Ignatius of Loyola
Ignatius of Loyola founded the Society of Jesus, the religious order that became the intellectual arm of the Counter-Reformation, and wrote the Spiritual Exercises. Born Íñigo López de Loyola around 1491 in the Basque country, the youngest of thirteen children of minor nobility, he spent his youth as a courtier and soldier with, by his own account, a taste for gambling, duelling and women. At the siege of Pamplona in May 1521 a French cannonball shattered his right leg. The bone was set badly and he had it broken and reset twice out of vanity, leaving him with a limp. Convalescing at Loyola with nothing to read but a life of Christ and lives of the saints, he underwent a conversion and resolved to imitate them. He spent 1522-23 at Manresa in prayer, austerity and periods of despair, and there drafted the Spiritual Exercises — a structured four-week retreat of guided meditation and examination of conscience, designed to bring the retreatant to a decision. It is a practical manual rather than a theological treatise, and remains in use. He then studied Latin alongside schoolboys in his thirties, and went on to Alcalá, Salamanca and finally Paris, where he was twice questioned by the Inquisition for preaching without theological training. At Paris he gathered six companions, including Francis Xavier and Peter Faber, who took vows at Montmartre in 1534. Pope Paul III approved the Society in 1540 and Ignatius was elected its first superior general. He directed it from Rome until his death in 1556, by which time it had about a thousand members, ran schools across Europe and had missions in India, Brazil and Japan. He was canonised in 1622.
- Lived: 1491 CE – 1556 CE
- Nationality: Spanish
- Roles: priest, founder_of_the_jesuits
