Pampeluna is a provincial town of no great size and it has little to attract the visitor. The plaza de la Constituçion has been renamed plaza de la Republica. In the cafes that surround it, before an empty glass, under awnings, the inhabitants sit all day long. In the centre is a bandstand and here without doubt will one day have place the statue of the first president of the republic. The narrow, winding streets of the mediaeval city have been broadened and straightened and there arc plate-glass windows in the shops. The houses have miradors in which hour after hour women sit, looking down on the street below, sewing and gossiping. Overhead is a spider's web of telegraph wires, telephone lines and electric light cables. No longer does each craft occupy its particular quarter, but on the rampart behind the cathedral you may still see the rope-makers making rope in the same way as they have for centuries, oiling their shuttles from oil in a cow's horn, and the makers of espadrilles sewing as though for dear life; which indeed they are.
From morning till late into the night there is a ceaseless din. The toot of motor-horns, the splutter of exhausts and the tinkling of bicycle-bells, the rumble of carts over cobbled stones, the braying of asses and the clatter of hooves, the playing of pianos and the harsh clamour of gramophones; and above all, a continuous accompaniment, the piercing sound of voices raised in animated conversation. At the spot where Ignatius received his wound they have built a chapel and next to it a church. In the chapel is a picture in which you see the saint, no saint then, lying on the ground while his companions attend to his wounded leg. A man on a white horse watches the scene with indifference, but above the wounded hero an angel hovers, a prey to agitation. In the background is the city's formidable wall. The church is uglier than any church I have ever seen. Its decorations remind you of those of the scent shops in the rue de la Paix. It is spick and span, and looks as though it had cost any amount of money. I cannot believe that religious art has ever sunk lower than this; and that an earthquake has not levelled it with the ground must seem to the good Catholic a very signal instance of the infinite patience of God. Large parts of the walls have been demolished for the expansion of the city, but such parts as remain are impressive. They were rebuilt, it appears, by Philip II and the city since then has proved itself impregnable. At their base a little river runs. It is bordered by a meadow in which trees grow, affording a grateful shade, and here groups of people, some on the bank fishing, others sitting down engaged in conversation, make a pleasant picture that reminds you of a painting by one of the French impressionists.
But I had never been to Loyola, Azpeitia or Manresa, all three closely associated with the founder of the Company of Jesus, and these after reading his life I made it my business to visit. It was at Azpeitia that Don Iñigo was baptized and in the church you are shown the font at which the ceremony was performed. It has been smartened up with wooden decorations and a carved top. On each side are stone fonts at which it was hoped later inhabitants of the neighbourhood would have their children christened, but they have continued to insist on using that which the saint had exalted. The sacristan tells you with indulgence that they hope thus to enable their offspring to partake of his sanctity. Loyola is less than a mile away and now a broad avenue of trees conducts you to it. As you drive up you come to a statue of Saint Ignatius. The fine portico of the basilica faces you. This is in the Jesuit style of the seventeenth century, somewhat highly decorated, and a flight of steps leads up to it. The interior has a massive nobility. On the left, enclosed in great stone buildings, is the ancestral house of the Loyolas. The exterior has kept its old appearance, but the rooms within have been converted into chapels; the walls are lined with marble and the windows are of coloured glass. An imposing flight of stairs has replaced the old one and the wooden balusters are in the flamboyant style of the eighties. On an upper floor you are shown the little room which Don Iñigo as a child shared with one of his brothers. Next door to it is a low wide chamber, with great beams, in which he read and prayed during his convalescence. Here, on a gold settle, is a statue of him in his best clothes, with a cushion behind him and a book in his hand, in the very act of being converted. There is a marble altar at which the privileged may pray. It is very magnificent and extremely ugly.
After that I went to Manresa. It is pleasant to drive through that sunny country. The colour has not the pastel lightness of French landscape, but is deeper and richer. The sky is bright blue with small stationary clouds very white against it. The hills are covered with pine trees and in the sun their green is brilliant. Round the town they are more thinly grown with stunted olives. You accompany a swift little river bordered with bulrushes, poplars and beech trees; but passing through the town it grows placid, as though in that quiet place it were unseemly to hasten. It is spanned by a slim bridge, plain but very graceful, with a tall arch in the middle rising to a point; and on its banks the houses are huddled together, old tall houses with open loggias in which the washing is hung out to dry.
