The Autobiography of St. Ignatius
This life story follows a wounded soldier's conversion and his journeys as a religious pilgrim. During his recovery, books about Christ and the saints replace the tales of knights he hoped to read.
80 pages 1h 34m reading time
- One of the first autobiographies of a Catholic saint, and the main firsthand source on the man who founded the Jesuits.
- Shows how Ignatius learned to read his own moods, noticing which thoughts left him at peace and which left him restless, and treating this as a way to tell what God wanted.
- Describes faith as a long road of trial and error, with doubts, extreme fasting, and mistakes that Ignatius later saw as part of how he grew.
- The inner experiences it records shaped his Spiritual Exercises, a guide to prayer and retreat still widely used by Catholics and other Christians today.
- It gives a personal look at the early days of the Jesuit order, which went on to found schools and universities around the world.
Called himself "the pilgrim"
Ignatius told his story in the third person and called himself "the pilgrim" rather than "I."
Spoken aloud, not written
Ignatius dictated it to a fellow Jesuit, Luís Gonçalves da Câmara, who wrote it down from memory afterward.
Years of friendly pressure
His followers begged him for years to tell his story before he finally agreed, near the end of his life.
Two languages in one
Da Câmara wrote the first part in Spanish but finished it in Italian through an Italian helper.
Pulled from circulation
In 1567 Jesuit leaders ordered copies collected and replaced it with an official biography written by another Jesuit.
Hidden for over a century
It stayed largely unknown until 1731, when a Latin translation was printed in a large collection of saints' lives.
Translated from Spanish by J. F. X. O'Conor