Ignatius of Loyola and the Society of Jesus

Ignatius of Loyola

Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) and author of the spiritual classic The Spiritual Exercises, holds a place among the most influential people of his time. Such a claim says a great deal about his impact, for Loyola lived in an age of many powerful and influential personalities.

Ignatius was born one year before Columbus discovered America into a noble family in the Basque country of northern Spain. The youngest of 13 children, he dreamed of making his fame and fortune as a valiant knight in the service of his king, and he pursued the swashbuckling life of a soldier until he reached the age of 30. Then, in May of 1591, he found himself heading a small garrison of Spanish troops in the fortress of Pamplona when it was attacked by a vastly superior French army.

Although the city’s leaders wished to surrender without a fight, the zealous Loyola convinced them to defend their walls, and he bravely rallied his troops in battle until a French cannonball shattered his right leg. Pamplona promptly fell to the French, and Ignatius was transported by stretcher to his family’s castle at Loyola, where he endured excruciating operations aimed at repairing and straightening his leg.


He nearly died under the surgeon’s knife, and his recovery process was long and slow. During his lengthy recuperation, a profound change took place in him that would totally alter the course of his life. As he lay in bed day after day, he grew extremely bored and asked for something to read.

He was an avid reader of the stories of gallant knights, who performed daring deeds in the service of their lady, and he craved such books to help him pass the time. But in his family’s castle, there was only a book on the life of Jesus Christ, and another on the lives of the saints.

In his desperation for something to occupy his mind, he would read from these books as he lay in bed and then daydream about knightly exploits. Yet, the more he read about Christ and the saints, the more impressed he became by their heroic virtue and goodness.

His daydreams began to alternate: At times he would envision himself as a valorous knight of the king of Spain; at other times, he would dream of becoming “a knight of Christ,” and of heroically following Jesus Christ as the great saints of old had done. After a period of serious deliberation, he became utterly convinced that he must leave behind his former way of life and dedicate himself completely to the cause of Christ.

A Hermit, Pilgrim, and Student

Over the following 13 years, Ignatius investigated various ways of responding to his new calling. His early attempts were not highly successful. First, he lived for many months as a poor hermit, begging for his food and spending his days in prayer. Then he took ship and went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, hoping to offer himself in lifelong service there.

When he was denied permission to remain permanently in the Holy Land, he returned to Spain and began a long process of study, which would take him from Barcelona, to the Spanish university town of Alcalá, and ultimately to the University of Paris, where he studied theology and was ordained a Catholic priest.

During his years at the University of Paris, by force of his virtuous character, his strength of personality, and his other powerful leadership qualities, he gathered around himself a group of extremely talented younger men from Spain, France, and Portugal, who were also studying for the priesthood.

He led each of them through The Spiritual Exercises, his life-changing 30-day retreat, which he had by that time developed. As their numbers and their friendship grew, this impressive band of men dreamed of doing something together in the service of God.

Founding of the Jesuits

In August 1534, Ignatius of Loyola and several others joined together in Paris to make promises to remain permanently single for God (chastity) and to live in poverty, in order to place their lives as completely as possible at the service of God. Their first ambition was to sail together to the Holy Land, and to preach the Gospel of Christ in Jerusalem.

When this proved impossible, they journeyed to Rome and placed themselves at the disposal of the pope, ready to serve in whatever way he should direct. The small group continued to grow, attracting many other young and gifted men who were inspired by the lives of Ignatius and his companions, and by the scope of their vision.

Although numerous religious orders of men already existed in the Roman Catholic Church, Ignatius’s company was utterly new: a bold and dynamic missionary band of highly gifted men who were prepared to go anywhere in the world, and to do anything that would advance the cause of Christ. In 1540 the new order, called the Society of Jesus, was officially established by Pope Paul III.

In the following year, Ignatius was elected the first superior (“general”), and he remained in that role until his death 15 years later, in 1556. Throughout these years, Ignatius remained in Rome, crafting the Constitutions of his order and directing his far-flung society through his extensive correspondence. A gifted leader of men and an able administrator, he was also revered by his men for his personal holiness and his profound life of prayer.

Under his direction, the Society of Jesus became a powerful force in the Counter-Reformation, exercising enormous impact through their dominance in the field of education, through their popular preaching and their theological disputations, and through their worldwide missionary activity. The order continued to grow rapidly throughout his life, and by the time of his death numbered nearly 1,000 men.

Society of Jesus

The Jesuit order exploded onto the European scene in the decades following their official establishment in 1540. Their growth in numbers was rapid, and within 25 years after Ignatius’s death, 5,000 Jesuits were at work all over the world. They played a major role in educating the youth of upper-class European society and had established nearly 150 colleges by 1580.

As time went on, they enjoyed enormous popular appeal through their creative use of preaching, drama, music, extensive use of the recently invented printing press, and promotion of baroque art and architecture. In the highest echelons of society, Jesuits became confessors and counselors to many of Europe’s kings and queens and leading statesmen.

Over the next 200 years, hundreds of intrepid Jesuit missionaries followed in the footsteps of the first Jesuit foreign missionary, Francis Xavier. They journeyed from Europe to many parts of North and South America, Africa, and Asia. Many of them would die on the journey itself, the hazards and hardships of sea travel at that time being so great.

Many others would die a martyr’s death in the land of their mission. Jesuits were known to be outstanding in developing creative missionary methods for different cultural settings, and in respecting the indigenous cultures within which they sought to adapt the preaching of the Gospel.

