by night, on purpose, with fraud, guile, and malice prepense ( sobre habla e consejo).” These vituperative epithets were no doubt used in order to bring the misdemeanor within the language of some criminal statute. Nothing further may be reasonably inferred than that the brothers had perhaps car¬ ried the license of carnival too far, and that in consequence some indignant citizen lodged a complaint against them.1 Pedro and Ignatius returned, or fled, from Azpeitia to Navarre. Thereupon the Corregidor of Guipuscoa, a sort ■ _

of high sheriff, demanded of the authorities in Navarre that the two should be delivered up to him. The brothers ob¬ tained an order from the episcopal court in Pamplona en¬ joining the execution of the Corregidor’s writ of arrest, on the ground that they were both clerks and not subject to secular jurisdiction. A hearing was had before the ecclesi¬ astical judge and a brief submitted on behalf of the Corregi¬ dor. The case against Pedro Lopez stood on a different footing from that against Ignatius; the elder brother was admittedly in clerical orders, and therefore some offense sufficiently heinous to deprive the ecclesiastical court of jurisdiction had to be alleged; for this reason, I surmise,

1 Possibly a story, told years afterwards, how Ignatius had drawn his sword on a peaceable citizen may represent the view of the other party to the quarrel.

the pleader inserted those vituperative words, “with fraud, guile, and malice prepense.” As to Ignatius, it was only necessary to show that he was not in orders, or else, for some reason, was not in a position to claim benefit of clergy. The Corregidor’s position was this: Two bulls of Pope Alexander VI provided that no clerk should be entitled to claim benefit of clergy unless he had worn a tonsure and a recognized clerical garb for the period of four months prior to the commission of the offense. A local synod had gone further and required a clerk to be duly registered, and had enacted that the tonsure must be at least the size of a penny ( una tarja), that the clerk’s hair must be cut so that his ears or a part of them showed, that his cloak should be of a sober hue, free from ornament, and reach to within about six inches from the ground, that his cap should not be dyed, etc., etc. Ignatius, the Corregidor alleged, did not come within these provisions. His name was not on the register; he had no tonsure; his hair hung down thick about his shoulders; his cap was of a gay color; he wore no cassock, but went about with corselet, gorget, crossbow, arrows, and all sorts of weapons; in short, “he displayed the insignia, not of celestial, but of earthly soldiery.” And all this he had done continuously for years. The record terminates abruptly at this point. There can be no doubt that Ignatius, though he may have received the tonsure when a child, was a soldier and not a clerk; but as no enemy has ever unearthed any further evidence of the alleged offense, and no friend has ever thought it worth while to suppress these documents, one may fairly conclude that ill will between factions in Azpeitia or jealousy be¬ tween the secular and ecclesiastical tribunals lay at the bottom of the prosecution.

The record, however, establishes the fact that Ignatius began his military life probably as early as 1511 or 1512, when he was sixteen or seventeen years old, and further, since the scene of the episode is laid in Azpeitia and Pam¬ plona, that he was no longer a resident member of Don Juan Velazquez’s household, for that nobleman was in those years royal governor of Arevalo. Nevertheless, some tie must have continued to exist between them, ior upon Don Juan’s death in 1517, at which time it became necessary for Ignatius to shift for himself, his widow, evidently in ful¬ fillment of her husband’s promise to Don Beltran to bring up Ignatius as if he were his own child, fitted the young man out with two horses and a purse of five hundred crowns. So provided for, Ignatius went to Pamplona and took serv- * ice with the duke of Najera, his kinsman, who had recently been appointed viceroy of Navarre. In the duke’s service Ignatius seems to have showed character and spirit, not only willingness to undertake a difficult task, but also both good sense in laying plans and perseverance in execution, and, in spite of little experience, to have given proof, even then, of his rare skill in handling men. On one occasion he was despatched to settle some quarrels in Guipuscoa; this task he accomplished to the satisfaction of both parties and thereby won special approbation. On another, he showed disinterestedness. The duke’s soldiers captured the city of Najera, which had revolted; Ignatius was among the foremost in the fight, but refused to accept any share of the booty.

