Paris rector kneels to St. Ignatius instead of flogging him

PARIS, October 1, 1529 AD — Saint Ignatius of Loyola, a thirty-eight-year-old former soldier, began the arts course at the College of Sainte-Barbe in Paris this week, on October 1, the feast of St. Remigius. He moved into a room with two students fifteen years younger than he was, St. Peter Faber and St. Francis Xavier. In the first philosophy lectures, thoughts of God kept pulling his mind away from the lesson, and he could not study until he went to his teacher and promised to keep attending.

St. Ignatius, a Basque nobleman, gave his life to God while recovering from a wound taken at Pamplona in 1521 AD. Since coming back from Jerusalem he had been studying so that he would be better able to help people’s souls, and he wanted a Paris degree for that work.

Diego de Gouvea, the rector of Sainte-Barbe, had wanted St. Ignatius kept out of the college since last autumn. That was when St. Ignatius took three men through the Spiritual Exercises, his method of prayer. All three gave everything they owned to the poor, their books included, and went to live by begging at the Hospital of St. James. One of the three, Amador, lived at Sainte-Barbe, and the rector said St. Ignatius had driven him to the edge of madness. Diego de Gouvea decided that as soon as St. Ignatius came to the college, he would have him flogged in public for leading its students astray.

The arts course at Paris opened only once a year, on that feast, and a student who missed the start waited a whole year for the next. St. Ignatius entered Sainte-Barbe shortly before the feast, and his teacher for the course was Master John Pena. He began with a plan: he would keep helping the men who already wanted to serve God, but he would not look for new followers, so that he could give his mind to his studies.

St. Peter Faber, from Savoy, was twenty-three and had already studied under John Pena. St. Peter Faber later described how the three men lived: in eodemque cubiculo, eadem mensa, eadem bursa (in the same room, at the same table, from the same purse). John Pena arranged for St. Peter Faber to tutor St. Ignatius and go over the lectures with him. The other roommate, St. Francis Xavier, was from Navarre and about St. Peter Faber’s age.

Five years earlier at Barcelona, while St. Ignatius was learning Latin grammar, so many new thoughts about God had come to him that he could not memorise anything. Now, in the philosophy lectures at Sainte-Barbe, the same thoughts crowded in, so many that he could not listen, and he saw that he was learning little. St. Ignatius went to John Pena and promised to attend the lectures for as long as he could find bread and water enough to stay alive. After he made the promise, the thoughts stopped breaking in on the lectures, and he went on with his studies in peace.

Soon afterwards the rector came close to carrying out his threat. Sainte-Barbe held formal debates for its students every feast day, but students St. Ignatius had encouraged to a devout life were spending those days in church, at confession and Communion, and the lecture halls stood empty. John Pena warned him several times to leave the other students alone. St. Ignatius was only sorry that a man cared more for the lessons of Aristotle than for the lessons of Christ, and he went on as before. John Pena then took the matter to the rector, and the two men agreed on a public flogging. They also meant it to drive St. Ignatius out of the college. At a public flogging the masters gathered in the college hall at the sound of a bell and beat the offender with rods in front of every student.

Friends told St. Ignatius what was planned. He went to the college anyway, and the doors were barred behind him. He asked to see Diego de Gouvea, who was still in his rooms. St. Ignatius told the rector that he would gladly take the beating for Christ. But no one, he said, could accuse him of anything except bringing souls to God. The rector took him by the hand and led him into the hall. There, in front of everyone, Diego de Gouvea knelt at the feet of St. Ignatius and, in tears, asked his forgiveness. Diego de Gouvea said that St. Ignatius was truly a saint. The fault was his own, the rector said, for giving way to what others urged and to his own ill will.

John Pena, who had asked for the flogging, made peace with St. Ignatius and from then on regarded him as a man of God. In the later years of his course, no one attacked St. Ignatius as they had at first. One day Doctor Frago, a doctor of the university, told him he was surprised nobody bothered him any more. St. Ignatius told him: “This is owing to the fact that I do not speak on religious topics. But when the course is completed, we shall act as formerly.”