It was in Manresa that Saint Ignatius wrote the first draft of a little book that has had a prodigious influence. This is the Spiritual Exercises. The visitor is shown the cave in which the saint, according to tradition, composed it. It is on the side of a rocky hill and from it you have a splendid prospect of Monserrat, sharp-edged on a clear day, but in the mist incredibly mysterious. It is shallow, hut long and high, rugged and open to the view. It can never have been a place of extreme seclusion. Now it is guarded by an enormous iron grille and over it is built a Jesuit college and church. But the Jesuits have been expelled and the buildings are barred and locked.
The book is one that cannot be read without awe. For it must be remembered that it was the efficacious instrument that enabled the Society of Jesus for centuries to maintain its ascendancy. Four hundred commentaries have been written on it; popes, cardinals and bishops have commended it. Leo XIII said of it: "Here is the sustenance that I desired for my soul.' So remarkable did the exercises seem even to the saint's contemporaries, the saint being when he wrote ignorant and, unlettered, that a supernatural origin was very generally ascribed to them; and this was substantiated by Blessed Virgin herself who appeared to Doña Maria Escobar and in so many words told her that she had been assistant and instructress of Saint Ignatius in their composition. The illustrious collaborators did not, for some reason, see fit to mention the fact that a Spanish monk Francisco Garcia de Cisneros, Abbot of Monserrat, had some years before published a similar work with a title that was almost identical; and in Ludolph's Life of Christ there are, it appears, so many points in common with the Spiritual Exercises that it seems impossible to acquit the authors of plagiarism. This has, to my mind unreasonably, disquieted a good many people. I look upon the offence with indulgence. We writers get our material from one source and another (je prends mon bien où je le trouve) and the fact is, we only acknowledge the debt when we cannot help ourselves. But I see no reason why the Blessed Virgin should not have dictated this interesting material to the Abbot of Monserrat and to Ludolph the Carthusian as well as to Saint Ignatius. Authors repeat themselves and when they have got hold of an idea that appeals to them are apt to harp upon it.
The title is impressive: 'Spiritual Exercises for overcoming oneself and for regulating one's life without being swayed by any inordinate attachment.' A noble aim! It must be a dull mind that is not curious to what plan this strange man devised to effect so difficult a process. For, notwithstanding his borrowings, it is clear that this book is the fruit of his own experience. Every page bears the stamp of his ruthless personality.
The exercises are divided into four weeks, but each week may be of shorter or longer duration, and they are performed under the guidance of a director. The root of the matter is told you at once. 'Man was created to praise, revere and serve God our Lord, and thereby to save his soul. And the other things on the face of the earth were created for man's sake, and to help him in the attainment of the end for which he was created. Hence it follows that man should make use of creatures so far as they help him towards his end, and should withdraw from them so far as they are a hindrance to him in regard to that end. Wherefore it is necessary that we should acquire detachment from all created things (in all that is left to the liberty of our free will and is not forbidden it), so that we on our part should not wish for health rather than sickness, for wealth rather than poverty, for honour rather than shame, for a long life rather than a short one, and so in all other matters, solely desiring and choosing those things that may better lead us to the end for which we were created.'
A number of precepts are given to enable the exercitant to acquire concentration and so achieve what he desires.
' . . . after going to bed; when I am composing myself to sleep, for the interval of one Hail Mary to think of the hour at which I should rise, and to what purpose, recapitulating the exercise that I have to make.
' ... When I awake ... immediately to advert to what I am about to contemplate in the first exercise at midnight, moving myself to confusion over those many sins of mine, proposing examples, as if some knight were being arraigned before his king and his full assembled Court, stricken with shame and confusion at having grievously offended him of whom he had hitherto received many gifts and many favours.'