The work of such men as Valignano in Japan, Matteo Ricci in China, Di Nobili in India, and the Jesuit reductions in Paraguay continue to be studied today by missionaries seeking to adapt the Gospel effectively to new cultures with respect and sensitivity.

All was not smooth sailing for the Society of Jesus, however. Their unprecedented success in so many of their endeavors, their massive influence at all levels of society, and serious doubts that were raised about some of their methods all contributed to making the Jesuits a storm center of controversy.

Although they won many influential friends over the years, they also accumulated a long list of powerful and dedicated enemies, who considered them a dangerous force to be eliminated. Some of their implacable foes came from within the Catholic Church itself, others from among the Protestants of Europe, and many more from among Europe’s Enlightenment intellectuals and rulers.

By the mid-1700s, fierce opposition to the activity and influence of the Jesuits had coalesced into strong pressure from different quarters for the complete suppression of the order. The society was first driven out of Portugal, then out of France and Spain, and finally in 1773, the pope was prevailed upon to suppress the entire order. The suppression was not lifted by Rome until 40 years later, in 1814.

The restored Society of Jesus flourished in many parts of the world in the 19th and 20th centuries, including in the United States, and became especially well-known for its excellent high schools and universities. Today the Society of Jesus ranks as the largest Catholic religious order in the world, with more than 20,000 members serving in 112 nations on six of the world’s continents.

Spanish and Roman Inquisitions

Spanish and Roman Inquisitions

The Inquisition in the early modern period was a permanent papal judicial institution of the Roman Catholic Church that was to eradicate heresies, originally dealing with alchemy, sorcery, and witchcraft, as well as dealing with heretical groups like the Cathars and subsequently with relapsed converts or “heretics” who refused to recant.

The most well-known of the inquisitions was the Spanish Inquisition, which was established in 1478 by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Castile, with the support of, and carrying the authority of, Pope Sixtus IV. Although the inquisitor-general was appointed by the pope, the Spanish Inquisition was run by the Spanish monarchy.

The first inquisitors of the Spanish Inquisition worked from Seville and were so vindictive that even Pope Sixtus IV tried to moderate them. However he was not successful as the Spanish government established grand inquisitors in Castile and placed Aragon, Valencia, and Catalonia under the power of the Spanish Inquisition.

The first grand inquisitor was the Dominican friar Tomás de Torquemada, who terrorized his victims using torture and the threat of execution to extract confessions, which resulted in as many as 5,000 people being burned to death at the stake before the practice was ended in 1834.


Torquemada’s reputation for brutality quickly became well known, and other inquisitors were appointed, with the Spanish Inquisition established in Sicily in 1517, although attempts to set it up in Naples and Milan failed. The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V introduced it into the Austrian Netherlands in 1522 to use it against Protestants there, and its use continued until 1834, operating in South America.

As well as the Protestants, Muslim and Jewish communities in Spain were singled out by the Inquisition. In the case of these communities, the Spanish Inquisition only had the role of dealing with those who claimed to have converted to Christianity but who went back to their original religious beliefs.

While many Jews and Muslims left Spain for North Africa, many Jewish converts, known as the conversos, and the Muslim converts known as Moriscos, remained in Spain, where some continued to be strong business leaders. It was not long after conversion that some reverted to following their original beliefs and they were deemed, by the Spanish Inquisition, as being relapsed converts.

the torture of the accused

A study of the 49,092 trials held by the Spanish Inquisition between 1560 and 1700 showed that 11,311 were of Moriscos, 5,007 of conversos, 3,499 of Lutherans, 14,319 for heresy, and 3,750 for superstitions, including witchcraft, and 3,954 were for offenses against the Inquisition itself.

Even when the Inquisition tried heretics—often using dubious evidence gained from the torture of the accused—the results were usually that the defendants were found guilty and sentenced to be burned at the stake.

The burning was done not only to purge the sin, but also to serve as a warning of the flames of hell. Occasionally if people recanted and accepted the church teachings, they would be freed. More often they were strangled and spared the punishment of being burned alive. These trials and executions were know as autos-de-fe.

As well as persecuting heretics and suspected heretics, the Spanish Inquisition drew up lists of banned books, which were also burned. Its role served to create a united political unit in Spain, weaken opposition to the Spanish monarchy, and to strengthen the Catholic orthodoxy against the Protestants.

Pope Sixtus IV accused the rulers of Spain of profiting from the Inquisition as people found guilty of heresy had their property confiscated by the state. The Spanish Inquisition survived until it was banned by Napoleon in 1808, and by royal edict in 1834.

The Roman Inquisition was established in 1542 and staffed by cardinals and other papal officials with the role of defending the integrity of the Roman Catholic faith. This involved arraigning people on charges of heresy, sorcery, blasphemy, and witchcraft. With trials presided over by a cardinal, it had jurisdiction on the Italian peninsula and on other parts of Europe under papal rule, such as Avignon.

It was this group that tried the astronomer Galileo Galilei in 1633, when he faced the Inquisition on the suspicion of heresy, following the publication of his ideas about the Earth’s moving around the Sun. Although Galileo escaped with his life, another astronomer, Giordano Bruno, was not so lucky and was burned at the stake for heresy. Bruno is now often considered the first martyr for science.

Generally the Roman Inquisition was not as fierce as its counterpart in Spain, except during the rule of Pope Paul IV (1555–59) and Pope Pius V (1566–72), the latter having been a grand inquisitor himself. It was Paul IV who declared at the start of his short reign that he felt that matters of doctrine were far more important than all other matters facing the papacy.