So much for the facts of Loyola’s life prior to his conver¬ sion that have any trustworthy historical support.

As we have now come to the time when both Ignatius begins his great career and Spain hers, it may not be inap¬ propriate to see how the nation, entering into European affairs, like an athlete on his mark starting to run a race, was judged by contemporaries. I will quote from some distinguished Italian observers, and first Lucio Marineo, a lover of learning (about 1535) :

The Spaniards delight greatly in the use of weapons, and the blast of trumpets in battle stirs them to the quick. It is my opinion, and that of many others, that they surpass all other nations in the art of war, not only by reason of bodily strength and agility, and heroism, and endurance of work, hunger and other necessary toils, but also because, besides that, they have great good sense. Their behaviour is excellent, and their temperance most praiseworthy, in eating, drinking, and other respects. I have lived in Spain for fifty years, and in all that time I have not seen a man drunk, and I have known many who only drink water, and the women, too, for the most part, abstain from wine.

The majority of the men are very particular with their dress, and spend more on their clothes and personal orna¬ ments than on food and lodging, or any other necessaries. Some austere persons may not approve of this; nevertheless I applaud it, especially for those who can afford it without hurt to anybody, and without putting on airs, but from a regard for their own dignity and to show their liberality. I like their ways of living and have always adopted them. They concern themselves about religious matters and the salvation of their souls with quite as much diligence and care as about the riches and amusements of the world. Indeed the Spaniards of the present day are very religious, and display great reverence for the worship of God; the priests are very solicitous for the spiritual welfare of the people, over and above celebrating mass and observing the canonical hours, and instruct their flocks with sermons and good example. And laymen, — not only noblemen and edu¬ cated men, but also the common people and the uneducated, — are very obedient to the commandments of Christ and the Church. While some go to confession at least once a year, others three times, and many four times; and others, not only old men but even young fellows, confess ten times a year, or every month, to the curate or some other priest, I do not think any nation in the world today is as Christian as the Spanish.

I now quote Gaspar Contarini, the Venetian ambassador (1525), whom we shall meet hereafter, as cardinal and patron of the first Jesuits:

The Spaniards are inclined to melancholy: they are all physically fit for martial exercises and fighting; they are intelligent and make a cult of honor, which they think usually obliges them to a military career; and by natural bent they excel all other nations in whatever pertains to war. They are reserved of speech, very proud and haughty in their manners and carriage, with little love toward their neighbors, and of an envious disposition.

Other Italians, believing in their own intellectual super¬ iority and the greater civilization of their own country, were more critical. Francesco Guicciardini, of Florence, looked severely out of his cold, shrewd, distrustful eyes (1513). He reports to his government:

Spaniards are saturnine in disposition, of swarthy complexion, and small of stature; proud, and full of the conviction that no nation equals theirs. They are boastful in speech, and take pains to make all the impression they can. . . . They are much inclined to arms, more perhaps than any other nation in Chris¬ tendom, and well fitted so to do, for they are very dexterous, agile and quick of limb. They make a great point of honor, and had rather die than suffer a stain. . . . They are considered intelligent and shrewd, and yet they are not good in liberal arts or mechanical matters; almost all the artists and artisans at the king’s court are French¬ men, or from some other country. They think it beneath them to become merchants, for they all affect the humours of persons of quality, and would rather go soldiering even with poor prospects, or take service with some great noble and put up with a thousand discomforts, or (in earlier days) betake themselves to the road as highwaymen. There are of course certain manufactures that they take up, but as a rule they are averse to such things. ... In public worship they affect great religious behaviour, but they are not so in reality. They are very formal in their manners, and cere¬ monious, and make a fine display of obeisance, with handkissings and expatiation of titles, “Sir, I am yours to com¬ mand”; however, it is better to fight shy and trust them but little. They are great dissemblers, in every rank you will find past masters; it is this quality — Punic ingenuity — that has got them their reputation of smartness and ability; it underlies their ceremonious ways and make-believe.

