by Charles Swan
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“Notwithstanding that the necessary consequence of actions like these was to attract the attention of the world, he is described as being desirous of withdrawing himself from the notice and esteem of men, and he resolved to carry into execution a design, which he had long nourished, of visiting the Holy Land. He accordingly proceeded to Barcelona, where he embarked on board a ship about to sail for Italy, landed at Gayeta in 1523, and proceeded on foot to Rome, where he received the Pope’s benediction, and obtained permission to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. From Rome he went to Venice, where he embarked, and arrived at Jerusalem on the 4th of September in that year.
“Here his heart was touched with the most tender devotion, and he began to deliberate whether he should fix his residence on the illustrious soil of Judaea, and apply himself to the conversion of the infidels. For his greater satisfaction, he consulted the superior of the Franciscans, who had the care of the Holy Sepulchre; the superior remitted him to the Father Provincial, who counselled him to return to Europe: but Ignatius, having some scruples about abandoning his design, answered the Provincial, that nothing but the fear of displeasing God should make him leave the Holy Land. ‘Why then,’ said the Provincial, ‘you shall be gone to-morrow; I have power from the holy see to send back what pilgrims I please, and you cannot resist me without offending God.’ Iguatius submitted without another word, left Jerusalem on the following day, and arrived at Venice about the end of January, 1524. A Spanish merchant at this place forced him to take fifteen or sixteen reals, but on his coming to Ferrara he gave a real to the first beggar that held out his hand; a second came, and he gave him another. These liberalities drew all the beggars to him, and he refused none so long as his money lasted, and when he had done he began to beg himself, whereupon they cried out, A saint, a saint!1 He needed no more to make him leave the place; he continued his journey through Lombardy to Genoa, where he embarked for Barcelona. During his voyage from the Holy Land, he had reflected a good deal on the subject of converting the infidels, and considering that without the aid of human learning his efforts would be comparatively inefficacious, he determined to put himself under the care of Ardebalo, the master of the grammar school at Barcelona. He was now thirty-three years of age. On his arrival at Barcelona, he fell to the study of the rudiments of the Latin language, and went every day to school with the little children; but whilst his master was explaining the rules of grammar, he was deeply engaged with the mysteries of faith. This distraction of attention he ascribed to the powers of darkness, and made a vow to continue his studies with greater application; nay, he requested of Ardebalo to require the same task from him as the rest of the boys, and if he did not perform it, to punish him as he punished them, by reprimands and stripes. We do not learn whether the master was necessitated to quicken his scholar’s diligence in the way suggested, but it is certain that he now proceeded in his studies with much greater facility. About this time he read the Enchiridion Militis Christiani of Erasmus, which had been recommended to him, but finding that it wanted fervour, and, in fact, diminished his devotion and exercises of piety (and was probably reducing him to a reasonable Christian), he threw away the book, and conceived such a horror of it, that he would never read it more, and when he became General of the Jesuits, ordered that the society should not read the works of Erasmus. Being re-established in his health, he renewed his austerities, but, for the sake of study, retrenched a part of his seven hours of prayer. John Pascal, a devout youth, the son of the woman with whom he lodged, would frequently rise in the night to observe what Ignatius was doing in his chamber, and sometimes he saw him on his knees, at others prostrate on the ground, and once he thought he saw him elevated from the earth, and surrounded with light, or as Butler expresses it in his Hudibras—
“‘Hang like Mahomet in th’ air,
Or Saint Ignatius at his prayer.’
“But whilst Ignatius was labouring after his own perfection, he did not neglect that of his neighbour, employing those hours which were not devoted to study, in withdrawing souls from vice, by striking examples and edifying discourses. Remarkable instances of his success are related, and on one occasion his interference cost him, to his inward delight, a sound external bastinado, which occasioned fifty days of sickness and pain. Having continued nearly two years at Barcelona, he was advised to pursue a course of philosophy at the University of Alcala, to which place he went accompanied by three young men, whom he had brought into the way of virtue, and who had desired to accompany him: to them he added a fourth on his arrival at Alcala. He had no sooner arrived than he began to study with such extreme eagerness, applying himself to so many sciences at once, that his understanding became confused, and his labour produced no fruits. Disheartened with his little progress, he employed his time in prayer, in catechising children, and attending the sick in the hospital. The marvellous changes effected by Ignatius in Alcala through his preaching and remonstrances, at length gave rise to a rumour that he was either a magician or a heretic, which coming to the ears of the inquisitors at Toledo, they were induced to believe that he was an Illuminato or Lutheran, and in order to investigate the matter, they came to Alcala to take his examination upon the spot. After an exact inquiry, Ignatius was pronounced innocent, but was admonished by the Grand Vicar that he and his companions, not belonging to any religious order, must not dress in uniform habits, and he forbid him to go barefoot, with both which commands he complied, and ever after wore shoes.