Indeed Paul IV personally oversaw much of the persecution himself. The persecution of the Protestants in Italy meant that they were eliminated as threats to the states in late Renaissance Italy. The Inquisition continued its activities well into the 19th century but has long since ceased to be a force in Italy or elsewhere.

Ahmed ibn Ghazi

Ahmed ibn Ghazi

Popularly known as the Gran or Ahmed, the Left-handed, Ahmed ibn Ghazi, the king of Adal, was a Somali general who, after establishing an inland Muslim empire, laid siege to Ethiopia in 1529 in an attempt to wipe out Christianity and establish Ethiopia as a Muslim state.

Christian Ethiopia was particularly vulnerable to outside attacks from neighboring Muslim countries because from 1478 to 1527, the average age of Ethiopian rulers was only 11. The Sultanate of Harar, which was heavily Muslim, repeatedly attempted to overtake Ethiopia. Around 1500, zealous Muslims announced the onset of a jihad (holy war) in which Islam was to be instated throughout Africa.

In the late 1520s, the sultanate’s position was reinforced by the Islamization of Somali, which was effected by the concentrated efforts of Turkish and Arab adventurers. Consequently, Harar’s troops, led by Ahmed ibn Ghazi, attacked Ethiopia in 1529. Ahmed’s forces were reinforced by the recently conquered Chushitic troops who hoped to gain their freedom by fighting with Ahmed’s forces.

Ahmed triumphed during the Battle of Amba Sel on October 28, 1531. By the following year, he had succeeded in gaining control of Ethiopia and had forced Ethiopian emperor Lebna Dengel (1508–40) into hiding. Ahmed subsequently established himself as the ruler of Ethiopia. He was a vengeful conqueror, brutally destroying land and churches and devastating the Ethiopian people.

Once he was in power, Ahmed proceeded with his attempts to eradicate Christianity from Ethiopia. He even destroyed the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion where Ethiopian emperors had been crowned for centuries. At swordpoint, Ahmed’s troops ordered Ethiopian Christians to renounce their faith and swear allegiance to the Muslim faith instead.

Ahmed also executed a Portuguese commander who refused to convert to Islam. Although appearing to comply with Ahmed’s orders, the Ethiopian Christians, including Emperor Lebna Dengel, continued to adhere to the Christian faith. When Ahmed ordered the emperor to command his daughter to marry him, Lebna Dengel defied him and refused to have his daughter marry a nonbeliever.

On September 2, 1540, Ahmed succeeded in tracking Lebna Dengel to the monastery of Dabra Dam in Tigre, where the emperor was killed in battle. However, the emperor’s earlier request for military assistance from Portugal had finally resulted in the arrival of 400 Portuguese musketeers in Ethiopia under the leadership of Christovao da Gama, the son of Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama.

In addition to the Portuguese, the Ethiopians had been reinforced by large numbers of Oromo (Galla) people, who threw considerable force into destroying Islamic communities and attacking the invaders.

While generally successful in their attacks on Ahmed’s troops, da Gama and 140 of his troops were killed in a battle north of the Tekez River. After Lebna Dengel’s death, his son Galawdewos, who had succeeded to the Ethiopian throne, led an attack on Ahmed’s forces on February 21, 1543.

Ahmed ibn Ghazi statue

In what became known as the Battle of Wayna Daga, a Portuguese musketeer who was determined to avenge the death of da Gama and his comrades killed Ahmed, even though it cost him his own life. Once Ahmed was dead, his troops lost the will to continue the jihad. As a result of the Battle of Wayna Daga and Ahmed’s death, Galawdewos was able to restore the Ethiopian Empire.

The Ethiopian Christians celebrated their restoration to power by holding ceremonies in which they publicy renounced the Muslim faith and reembraced Christianity. Despite this success, Galawdewos’s reign was cut short when he was killed in one of the frequent raids conducted by Bati Del Wambara, Ahmed’s widow, who was determined to avenge her husband’s death.

During the years of Muslim occupation, much of Ethiopia had been destroyed. Ethiopia has survived as an African nation with a considerable Christian presence. Currently, between 35 and 40 percent of the Ethiopian population belong to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and between 45 and 50 percent embrace the Muslim faith.

Anne Hutchinson - Puritan Dissenter

Anne Hutchinson - Puritan Dissenter

Born Anne Marbury in 1591, Anne Hutchinson was the daughter of an Anglican priest who was an advocate of church reform. During her childhood, the family moved to London, where she received an excellent education and became well grounded in the tenets of Puritanism. At 21, she married William Hutchinson, a prosperous London cloth merchant, and they settled in Alford, Lincolnshire, Anne’s birthplace.

She attended the church of John Cotton in nearby Boston, and when Cotton migrated to New England, Mrs. Hutchinson convinced her husband that the family should follow. They arrived in Boston sometime in the summer of 1634 and quickly became church members and her husband a community leader. She was skilled in the use of herbal medicine and soon developed a reputation for her medical advice.

She soon moved into religion. An extremely intelligent and thoughtful woman, well versed in theology, she took to expanding on Cotton’s sermons to an ever-increasing group of followers. Taking what she believed to be Cotton’s lead, she stressed a covenant of grace; in her view individuals gained salvation solely through God’s love, and unrelated to their actions, a covenant of works.


