St. Ignatius sends more than a hundred men out of Rome

ROME, Papal States, September 1555 AD — St. Ignatius of Loyola sent more than a hundred of his own men out of Rome this month, to various places outside the city, and gave the brothers left at the Roman College less to eat. The price of corn had risen that far.

St. Ignatius is sixty-four, a Basque, and has governed the Society of Jesus from the professed house beside Santa Maria della Strada since the fathers elected him general in 1541 AD. The Roman College is his own foundation, and he settled no income on it at all. It lives on alms and on money he borrows. It has nothing of its own to feed its men with, and the papal income he won for it in February is gone.

He opened the college on Sunday, February 22, 1551 AD, and lessons in Latin and Greek began the next day. St. Francis Borgia, then Duke of Gandía, paid for the start of it. It has been short of money before. In October of last year the professed house and the college were both in grave straits over money, and in December the brothers went out to beg through the city.

Last year St. Ignatius set about ending that. He asked Prince Philip to write to the Pope and to several cardinals in support of the college. The letters reached Rome in the summer, and he held the one addressed to the Pope back until December, when word came that England had been reconciled to the Church and Pope Julius III was in good humour with the prince. Then he had it delivered. On February 6 the Pope decided in consistory to settle money on the college for good: an income of two thousand ducats reserved to it, and, starting at once, fifty ducats a month out of his own revenues.

The men in the house went on with nothing in reserve. On the first of March there were twenty-five scudi in the house. Grain was selling at seven or eight scudi the rubbio (the Roman measure of corn), and a cask of wine at fifteen or sixteen scudi. The house owed money to a great many people. That same day letters reached his secretary, Juan Alfonso de Polanco, to say that two hundred and fifty scudi were waiting at Florence for him. Polanco had asked for them, from a quarter he had expected nothing from so soon. St. Ignatius said: “Now we can tell Polanco to have greater hope than he had the day before yesterday.”

A few days later he asked what the house owed and was told near three thousand scudi. Other people owed the house about as much, and it was unlikely to be paid soon. Two novices had been taken in two days before, and more were to be received the next day.

On March 23 Pope Julius III died. Cardinal Marcello Cervini was elected on April 9 as Pope Marcellus II, and he died on May 1. The fifty ducats a month were to come out of Pope Julius III’s own revenues. With both popes dead, the whole grant came to nothing.

At the start of this month St. Ignatius was in excellent health. He had been gravely ill last year for three months together, hardly able to attend to any business. In January, with the number of students arriving at Rome grown very large, he had asked the rectors of the Society’s colleges in Italy to take some of them into their own houses. About seventy men were living at the Roman College this year. Then corn grew dear, and he sent more than a hundred of his men out of Rome to places outside the city. The brothers who stayed at the college were given less to eat.

In the same weeks St. Ignatius sent for three of his closest men. Diego Laínez was one of the first companions of the Society. Polanco had been Secretary of the Society since 1547 AD. Cristóbal de Madrid lived in the house and had charge of St. Ignatius’s health since last summer. St. Ignatius told the three of them that he was most certain the college would be provided for within the year. He did not promise himself one day of life, and when anyone in the house said he would finish some piece of business within a week or a fortnight, his answer was: “How is that? Do you think you are going to live that long?”

Luis Gonçalves da Câmara, the Portuguese priest who has been writing down what St. Ignatius says and does since January, set this down in February. “The Father, in the enterprises he takes up, many times seems to use no human prudence,” he wrote, “as in making this college here without having any income for it, and other like things; but it seems that he does it all founded on trust in God alone.”