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“About this time, Ignatius being afflicted with indisposition, partly from his austerities, and partly from the climate of Paris, was advised by his physicians to try the benefit of his native air; an advice which he the more readily adopted, partly because three of his companions had some business to transact in Spain before they could absolutely renounce all their worldly goods, and partly that he might repair the scandal of his youth by his present virtuous demeanour. Having committed the care of the society to Faber, he departed for his native country; making use, however, of a horse, on account of the weakness of his foot. He went to Azpetia, a town near the castle of Loyola, where the clergy, hearing of his approach, assembled to receive him. He refused, however, to take up his abode with his brother at the castle of Loyola; and instead of making use of the bed and provisions which he sent to him at the hospital, he chose to lie on the bed of a poor man, taking care, however, every morning to disarrange the other, as if he had slept in it; and distributed the provisions he received from Loyola amongst the poor, and begged his bread about the town. Once only he went, ‘upon compulsion,’ to visit the inmates of Loyola, the sight of which renewed the memory of his former life, and inspired him with an ardent love of mortification. In consequence, he forthwith put on a sharp hair shirt, girded himself with a great chain of iron, and disciplined himself every night. He catechised the children, he preached every Sunday, and two or three times in the week besides; until, the churches not being able to contain the great crowds who came to hear him, he was obliged to hold forth in the open fields,’ et auditores arbores complere cogerentur.’ The first time he preached, he told the assembly that he had been, for a long time, grievously afflicted by a sin of his youth:—he had, he said, with other boys, broken into a garden, and carried off a quantity of fruit; an offence for which an innocent person was sent to prison, and condemned to pay damages. ‘I, therefore,’ he proceeded,’ am the offender; he is the innocent person: I have sinned—I have erred!’ and he called before him the man, who by chance was present, and gave him, before the public, two farms, which belonged to him. We shall pass over the particular circumstances of success which attended his preaching: it will be sufficient to apprize our readers, that as soon as he preached against the immodest attire of the women, it disappeared; that the same day he denounced gaming, the gamesters threw their dice into the river; that the courtezans made holy pilgrimages on foot, and the blasphemers ceased to curse.
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“Although this sketch of the life of Ignatius Loyola bears no proportion to the details which have been given of it by about twenty biographers, it is, we conceive, sufficiently ample to enable the reader to form a correct judgment of his character. It has been thought that the society of Jesuits owed its origin to the enthusiasm, rather than the policy, of its founder.1 Let the reader trace him from his conversion to his death, follow him through his rigorous infliction of self-punishment, his fastings until exhausted nature was ready to sink under his severe austerities, his voluntary beggary, his growing reputation for sanctity, his flight from public notice and reverence whilst he pursued the very means to obtain them, his being stamped a saint, his application to human learning, the unfolding of his views, the alteration in his austerities, in his habits of life and mode of dress, and he will probably be of a different opinion. Enthusiasm was doubtless the inspiring fountain at which he first drank; not so much, however, the enthusiasm of an ardent and noble mind, as a preternatural excitement caused by the sort of reading to which accident invited him, working on a debilitated and feverish frame. His enthusiasm, after the first ebullition, seems to have had a method in it; it led him to just so much voluntary suffering as was necessary to gain him the reputation of a saint, and it was probably at that species of fame that he at first aimed: his affected humility was ostentation; his pretended seclusion, notoriety; he did not conceal from his left hand what his right hand did, he distributed the alms he had acquired to beggars, and as soon as he had done began to beg himself, to the admiration of the professors of mendicity; and it was no wonder they should cry out, A SAINT, A SAINT ! He did not retire into trackless deserts like the ‘eremites’ of old, but, like a retiring beauty, suffered his flight from the world to be seen, and was shocked when he was followed. Whilst rendering himself an object of loathing and disgust, and attenuating his body to the proper point of sanctity, it was swelling with holy pride and inward gratulation; but as soon as this part of his object was once accomplished, he threw off his tattered robes and iron chain, he diminished his hours of prayer, and grander prospects and mightier power began to open before him. Not that he would have hesitated to continue them for the purpose of preserving his reputation or securing an important object; but what is to be remarked, is, that those things which he had formerly considered indispensable were now no longer thought so, and that without any change of the circumstances which originally made them necessary, and it is not sufficient to resort to visions to account for the change. For, although an enthusiastic imagination might see such things ‘in dim perspective,’ the whole of the conduct of Ignatius marks him to be a cool, persevering, and calculating politician,1 and the visions themselves ceased, when no longer required to spread his name and consolidate his power. Though influenced by motives of ambition, they were not those of wealth or rank, but of real, substantial power; and, although some obscure thoughts of framing a religious Order might have obtruded npon his meditations at Manreza, it is probable that the precise nature of it was only gradually unfolded, and not completed until he was about to leave Paris.”2
The latter part of the life of Ignatius Loyola bears no proportion to its outset. Enthusiasm had abated, and policy was the cynosure of his subsequent career. In this he differs from Alexius; as he became more active, he became less a SAINT; and as his mind opened, and reason assumed her proper station, he gradually lost the fanatic in the designing founder of a sect. What he retained of fanaticism was chiefly external and artificial; but the leading features of his life accord surprisingly with the legendary character of the text. Had Loyola remained always ignorant, he had been always a bigot; and, judging by the commencement of the life, would have died as useless and as burdensome to society as the son of the senator Eufemian.