Before the exercitant reaches the place where he is to make his meditation he is bidden to stand for the space of a Pater Noster, with mind uplifted; then he enters upon his meditation, 'now kneeling, now prostrate on the ground, now lying back with uplifted face, now sitting, now standing.' When it is finished he is to spend a quarter of an hour, sitting or walking, during which he must consider what success he has had in it. He is ordered to avoid thinking of agreeable subjects, since the feeling of grief for his sins is hindered by any consideration of joy. He must deprive himself of all bright light, closing shutters and doors, except when he is praying, reading and eating. He is not to laugh or to say anything to provoke laughter. He is enjoined to do penance; interior penance, which is to grieve over his sins, with the firm purpose of not committing them or any others again; and exterior penance, which is chastisement for sins committed. This is taken in three ways. 'The first regards food: that is to say, when we take away superfluities, it is not penance but temperance: penance is when we take away from what it is fitting that we should have; and the more and more, the greater and better the penance, provided the constitution be not impaired nor notable infirmity ensue. The second way regards our amount of sleep; and in like manner it is not penance to take away superfluity of things delicate or soft, but it is penance when, in the measure of sleep that we allow ourselves, something is taken away from what is fitting. . . . The third way is to chastise the flesh, to wit, by putting it to sensible pain, which is inflicted by wearing hair shirts, or cords, or iron chains on the bare flesh, by scourging oneself, or wounding oneself, and by other modes of austerities. What seems the more suitable and safe thing in penance is for the pain to be sensible in the flesh, without penetrating to the bones, so that it may cause pain and not injury. Wherefore it seems more fitting to scourge oneself with thin cords, which cause pain externally, rather than in any other way, which may cause serious injury internally.'
The exercise begins with a preparatory prayer and two preludes. The first prelude consists in what is called the composition of place. The exercitant forms for himself a picture of the scene which is to be the subject of his meditation, the temple or mountain, for example, where Jesus Christ is found. In meditation of the invisible, as of sins, 'the composition will be to see with the eye of the imagination and consider my soul imprisoned in this corruptible body, and my whole compound self in this vale of tears as in banishment among brute animals. In the second prelude the exercitant is to ask for what he wishes from the meditation. If his meditation is on the Resurrection he is to ask for joy with Christ rejoicing; if it is on the Passion he is to ask for pains, tears and torment with Christ tormented. The exercise ends with a colloquy in which the exercitant has to consider himself in the presence of Christ crucified and this is made 'as one friend speaks to another, or a servant to his master, now asking some favour, now reproaching oneself for some evil done, now speaking of one's own affairs and asking advice upon them.'
A Pater Noster brings the exercise to a fit conclusion. The first week contains five exercises. The first of these deals with the sin of the angels, the sin of Adam and Eve and the mortal sins of individuals. The second is a consideration of one's own sins. These are repeated during the third and fourth exercises. The fifth is concerned with hell.
I have an edition of the Spiritual Exercises in Spanish in which the Editor, Father Ramon Garcia, S.J., has charitably sought to make the way of the exercitant easier by describing for him in considerable detail the composition of place and by giving him the matter of his meditation in such a manner as to make it an intellectual exercise of no great severity. When he comes to the meditation of hell he displays a realistic fancy that is truly Spanish. Hell, he says, is like a very dark prison or a cavern of fire and intolerable smoke. With the eyes of his fancy the penitent must see the terrible flames and the souls enclosed as it were in bodies of fire. 'Look,' he cried, 'look at the unhappy creatures writhing in the burning flames, their hair standing on end, their eyes starting out of their heads, their aspect horrible, biting their hands, and with sweats and anguish of death and a thousand times worse than death. Look at the devils of frightful mien, not now tempting the wretched with thoughts of pleasure, but tormenting them like ruthless torturers. See how they mock and deride them, hit, strike and tear them with insatiable rage; for they are their slaves and they are in their power for sufferance as in the world they were in their power for sin. Apply your ears and listen to the tumult and perpetual confusion of those infernal dungeons. If when a house is burnt down the cries and the turmoil are so great what will be the clamour of these innumerable people who burn in living fire?' Now by an effort of imagination making use of his sense of smell the penitent becomes conscious of the sulphurous smoke and stench of the sink of hell. The pestilential air stinks in his nostrils. It is the rank atmosphere of a prison that has no vent; it is worse than the exhalation of a dungeon; it is far more disgusting than the depth of an open grave. The bodies of the damned are alive with worms and emit more putrescence than corpses, so that one would be enough to poison a whole countryside. 