Her opponents labeled her an antinomian (against the law), for her doctrine implied the negation of clerical power and church discipline and had unacceptable implications for social order and the authority of the established government. This was of special concern in the Massachusetts Bay Colony; a new colony, isolated in the wilderness, and dedicated to defending its mission to establish a godly community.

Although Hutchinson originally had a large following, including some prominent merchants and even the colony’s governor, she came to be viewed as a threat to Massachusetts’s mission and was eventually banished from the colony and later excommunicated from her congregation.

Because her accusers were also her judges, her trial was unjust by modern standards, but typical of sedition trials at the time; a formal defense was not permitted. Perhaps most importantly, she guaranteed a guilty verdict when she asserted a direct communication with God, a position unacceptable to a society that believed God spoke through the Bible as interpreted by clergymen.

That she was a woman in a society in which women had no public power only made her ideas all the more threatening. Coupled with the challenges of Roger Williams and others, the Hutchinson affair prompted Massachusetts to ensure religious orthodoxy, at least among its clergy, by establishing Harvard College in 1636.

In the spring of 1638, Mrs. Hutchinson, her family, and a small number of followers moved to Rhode Island and settled at Aquidneck. After the death of her husband in 1642, she moved to Long Island and then to the New York mainland.

In the late summer of 1643, Indians attacked her home, killing all but one member of her household. Long viewed as a victim of Puritan intolerance and a champion of religious freedom, Anne Hutchinson is also recognized for her contribution to the struggle for women’s rights.

Huguenots

Huguenots

Huguenots is the name given to Protestants in France who were severely persecuted for their faith. The origin of their name is unclear, but its roots probably go back to a German word meaning “confederates” or “conspirators,” reflecting public suspicions about the foreign and subversive intentions of the group.

The Reformation spread into France almost as early as it shook and divided Germany. In 1523, two years after Martin Luther’s excommunication from the Catholic Church, Jean Vallière was burned at the stake in Paris for his Protestant beliefs.

John Calvin, an exile from France, began the reformed movement in Switzerland, but his dream was to convert his native land. It was inevitable that his Francophile followers would return on a mission in spite of opposition.


Government measures taken against the Protestants backfired, and by 1555 there was a Calvinist congregation in Paris. In 1559, Protestant deputies from all provinces assembled in Paris and formed the National Evangelical Church. Within two years, the number of churches went from 15 to 2,150.

Their strategy for survival was to find allies among the nobles and obtain their patronage. They organized themselves into military and political units, unified with the church structure. Close-knit, clannish, and theocratic, they were identified by the name Huguenots.

Although the Huguenots won the right to organize, matters took a dark turn in the late 1550s when the French Crown and the noble family of the Guises forcefully countered the Huguenots. The last straw was the Vassy massacre in 1561, and the Huguenot nobles took up arms.

Seven wars were fought over the next period, summed up in the Thirty Years’ War. Many slaughters of Protestants in French cities occurred, most infamously in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day (1572). The next year, the Huguenot Party was formed, insisting on full liberties for their religion.

In the next decade, they formed themselves as a state within a state, and their internal governance was tight and severe. They were so effective at discipline that rival Catholic groups in the Counter-Reformation imitated their organization.

Massacre Of Huguenots

Peace came with the Edict of Nantes in 1598, imposed on the French people by Henry IV, a Huguenot-turned-Catholic. The regime and the public had spent themselves on violence and now foreign interference threatened state sovereignty. In the streets, however, tensions continued to fester, making the edict hold precariously.

The Huguenots meanwhile pushed through their jadwal so that by 1611 they were recognized as a provisional republic within France. This arrangement began to unravel in 1615 when three Protestant provinces temporarily took up arms against the central government, and other signs of dissatisfaction arose over the next 10 years.

Cardinal Richelieu, the master tactician of French federal government, concluded that the edict would only destroy the unity of France. In 1626, he mounted a full-scaled attack on Huguenot strongholds. Within three years, all that the Protestants had left was a guarantee of freedom of conscience.

Under Louis XIV (1661–1715) all Protestant rights were gradually withdrawn. Nantes was officially revoked in 1685, and massive emigration of Huguenots ensued. The loss of the Huguenots dealt a severe blow to France’s efforts to keep up with their rivals during the Industrial Revolution: a generation of entrepreneurs had emigrated. Just before he died, Louis announced that Protestant exercises in France had ceased.

Holy Roman Empire

Holy Roman Empire

During the period of 1500 to 1750, the Holy Roman Empire grew to be a large political entity but faced serious problems that brought it close to the point of disintegration. The immense territory of the empire—over 300 states of varying size—was to be its ultimate undoing.

Though several emperors—most notably Charles V—tried to unite the Empire into a modern state like France and England, they were frustrated by the diversity, size, and vested interests of its many rulers.

When Charles V (Charles I of Spain) was elected the Holy Roman Emperor in 1519, he raised the profile of the Empire by uniting Habsburg Spain, Austria, and the Austrian Netherlands, with the Holy Roman Empire.


Combined with the Kingdom of Naples, and also the Spanish colonies in the Americas, the Holy Roman Empire was becoming an important political entity. When Charles V opened the Diet of Worms in 1521, he proclaimed that “the empire from of old had not many masters, but one, and it is our intention to be that one.”

Charles’s power was accentuated when he was crowned as the Holy Roman Emperor in February 1530, by Pope Clement VII at Bologna, the first emperor to have been crowned since Frederick III, and the last person to be crowned as the Holy Roman Emperor by the papacy.