The Flemings, who came to line their pockets in the train of Charles V, also recorded various impressions. The Spaniards were poor. In Asturias for instance, most of them went barelegged and the young women, on workdays, barefoot; and in some places the poverty was so great that villages were underground, the dwellings, on account of the scarcity of timber, were mere cellars or caves dug in the earth, like a rabbit warren. And to this day (it may be said) lack of energy has left a small region of Spain, occu¬ pied by people called Jurdes, in a very similar plight. Laurent Vital, whom I am quoting, attributes their poverty to pride and laziness. If the men chose to work they might be rich and have well-appointed houses ; but they esteemed themselves all noble, and were above unnecessary industry. Perhaps it was their pride that rendered them, as he thought, ill bred. (But it must be remembered that there was much bad feeling between the Flemings and the Span¬ iards.) Vital gives this instance of what he means: When the king went to Valladolid, although it was the custom, sanctioned by law, that his retinue should be billeted about in houses, occupying if need were half the rooms, some ecclesiasts refused to grant admittance. When the magis¬ trates forced the doors open, the priests retorted by excommunications and by refusal to conduct divine service in the churches.

Possibly Vital was one of those to whom admittance was refused. At any rate, he noticed — horrescit referens — other fallings below the standards of the Low Countries. Babies were left out of doors, to die of exposure, or be eaten by wild beasts. And in Valladolid, even while royalty was there, robbers and robberies abounded. And, what shocked him even more, housewives and chambermaids made a prac¬ tice of emptying slops from upper windows into the streets. He introduces his description of what takes place, which reads like a passage from Rabelais, with a careful “sauf vos r&v£renees and protests that at least a warning cry should be given. He also draws a comparison between the treat¬ ment of servants and horses in Germany and that in Castile, greatly to the advantage of the Germans, in spite of the fact that they are “ruides et rebelles” and the Castilians “assez courtois” ; for both man and beast are well cared for in Germany, while in Castile servants are obliged to run on foot after their mounted masters in the country as well as in town, and at night, tired, hungry, thirsty, and often wet, get poor fare, being lucky to find a bench or table to lie upon, and their wages are paltry. The horses are treated in like fashion, and become lean, weak, and emaciated, and at that they are belabored with blows. But in spite of these shortcomings Monsieur Vital asserts that in other respects — with his mind on the gentry and prosperous mer¬ chants^ — he much prefers the ways of the Castilians to those of the Germans, for the former accept with good grace what God sends them, and make good cheer without wassailing, wastefulness, or gluttony, as people do in Germany and the Low Countries, “de quoy Dieu est souvent grandement offense.”

To dwell further on this subject would take us too far out of our way. Enough has been quoted to show that Spaniards were proud, sober, observant of Christian ritual, and poor — neglecting, as they have done ever since, the economic development of the country, in their quest of glory and empire.

Chapter II

The year 1521 is the turning point, the master year, in Loyola’s life. Up to that time he had followed the common road of common men; but in that year there befell him the mysterious religious experience which men call conversion, and he surrendered himself to a dominating influence that led him all his life. From that time he could well say, “I go to prove my soul” ; and he proved it heroic.

His conversion was not of the kind that can point back to one overwhelming moment, such as St. Paul experienced on the road to Damascus, or St. Augustine under the fig tree, when he heard the voice say Tolle lege ; nevertheless, Loyola’s turn-about was as complete as theirs. From a selfindulgent boy seeking his own pleasure, he became an austere and steadfast man, following the gleam that lighted up the path of grievous self-denial. The child of the world became a child of the spirit. The cause of his conversion is ascribed by Catholic tradition to the grace of God. So be it; but without derogation to the explanation, we may look about to find what educational influences were at work to prepare the ground in which divine seeds might lodge and germinate.

