Abstract
Il documento esplora il ruolo significativo delle donne nella spiritualità e nell’ecclesiologia di Ignazio di Loyola attraverso tre episodi chiave della sua vita, come riportato nella sua Autobiografia. Nonostante la tendenza del testo a silenziare l’importanza delle donne, l’autore sottolinea come queste figure abbiano esercitato un’influenza spirituale e apostolica su Ignazio.
Il primo episodio riguarda un incontro con una “serva di Dio”, che ha avuto un impatto profondo sulla sua vita spirituale. Staab suggerisce che questa figura potrebbe essere stata Sor María de Santo Domingo, una mistica e riformatrice ecclesiastica dell’epoca, la cui spiritualità centrata su Gesù ha potuto ispirare Ignazio a cercare un incontro personale con Cristo.
Il secondo episodio analizza il ritorno di Ignazio ad Azpeitia nel 1535, evidenziando il contributo delle “seroras”, donne laiche che svolgevano ruoli pastorali e catechetici nella comunità basca. Queste donne non solo si prendevano cura delle parrocchie, ma educavano anche le giovani e gestivano attività caritative, dimostrando un’importante interazione tra il sacro e il secolare.
Infine, il documento si concentra su Isabel Roser, la prima donna menzionata nell’Autobiografia. La sua relazione con Ignazio è descritta come fondamentale per lo sviluppo delle sue idee sulla Società di Gesù. Attraverso la corrispondenza tra i due, emerge una profonda amicizia e un legame spirituale che ha influenzato la missione della Compagnia.
The document explores the significant role of women in Ignatius of Loyola’s spirituality and ecclesiology through three key episodes from his life as reported in his Autobiography. Despite the text’s tendency to downplay the importance of women, the author emphasizes how these figures exerted spiritual and apostolic influence on Ignatius.
The first episode involves an encounter with a “servant of God,” which had a profound impact on his spiritual life. Staab suggests that this figure may have been Sor María de Santo Domingo, a mystic and ecclesiastical reformer of the time, whose Jesus-centered spirituality could have inspired Ignatius to seek a personal encounter with Christ.
The second episode analyzes Ignatius’s return to Azpeitia in 1535, highlighting the contribution of “seroras,” laywomen who played pastoral and catechetical roles in the Basque community. These women not only cared for parishes but also educated young girls and managed charitable activities, demonstrating an important interaction between the sacred and the secular.
Finally, the document focuses on Isabel Roser, the first woman mentioned in the Autobiography. Her relationship with Ignatius is described as fundamental to the development of his ideas about the Society of Jesus. Through their correspondence, a deep friendship and spiritual bond emerge that influenced the mission of the Society.
Keywords
Ignazio di Loyola, Donne, Spiritualità, Autobiografia, Seroras.
Ignatius, Women, Spirituality, Autobiography, Seroras.
1 Introduction
This paper will explore three episodes in the life of Ignatius of Loyola as reported in the Autobiography to uncover the influence of women in his spirituality and ecclesiology[1]. I have chosen to investigate the Autobiography because it may be the most popular of documents about Ignatius, and it is also the one that tends to silence the role and importance of women in his life[2]. Notwithstanding that silence, the text does offer us the possibility to explore his experience of women who exercised spiritual authority and apostolic responsibility in the Church. My goal is to provide historical details on these women so that readers might not only observe, consider and contemplate them, but also, like Ignatius, learn from them.
2 A beata opens Ignatius’s eyes to aspects of the spiritual life
The first female voice in the Autobiography appears when Ignatius reports that he had an encounter with a “long-standing servant of God,” whom “King Ferdinand had once summoned… to share some matters with her”[3]. He relates that this woman startled him when she said to him: “O, may it please my Lord Jesus Christ that he will appear to you one day”[4]. Later in his narrative, likely referring to the same person, Ignatius offers this encomium: “this woman alone appeared to him to enter more deeply into spiritual things”[5]. Though the she remains unnamed, his recollection of her as a holy woman “known as such too in many parts of Spain” suggests that she was no ordinary woman[6]. Moreover, her spiritual advice and desire for Ignatius was extraordinarily direct: that he have a personal experience with Jesus. Not bad spiritual counsel.