But Charles V faced many challenges in his quest to unite and extend the Holy Roman Empire. The increasing power of the French kings and Ottoman Turkey threatened the Empire. In 1529, the Ottoman army— after having overrun Hungary—besieged the gates of Vienna, but the city held fast and the Turks were forced to retreat.

However, within Europe itself the religious debates following the increasing popularity of Martin Luther and John Calvin led to factionalism and fighting between Protestants and Catholics, the former being supported by the Habsburg dynasty.

These conflicts merged with wider dynastic struggles within the House of Austria for power in Europe that became known as the Thirty Years’ War, which lasted from 1618 to 1648.

Germany was devastated in the war, with more than 5 million German lives lost, while Austria was forced to sign the Peace of Westphalia, which allowed the princes of the Empire to negotiate their own foreign alliances without the Emperor. After this defeat, the Holy Roman Empire ceased to play a dominant role in the European balance of power.

Although the political power of the Holy Roman Empire was sapped, the role of the electors became important. Initially there were three archbishops, those of Mainz, Cologne, and Trier; the king of Bohemia; the count Palatine of the Rhine; and the elector of Saxony; and the elector of Brandenberg. To these seven, the rulers of Bavaria, Hanover, and Hesse-Cassel later were appointed electors.

These electors were granted considerable autonomy and acted as a counterweight to Imperial power. Though the Habsburg Empire and the Holy Roman Empire were two distinct political entities, the Habsburg dynasty continued to assume the title of Emperor.

Only now the Habsburgs had to share power with the electors, and their control over the Imperial diet was reduced. In 1806, Francis I, Emperor of Austria, relinquished the title of Holy Roman Emperor. After the Napoleonic wars, the political map of Europe was redrawn at the Congress of Vienna (1814–15), at which time the Holy Roman Empire was officially dissolved.

Franciscans in the Americas

Franciscans in the Americas

The Franciscans sent the greatest number of missionaries to minister in the New World. This is quite likely due to the fact that they were the largest order in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. In 1493, there were some 22,000 friars participating in various Franciscan observances. A large number of them were in Spain.

By 1517, this number had grown to 30,000, mainly due to reforms initiated by Cardinal Francisco de Cisneros in the simpler more relaxed Observant reform (which retained the name Order of Friars Minor). The Franciscan order has had a history marked by reforms and divisions. In 1517, Pope Leo X divided into two independent groups disgruntled Franciscans still unsatisfied by the medieval attempts at reform.

The result was a Conventual Franciscan group (those resisting change) and the Observant group, which would be called Friars Minor. A Capuchin reform surfaced in 1528 and became an independent group by 1619 (Order Friars Minor Capuchin). Among the three groups, the Franciscans had an overwhelming majority of religious representatives in the New World.


It has been suggested by historians that Franciscan missionaries, Friars Juan de la Deule and Juan de Tisin along with Father Ramón Pané, were the first members of a religious order to come to the Americas. These men accompanied Christopher Columbus in 1493 during his second expedition.

They had been sent by a special commission of the Franciscan order in response to royal instructions from the Spanish Crown aimed at bringing the natives of the Americas to Catholicism. Their initial chapel was built at Port Conception on Hispaniola, where in December of 1493 they offered Mass for the first time in the New World. A convent was built for them by Columbus at the stronghold of Santo Domingo.

Pane, probably more of a contemplative, accompanied Columbus on his voyage to Puerto Rico in 1496. Pane kept very exacting records of his activities and observations of the natives that have survived to this day. The Franciscans were at the vanguard of missionary activity on the newly discovered islands. In 1502, 17 more Franciscans arrived along with the first governor of Hispaniola. They would go on to build the first convent and church (San Francisco) at Santo Domingo.

Domingo became the base of operations for countless missionary expeditions to the north, south, and central continental mainland for many decades. During the next 25 years, more than 50 Franciscan missionaries attempted to evangelize the Caribbean islands, particularly Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. Friar Juan de la Deule died while ministering to Jamaicans sometime between 1508 and 1511.

In 1512, Father García de Padilla was consecrated as bishop of Santo Domingo and, two years later, another Franciscan, Juan de Quevendo, was consecrated as the first bishop of the Central American mainland at Santa Maria Darién. The eastern part of Venezuela was also established as a Franciscan apostolic mission that lasted from 1514 to 1521.

Not until after 1576 were friaries founded in the province of Caracas. In the 17th century, the Capuchins attempted to evangelize in Venezuela. Francisco de Pamplona (a former military general) began work at Darién in 1650. The Capuchin houses located there refused to accept Creoles into the order.

Expeditions to Mexico

During 1523 and 1524, two Franciscan missionary expeditions set out for Mexico from Santo Domingo. The first friars among the Mexicans were Flemish. Among them was Father Peter of Ghent (d. 1562), who spent some 40 years among the native Mesoamericans. The following year 12 more Franciscans arrived. Around 1527, a diocese was organized under the Franciscan bishop Juan de Zumárraga.

At that point, some 70 Franciscan houses rapidly surfaced in Mexico and the region was raised in status to a province. Zumárraga is credited with setting up the first printing press in the New World. Publications in 12 languages were printed and distributed throughout the Americas.

Education of the Indian children of Mexico became a priority and labor of love among the friars. However, there was some opposition on the part of the Spanish government in regard to the education of the natives.

