Ruben's 1609 Picture Biography of Ignatius

"In all that he did he gave thanks to the Holy One, he brought his brothers as an offering to the Lord . . . Ecclesiasticus 47, Isaiah 66"

When his mother was about to give birth to Ignatius, out of her devotion to the birth of the Lord, she orders that she be brought down to the stable; and she gives birth to him, her last child after seven sons.

We know very little about Ignatius's youth. We are not even certain of the date of his birth and certainly know nothing of the immediate circumstances. The function of this plate, like many others in the book, was to increase Ignatius's popularity by drawing parallels between his life and the lives of Christ and of certain important saints. This picture hearkens back of course to the birth of Christ. Moreover, the birth of Saint Francis of Assisi in a stable was also a frequent theme for artists of this same period. The Jesuits were eager to make a connection between Ignatius and Francis (and did so in several other images in this book) because Francis, like Ignatius, had founded a religious order and enjoyed immense popularity as a saint in the seventeenth century as he does today.

On his journey he hesitates whether or not to take vengeance with the sword on a Moor who had spoken scurrilously of the virginity of the Mother of God. He gives free rein to his horse and, since it turned aside from the path taken by the Moor's mount, he interprets this as a sign from heaven that such vengeance is not pleasing to God.

This is the oldest known image of Ignatius's encounter with the Moor, a story he himself recounts in his so-called Autobiography "so that others may understand how our Lord dealt with that soul, still blind but filled with ardent desires to follow Him in every way he knew."

Note that although Ignatius reported that his "mule" had taken the "highway" rather than the "village road," here his "horse" takes an arduous mountain path rather than the easy road to town, surely a visual metaphor for the rigor of Ignatius's spiritual life and an example of an old biographical episode taking on new significance.

Also, the explanatory final line in the caption, not drawn from the Autobiography, is especially noteworthy for an era when Christians on all sides of the Reformation were enforcing their orthodoxies with special vigor.

The Lord appears to a hermit, who silently despises [Ignatius's] way of life, and He reveals [Ignatius's] sanctity and teaches [the hermit] that [Ignatius] was born to save many.

The Jesuits struggled throughout the early years against the charge of their fellow Catholics that theirs was not a true religious order. With no habit and few requirements for common prayer, they were missing seemingly essential parts of religious life as lived by monks and friars. The Jesuits responded to exactly that critique in this plate: the hermit, representing the purely contemplative religious life, is corrected in prayer with the key justification of the active religious life . . . there are souls to be saved.

He renews at Rome the practice of the sacraments and of sacred sermons, and he introduces the system of catechizing children in the rudiments of the Christian faith in the churches and squares of Rome.

The ministries of word and sacrament were at the heart of the Early Jesuits' pastoral program. In this picture, preaching and teaching are placed in the foreground; and in the background Jesuits are hearing confessions and distributing communion. The image with its caption also portrays two other important aspects of the Jesuit pastoral strategy: first, to seek out the young for education; and second, to take their ministries outside of churches to squares and other profane places.

A young girl, long afflicted with a tumor and unable because of the crowds to get near enough to his bier to kiss his hands, picks up a shred of his clothing and pressing it to her throat is instantly cured; greens and flowers removed from his bier prove health-giving to many sick persons.

The most serious impediment to Ignatius's canonization in the late sixteenth century was the absence of miracles credited to his intercession. Miracles worked posthumously by a holy person were an essential part of any saint's devotional cult and an absolute requirement for canonization. The Jesuits worked hard to establish a miracle tradition from the 1590s on. The medical healing shown here, taking place as it does near the body itself, is the most common miracle form of all and hints at the Gospel story of the hemorrhaging woman in Mark 5:25-34.

Fr. David Collins, SJ, is working on a doctorate in history at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., focusing on the religious culture of medieval Europe. The engravings in this article come from Gonzaga University's copy of the Rubens-Barbé Life of Ignatius Loyola, courtesy of the Jundt Art Museum at the university. Company's special thanks go to J. Scott Patnode, director and curator of the museum.

From a letter of Blessed Xavier in India to Ignatius: "The grace and love of Christ the Lord, etc. My only father in the heart of Christ, on my knees (for I now write this letter to you in that position). I humbly beg you, the father of my soul and one always deserving my reverence, that you obtain for me from God that he grant me the power to know and carry out completely his most holy will as long as I live. Farewell! Your least son and most distant exile. Francis Xavier."

The saintly holiness of Francis Xavier, the close friend of Ignatius and a cofounder of the Jesuits who died as a missionary off the coast of China, was more widely recognized than Ignatius's before their joint canonization in 1622. This image emphasized the link between the two men and, more important, the spiritual dependence of Francis on Ignatius with the implicit message that the son ought not be canonized without the father. Note the detailed and creative setting in which the artist placed Francis, especially the "Indians" wearing feather headdresses and carrying hunting bows in the background!