In his biography on Ignatius, the Spanish historian Enrique García Hernán hypothesized that this woman could have been Sor María de Santo Domingo. Not only does García Hernán suggest that Ignatius knew of her and that she was the one who spoke these words to him, but that she made a “notable” impact on him[7]. Though these claims are hard to substantiate, García Hernán’s hypothesis represents a helpful contribution to Ignatian historiography: Sor María was an exceptionally important figure of the era, and it is plausible to imagine that Ignatius, moving as he did in aristocratic circles, knew of her. In addition, the details mentioned in the Autobiography line up with what we know of Sor María. King Ferdinand invited her to stay at the court in 1507-1508, which that year was in Burgos. And modern historians have affirmed her wide influence in early 16th century Spanish spirituality. In the words of the historian Marcel Bataillon, she was the most famous holy woman (beata) of her era[8]. According to another scholar, “the presence and dynamism of the beata was very strong in her days with repercussions in every social sphere of the era”[9]. In short, this simple provincial woman born in the latter part of the 15th century captivated the imagination of much of the Iberian Peninsula[10].
Sor María de Santo Domingo was considered a mystic, visionary, and a vociferous church reformer. She is a compelling figure not only for the way in which her life unfolds in the drama of the reform movement within the Order of Preachers – she was a tertiary or third order Dominican – but for her influence in shaping the religious imagination of her times[11]. And herein lies the importance of her statement as recorded by Ignatius: if she was the woman whom he met in Manresa and the one who “appeared to him to enter more deeply into spiritual things”, she would have helped him imagine a personal encounter with Jesus as possible. She places Jesus and relationship with Jesus at the center of the spiritual life.
In the study of Ignatian spirituality, Ignatius’s experience at Cardoner holds a privileged place; but what if we were to shift the emphasis to this encounter? What might change if we were to imagine that a spiritual woman opened his eyes to new aspects of the faith and to life in the Spirit? If we were to accord this woman an important place in his spiritual development, as the text allows us, we would draw closer to the spiritual and religious climate of his era, dominated as it was by female figures, like Sor María de Santo Domingo. We would also draw close to a constitutive part of the Spiritual Exercises, namely that the one who makes the Exercises seeks “to watch, notice, and contemplate” Jesus[12]. Listening closely to the Exercises, a faint echo of the voice of a woman, perhaps that of Sor María, can be heard: may it please Jesus to appear to you too.
It is also possible to listen more closely to Sor Maria as there is a surprising number of extant documents from her. One of these titled The Book of Prayer, a text thought to have circulated during her lifetime and considered the first printed text in Spanish by a female mystic, contains a compilation of her mystical experiences[13]. In terms of its theology, Jesus and his passion dominate the spiritual vision of Sor María. Similarly, she does not talk about him, but she speaks directly to him, considering herself his spouse and his companion[14]. In terms of the structure of the text, the contemplations are dialogues between her and God, and while she is in these trance-like states speaking with the Lord, people ask her questions which she in turn relays to God. One such question addressed the rather thorny theological issue of whether God was present, and in what way, to the peoples of the Americas before the arrival of Christian missionaries. Sor María affirms that God responded to her by saying that everything was destined “to hear about the pain of my death, as all creatures did hear about it”[15]. The dialogue moved into more concrete details regarding how to be a missionary to these men and women. She responds with what she hears from God, and her response is worth citing in its entirety:
When the marvelous flame of my love begins to shine in despoiled Spain, many other men of mine will go forth who will not act like those who are there now. For these will act like brothers to those who are in that land, weeping, eating, speaking with them and describing such things as the heavenly city. And with the love they will show them and the beauty which they will see described, these men will win souls and bring them to Me[16].
