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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 […]

Ignatius in the letter here offers warm encouragement to Jesuits who are suffering the effects of poverty. Such poverty often arose when benefactors who founded colleges for the Society did not fulfill their obligations or promises to support them. Regardless, Ignatius acknowledges that poverty can be a grace, as it lets “us have a real

This instruction that Ignatius offered to those Jesuits sent on missionary work contains extracts of Part VII of the Constitutions. At the time, the Constitutions were not yet fully promulgated throughout the Society (that would wait until 1558, two years after the death of Ignatius). The instructions by Ignatius here are divided into three sections:

In 1552, the Portuguese province experienced a breakdown of obedience in its members, arising, in part, because the previous provincial (Simão Rodrigues) was unable or unwilling to take the necessary corrective measures. To solve the problem of disobedience, Ignatius wrote the following letter asking that Diego Miró, the new provincial, dismiss from the Society those

Pope Julius III was asked by Emperor Charles V to make Francis Borgia a cardinal. Borgia asked for Ignatius’s advice on whether to accept the position. In the following letter, Ignatius describes a three-day process of interior discernment that he underwent to determine his own position on the matter. In setting out what happened to

At the request of Ignatius and on the occasion of the jubilee year, the senior professed members of the Society gathered in Rome at the end of 1550. During the ensuing weeks, while the men were discussing the draft of the Constitutions that he and Juan Alfonso de Polanco had prepared, Ignatius presented them with

The letter below serves as one of the fullest outlines of the overall apostolic activity of the Jesuits in a city. The instructions come in three parts. First, the letter stresses how each member “provides the foundation for the others.” Virtuous behavior, right order, and using conversation and studies to draw people towards perfection were

In the summer of 1550, Ignatius offered a brief set of directions to his fellow Jesuits. He implores them to be “blind and prompt” in their obedience, prepared to leave any occupation on the instant, all for “God’s greater praise and the greater spiritual progress of all of us.” The instructions were sent by Juan

More commonly known by its Latin name (Exposcit Debitum), the papal approval of the Formula of 1550 has articulated the purposes of the Society of Jesus since it issuance by Pope Julius III. The formula was based on the Five Chapters of 1539 and of the Formula of 1540. For more on the history, content,

William IV, duke of Bavaria, appealed to Pope Paul III and to Ignatius to send several Jesuits as professors of theology to the University of Ingolstadt, an institution that had fallen into severe decline. Alfonso Salmerón, Claude Jay, and Pierre Canisius were chosen for the task. For them, Ignatius writes the following instruction, urging them