Introduction

Ignatius of Loyola’s convalescence in his tower castle from his severe leg injuries sustained in Pamplona constitutes a rich source of theological and spiritual reflection for Ignatian historiography. One aspect of that reflection explores the connection between spiritual reading and his desire to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. According to the so-called Autobiography ¹ , the document that recounts his life from his conversion up to his arrival in Rome, two impressive spiritual texts contributed to his conversion experience which he concretized in his desire to travel to the Holy Land. These texts have been identified as a life of the saints, The Golden Legend by Jacob Voragine, and The Life of Christ by Ludolph of Saxony. The central place of these two books in his conversion has allowed scholars to identify spiritual reading as one significant factor in the inner change that took place in his life. As one of the more modern biographers on his life puts it, the reading of the lives of the saints operated a change in his inner life, “fortifying his spirit to give himself over to God” ² . Books have the power to fortify our spirits, but the Autobiographygoes further: they were motivating him to realize a journey to Jerusalem.

The image of Ignatius passing his confinement in Loyola with spiritual literature is easy to visualize and, for that reason, tremendously potent. A reader can imagine easily Ignatius, propped up in his bed, reading the life of the saints and gradually being inspired to imitate them. The mention of texts and reading at the beginning of the Autobiography is also a rhetorically deft move by the author Luis Gonçalves da Câmara. The author represents Ignatius doing exactly what the reader of the Autobiography is doing, reading a spiritual narrative. The idea, albeit implicit, seems to be for the reader to learn from Ignatius and to read like him, and in that way to begin his or her own spiritual journey. Whether historical or rhetorical, the opening image provided by Gonçalves da Câmara’s narrative is compelling, highlighting reading as that which reconfigures the interiority of the wounded soldier.

Attention to this facet of Ignatius’s inchoate experience of God mediated through reading has helped Ignatian historiography to modify its image of him. It is now considered vastly inadequate to represent him as the soldier called by God to form a militia of men to ward off the dangers and the evils of heretics. That image misses the mark. We now are much more attentive to an Ignatius who was a reader, capable of allowing stories and narratives to guide him; we might even say, in language of ours, that texts were constructing this new identity. He himself reports in his dictation to Gonçalves da Câmara, that “his mind was full of the things that he had read from the book Amadis de Gaulaand similar books” ³ . Stories and narrative were a part of his life. And if they were important to him, it is because he was a man of considerable reflection. Even before his convalescence, Ignatius was, as Javier Melloni ventures, a thoughtful and introspective person ⁴ . Or in the words of another specialist of Ignatian spirituality, his character, deep down, was very capable of concentration and profound reflection ⁵ .

This is not an insignificant development in Ignatian historiography: from the militant to the thoughtful, from the defender of the Catholic faith to the reflective explorer of the inner human geography. And if he was an avid reader of texts, he did it, in the words of another great exegete of Ignatian spirituality, in a personalizing way, making his own what he read ⁶ . Thus, it was the rich interaction of his thoughtfulness with powerful spiritual texts that produced in him a desire to change his life; he made the desire to go to Jerusalem his own.

In studies on the life of Ignatius, it is hardly novel to suggest that his desires to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem have their origin in his spiritual reading ⁷ . All the while recognizing the power that these texts exercised on him, and allowing for the action of the Spirit in his meditative reading of these stories, this interpretation of his initial conversion and the emergence of his desire to travel to Holy Land tends to overlook important considerations from his social, political, and religious context. Writing now more than thirty years ago, Philip Endean warned of an exclusively biographical focus on Ignatius “that tends to neglect political and social forces affecting the development of his movement” ⁸ . Such a biographical approach, deeply dependent—almost exclusively so—upon the Autobiography for understanding his spiritual evolution, limits the connections that can be made with his sociopolitical context ⁹ .