According to Sor María, the revitalization of the Christian missionary enterprise to the Americas begins in an experience of God’s love. Such an experience would allow the missionary to evangelize the other as a brother, one with whom the European missionary can find kinship and solidarity. And this sense of fraternity is demonstrated in the most human activities: eating, crying, and sharing. Indeed, there is much to listen to in Sor María. We might even say that as a synodal church, we are learning, as she puts it, to not only seek an experience of God, but to seek an experience of God in fraternity.
3 A sister and a serora: apostolic lay women in the Basque country
The next part of Ignatius’s life that I will investigate involves his return to Azpeitia in 1535. As the Autobiography recounts, doctors in Paris and his companions urged him to return home to care for his health. And as a way to care for his health, he embarked upon an 815-kilometer journey[17]! According to the story, he appears to have spent little time resting. He taught “Christian doctrine every day to children” and he also “preached on Sundays and feast days”[18]. Moreover, he helped craft legislation which would forbid women to wear head-covering unless they were married; he also pursued the establishment of laws that prohibited gambling. Similarly, he arranged “for the public provision of the poor” and that the “Angelus be rung three times” a day[19]. This apostolic labor impresses, and the epithet “Apostle of Azpeitia” given to Ignatius by the biographer Ricardo García Villoslada, fits the hagiographical coloring that informs this section of the Autobiography[20]. Nevertheless, it is worth probing into this episode of his life. Did he do all of this alone? Was there no pastoral program occurring at that time in Azpeitia? Similarly, was he alone responsible for soliciting at the municipal level the changes that he wanted? Though the Autobiography would have us consider all of this as his heroic apostolic work, research into Basque religiosity of the time reveals the existence of an extensive, structured, and church sanctioned group of women that carried out pastoral, catechetical, and administrative church activities. These women were called seroras, and according to scholarship on them, they represented “a vibrant tradition of Basque female religiosity”[21]. It is hard to imagine that Ignatius was unfamiliar with them: his own sister María Beltran was installed as a serora in 1511 at the chapel of St. Miguel in Azpeitia[22].
Though their origin remains obscure, it seems likely that the institution of seroras traces its roots back to eremitical life and anchoresses, called in Spanish emparedadas, or “bricked in female hermits”[23]. The earliest reference to seroras comes from a poem written by Don Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, sometime between 1199-1215 at Roncesvalles, which describes their role in church life: “women, who in goodness and beauty / Pure in habits and in life / Care for the sick with delicacy”[24]. And it appears that the institution of seroras was a point of pride for the church in the Basque country: local tradition considered that this unique manifestation of a quasi-religious life for women dated back to “time immemorial”[25]. Largely caretakers of parishes and shrines, these women assumed their responsibilities after a competitive application process[26]. This was the case for Ignatius’s sister, María Beltrán, who was nominated by the local community, examined, and then installed. In her installation ceremony, she was brought by hand into the church and, once inside, given the keys to the church, and as the testament records, she was then “in possession of the church”[27].
Though their principal function in early modern Basque Country and Navarre involved caring for a parish or church shrine, the poem from Don Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada and further documentary evidence points to their multifaceted pastoral activity[28]. They educated girls and women in the basics of Christian doctrine[29]. At their parishes, they were responsible for ringing church bells, coordinating and administering donations to the church or shrine, and at times for leading prayer services[30]. If their chapel was situated near one of the pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela, they also cared for pilgrims. Similarly, if they were responsible for hospitals, as was often the case, they cared for the sick and destitute.
