Loyola and the Educational System of the Jesuits — John Shaqi
Loyola and the Educational System of the JesuitsHughes, Thomas
History
Loyola and the Educational System of the Jesuits
Hughes, Thomas
Education -- History; Ignatius, of Loyola, Saint, 1491-1556; Jesuits
The story of the cavalier wounded on the ramparts of Pampeluna has
often been told. Loyola was not at the moment governor of the city,
nor in any responsible charge. But official responsibility was not
necessary for him to see the path of duty and follow it. As one bound
to the service of his sovereign by the title of honor and nobility,
he retired to the citadel, when the town surrendered; and then, when
the ramparts began to give way under the cannonading, he stood in the
breach. A ball shattering the rock laid him low, maimed in both his
limbs. At once the defence collapsed. Cared for chivalrously by those
whose arms had struck him down in battle, he was transported with every
delicate attention to his castle of Loyola. It was found that one of
his limbs had been ill set. He had it broken again, to be set aright.
Meanwhile, instinct with all the ambition of a knight, belonging to
a chivalrous nation in an age of chivalry, he was not insensible to
the charms of society and affection. And, out of a sensitive care for
his personal appearance, he must needs have a protruding bone, which
still threatened to mar his figure, sawed off while he looked on. In
the loneliness and tedium of a sick-room, he whiled away the hours by
dreaming of his ambitions and his aspirations, and he sought to feed
them with suitable nourishment. He wanted a romance to read. There was
none to be had. So, instead of the novel which was not forthcoming, he
took what they gave him, the Life of Christ, and the Lives of some who
had served Christ faithfully. The soldier of the field and of blood
felt the objects of his ambition change; he became a soldier of the
spirit and eternal life. And, after the experiences of his bed of pain,
and the protracted communings with another world, he arose another man;
he went forth a knight as ever, but not on an expedition terminating as
before. An evening and night spent in the sanctuary of Montserrat, as
once before he had passed a vigil of arms, when dubbed a chevalier by
the King of Navarre; a morning begun with the Holy Sacrifice attended
and Holy Communion received, opened to him a new era; and he went
forth, bound now by a new oath of fealty to the service of the King of
Heaven.
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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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