'What then will be the stink of this horrible prison crammed with so many abominable bodies? We must reflect that the depth of hell is like a lake of liquid sulphur from which rise heavy vapours, and they, since they have no issue, condense; and this noxious venom, so heavy that it is almost palpable, the wretches with mortal agony continually breathe. That unhappy place is an abyss into which, after the Day of Judgment, will fall the putridity, the poison and the ordure of the whole extension of the earth so that it will be like an unfathomable latrine in which the condemned will find themselves submerged. Think what will be the stench of so much filth there commingled and agglomerated. Think also of the bitter, a tinging tears that perpetually flow from the eyes of the damned, furrowing and burning their faces. If in our own bodies, as the result of a sudden shock, or from a paroxysm of anger, we may have indigestion, effusion of bile, bad blood, bitter taste, stinking breath, cough, nausea, vomiting and other miseries of great affliction to such as suffer them, and of no little distress and disgust to such as see them, what will be the mouth and breath of the damned? There is nothing in the world so repulsive, nor stink with which it can be compared. To this must be added the worm of conscience that is ever gnawing their entrails and spewing into them bitter gall and constant remorse.'
'And what,' asks Father Ramon, 'shall we say of the thirst and hunger that torment them?' Much. Raging is the thirst caused by the heat and the ceaseless wailing. For centuries the rich miser has had his gullet parched and his tongue hanging out of his mouth with the hankering for a drop of water, and never shall he get it, for in that place there is nothing to drink but gall of dragons, poison of asps, boiling pitch and liquid sulphur. They are hungry with a brutal hunger, the damned, and without respite suffer from languor, inanition and a very active craving to eat something, but there is nothing for them to eat but wormwood, pitch, and molten lead that burns their entrails.
'Now touch with the touch of imagination the fire that crucifies the souls of the damned. Acute and very fearful is the pain it causes. The fire of this world is like the fire in a picture compared with that; for it is the wrath of God that lights it and maintains it, so that it shall be a terrible instrument of his just vengeance. The damned live plunged in this, like fish in water, or rather (better, says my author) penetrated as by a red hot coal, the flames entering their throats, veins, muscles, bones, entrails and all their vitals. It combines and symbolises all the aches and pains that can afflict and torment out flesh and our spirit: wounds, convulsions, agonies, the ills of gout and stone, blows, whippings, chains, gallows, nippers, swords, wheels and hooks. It likewise torments the soul. One cannot understand how; but this is certain that, with a formidable activity, it penetrates and atrociously tortures the very spirit; since our faith teaches that the demons also burn and suffer from the pain of fire.'
Having given the reader this lively and impressive picture of the fate in store for the sinner the author points out that it is everlasting. The damned are eternal not only in their souls but also in their bodies. They will long for death, but death will free from them; indeed, the rage to destroy themselves will cause them fearful agony since they perceive that they cannot die. Their torments are not only everlasting, but they continue for ever without interruption; they are invariable, without diminution; they do not cease for an hour, for a moment; nor is there any alleviation. And though so long and so unceasing, custom does not mitigate them and so render the suffering less intolerable. Every day they are new and return with new exacerbation.
Then in a passage that seems to me of considerable power the good Father pauses to consider the meaning of eternity. Eternity lasts for ever. Eternity is unending. 'In order to form a conception of so terrible a thing, let us embrace in our imagination any number of years, or millions of years, and we shall find that after they have passed eternity remains entire. As many millions of years may pass over the damned as drops of water have fallen upon the earth, and shall fall to the end of the world, and as many drops of water as there are in all the seas on the planet. As many millions of years as there have been leaves, are or shall be, on all the trees and plants in the world. As many millions of years as there are rays of the sun, atoms in the air and sands of the sea. And after there has passed this incalculable number of years, the torments of these unhappy creatures shall continue, as though they were but beginning, as though it were the first day; and eternity and suffering will remain whole as though not one second had passed.