Most convents had schools where thousands of Mexican boys were taught to read, write, and sing. Eventually the Franciscans assisted with the development of a school for girls in Mexico City. Several colleges were also founded for the sons of tribal chiefs throughout Mexico; they became centers for further missionary activity to both South and North America.

Before the end of the 16th century, friars extended missionary efforts from Guadalajara in the northwest to New Mexico in the north, northeast to the Gulf of Mexico, and south to the Yucatán, Guatemala, and Costa Rica.

Beautiful churches were constructed at Huejotzingo, Tlamanalco, Huequechula, Izamal, and Cholula. Friars Pedro de Betanzos and Francisco de la Parra became experts in the Mayan language and have handed down keys to its translation. By 1569, there were some 300 Franciscan missionaries in New Spain (Mexico) alone.

Missions to Peru

Missionary efforts to Peru were launched by Franciscans from Santo Domingo, after 1527 by Juan de los Santos, and followed by Marcos de Niza between 1531 and 1532. Earlier, Franciscans accompanied Pizarro during his conquest and exploration of the region. Evangelization progressed fairly slowly in Peru for the first 20 years due to the animosity between natives and the Spanish invaders.

From Santa Cruz eight missionaries were sent out to Peru. Friar Francisco de Aragón took 12 Franciscans and traveled south to form the main trunk from which communities in Ecuador, Chile, and Bolivia grew. A center for ministry was established at Quito as well as a college.

By 1549, a supervisor was sent to Lima to coordinate all Franciscans in the southern part of the continent. It was not until 1553 that Peru saw permanent Franciscan establishments. In Ecuador a Franciscan province was erected in 1565. Missionary activity to the east and south continued.

During the 17th and 18th centuries, many friars were lost to martyrdom in the territories of the Ucayali and the region north of the Amazon. Franciscans count 129 friar deaths on the Ucayali alone. In 1742, most of these centers of ministry were destroyed during native uprisings.

It took 50 years to restore the Franciscan missions in these areas. Attempts by Franciscans to evangelize Chile were gravely disappointing. Between 1553 and 1750, repeated hostilities between Spanish settlers and natives made activity in the region difficult.

Not until Chilean independence in 1832 did the friars resume their missionary work. In the southern part of Chile and Bolivia the Franciscans were more successful. Seven missionary colleges were established and Franciscans ministered to the people of Bolivia between the 16th and 19th centuries.

They reached Paraguay in the early 1600s and Uruguay a century later. In Argentina, Paraguay, and Peru, the Franciscan missionary St. Francis Solano (1549–1610), who was said to have had the gift of tongues (having learned numerous native languages), spent 14 years ministering to colonists and natives. He is still held in highest regard among descendants of the indigenous people of South America.

Franciscans in Florida

Franciscans arrived in Florida in 1573, eight years after the first permanent Spanish settlement. A larger influx of friars in 1587 and again in 1589 helped with the conversion of the Guale.

Many of the northern tribes of Florida were urban dwellers, so the Franciscans attempted to move into their cities and live among the people. Soon a chain of missions were established along the Atlantic coast for some 250 miles. However, during Indian uprisings of 1597, five Franciscan friars were martyred.

In 1612, the Franciscan province of Santa Elena, which was headquartered in Havana, Cuba, began to supervise missionary work in Florida. At its peak in 1675, some 40 friars maintained 36 missions and the bishop of Havana claimed 13,000 native souls and about 30,000 total Catholics (which might be an exaggeration) under his care.

Eventually, the Franciscan missions would fall victim to the struggle between England and Spain over the territory between St. Augustine and Charleston. Slaving raids, armed conflicts, and British alliances with Native American tribes caused the Florida missions to vanish. By 1706, most Franciscan houses in Florida had ceased to function.

By 1680, there were more than 60,000 Franciscan friars worldwide. This may have had to do with the growing number of friaries (2,113 in 1585 and 4,050 in 1762). There were 16 provinces in the Spanish Americas alone.

By the middle of the 18th century, at least a third of all Franciscan houses and friars were in the Spanish New World. Some of this growth reflected an increase in the number of native Franciscans in the Americas, especially in the 16th century. In fact, in Mexico, Spanish friars began to constitute a thin minority by the mid-1600s.

Texas Settlements

Texas began to be settled by Franciscans while the area was still linked to New Spain. Some missionaries refer to the areas occupied by Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California as the New Kingdom of St. Francis.

There was trouble in 1680; the Pueblo Revolt saw the uprising of many Native Americans, primarily in response to the denigration of their religion by the Spanish Franciscans as well as the disruption of the Pueblo economy. Under the direction of Popé, the revolt was successful, and Popé ruled from the former governor’s palace until his death in 1688.

Shortly after his death, the Spanish returned, reconquering the land without bloodshed by offering clemency to the inhabitants. In 1690, permanent missions began to be founded in the area of Texas, mostly through the efforts of Father Damian Mazanet.

Many Indians in Texas were open to accepting the Christian gospel. During the 1700s, some 21 Franciscan missions staffed by more than 160 friars were established in Texas and thousands of Indians embraced the faith.

During the mid-1700s, many were constructed in magnificent fashion of stone; some included fortress walls. Several examples of these still survive, particularly in the area around San Antonio, Texas. After the period of Mexican independence in the early 1800s, a large number of these missions were left to ruin.

While Mexico and Arizona had Franciscan visitors in the 1500s, it was not until the early 17th century that there was any permanent activity there. Father Juan de Padilla died in the region for his faith in 1542 during an early expedition.

