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The difficulties that the Society experienced in Zaragoza, Spain, weighed heavily on the Jesuits in the city and their rector. For example, the archbishop was firmly opposed to their presence in his archdiocese, excommunicating them and anyone who frequented their church or heard their sermons. The populace had been encouraged to throw stones at their […]

The following is one of Ignatius’s most direct and blunt letters. The recipient, Antonio Soldevila, apparently gave more than occasion for it. The Catalan had entered the Society of Jesus in 1551 and came to Rome in 1553. At first, he had a reputation for devotion and spirituality, but Soldevila soon showed eccentric and hardheaded

As the rector at Leuven, Adrian Adriaenssens frequently consulted Ignatius on a variety of questions. In this letter, Ignatius addresses Adriaenssens’s problem of how to provide the proper food for his scholastics who are of different nationalities and physical constitutions. While Ignatius recommends having all get used to the ordinary local diet, he is clear

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

In this letter to Lorenzo Bresciani, Ignatius explains how the Society of Jesus “regards the mingling of human attachments with charity as imperfect.” Bresciani had reportedly given rosaries and an error-filled dialogue to certain ladies, signs of preferential treatment to which Ignatius had found objectionable. For more sources from Ignatius, please visit the Letters of Ignatius

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 scholastic at the Jesuit college in Ferrara, Bartolomeo Romano was dissatisfied with conditions there and wanted to be moved. The house at Ferrara certainly experienced its troubles. The four Jesuits there were overworked, and the town’s citizens were becoming disillusioned with the Jesuits. Ignatius had written to the superior, suggesting ways to improve the

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

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