Search Results for: Ferrer

Robert Claysson, a native of Bruges, had sent a report to Rome in a rather bombastic style, and Ignatius here reproves him for having done so. His comment that Claysson’s letter could not be sent anywhere else without heavy editing refers to the fact that the reports of Jesuit activities regularly sent to Rome were often […]

The local inquisition in Venice forbade any priests under the age of thirty-six from hearing women’s confessions. The Society of Jesus, however, enjoyed the right, by papal authority, to hear anyone’s confession. Ignatius did not want to press the dispute publicly. So he arranged that for the only Jesuit in Venice above the minimum age

Teutonio de Braganza was a member of the high Portuguese nobility, the stepbrother of the Duke of Braganza. Once he had decided to enter the Society, he had to overcome the opposition of his family. In the Society at last, he became a partisan of Simão Rodrigues in the troubles among the Jesuits in Portugal.

Jerónimo Doménech, the provincial of Sicily, had complained both in writing to Ignatius and by word of mouth to others about the lack of manpower he had to carry on the works for which he was responsible. Ignatius’s reply to Doménech serves as a strikingly realistic account of the penury in quantity and qualifications of

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

Seriously ill, Francesco Mancini came from Sicily to Naples. He wrote to Ignatius, saying that for his own spiritual consolation he judged it better to stay with his Jesuit brethren there than with his family. The superior in Naples, Alfonso Salmerón, had believed that Mancini could not receive the proper treatment at the city’s college

Nicholas Floris (Goudanus) was a zealous apostolic Jesuit from Gouda in the Low Countries. To Rome, Floris lamented his spiritual dryness, specifically how he lacked the gift of tears. Juan Alfonso de Polanco, writing on behalf of Ignatius, relays to Floris the superior general’s assurance that sensible consolations are not essential to Christian holiness. “Keep

Hannibal Coudret was one of the early Jesuits sent to the college at Messina, the first to be founded explicitly and primarily for the education of lay students by members of the Society of Jesus. In many ways, it became a model for later Jesuit schools. Some of the humanistic-classical texts adopted for study in