The Jesuits, 1534-1921: A History of the Society of Jesus from Its Foundation to the Present TimeCampbell, Thomas J. (Thomas Joseph)
History
The Jesuits, 1534-1921: A History of the Society of Jesus from Its Foundation to the Present Time
Campbell, Thomas J. (Thomas Joseph)
Jesuits -- History
The church looks towards Azpeitia. A little stream runs at the side of
the well-built road-way which connects the two towns. Along its length,
shrines have been built, as have shelters for travelers if overtaken by
a storm. The people are handsome and dignified, stately in their
carriage--for they are mountaineers--and are as thrifty in cultivating
their steep hills, which they terrace to the very top, as the Belgians
are in tilling their level fields in the Low Countries. There is no
wealth, but there is no sordid poverty; and a joyous piety is everywhere
in evidence. Azpeitia glories in the fact that there St. Ignatius was
baptized; and when some years ago, it was proposed to remove the font
and replace it by a new one, the women rose in revolt. Their babies had
to be made Christians in the same holy basin as their great compatriot,
no matter how old and battered it might be.
Ignatius was the youngest of a family of thirteen or, at least, the
youngest of the sons; he was christened Eneco or Inigo, but he changed
his name later to Ignatius. His early years were spent in the castle of
Arévalo; and, according to Maffei he was at one time a page of King
Ferdinand. He was fond of the world, its vanities, its amusements and
its pleasures, and though there is nothing to show that there was ever
any serious violation of the moral law in his conduct, neither was he
the extraordinarily pious youth such as he is represented in the
fantastic stories of Nieremberg, Nolarci, García, Henao and others.
After the fashion of the hagiographers of the seventeenth century and
later, they describe him as a sort of Aloysius who, under the tutelage
of Doña María de Guevara, visited the sick in the hospitals, regarding
them as the images of Christ, nursing them with tenderest charity, and
so on. All that is pure imagination and an unwise attempt to make a
saint of him before the time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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