'What do you say to this, my soul? If in your soft bed it is so painful to you to pass a long night of sleeplessness and pain, waiting eagerly for the relief of dawn, what will you feel in that eternal night upon which the dawn never breaks, during which you will never have an instant of refreshment, during which you will never see a ray of hope?'
This meditation ends the first week. The exercitant makes a general confession and receives absolution. Before going further I should like to narrate a little story that is told by Don José Muñoz San Roman and that the reader can take as he likes. The people of a certain village in Andalusia were tired of the Lenten preacher who sought every year to bring them to repentance with sermons that they knew by heart; so the mayor, to give them a treat, secured for the usual discourses the services of a friar whose fame had reached even that secluded spot. His arrival was awaited with eagerness and all the inhabitants came out into the streets to welcome him. The authorities, lay and ecclesiastical, met him at the railway; and the women of the place, surrounding the mayor's lady, stationed themselves at the foot of the Cross that stood at the entrance to the village. The preacher made his entry amid the acclamations of the multitude. They crowded into the church. So that they should not miss a single one of his winged words they struggled to get as near the pulpit as possible, and when he ascended it a tremor of curiosity and expectation passed through the congregation. His manner was humble as he entered into his exordium and his words were mild; but then raising his voice and changing his tone he gave on a sudden a great cry. Remorse seized and shattered him, anger heeded his brows, terror made him quail and then again he was suffocated with rage. His gestures were abundant and dramatic. And such was the language with which he described the affronts that were suffered during the Passion by Jesus Christ and the anguish that on their account afflicted the Blessed Virgin that the people were dissolved into bitter and noisy tears. Such was the orator's eloquence and in so vivid colours did he depict the Passion of the Redeemer that many of the faithful fainted and some had convulsions. The mayor's wife fell to the floor in a fit to the consternation of those around her and to the mayor's very natural concern. The whole congregation was the prey to an ungovernable agitation.
The preacher at last perceived what was happening. He was very much surprised. The congregation, outraged at the condition to which he had reduced them, were about to rush the pulpit and the unfortunate man hardly knew how to stem the torrent of indignation he had aroused. He besought his listeners to calm themselves, for there was an uproar, and begged for silence. When at last he was able to make himself heard, he said:
'But, my brethren, reflect that all this that I tell you happened many years ago. And it may be that it never happened at all.'
With these consoling words he was able to calm the perturbed spirits of his congregation.
One of the most interesting things to my mind in the Spiritual Exercises is the method of combating sin called Particular and General Examen. The particular examen deals with special sins; the exercitant performs it three times a day; on rising, when he resolves to be on his guard against the sin of which he wishes to amend himself; after dinner, when he marks with dots on a line the number of times he has committed it; and after supper, when he makes dots on a lower line for each subsequent trespass. This he repeats every day, comparing the numbers of dots from day to day. A curious detail is the advice to put his hand to his breast each time he offends, 'which may be done even in company without anyone noticing what he is doing.' The General Examen, as its name suggests, is a general examination of conscience.
The first week is concerned with sin, the second with contemplation on the life of the Eternal King, the third with contemplation on the Passion of Christ and the fourth on the Resurrection. The second week is the culminating point of the exercises, for it leads to the election of a state of life. The third and fourth week confirm and fortify the exercitant in the resolutions he has then made.