By 1628, there were 43 churches and an estimate of some 30,000 Catholics (native and Spanish) in the territories. The Franciscans were the only missionaries to minister there and it has been recorded that nearly 300 Franciscans preached in the area during the 16th and 17th centuries. California did not experience Franciscan activity until 1769.

The work of Father Junípero Serra and his assistants saw the founding of 21 permanent missions extending from the initial foundation in San Diego north to San Francisco. For the next 100 years, 144 friars would labor in California, resulting in an estimated 80,000 baptisms among Native Americans and settlers.

English American Missions

In the English American colonies there was some isolated Franciscan activity in the late 1600s as well as some activity in French Canada in the early part of the 17th century. Between 1672 and 1699, English friars assisted the Jesuits with work in Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Michigan, Illinois, and Minnesota. The only permanent success seems to have been in Detroit. However, even that region was unstable. In 1706, the Franciscan priest Constantine Dehalle was killed in an Indian uprising.

Father Gabrielle de la Ribaude also gave his life near Joliet, on the banks of the Illinois River, in 1681. In New France (Canada) the first missionaries in the region were four French Franciscans in Quebec around 1615. They spent the 10 years ministering to the Huron and Algonquins in the regions of the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes.

Father Nicholas Veil was the first Franciscan to be martyred in Canada. By 1630, the British ended friar activity in most of Canada. Some work continued among the Abnaki in Nova Scotia and Arcadia until around 1633.

A group of explorers led by the Franciscan Father Louis Hennepin (1640–1701) sailed from Niagara Falls down the Mississippi. Hennepin wrote several accounts of his adventures. One of the last of the formative Franciscan missionaries in Canada was Father Emanuel Crespel, whose efforts extended all the way to the Fox River in Wisconsin during the 1720s.

Historical information on Franciscan activities during the 17th and 18th centuries is not as abundant as that of the 16th century formative period. Heroic tales of martyrs and founders survived in the form of oral traditions, written accounts, and records kept by the order. By the 17th century, the scope and goals of missionary and evangelical activity began to change.

By then it was even more necessary to educate and catechize as well as bring European culture and ideas to the native inhabitants. Dealing with a second generation of settlers, the arrival of new Europeans, as well as the issue of intermarriage, preoccupied the friars.

The mission foundations, or doctrinas, began to evolve into parishes (some were exclusively native, others were urban European, and there were many mixed communities). It was also customary to hand many of the more successful parishes and mission foundations over to diocesan secular clergy, freeing many Franciscans to attend to ministry in the more remote areas.

As the 18th century progressed, growing control by the secular clergy eventually gave way to the specialization of the Franciscans in attending to new and more isolated missionary territories in addition to the establishment of missionary colleges directed at the propagation of the faith.

St. Francis de Sales (François de Sales)

St. Francis de Sales (François de Sales)

In an age of religious division and strife, Francis de Sales (François de Sales) was a voice of reason and charity and a leader in the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Plagued by lifelong doubts about his faith, he was revered as a saintly man by both Catholics and Protestants precisely when violence was the usual recourse for religious controversy.

Francis’s father expected him to be either a lawyer or a military officer and raised him accordingly, sending him to the University of Paris to study rhetoric and humanities under the Jesuits and then to the Padua Law School. He was not much interested in the hidebound teachings of the Dominicans and Jesuits, consummate Scholastics who followed the old ideas of Thomas Aquinas.

He found himself fascinated by the new ideas of the Protestant reformer John Calvin, who taught predestination. Struggling with doubts, he finally came to the conclusion, at age 19, that his main concern was to love God in this life and to entrust his eternal fate to the hands of this God.

During Francis’s days in law school he resolved to become a priest. He became involved with the Catholic diocese of Geneva-Annecy, an area particularly hard-hit by Protestant proselytism. He was ordained in 1593, and through some papal connections was appointed provost of the diocese.


Francis’s position allowed him to begin a mission to the resident Protestants. He conceived it as based on charity toward the poor, care of the sick, and evangelical preaching instead the conventional Counter-Reformation tactics of law and military force. Francis endured daily hardships of harassment, cold, violence, and threats.

When offered another diocese by Henry IV, he refused, saying, “Sire, I am married; my wife is a poor woman, but I cannot leave her for a richer one.” Miracles were associated with his mission. The area, Protestant for some 60 years, largely returned to the Catholic Church within four years.

Francis soon became bishop of Geneva, where his patience and mildness became proverbial. He often dared to walk the streets of the city where Calvin had his headquarters 50 years earlier. In fact he dialogued with the reformed leader and scholar Theodore Beza. Though again plagued by doubts, his philosophy was “Love will shake the walls of Geneva; by love we must invade it.”

Francis produced a stream of writings that proved that the pen was mightier than the sword. Among his most famous books were Introduction to the Devout Life (1608). He also became renowned as a spiritual director, having a profound effect on the founders of two Catholic Counter-Reformation orders, later declared saints, Vincent de Paul and Jane de Chantal. Protestant King James of England and Scottish Calvinists in Aberdeen read his literature. He had a vast correspondence, perhaps sending out 20,000 letters.

He suffered an agonizing death in 1622, was beatified by Pope Alexander VII only 39 years later, and was canonized by 1665. He was declared doctor of the church in 1877 partly for his irenic affects on religious dissent and patron saint of journalists and writers in 1923.

