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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 […]

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

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

In this letter, Ignatius replies to a number of questions from Antonio Brandão, a Portuguese scholastic who had accompanied Simão Rodrigues to Rome. The original questions dealt with practical questions, some of which Ignatius addresses at the end of the letter by simply noting that they “are more dependent on circumstances.” Of note is Ignatius’s

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

Antonio Araoz, the nephew of Ignatius’s sister-in-law Magdalena, entered the Society early its history and devoted himself tirelessly to preaching and spreading the order in Spain, where he had been provincial since 1547. His health suffered, though, and after a series of fruitless attempts had been made to get him to moderate his labors, Ignatius

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,