At the side of the altar in this sanctuary of Montserrat, the Abbot of the monastery, eighty-one years later, committed to a marble tablet the record of this event, for the perpetual memory of the future: "Blessed Ignatius of Loyola here, with many prayers and tears, devoted himself to God and the Virgin. Here, as with spiritual arms, he fortified himself in sack-cloth, and spent the vigil of the night. Hence he went forth to found the Society of Jesus, in the year MDXXII."
He first looked about him to find a retreat, and immerse himself in the contemplation of time and eternity. It was a Saturday. John Sacrista Pascual tells us that his mother, a devout lady of Manresa, was in the church that morning; and, accompanied by two young men and three women, she was at her devotions in the chapel of the Apostles. A young stranger came up and accosted them. His clothing was of very common serge; for Ignatius had given away his knightly robes to a poor man. The youth looked like a pilgrim. He was not tall; he was fair in complexion and ruddy in cheek. His bare head was somewhat bald. Altogether he was of a fine and grave presence, and most reserved in look. He scarcely raised his eyes from the ground. Coming up, he asked if there were a hospital anywhere which might serve him for shelter. Regarding his noble and fair features, the lady, as became a Christian woman, offered her services; if he would follow her company, she would provide for him, in the best way possible. Courteously and thankfully he accepted her offer, and followed the party as they left the sanctuary. They proceeded slowly; for they noticed that he was lame. However much they urged him, they could not induce him to ride upon the ass. Three leagues away from Montserrat, they arrived at the little town of Manresa; and he took up his residence in the common hospital for the poor and pilgrims. Whatever alms or food was henceforth sent him first went to others, whom, in these matters, up to the end of his life, he always considered to be more in need than himself.
He now entered on his probation of Christian virtue. In the mind of the Catholic Church, the degree of virtue which he practised is that accounted heroic. As it is not for me to dwell on it here, I will pass it over with one remark. That which is accounted ordinary Christian virtue, resting as it does on faith and hope, on principles not barely natural but supernatural, is not very intelligible to the world at large. Still less the heroic degree of the same. Both however claim to be estimated by their own proper motives and principles. When they enter into the very subject, which the biographer means to treat, it appertains to his art not to ignore the objective motives and reasons of things, as they operated in his subject. In the shortest monograph, like the present, we cannot separate from the work, which he did, the man who did it. And the man is made by his motives. It were bad literary art to describe feats, which are confessedly great, and not to find motives which are proportionate.
Ignatius, after a year more or less spent at Manresa, took his pilgrim's staff and journeyed on foot to Italy, and thence to the Holy Land. It was in the spirit of the old Crusaders, whose chivalry had a charm for him up to the day many years later, when, with his first associates of the Company, he endeavored once more to cross over from Italy to Palestine. Had he succeeded on this later occasion, he would most probably never have known the others who attached themselves to him; nor might history have busied itself with him or with them.
At the date of his return from the Holy Land, we find that he has advanced already to the second lesson in the development of his future. It is, that mature in years as he is, and full of desires for doing good to his neighbors, yet neither does mere piety place in his hands the instruments for such work; nor, if study alone can give the means of apostolic zeal, can he consider himself exempt from the law, that he must labor to acquire what are only the results of labor. He was thirty-one years of age, when he betook himself, after his night's vigil, to the cave of Manresa. He is two years older now. So, at the age of thirty-three, he sits down on the school-bench at Barcelona, and begins his Latin declensions.
Begrudging his studies the time which they demand exclusively, he mistakes the situation, and allows himself the exercises of an apostolic life. At his age, even supposing his earlier pursuits to have been more in harmony with his present life of letters, he is not an apt pupil. However, he labors conscientiously. After two years spent at Grammar, he is judged by his teacher, who takes a lenient view of the case, to be competent for approaching his higher studies.
He himself was dubious. His friends recommended him to ascend. He still hesitated. But, receiving the same favorable opinion from a theologian whom he consulted, Ignatius acquiesced, in accordance with his unvarying rule, to follow competent direction. How unfortunate this step was for the happy progress of his studies, but how advantageous for his experience as a future legislator, I shall proceed to show.
Leaving Barcelona for Alcalà, he meant to enjoy the best advantages which a great university could afford. He lived on alms as ever; and others lived on the alms which he received. It was the year 1626. He entered upon the study of Logic, using the Summa of Di Soto; also the Physics of Aristotle; and he pursued besides the Master of Sentences.
He had stayed only a year and a half in this rich variety of pursuits, scholastic as well as apostolic, when the novelties apparent in his manner of life ended by making him a suspected character to the ecclesiastical authorities. To a few, among the population of the city, his fruitful zeal made him distinctly odious. The result was a juridical process against him, which issued in a complimentary verdict, the Vicar of the diocese pronouncing him and his companions quite blameless. But restrictions were imposed regarding his future ministrations, since Ignatius was not yet in holy orders. During a term of four years he was not to preach. After that time, his progress in studies would enable him to honor that important ministry, without giving offence. This was a deathblow to the aspirations of the student. He made up his mind to go elsewhere, to the famous university of Salamanca; and he turned his back on Alcalà.
The time was soon to come for a pleasant revenge; and apparently he knew of it long before it came. Just six years after the foundation of his Order, when he sent Francis Villanova to open a house at Alcalà, not only did he find men of the university embracing his Institute, but, two years after that, the whilom persecuted pilgrim received, in a single twelvemonth, thirty-four Doctors into the Society, all from that one seat of learning. The mere passing by of Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandia, who had become an humble follower of Ignatius, made the choicest spirits flock to his standard; and, all over Spain, colleges sprang up as if from the soil.
In Salamanca, where likewise he and his were to figure in the future, the personal history of Ignatius is briefly told. In ten or twelve days after his arrival, he was thrown into chains. He spent twenty-two days in prison. When released, with the same commendation for himself and his doctrine as he had received at Alcalà, but with a similar restriction on his action, he thought it was not worth his while to repeat the same experiences at the same cost. So, in spite of all the eloquence of dissuasion brought to bear on him by friends, he took a new departure, which seemed plausible to him, and therefore feasible. He would try his fortunes in another land, and continue his studies in the greatest philosophical and theological centre of the world, the University of Paris.
To any one who judged of things by an ordinary standard, the project was not feasible. War was raging between Spain and France; the roads were infested with hostile soldiery; many murders and robberies, committed on the persons of travellers, were recently reported. But these and other considerations of the kind had no weight with Loyola, to stay him in a course once deliberately adopted. Accepting some alms from friends at Barcelona, to obtain on the way the necessaries of life, he accomplished on foot the whole journey from Barcelona to the French capital; where he arrived at the beginning of February, A.D. 1528.
He has now had experience of prisons and chains, on the charge of teaching error, or of being a dangerous enthusiast. One of the calmest and coolest of men, who never acted, but he first calculated, and who never allowed himself to approach a conclusion, without first freeing himself from all bias and impulse, he had