St. Ignatius of Loyola Day (31/07)





In 1521, at the age of 30, he began to study religion. The reason was the military events – siege of the Spanish city of Pamplona by French troops. During the fighting, Loyola is injured – with one of his cannon shells crushing his leg, and breaking the other with a piece of a collapsed wall. But Loyola did not leave the battlefield, which earned him high praise from the French. The courageous officer was sent to his father's house – ancestral castle – for treatment, which, as the story tells, brought Loyola no less pain and suffering than wounds in battles.

For more than a year, Loyola treated his crushed legs, the doctors made every effort to fuse the bones, but the result did not satisfy Loyola. Moreover, at first the bone sticking out of the knee interfered with walking – on Loyola's orders, the bone was sawed off. Then it turned out that one of his legs became shorter than the other – Ignatius ordered prosthetics to be made to stretch his leg. The prosthetics were torture, and as a result, Loyola was still left lame.

Just during treatment, Ignatius reads a large number of books that have become an outlet in the fight against illness and suffering. The family castle housed religious books, «Life of Jesus» and lives of saints. There is a version that these books were offered to Ignatius by his mother in order to alleviate the physical, but even more likely, mental torment of his son. The books upended Loyola's idea of peace, being and his own destiny, and in the spring of 1522 he leaves the castle for a monastery. After spending the night in prayer in front of the icon, he changed his knightly armor to the rough clothes of a hermit...

In 1534, Loyola founded a Jesuit order called the Society of Jesus. The purpose of the order was to strengthen the power of the pope, which, in turn, could be achieved by penetrating the teachings of the Jesuits into the rich and ruling circles of different states. The Jesuits also sought to maintain close ties with prominent political figures and did not ignore the agricultural and financial aristocracy in order to exert a noticeable influence on political and public life through them, passing papal laws.

In other words, the Jesuit order served to strengthen the shaky prestige of the Catholic Church. The charter of the new religious monastic order was approved by the pope, and Loyola himself was elected the first cardinal of the order. After serving as a cardinal of the order until the last day of his life, the sick Loyola died in Rome on July 31, 1556, without appointing a successor.

The architecture of Spain preserves the memory of Ignatius Loyola. Near the city of Azpeitia there is a grandiose 18th-century basilica, Sanctuario de Loyola, which became a monument to Saint Ignatius, who was born in these parts.

1186