Storm wrecks the ship that refused St. Ignatius a free passage

JAFFA, Ottoman Palestine, October 3, 1523 AD — Saint Ignatius of Loyola sailed from Jaffa on October 3, 1523 AD, ordered out of the Holy Land and without a coin for the voyage home. At Cyprus the captain of the best ship in the harbour would not carry him to Venice without payment, and the smallest ship there took him. A storm on the first evening out wrecked the ship that had refused him.

St. Ignatius was thirty-two and had been a soldier. The year before, at the shrine of the Blessed Virgin at Montserrat, in Catalonia, he had left his sword and dagger hanging by the altar. Since then he had lived on what he begged.

He had no money because he would not carry any. Early that year, when St. Ignatius was leaving the Catalan town of Manresa for Barcelona to sail for Italy, friends urged him to take a companion, because he knew neither Latin nor Italian. St. Ignatius answered that he “wished only three virtues,–Faith, Hope, and Charity.” St. Ignatius told his friends that he would look to a companion for food when hungry and for help when exhausted, and that he wanted to depend on God alone. Before he went aboard he left the five or six coins he had been given as alms on a bench on the wharf. The captain at Barcelona carried him free, and at Venice the Doge, the head of the Venetian republic, gave him a place on a government ship as far as Cyprus.

St. Ignatius entered Jerusalem on September 4 and decided to live there, so that he could visit the holy places often and work for the good of other people’s souls. On September 22 the superior of the Franciscan friars, who had charge of the holy places, ordered him to leave with the other pilgrims the next day. The superior gave his reason: many pilgrims who had stayed behind before had died or been taken prisoner, and the friars were left to ransom the captives. The superior held the Pope’s authority to excommunicate a pilgrim who stayed against his order, and St. Ignatius obeyed. Before he left he went alone, twice, to the Mount of Olives to look again at the footprints in the rock from which Christ ascended to heaven. The guards would not let him in, so he gave them his knife the first time and his scissors the second. He left Jerusalem with the other pilgrims on September 23, hoping to come back one day.

The pilgrims’ ship from Jaffa reached Cyprus on October 14, and there the pilgrims separated to find places on other ships. Three ships in the harbour were bound for Venice. One belonged to Turks. One was small, old and in bad repair. The third was large, strong and well equipped, and belonged to a rich Venetian. Winter was the dangerous season at sea, and it was close, so most of the pilgrims paid for places on the Venetian ship.

St. Ignatius could not pay. Some of the pilgrims went to the captain of the Venetian ship and asked him to carry St. Ignatius without payment, as an act of charity, because the pilgrim was a holy man. Many of them pleaded with the captain and praised St. Ignatius to him. The captain refused. A saint, the captain said, could walk on the water as other saints had done before him, and this one would not sail on his ship. The same pilgrims then went to the captain of the small ship, and he agreed without difficulty.

The three ships left together at the start of November, at daybreak, with a fair wind, and for some hours they sailed well. Toward evening a violent wind rose. It raised a heavy sea and then drove the three ships apart. The storm drove the large Venetian ship back onto the coast of Cyprus, where it broke apart; the people aboard were saved. The Turkish ship went down in the same storm with everyone on it. The small ship, old and leaking, was battered by wind and waves for a long time and stayed afloat. It came to land in Apulia, on the Italian coast, was repaired there and went on toward Venice.

By then it was midwinter, very cold, and snow was falling. St. Ignatius had a pair of coarse breeches that came to the knee and left his legs bare, a black waistcoat torn open at the shoulders, a light cloak of coarse hair and a pair of shoes.

St. Ignatius reached Venice in the middle of January 1524 AD, two and a half months after leaving Cyprus and close to death from the cold. There he met again a man who had given him lodging in the city before he sailed for Jerusalem. The man gave him a piece of cloth. St. Ignatius folded the cloth over many times and wore it against his stomach to keep out the cold.