Autobiography
The account of his own life, from his wounding at Pamplona to his first years in Rome, that Ignatius of Loyola gave by word of mouth to a fellow Jesuit. It is a first-hand source for his conversion, his studies and the gathering of his companions.
The preface of the writer explains how the book was made. In 1553 Ignatius of Loyola, pressed by members of the Society to tell the story of his life, began to relate it to Luis Gonçalves da Câmara, who noted the points at once and wrote them out afterwards, keeping, he says, to Ignatius’s own words. The telling was broken off and taken up again in 1555. Ignatius speaks of himself throughout in the third person, often as “the pilgrim”. The narrative ends with the first years in Rome.
It is Ignatius’s own testimony, given late in his life about events of many years before, and passed through a secretary’s memory and through translation before it reached this English text. Of the vision near Rome he himself says that he no longer remembered the particulars. Dates are few and some are loose. The chapter headings and the appendix in O’Conor’s edition are the editor’s.
Cited in
- 27 September 1540, firm date