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Emerio de Bonis was a twenty-five-year-old scholastic strongly troubled by temptations against chastity. He had been in the Society for five years and felt overly uncertain about himself. He revealed his state of soul to Ignatius. De Bonis received the following reply from Ignatius, written on his behalf by Juan Alfonso de Polanco. Ignatius calls […]

Ignatius cared deeply for the apostolic work of reforming the houses of members of religious orders. During Ignatius’s lifetime, Jesuits carried out this work in places as far apart as Sicily, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. Cardinal Marcello Cervini (later Pope Marcellus II) charged Ponce Cogordan with the reform of a monastery of Benedictine nuns

A Neapolitan woman had started a home for six or seven abandoned girls, whom she brought to the Jesuit church for the sacraments. She rented a house next door to the Jesuits, where the girls’ windows looked onto the men’s rooms. When she refused to move, the Jesuit superior, Alfonso Salmerón, threatened to deny the

Along with Francis Xavier, Gaspar Berze (or Barzaeus) was one of the great Jesuit missionaries of the sixteenth century. Before entering the Society, the Dutch Berze had served in the army of Emperor Charles V, lived as a hermit at Montserrat, and worked in the royal treasury of Portugal. With the following letter, Ignatius has

In the letter here, Ignatius offers a program to offset Protestant propaganda in German-speaking lands and in France. Ignatius’s program against heresy has three parts: the creation of a “summary theology” to be taught at all educational levels, the spread of Jesuit schools, and the writing of popular tracts to counter the Protestant literature. Although

After the Spiritual Exercises, perhaps until the publication and translation of his “autobiography,” the writings of Ignatius were perhaps best known for this letter, commonly known as the “Letter on Obedience” to the Province of Portugal. Generations of Jesuits heard it read at table once a month in their refectories. Ignatius writes here during a

Filippo Leerno had been named rector at Modena in 1553. Shortly after his appointment to the northern Italian city, Leerno feared that that some of the young Jesuits in his charge did not want to change for the better while others lacked in obedience. The situation was enough for Leerno to conclude that he was

King John III of Portugal requested that Diego Miró and Luis Gonçalves da Câmara serve as confessors for himself and his family. The two Jesuits firmly declined, considering such lofty posts to be incompatible with the Society’s prohibition against personal ambition. The men were also aware of the delicacy of the situation. Ignatius had recently

Appointed treasurer of the college at Coimbra, the austere Manoel Godinho (who had complained about the governing style of Simão Rodrigues) found his involvement in finances and lawsuits to be incompatible with the spiritual life. He appealed to Ignatius and received from him the following reply. Even “temporal business,” Ignatius notes, can be “spiritual and

King Ferdinand I requested that the Jesuits come to Vienna in 1551. The success of the Jesuits in teaching there led to a discussion of the ways to restore the decayed faculty of theology at the University of Vienna, so as to provide Germany with educated Catholic priests. In this letter, sent by commission to