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Iñigo, the last child of a large family of the minor nobility, was sent at the age of 17 to the house of the Finance Minister of Castile, Juan Velázquez de Cuéllar, in Arévalo, Ávila, so that he might be initiated in the life of the court, the secrets of administration, and the arms career.
In 1516, when Iñigo was 25, his host and protector fell in disgrace with Charles I of Spain, and lost his post in court and the palace in Arévalo, and died shortly thereafter. His widow, unable to give employment to Iñigo, introduced him to her relative the Duke of Nájera, who was the Viceroy of Navarre, and Iñigo settled as his gentleman-at-arms.
The visit to the Tower-House will give us the opportunity to tell in greater detail about Iñigo’s birth, childhood and youth until his conversion in 1521. The importance of his conversion lies in the fact that, from then on, he began shaping into a charismatic leader, a spiritual master, the founder of a religious Order destined to have a decisive influence in the life of the Church
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Wounded in
Pamplona |
The vigil in
Montserrat |
The cave of
Manresa |
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At the end of our visit to the Holy House we shall see Iñigo leave Loyola with the intention to go to Jerusalem searching for Christ. After keeping a vigil in Montserrat with a coarse sackcloth and a pilgrim staff as his new arms, he retired to Manresa for eleven months (May 1522-March 1523) and there he began to develop the method for seeking God’s will that he would enshrine in his Book of the Spiritual Exercises.
In April 1523 Iñigo traveled to the Holy Land, then under the dominion of Soliman II the Magnificent. Prevented from remaining there and convinced that he could do good to others, he undertook a belated but long course of studies that would take him to Barcelona, Alcalá, Salamanca and Paris. In the latter university, he latinized his name and began to call himself Ignatius. The group of seven companions gathered around him took the vow to go to Jerusalem as missionaries or, if they could not make it within a year, place themselves at the disposal of the Pope. Soon the group increased to ten. Ordained priests in Venice while waiting for the opportunity to go to the Holy Land, they fulfilled the second part of their vow and offered their services to Pope Paul III, who approved the Society of Jesus in 1540.
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In the Sorbonne |
The vow of
Montmartre |
The approval of
the Society |
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Ignatius was elected Superior of the Order and devoted the remaining 16 years of his life to governing it and writing its Constitutions. His style of government and the Constitutions he wrote marked for ever the Order he founded.
When he died in 1556 at age 65, the Society had a membership of 1,000 Jesuits, about a hundred houses and colleges, and 12 religious provinces.
In 1609, Pope Paul V declared Ignatius and Francis Xavier Blessed, and Pope Gregory XV declared them Saints in 1622.
This is a short summary of the human adventure of that “reckless and vain soldier” who became the Founder of the Society of Jesus. |
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