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Roots
By Hedwig Lewis, SJ
Overview
The text of the life-history of
Ignatius Loyola is the last testament
- a personal legacy - that the saint
bequeathed to the Society of Jesus that
he founded. He did not write it himself,
but dictated it to a younger companion
and confidante, Fr Luis Goncalves da
Camara.
Ignatius narrated his accounts in
three periods: August-September 1553;
March 1555; and October 1555, when
da Camara had to leave for Portugal.
Ignatius never resumed his stories. The
Autobiography covers only 18 (1521-
1538) of the 65 years of his life (1491-
1556). Most of the text was read by
Ignatius before his death in July 1556
and he seemed content with the younger
man’s precise memory of the spoken
account. The last chapter (ch 11) spans
as many years as the previous ten put
together.
Purpose
Fr Jeronimo Nadal made frequent
and fervent requests to Ignatius to
tell how God guided him from the
beginning of his conversion, so that
his account might be for his sons a sort
of testament and paternal instruction.
Though Ignatius was reluctant, he
decided “to narrate all that had occurred
in his soul” for the benefit of the
Society.
This is a spiritual autobiography.
Ignatius reveals not what he had done
for God but what God had deigned to
do in him and through him. So, not
Ignatius, but God stands at the centre
of the Autobiography. The person of
Ignatius effaces itself, and the story is
told in the third person, by a “pilgrim”
- as Ignatius prefers to call himself.
For Nadal, Ignatius’s story was
somehow the story of every Jesuit. In
an exhortation at Alcala in 1561, he said
that in Ignatius one saw “the first form
and grace” God gave to the Society. At
Cologne in 1567 he stated: “The whole
life of the Society is contained in germ
and expressed in Ignatius’s story.”
Titles
Da Camara left his document
without a title. Nadal put one in his
Autobiography
of Ignatius
The story
behind the story
own copy: The Acts of Father Ignatius,
as Father Luis Goncalves First wrote Them,
Receiving Them from the Mouth of the
Father Himself. Modern translators and
editors have given it many titles such
as The Pilgrim Story, or Testament, Acts,
Memoirs. These titles point to the special
nature of the narrative. It is a personal
account of Ignatius’s life, but one in
which he chooses and recalls specific
events and experiences for the benefit of
the early Jesuits. It has been translated
into many languages with the most
common title, Autobiography.
Reservations
Not everyone appreciated the
picture of Ignatius which emerged from
da Camara’s pen. A free Latin version
was produced very early by Fr Anibal
du Coudray and later printed but never
really circulated. In 1567, Francis Borgia,
the Jesuits’ third General, recalled all the
copies of the Autobiography so as to
clear the way for Ribadeneira’s “true”
account of the founder’s life: “The
Provincials are to make a good job of
gathering in what Fr Louis Gonsalves
da Camara wrote, or any other writing
about the life of our Father, and they are
to keep them and not permit them to
be read or to be circulated among our
people or others. For being an imperfect
thing, it is not appropriate that it cause
problems.”
Some months later Ribadeneira,
answering a query from Nadal,
comments that: “The gathering in of
Fr Luis Gonsalves’ writings about the
life of our Father did not originate
with me, but from the fathers who
remembered our Father. And it seemed
a good idea to his paternity so that when
what is written gets published it should
not appear that there be divergence or
contradiction or that the work does
not have as much authority as what
was written almost from the mouth of
the Father.”
There seems to have been some
embarrassment about the way Ignatius
expressed himself and possibly some
disappointment too. The narrative
is most unsatisfactory as a piece of
literature. To a casual reader it seems
to be just a patchwork of random
memories, ranging from the trivial to
the profoundly significant. But looking
closely at the details and the sequence of
eleven chapters we discover a connecting
thread and pedagogy in them.
Retrieval
It is surprising that after it had been
obtained at such cost, the Autobiography
was never published, either in the
original or in translations into modern
languages, till the 20th century. The
Bollandists included a Latin translation
in Acta Sanctorum in 1731. The original
Spanish was edited and published by
the Historical Institute of the Society of
Jesus in 1904. The first translation into
a modern language was in English. Two
“loose” translations appeared precisely
in 1900, both by Jesuits: one American,
J.F.X. O’Connor; the other British, E.
M. Rix.
Today the document is regarded as
a spiritual classic and a masterpiece of
self- revelation in its very clumsiness. The
remarkable renewal in the appreciation
and use of the Spiritual Exercises is
in large measure due to the current
understanding in the light of the insights
provided by the Autobiography. It supplies
extensive information indispensable for
understanding the rest of Ignatius’
writings with accuracy and depth. •
JIVAN: News and Views of Jesuits in India NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2012 17