In his youth Loyola did not go to college, and had, as it will appear hereafter, but scanty schooling; he lived the life of a young gentleman, doing his duty while in service, and amusing himself with escapades and women in times of leisure, and, so far as he had any use for books, in reading tales of knights errant, especially the very popular Amadis of Gaul. These occupations would make unlikely conduits for the flow of spiritual grace. But an educational force was abroad of great potency, a moral tonic was in the air, that affected young men of finer sensibilities, and educated them as the universities of Salamanca or Alcala de Henares could not do. During the formative years in Loyola’s life, the tide of Spanish fortune was mounting to the flood ; the spirits of young men were swept up on the crest of an exultant wave of national pride and self-confidence. So it had been in the Athenian democracy under Pericles, and was to be in Elizabethan England. This was the beginning of what the Spanish call El siglo de Oro. Let me remind the reader of what happened then.

Some twenty years before Ignatius was born, Aragon and Castile had been united by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella. These Reyes Catolicos, as they are called, were able rulers; and from their marriage and the consequent virtual administrative union, great advantages, economic, political, and social, accrued to their kingdoms. Stirring events soon followed hard on one another’s heels. The na¬ tional crusade against the Moors, which after seven hundred years of dispossession, liberated the last plot of Spanish soil from the shame of Mohammedan dominion, ended in a desperate campaign for the capture of Granada; that cam¬ paign lasted ten long years, and was more memorable for its fierce and chivalric episodes than any struggle for a city since the fall of Troy. The Spaniards did not rest content with driving out the Moors. The primate of Spain, Cardi¬ nal Ximenes, equipped an expedition out of his ecclesiastical revenues, transported his army to Morocco, and blessed it as it rushed to its victorious onslaught upon Oran. Gonsalvo de Cordoba, el gran capitan, fought the French for the possession of southern Italy, won battle after battle, and added the kingdom of Naples to the Spanish dominions. Two of Loyola’s brothers were killed in these wars. The duke of Alva wrested the southern portion of Navarre from its native sovereign and ran the northern boundary of Spain along the Pyrenees. Ignatius was just seventeen at the time and may possibly have taken some part in the campaign.

But stirring as were these events in Spain and across the waters of the Mediterranean, far more adventurous and romantic success befell the bold spirits that sailed out over the Atlantic Ocean. Spanish and Portuguese discoveries, like beacon fires, one kindled from the next, lit up the great darkness that had hung over the globe, and revealed un¬ known islands and continents to an astonished Europe. Columbus and his followers brought back marvellous tales of mysterious shores, and cosmographers began to set down on their charts fanciful outlines of a western world. Ponce de Leon landed in Florida; Balboa “stared at the Pacific” ; one ship followed in another’s wake and nosed its way, past strange beach and headland, into new creeks and rivers. A third brother of Ignatius perished on one of these expedi¬ tions. And while Spaniards were sailing westward, the Portuguese sailed to the east, each nation inciting the other to fresh rivalry. Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope; other mariners and buccaneers, emulating his example, cruised along the east coast of Africa, past the shores of Arabia, across to India, and on to Ceylon, Sumatra and Java. Never had there been such a time in Europe; high romance on canvas wings skimmed the oceans, as swallows skim a pond. And human pulses beat strongest in Spain. Even in remote Navarre, these tidings must have passed from mouth to mouth, exciting young men with thoughts of adventure and conquest. Every soldier’s mess in Pamplona discussed adventure in some form. It could not have been otherwise; the famous pass of Roncevalles, where Charlemagne’s retreating rearguard had been routed, and, according to Spanish tradition, Roland himself had been slain by Bernardo del Carpio, lay not a day’s ride dis¬ tant. His horn, the trophy of victory, still hung in the chapel there.