When you look at the exercises as a whole you cannot but observe how marvellously they are devised to effect their object. Saint Ignatius is an artist who forms living souls after his own image. He creates them as the poet creates a poem. But he seeks to strengthen the character rather than to develop the intelligence. Blind obedience was what he claimed and he allowed to none the pleasant freedom of thinking for himself. We know now how great is the value of suggestion and what strange things may be achieved by its power. Saint Ignatius learnt its secrets in his own person. The physical condition to which the exercitant is reduced and the circumstances in which he performs the exercises produce in him a state of passivity in which he is very ready to receive the desired impressions. One can well imagine that after this shattering experience the spirit must for ever lose its resilience. It is said that the result of the first week is to reduce the neophyte to utter prostration. Contrition saddens, shame and fear harrow him. Not only is he terrified by the frightful pictures on which his mind has dwelt, he has been weakened by lack of food and exhausted by want of sleep. He has been brought to such despair that he does not know where to fly for relief. Then a new ideal is set before him, the ideal of Christ; and to this, his will broken, he is led to sacrifice himself with a joyful heart. It has been said that no heretic who performed the exercises in the indicated way could fail, not only to become a Catholic, but to seek refuge in the Company of Jesus. It is said that the Jesuits who were sent on their dangerous missions to protestant England, before starting were set a special exercise in which (the composition of place) they were bidden with their mind's eye to picture to themselves the prison into which they might be cast, the grim chamber where horrible torture would be inflicted upon them, and the place of execution where amid frightful torments they would achieve the crown of martyrdom.
They were enjoined in imagination to feel the bitter cold of the dungeon and its noisome stench, the heavy chains that galled their flesh, the red-hot irons that seared it, the rack that tore their joints and the blows that mangled their limbs; and then, in agony, the sharpness of the knife that disembowelled them, the acrid smoke that choked their lungs and the flames that intolerably burned their living flesh. And such was the anguish of this exercise that when they had at last to submit to the reality they did so, not only without fear, but in complete insensibility. They had already endured all that the mortal body and the immortal soul could endure. And if it is not true and they suffered like other men, they did not survive to say so.
I had the curiosity on one occasion to attempt to do one of the exercises myself. It was a singular experience. I began with the composition of place. It seems simple enough, but I found it none too easy, and I am not surprised that the commentators have seen the necessity of providing the exercitant with particulars circumstantial enough to eke out a halting fancy. But I found this child's play compared with the meditation. It is true that I had not prepared myself by fasting or corporal penance, and grace was certainly not vouchsafed me. To me it was incredibly difficult to fix my mind on a subject and concentrate on it without distraction. I was for ever wandering along by-paths and down crooked ways. I could think of anything but what I wanted to. I suppose mathematicians and philosophers can control the flow of their ideas and have no difficulty in directing their reflections towards the end they have in view. With most of us the mind is discursive and the labour of pursuing a train of thought, step by step, without deviation, is very severe. I think a good deal, and, I am inclined to believe, with lucidity, but I cannot think to order: notions and impressions come at haphazard, they are stored away in the subconscious and emerge when they are needed, sifted, combined and elaborated, by no effort that I am aware of: to endeavour then deliberately to picture to myself a series of events and to feel the emotions that moved the actors in them when they experienced them was an exercise of will that I found myself almost incapable of. My spirit (animula vagula) seemed to be compassed about by obstacles that were almost material and it fluttered here and there in a desperate anxiety to escape. The violence to which I subjected my imagination paralysed it. I felt like a bird struggling in a net. My head seemed to be constricted in an iron band and I had such a peculiar feeling in the pit of my stomach I thought I was going to be sick.
Saint Ignatius instructed the exercitant to repeat the same meditation twice and sometimes three times; but whether he did this because he knew from his own experience how difficult the performance was or whether he wished only to confirm its effect I do not know. It must then be an exercise of extreme severity. For though we can turn our thoughts again to a subject that has occupied us and it may be think of it more profoundly, we cannot by an effort of will feel again an emotion that we have felt before; otherwise, I suppose, none of us would cause others the pain of ceasing to love them. The attempt must tear the nerves to pieces. But I cannot persuade myself that meditation forced upon the mind is likely to give rise to fresh and inspiring notions. I should have thought rather that by such a practice the spirit was enslaved and cowed, while the happy flow of fancy was for ever stemmed. It may be that this is what Saint Ignatius aimed at. If so the spiritual Exercises are the most wonderful method that has ever been devised to gain control over that vagabond, unstable and wilful thing, the soul of man.
Considering that their effect has been achieved through a constant and ruthless appeal to terror and shame it is surprising to observe that the last contemplation of all is a contemplation of love.
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