These un-cloistered apostolic women chosen by the local church to serve the parish community demonstrate the rich ecclesial context which Ignatius emerged from and to which he returned in 1535[31]. As lay women, they “bridged the secular and the religious worlds of their communities”, inhabiting a kind of in-between space in Basque society[32]. These women responded to an inner call as well as to the “conviction that the church needed their public efforts”[33]. As “devout laywomen” they lived in small communities and promised to live chastity, but they also moved about freely, participating in the life of their village[34]. And that freedom of movement could occasion their departure from their position as seroras. This was the case for María Beltran: after approximately 5 years of serving the shrine of St. Miguel she left her position there as a serora and married Dominico de Arroyo in 1516[35]. In sum, seroras “were exceptionally autonomous women”, exercising certain agency to choose what life or lives they wanted to live[36].
In her study on seroras, Amanda Scott suggests that “the Loyola family’s close connection with the seroras of Azpeitia raises important questions about the degree to which this familiarity with Basque female caretakers may have set the groundwork for Jesuit relationships with women as spiritual collaborators”[37]. I would focus this observation on Ignatius and inquire into the place of these women in the “groundwork” of his ecclesial thinking. For example, knowledge of this institution in the Basque church does allow us to consider with some certainty that he would have seen women serving the needs of a parish community. Similarly, it is possible to imagine that the image of a woman teaching the faith, cleaning a church, caring for the poor, and raising money for a shrine would not have surprised him. Finally, he would have been familiar with a vocation administered by the local church. Quite possibly, this vibrant expression of synodal decision-making at the parish level informed his own thinking on the importance of the local situation and knowledge of that situation for apostolic labor. More specifically, the institution and the activity of the seroras could have informed his commitment to “places, peoples, and situations”, a refrain that he repeated so consistently as to become a kind of mantra in Jesuit thinking on governance.
I began this section referring to Ignatius’s pastoral engagement in Azpeitia. Though further archival research is required to determine a possible collaboration between Ignatius and other seroras, such a hypothesis seems promising. Again, the historian Amanda Scott argues that this is what church life looked like in the Basque country: “seroras complemented, and certainly facilitated male religious work… the two operated in tandem and were not considered interchangeable”[38]. Although his collaboration with women in Azpeitia in 1535 remains a hypothesis, this “working in tandem” materialized several years later in Rome. It is to that woman, Isabel Roser, the first woman named in the Autobiography, to whom I will turn in the last section of this study[39].
4 Delegate, governess, and member of the Society of Jesus – Isabel Roser
The Autobiography introduces us to Isabel Roser when Ignatius returns to the Iberian Peninsula after his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and this sole mention of her in the text does not correspond to her significant place in his life and in the life of the Society of Jesus. The two met in Barcelona in 1523 and remained in contact until her death in 1554[40]. For nearly 35 years, she was, in the estimation of Rogelio García Mateo, “a generous benefactor and an unconditional devotee” of his[41]. In a stronger observation, Hugo Rahner argued that “she played an essential role in the formation of his ideas about the Society’s purpose”[42].
Ignatius’s correspondence with her suggests their spiritual and apostolic kinship, and in the first extant letter of his to her in 1532, that kinship is on full display. In that missive, he acknowledged his gratitude and indebtedness to his female benefactors in Manresa, but he singled out his addressee in a special way: “I owe you more than any others that I know in this life”[43]. Lest we consider such an expression mere hyperbole, the content of the letter reveals that these exuberant expressions rest upon a real friendship. For example, she was for him “my sister in Christ our Lord”[44]. And it is likely that their friendship emerged from shared spiritual and apostolic desires, as well as from experiences held in common. On this latter point, Isabel communicated that she too “experienced great pain in her stomach” and that she was subject to the jealousies and slanders of others. And not unlike Ignatius, she too thought of herself as a scrupulous person[45].
The depth of their friendship comes into sharper focus in a letter of his to her in 1538. Described by Rahner as “one of the most important documents for the early history of the Society of Jesus”, this letter details the accusations of heretical teaching and preaching that the early companions were accused of in Rome that year[46]. In this massively detailed and extensive missive, Ignatius confides to her “the most violent opposition [la más recia contradicción]”[47] that they had faced, and in so doing he was making “her a participant in every moment of the foundation of the Society”[48]. In addition to describing all that they had suffered, Ignatius makes explicit his commitment to her: he promises to write to her more often and reminds her that “all the days of my life you will always be a participant”[49]. Though Ignatius would later encourage Jesuits to adopt a sober attitude towards women, “sober” does not describe the tone of this epistolary exchange with her[50].