Among the organizations that claim direct connection with him today are Visitation Sisters, Missionaries of St. Francis de Sales, Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, Salesians of Don Bosco, and the St. Francis de Sales Association.

Erasmus of Rotterdam

Erasmus of Rotterdam

Desiderius Erasmus was an internationally acclaimed celebrity and the greatest European scholar during the 16th century. Despite the polemics of the Protestant Reformation, he could make friends among kings and lords in every land and on all sides of the central questions of his day, and this trait led him to reside in Holland, France, England, Switzerland, and Italy.

His pursuit of Christian humanism and his intellectual curiosity led into a lifetime of travel and writing, seeking to promote the values of the Italian Renaissance in northern Europe.

Erasmus was born in Rotterdam on October 27, 1466, as an illegitimate child. His father was Roger Gerard, who later became a priest, and his mother Margaret, the daughter of a physician. One of the major Catholic renewal groups of the Low Countries, the Brethren of the Common Life, adopted him and no doubt generated in him an unpretentious and broadminded orientation toward spirituality.

For the rest of his life, Erasmus never was enticed by the outward show of formal religion, whether it came from Catholic pomp or Protestant sectarianism. He never held an office in the church, even though he was offered the cardinal’s hat by the pope; he also rejected the pandemonium caused by the likes of Martin Luther, Henry VIII, and Ulrich Zwingli.


At first, he spent time in a religious order, though he probably chafed at requirements that he remain in a monastery under a superior. What attracted him were the disciplined study and fraternal companionship a monastic life afforded. He found an excuse to leave when he took up a position with a local bishop and later obtained permission to study theology in Paris.

It was not theology that interested him as much as the life of intellectual stimulation and possibilities of travel. After leaving the monastery, he never looked back. In the university he gravitated toward literature and humanism of the Renaissance more than toward the theology and philosophy of Scholasticism.

He made friends with Italian scholars in Paris, who kept him informed about the intellectual currents of the Renaissance. His skills at Latin and his need for income led him into contact with English students, who in turn invited him to England. At the age of 33, he accepted their invitation and emigrated there.

The English intellectuals he met included John Colet, Sir Thomas More, John Fisher, and Archbishop Warham, men of the “New Learning” school who were interested in reviving the Greek and Latin classics instead of the hidebound studies of medieval Europe.

Erasmus began to realize that such a philological methodology could also be applied to the church fathers and the scriptures, the literary pillars of his traditional Catholic faith. His object was not to undermine the established religious doctrines of his time, but simply to make the writings more available and understandable to the broader public.

Erasmus discovered the advantages of travels and friends in high positions. Whereas other scholars had to worry about financial support and institutional approval, Erasmus attracted the favor of benefactors in many countries, especially those who were outside the church hierarchy. This new life afforded him independence of thought, though it meant that he never lived in one place more than eight years.

His celebrity status as an intellectual can only be compared to the likes of Herodotus among the ancient Greek and Persian officials or Voltaire among the Enlightenment thinkers. He was a trendsetter in bringing the ideas of the Renaissance to northern Europe. His book of commonplace wisdom, Adagia, propelled him into the limelight and was published more than 12 times between 1500 and 1535 in several languages.

On the topic of religion he wrote Enchiridion militis Christiani (Handbook of a Christian Knight), a book that found its way throughout Europe. This book attempted to make Christianity practical by teaching about how to choose virtuous life. For Erasmus, this choice did not come through rite or ceremony; nor was it mental speculation or Scholastic dialectic, but it was learned through practice and imitation of Christ.

However, Christ was Savior, as well as supreme teacher, and only Christ and conversion of heart could make Christian life possible. Enchiridion stays within Catholic bounds by stressing the need for the external church as a peaceful and orderly environment where such learning about Christ can occur.

Erasmus’s most lasting contribution lies in the field of biblical studies and patristics. He can only be compared to Origen and Jerome, Christian scholars of the third and fourth centuries. He compiled the manuscripts that led to five new editions of the New Testament.

His historical-critical methodology for studying the Bible laid the groundwork for a new generation of interpretation and modern thinkers. He edited and commented on many writings of the church fathers. These include Jerome (1516), Augustine (1529), John Chrysostom (1530), and Origen—his favorite—(1536), and also Athanasius and Ambrose.

Erasmus died a Catholic in Basel, a Protestant city, without Catholic last rites and was buried under a cathedral that had been converted to a Protestant church. Many of his writings were put on the Index of Forbidden Books by the Council of Trent as supportive of the Protestant critique of the Catholic Church. Protestants maintained that they brought into the light what Erasmus had already hinted at in the dark.

Yet Erasmus never refused to submit to the Catholic Church. He feared that the Protestants’ invectives against the church destroyed the irenic atmosphere so necessary for learning and dialogue. He also believed that the church was in spite of its flaws the necessary environment where virtue could be lived out. He stood in the lonely middle ground, saying that the Apostles Creed held both groups together.

As early as 1516, his opposition to Luther was known. Finally, in 1524 he wrote De libero arbitrio (On free choice) against Luther’s ideas, arguing that the consensus of the church was authoritative for biblical interpretations. By the end of his life, Erasmus had alienated many erstwhile Protestant friends and allies, including Luther, Zwingli, and Henry VIII.

The principles that animated his life and inspired a whole generation of thinkers were his respect for conscience and the rule of reason over coercion and military might. Both of these principles proved to be impossible to live out in the politics of the Reformation. He saw his best friend in England, Thomas More, executed by Henry VIII for these humanist ideals, the year before his own death.