The romance of discovery and adventure was, as I say, in the air, but the austere Spanish character, which love of romance heated to action, had been forged and tempered by seven centuries of warfare with misbelievers. While the Cross was struggling with the Crescent, the Roman Catholic creed was being bred in Spanish bones, as integral a part of each man’s personality as his dark eyes and swarthy skin. Religion was one with patriotism, one with self-preserva¬ tion, one with the lust of battle and the joy of triumph. So strong was their devotion to their faith that all pure-blooded Spaniards welcomed the Inquisition (1478) with joy, and felt a sense of personal purification at the expulsion of the unbelieving Jews (1492). Spaniards looked upon them¬ selves not only as the chief men of Europe, “of earth’s first blood,” but as special champions of the Cross. To be a Christian was to be a soldier, and to be a soldier was to dedicate oneself to the service of the God of Battles. Such thoughts, like chemical fluids, lay in solution in Loyola’s mind, awaiting the sudden troubling of the soul that should crystallize them into a definite form of devotion, self-consecration and service; and underneath, in those deep regions of self where the issues of character are decided, lay a sense of repentance and regret for fruitless years and trivial acts, and deeper still the consciousness of power that goes with genius and the desire to put it to use. Be that as it may, on a sudden Loyola’s soul came to birth.

To return to the year 1521, when Ignatius was a young officer in the garrison of Pamplona. In the month of May, a French army marched up against the city. The invasion came about in this way. For a generation and more there had been disputes over dynastic rights to the kingdom of Navarre; France supported one claim and Spain another, but the real issue was whether France should control the passes of the Pyrenees and have a foothold south of the mountains, or Spain establish her northern boundary along the mountain tops. Previous campaigns do not concern us ; but I may recall the fact that Csesar Borgia, after strutting in his brilliant braggadocio role upon the center of the world’s stage, perished in this out of the way corner, un¬ noticed, in some chance raid, a luckless soldier of fortune. Ferdinand played the game better than the French and, as I have said, annexed that portion of the little kingdom that lay south of the Pyrenees to the crown of Castile. The French bided their time. In 1521 a revolt of various Spanish cities, las comunidades, seemed to offer them their opportunity, for Navarre was stripped of troops. The French army crossed the mountains, meeting virtually no resistance, and advanced on Pamplona.

A letter by some partisan of the older regime, dated May 17, 1521, says:

The French are coming down the Roncal Valley in such numbers that they can’t be counted. The towns round¬ about rose yesterday for King Don Enrique [the claimant supported by France] ; Pedro of Navarre, with the Marshal’s son, is at their head. The duke of Najera has hurried from Pamplona. The city is left to itself. The French army will be there tomorrow, and it is said that they need not unbuckle their spurs before taking the citadel; it’s a sure thing. The whole kingdom is up for King Don Enrique, and the duke of Najera may thank God if he gets safe into Castile.

And, on the 21st:

You will have heard how the Spanish, shut up in the citadel at Pamplona, started to train their artillery on the city; the French set up their cannon against the barbican of the citadel, and, can you believe it — it seems incredible — after a siege of six hours by the clock, the Spanish sur¬ rendered, asking for quarter. The French wished to refuse; the Marshal’s son was obliged to intercede in order to save them.

These letters appear somewhat biassed ; at any rate, after the French had entered the city and opened fire on the citadel, it became plainly impossible for the garrison to maintain itself, and all the officers, except Ignatius, advised immediate surrender; but he persuaded the commandant to hold out as long as possible. After a cannonade lasting some six or eight hours at most, a breach was made in the wall, the French rushed in, and the garrison lowered its flag.

Just before the last assault, on May 20th, a cannon ball broke the bone of Loyola’s right leg and inflicted a flesh wound on the left. The victors treated him with much consideration, tended his wounds, and at the end of a fort¬ night sent him home to the castle of Loyola on a stretcher.

For some reason, the bone of the right leg had to be broken again and reset. Ignatius was very ill, and the pain very severe, but he bore his suffering with extreme pluck. His condition grew steadily worse, until on June 28th, the vigil of the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, the crisis came. Ignatius had always entertained a peculiar reverence for St. Peter, and he ascribed his recovery to the apostle’s interposition. The bone, however, had been badly set, and an ugly protuberance showed itself near the knee, and as he had not yet resolved to abandon the world, and was still far from indifferent to his personal appearance, he insisted upon a further operation, although the surgeons warned him of the suffering. In addition to the surgical operation, the leg had to be stretched by means of a weight, as it was shorter than the other. The pain must have been torture, but the result was successful; Ignatius always limped a little, but so slightly, at least until the last years of his life, as to escape casual observation.