The exuberant, intimate and concrete language with which Ignatius communicates to Isabel, along with her own vocational desires to serve the Church, help us to understand her decision to come to Rome and to seek a place in the apostolic work of the nascent Society of Jesus. She was deeply moved and attracted by him, and her own deep religious and spiritual motives, often left out of scholarly reflection on her, account for her desire to serve the Church in Rome. Moreover, in some way she was already participating in the work of the Society by way of her close contact with Peter Faber and Antonio Araoz, both of whom seemed to have been impressed by her apostolic zeal. Concretely, Ignatius seems to have depended upon her in Barcelona to facilitate the activity of Jesuits, acting, in the words of the Spanish historian Antonio Gil Ambrona, as a “kind of delegate for the Society of Jesus in Barcelona”[51]. Thus, their friendship, their apostolic collaboration, and the explicit invitation of Ignatius to her to come to Rome encouraged her to imagine herself as a part of the apostolic work of the Society[52].
She arrived in Rome in late 1543, and in the beginning of 1545, she assumed the position of governess of the house of St. Martha, a position detailed in the founding constitutions of the house. Note too that a pious lay woman directing a home for women at risk was not unusual. For example, Charles Borromeo established the “Milanese Company” in 1567, a foundation run by women to care for women[53]. But, on December 25th, 1545, Isabel Roser ceased to be a mere governess of a house that cared for women. On that day, before Ignatius in the Church of Our Lady of the Way, she professed vows and became, along with two other women, a member of the Society of Jesus[54]. Her presence in the Society was to be short-lived: a mere ten months later, Ignatius released from the Society.
The decision to dismiss her from the order, which Ignatius appears to have been mulling over for some time in the early months of 1546, came after a heated discussion in which she and her nephew alleged that the Society was profiting from “elevated sums of money” that belonged to her[55]. These accusations were settled, and the very next day he drafted a letter, sent Jerome Nadal to read it to her, and she was out of the order. In that letter, he wrote: “I have therefore determined, for God’s greater glory, to withdraw and remove myself from this responsibility of having you as a spiritual daughter under obedience, but rather as the good and kindly mother that you have so long been to me”[56].
It seems cynical to opine that on December 25th, 1545, “she obtained what she wanted” or that Ignatius on that day received “far from a welcome Christmas present”[57]. She was a strong, tenacious, and determined woman, and she was also encouraged by Ignatius to imagine herself as part of the apostolic project of the Society of Jesus. Nor do early documents suggest that she was a burden to the Society. In a letter of the then secretary to Ignatius Bartolomé Ferrón to Simon Rodriguez, Ferrón wrote that “this work [the House of St. Martha] goes with the greatest fervor and devotion here in Rome… nor is it less edifying what the Lady Roser has done in this work”[58]. In short, her person and her leadership were a point of pride for the Jesuit secretary.
Though extant documents do not reveal the change in Ignatius’s in his thinking on his relationship with her, nor do they allow us to ascertain with any certainty why he dismissed her from the Society, his letters to her do become ambiguous. In part, I draw this conclusion from Isabel’s own texts: she consistently complained to him about his lack of clarity. In a letter of hers to him in 1542, she wrote: “I beg you that you speak more clearly to me that which God our Lord gives you to understand”. And in the same letter, she continued, “for the passion of Christ I again reiterate to you to not speak obscurely”[59]. Where Hugo Rahner sees in this missive signs of Isabel’s nervous and hysterical character, I read this request for clarity as part of the nature of their then 20-year friendship. She was accustomed to hearing clearly what he thought and wanted. Indeed, Ignatius’s letters to her at this time do lack clarity: in a letter of his to her in 1542 he simply invites her to discern if it is a good or an evil spirit that prompts her desire to live in obedience in the Society[60]. I would also note that, in the corpus of Ignatius’s letters, it is not common to find a voice and tone as strong as Isabel’s. As far as I am aware, no one dared to challenge him about decisions that he made regarding the mission of Jesuits. For example, regarding his decision to remove two Jesuits from Barcelona, she wrote “you should help us here [Barcelona] before you hinder God’s work”[61]. In sum, she was a strong apostolic woman.
