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A college in Padua was insufficiently supported by its founder, Andrea Lippomani. Lippomani had hosted Jesuit scholastics in Padua as early as 1542. The Venetian government, though, stalled negotiations to transfer Lippomani’s bequest to the Society intended to support a college in the city, doing so despite a bull by Pope Paul III in support […]

Ignatius addressed this “Letter of Perfection” to the flourishing scholasticate at Coimbra, in Portugal. Though the scholasticate prospered with vocations and zeal, the latter was at times quite indiscreet. Concerned observers felt that Simão Rodrigues, the Portuguese provincial, was too compliant in allowing the scholastics to become “fools for Christ,” in such manifestations as self-flagellation and

Bernardino Ochino, elected vicar-general of the newly founded Capuchin Order in 1538, had become a prominent Catholic preacher before converting to Protestantism and fleeing to Geneva in 1542. His defection was a great shock, and several attempts were made to reconcile him to the Catholic Church. In this letter, Ignatius asks Claude Jay to make

Ignatius offers this letter, combining firmness with humility, as a response to Nicolás Bobadilla’s outspoken protests against Ignatius’s regulations concerning letter writing. Ignatius confesses to a blunder (addressing a letter to Bobadilla in a king’s palace rather than the court) and asks for correction in such circumstances. “For this is my desire in this life,”

In the following letter, Ignatius enjoins that greater order and care be used when Jesuits write to him. Their regular letters, Ignatius explains, might be shown to the Society’s friends and benefactors. Recently, Ignatius wished to show some of the letters to “a couple of cardinals,” whom Ignatius believed could help the situations raised in

King John III of Portugal was the early Society of Jesus’s strongest royal supporter. All the more painful to the Society, then, was a serious quarrel that broke out between the Portuguese king and Pope Paul III after the latter appointed the former ambassador of Portugal as a cardinal. The king responded by recalling his ambassador

In the following letter, Ignatius offers a reproof to a Jesuit scholastic. Giovanni Battista Viola professed obedience yet sought to impose his own solution to an academic difficulty, which he had created by ignoring Ignatius’s directions. Ignatius responded with his two understandings of “blind” obedience. Viola had gone to Paris with Andrés de Oviedo in

In this document, part of his instructions for the legates to Ireland (Alfonso Salmerón and Paschase Broët), Ignatius advises the men on how best to deal spiritually with the variety of persons they would encounter while also telling them to also avoid direct involvement in money matters. His instructions differ according to the legates’ different

The following text is the “Formula of the Institute” composed by St. Ignatius and his first companions in 1539 as a kind of charter or mission statement for the new Society of Jesus. It was inserted with minor revisions into the 1540 bull Regimini militantis Ecclesiae, in which Pope Paul III formally approved the foundation

Just before Easter in the spring of 1539, Ignatius and his companions gathered to determine whether or not they should continue to informally collaborate with one another, as they had for some five years. Their deliberations took the form of group discernment, consisting of several days of prayer and discussions. Jean Codure or Pierre Favre later