NOTE 3. Page 48.
“This story is told in Caxton’s GOLDEN LEGENDE, and in the Metrical Lives of the Saints. Hence Julian, or Saint Julian, was called hospitator, or the gode herberjour; and the Pater Noster became famous, which he used to say for the souls of his father and mother, whom he had thus unfortunately killed. The peculiar excellencies of this prayer are displayed by Boccace. Chaucer, speaking of the hospitable disposition of his Frankelein, says—
“‘Saint Julian he was in his own countre.’3
“This history is, like the last, related by our compilers in the words of Julian’s Legend, as it stands in Jacobus de Voragine. Bollandus has inserted Antoninus’s account of this saint, which appears also to be literally the same. It is told, yet not exactly in the same words, by Vincent of Beauvais.”—WARTON.
The passage in Boccacio, above alluded to, is as follows :—
“Falling from one discourse to another, they began to talk of such prayers as men (in journey) use to salute God with all: and one of the thieves (they being three in number) spake thus to Rinaldo: Sir, let it be no offence that I desire to know, what prayer you most use when you travel on the way? Whereto Rinaldo replied in this manner: To tell you true, sir, I am a man gross enough in such divine matters, as meddling more with merchandize, than I do with books. Nevertheless, at all times, when I am thus in journey, in the morning before I depart my chamber, I say a Pater Noster and an Ave Maria for the souls of the father and mother of ST. JULIAN; and after that, I pray God and ST. JULIAN to send me a good lodging at night. And let me tell you, sir, that very oftentimes heretofore, I have met with many great dangers upon the way, from all which I escaped, and evermore (when night drew on) I came to an exceeding good lodging. “Which makes me believe that SAINT JULIAN (in honour of whom I speak it) hath begged of God such great grace for me: and methinks, that if any day I should fail of this prayer in the morning, I cannot travel securely, nor come to a good lodging. No doubt then, sir, (quoth the other) but you have said that prayer this morning? I would be sorry else, said Rinaldo; such an especial matter is not to be neglected.”—Second Day, Novel II. 1684.
NOTE 4. Page 55.
“Certaine trochisks1 there be made of a viper, called by the Greeks theriaci: for which purpose they cut away at both ends as toward the head as the taile, the breadth of foure fingers, they rip her bellie also, and take out the garbage within: but especially they rid away the blew string or veine that sticketh close to the ridge-bone. Which done, the rest of the bodie they seeth in a pan with water and dill, seed, until such time as all the flesh is gone from the chine: which being taken away, and all the prickie bones thereto belonging, the flesh remaining they incorporate with fine flower, and reduce into troches, which being dried in the shade, are reserved for diverse uses, and enter into many soveraigne antidots and confections. But here it is to bee noted, that although these troches bee called theriaci,2 yet are they made of viper’s flesh onely. Some there be, who after a viper is cleansed, as is above said, take out the fat, and seeth it with a sextar of oile untill the one halfe bee consumed: which serveth to drive away all venomous beasts, if three drops of this ointment be put into oile, and therewith the bodie be anointed all over.”—Pliny’s Nat Hist b. 29, c. iv. trans, by Philemon Holland. Ed. 1601.