Ignatius’s relationship with Isabel Roser represents an important part of Jesuit history with women that requires careful consideration. Recognizing the complexity of trying to understand this moment in the life of a 16th century man in Rome attempting to consolidate a new religious order makes me cautious about emitting any judgments. Nevertheless, the texts delineate a change: from “you will always be a participant in my life” to no longer writing to her. The former sister in Christ and spiritual daughter becomes a pious and good mother. Something of this change is important for Jesuits’ reflection in this synodal moment in the Church where women are finding their voice and their place in the Church’s mission. Perhaps, like Ignatius, we might harbor a desire to imagine women as sisters with whom we collaborate, but if we are honest, we may end up preferring that they be our spiritual mothers, funding our projects and taking care of our needs. In short, Isabel Roser is a part of the Society of Jesus’ story, and this chapter of the order’s history requires us to notice, consider and contemplate her in this ecclesial moment so that we no longer dismiss those strong apostolic women from full participation in the Church’s mission.
5 Conclusion
I have presented Ignatius’s contact with a beata, seroras and an apostolic woman who was a member of the order. This array of female relationship demonstrates the complexity of his ecclesial situation and it suggests that that he had multiple views of women and that those views changed over time. Once superior of a growing apostolic order, his perspective on women evolved further; “thinking with the Church” obliged him to take great caution with women. Perhaps, for us, “thinking with the Church” may mean something different. It means learning from female spirituality and mysticism; it encourages us to recover those locally recognized ministries of women in parishes; it challenges us to find ways that allow for the full participation of women in all the works God has entrusted to us.
Bibliografia
Bataillon, Marcel. Erasmo y España: estudios sobre la historia espiritual el siglo XVI. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1950.
Bilinkoff, Jodi. “Charisma and Controversy: The Case of María de Santo Domingo.” Archivo Dominicano Anuario 10 (1989): 55-66.
Blecua, Jose Manuel. “La figura de Sor María de Santo Domingo.” In Libro de la Oración de Sor María. Madrid: Hauser y Menet, 1948.
Epistolae mixtae ex variis Europae locis ab anno 1537 ad 1556 scriptae nunc primum a patribus Societatis Iesu in lucem editae, vol. 1. Madrid, 1898.
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Gil Ambrona, Antonio. Ignacio de Loyola y las mujeres. Madrid: Cátedra, 2017.
Ignatius of Loyola. “Reminiscences (Autobiography).” In Saint Ignatius of Loyola: Personal Writings, 13-64. New York: Penguin, 2004.
Ignatius of Loyola. “Spiritual Exercises.” In Saint Ignatius of Loyola: Personal Writings, 283-360. New York: Penguin, 2004.
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López Hernández, Julio. “María de Santo Domingo”. In Diccionario Biográfico Español, vol. XXXI:496. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 2011.
“María Beltran De Loyola Fit Soror (Freyla) Sacelli Sancti Michaelis.” In Fontes Documentales de S. Ignatio de Loyola, 211-216. Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1977.
María de Santo Domingo. The Book of Prayer. Albany: State University of New York, 1990.
Rahner, Hugo. St. Ignatius of Loyola: Letters to Women. New York: Crossroad, 2007.
Ribadeneyra, Pedro de. Vita Ignatii Loyola. In Fontes Narrativi de S. Ignatio de Loyola et de Societatis Iesu Initiis. Rome, 1965.
