Personal Writings ─ Reminiscences, Spiritual Diary, Select Letters Including the Text of the Spiritual Exercises

St. Ignatius of Loyola (c. 1491-1556), founder of the revolutionary Jesuit Order, is one of the key figures in Christian history. These Personal Writings reveal the intense inwardness and devotional depths of the private man. His Reminiscences give a vivid account of his conversion and psychological turmoil, of his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and of the years of study and controversy in Spain and Paris leading to the creation of the Society of Jesus. The immensely influential Spiritual Exercises offer guidelines for helping people discover God in their lives, coming to terms with their flaws, and making choices about their future. In the Spiritual Diary Ignatius shows himself drawing on these methods to work through a period of crisis. All these major works have been included in this volume, along with forty letters specially selected by the editors. Together with the Preface, Introduction to each text and detailed notes, they make one of the greatest of religious characters freshly available to modern readers.

Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) was trained as a page at the court of Castile. Wounded at the siege of Pamplona in 1521, he underwent a deep conversion, eventually travelling to Jerusalem and beginning to study. He attracted like-minded students and in 1534 they took vows and formed the 'Society of Jesus', popularly known as the Jesuits. From 1540 he was elected Superior General and lived in Rome, organising the astonishing spread of the Jesuits. He was canonized in 1622.