Sanmartín Bastida, Rebeca. La Representación de las místicas: Sor María de Santo Domingo en su contexto europeo. Santander: Real Sociedad Menéndez Pelayo, 2012.
Scott, Amanda. The Basque Seroras. Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2020.
________. “Community, Conflict, and Local Authority: The Basque Seroras.” In Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World, 31-47. London: Routledge, 2016.
“Testamentum et Codicilli Martini Garcia De Oñaz.” In Fontes Documentales de S. Ignatio de Loyola, 563-599. Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1977.
Weber, Alison. “Introduction: Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World. The Historiographic Challenge.” In Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World, 1-28. London: Routledge, 2016.
Ignatius of Loyola, “Reminiscences (Autobiography),” in Saint Ignatius of Loyola: Personal Writings, trans. Joseph A. Munitiz and Philip Endean (New York: Penguin, 2004), chapter 21; hereafter cited as “Autobiography” with chapter number. ↑
For the latter point see, Jose García de Castro, “Las mujeres y los primeros jesuitas”, in Iguales y diferentes, ed. Fernando Rivas (Madrid: San Pablo, 2012), 219-282, at 243. ↑
“Autobiography”, chapter 21. ↑
“Autobiography”, chapter 21. ↑
“Autobiography”, chapter 37. ↑
“Autobiography”, chapter 21. ↑
Enrique García Hernán, Ignacio de Loyola, (Madrid: Taurus, 2013), 163. ↑
Marcel Bataillon, Erasmo y España: estudios sobre la historia espiritual el siglo XVI (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1950), 69. ↑
Cited in Julio López Hernández, “María de Santo Domingo”, in Diccionario Biográfico Español vol. XXXII (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 2011), 496. ↑
See, Jose Manuel Blecua, “La figura de Sor María de Santo Domingo”, in Libro de la Oración de Sor María (Madrid: Hauser y Menet, 1948), 2. ↑
Here I follow the intuition of Jodi Bilinkoff who sees in Sor María’s life the larger debate as to what constitutes the “true” Dominican tradition. See, Bilinkoff, “Charisma and Controversy: The Case of María de Santo Domingo”, Archivo Dominicano Anuario 10 (1989): 55-66, at 58. ↑
Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, in Saint Ignatius of Loyola: Personal Writings, trans. Joseph A. Munitiz and Philip Endean (New York: Penguin, 2004), number 115. ↑
For Sor María’s text, see, The Book of Prayer, trans. Mary Giles (Albany: State University of New York, 1990). For this assertion of its place as the first text in Spanish by a female mystic, see, Rebeca Sanmartín Bastida, La Representación de las místicas: Sor María de Santo Domingo en su contexto europeo (Santander: Real Sociedad Menéndez Pelayo, 2012), 421. ↑
Bataillon, Erasmo y España, 70. ↑
The Book of Prayer, 177. ↑
The Book of Prayer, 178; emphasis mine. ↑
The distance that Google maps provides for the journey from Paris to Azpeitia. ↑
“Autobiography”, number 88. ↑
“Autobiography”, number 89. ↑
“El apóstol de Azpeitia” is the title of chapter 13 in Ricardo García-Villoslada’s, San Ignacio de Loyola: Nueva Biografía (Madrid: Biblioteca Autores Cristianos, 1986), 372-400. ↑
Amanda Scott, The Basque Seroras (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2020), 54. ↑
See, “María Beltran De Loyola Fit Soror (Freyla) Sacelli Sancti Michaelis”, in Fontes Documentales de S. Ignatio de Loyola, ed. Cándido de Dalmases (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1977), 211-216. ↑
Scott, The Basque Seroras, 128. ↑
Scott, The Basque Seroras, 11. ↑
Scott, The Basque Seroras, 143; on this same point, see, Amanda Scott, “Community, Conflict, and Local Authority: The Basque Seroras”, in Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World, ed. Alison Weber (London: Routledge, 2016), 31-47, 41-42. ↑
Scott, The Basque Seroras, 5. ↑
See, “María Beltran De Loyola Fit Soror (Freyla) Sacelli Sancti Michaelis”, 214. For more on the ceremony of a serora’s installation, see Scott, “Community, Conflict, and Local Authority: The Basque Seroras”, 33. ↑
Scott, The Basque Seroras, 2, 42. ↑
For documentary evidence of this in Azpetia, see Scott, The Basque Seroras, 75, 110, 166. ↑
Scott, The Basque Seroras, 44, 113. ↑
Scott, The Basque Seroras, 41. ↑
Scott, The Basque Seroras, 96. ↑
Alison Weber, “Introduction: Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World. The Historiographic Challenge”, in Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World, ed. Alison Weber (London: Routledge, 2016), 1-28, at 11. ↑
For more on this term, see, Weber, “Introduction: Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World”, 1-20. ↑
See, “Testamentum et Codicilli Martini Garcia De Oñaz”, in Fontes Documentales de S. Ignatio de Loyola, ed. Cándido de Dalmases (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1977), 563-599, at 596. ↑
Scott, The Basque Seroras, 104; see also Weber, “Introduction: Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World”, 11. ↑
Scott, The Basque Seroras, 187, note 21. ↑
Scott, The Basque Seroras, 2. ↑
“Autobiography”, chapter 54. ↑
For an account of their first meeting, see, Pedro de Ribadeneyra, Vita Ignatii Loyola, in Fontes Narrativi de S. Ignatio de Loyola et de Societatis Iesu Initiis (Rome, 1965), 145-147. ↑
Rogelio García Mateo, Ignacio de Loyola: Su espiritualidad y su mundo cultural (Bilbao: Mensajero, 2000), 215. ↑
Hugo Rahner, St. Ignatius of Loyola: Letters to Women, trans. Kathleen Pond and SAH Weetman (New York: Crossroad, 2007), 262. ↑
M. Lecina, V. Agustí, F. Cervós eds., Sancti Ignatii de Loyola Societatis Iesu fundatoris Epistolae et Instructiones, vol. 1 (Madrid, 1903), 85; hereafter abbreviated as Epp with volumen number. ↑
Epp I:89. ↑
Epistolae mixtae ex variis Europae locis ab anno 1537 ad 1556 scriptae nunc primum a patribus Societatis Iesu in lucem editae, vol. 1, ed. V. Agustí (Madrid 1898), 113; hereafter abbreviated as Epp Mixtae with volumen number. ↑
Rahner, Letters to Women, 268. ↑
Epp I:137. ↑
Antonio Gil Ambrona, Ignacio de Loyola y las mujeres (Madrid: Cátedra, 2017), 245. ↑
Epp I:144. ↑
Rahner, Letters to Women, 251. ↑
Gil Ambrona, Ignacio de Loyola y las mujeres, 246. ↑
See also, Gil Ambrona, Ignacio de Loyola y las mujeres, 247. ↑
Weber, “Introduction: Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World. The Historiographic Challenge”, 7. ↑
The vow formulas for all three women – Isabel Roser, Francisca de Cruylles, Lucrezia Bradine – can be found in Archivum Romanum Societaties Iesu, Codice Italiano 59, f. 11, 11ª, 12, 12ª. ↑
Gil Ambrona, Ignacio de Loyola y las mujeres, 270. ↑
Epp I:424; English translation from Ignatius of Loyola: Letters and Instructions, trans. Martin E. Palmer, John W. Padberg, John L. McCarthy (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2006), 146. ↑
Rahner, Letters to Women, 286, 287. ↑
Epp I:371-373. ↑
Epp Mixtae I:110-111. ↑
See, Isabel Roser’s letter to Ignatius on 1 October 1542 where she quotes language from a previous letter of his in Epp Mixtae I:111. ↑
Epp Mixtae I:116-117. ↑