This article seeks to make those connections by exploring other texts that circulated in the Iberian Peninsula about Jerusalem. The desire for Holy Land enjoyed significant currency during the time of Ignatius’s youth, and nowhere more so than in the political and religious discourse on and generated by King Ferdinand and Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros. This article will point to the central place that Jerusalem occupied in the messianic aspirations attached to the Catholic King Ferdinand and in the crusade and conquest of Oran accomplished by Cisneros. Sermons, music, and chronicles about these figures present Jerusalem as a special object of desire in the Spanish religious and political imagination. These narratives, though hardly as influential as were those of Christ’s life and the lives of the saints on Ignatius, constitute the broad context of his decision to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

The Catholic King and liberator of Jerusalem

“One God in heaven, one King on Earth” ¹⁰

Ignatius was born at a time when the Iberian Peninsula was emerging on the world stage as a principal actor of significant economic, political, and religious standing. The unification of the Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, achieved by the marriage of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand (1469), transformed the territories of what is now Spain. Much of this transformation was political in nature ¹¹ . For example, scholars suggest that the Catholic Monarchy (1473-1517) inaugurated a more modern style of government. Their kingdom has been considered a kind of community of kingdoms where local jurisdiction and local customs continued to be recognized ¹² . This accords with Ferdinand’s very consultative style of administration. He was surrounded with an array of talented and efficient professional advisors. Ignatius was close to this atmosphere, working as a page to the Catholic Monarchy’s economic administrator, Juan Velázquez de Cuéllar, considered one of the best examples of the administrative talent by which the King and Queen governed ¹³ .

At the same time, Ferdinand and Isabella’s leadership, political acumen, and religiosity strengthened the monarchy itself ¹⁴ . This monarchical strength derived in no small part from an astonishing series of political and military victories, the most important of which was the conquest of the Kingdom of Granada in 1492. In fact, that year represents a constellation of stunning political achievements: the arrival of Columbus in Guanahani (San Salvador); the election of Rodrigo Borja, a former official of the Aragon court to the Chair of St. Peter ¹⁵ ; the conclusion of political and economic reform in Catalunya. Nationally and internationally, the king’s fame was as at its zenith. He was considered the most prudent, courageous, pious, firm, and just prince ¹⁶ ; these qualities were further underscored by his spouse, Queen Isabel, a woman meritorious of similar or even greater encomiums ¹⁷ .

These accolades of the Catholic Monarchy’s piety, justice, and magnanimity not only refer us to their personal character and political leadership, but also to their religious renewal project. Though a vastly complicated undertaking, their reform of Church life in the peninsula, a veritable renewal of the life in the Spirit as one scholar puts it ¹⁸ , involved a return to the authentic living of the charism of each religious congregation, the economic solvency of what had been the rather ruinous financial situation of religious houses, and the establishment of discipline and the promotion of studies for clergy and religious ¹⁹ . Though it exceeds the scope of this present study to detail the many diverse manifestations that these renewal aspects assumed, their renovation of multiple aspects of Church life constituted a fundamental part of their political designs ²⁰ . As such, their political vision was, simultaneously, ecclesial. In this way, their support of observant movements and the reform of monasteries was but one aspect of a larger movement both at home and abroad to unify and expand the Christian faith.

Important for this study is not only to note what they did but how it appears to have been interpreted by their contemporaries. The abundant scholarship on the Catholic Monarchy suggests that their persons, their achievements, and their political program coalesced in a way to give the impression that they were called to occupy a privileged role in a new international order ²¹ . More concretely, the Catholic Monarchy generated a discourse of political imperialism with no small amount messianic aspirations ²² . In essence, they appear to have been seen as fulfilling earlier medieval messianic prophecies and as inaugurating a new moment for Christianity formerly beset by impotency in the face of Muslim presence to the east. This was implied in their honorific designation as the Catholic King and Queen, a title given to them by Pope Alexander VI which explicitly alluded to their plans to wage war in Africa ²³ . A new moment was arriving for Europe. This new international Christian order would include the reconquest of Jerusalem ²⁴ .

“He was the one who joined earth with heaven” ²⁵

In the last decade of the 15th century, no doubt formative years for the young Ignatius, Ferdinand occupied a special place in the imagination of many in Spain and abroad. The conquest of Granada kindled desires for a similar kind of feat in Jerusalem where the Christian faith would finally return to the place of Jesus’s life. And all eyes were on Ferdinand to carry this out: “The image of King Ferdinand was fixed in the retina of Christians as one of the possible heroes that could liberate Jerusalem from the Islamic yoke” ²⁶ . Though he was in fact considered the King of Jerusalem, a title which he inherited as part of a dynastic tradition ²⁷ , it was now hoped that his kingship would no longer be nominal, but real. Nourishing these desires were more ancient messianic expectations that had their origin both in the Kingdom of Aragon ²⁸ as well as in the Kingdom of Castile ²⁹ .

As a result of these longer traditions, the Catholic Monarchy benefited from a “double messianic heritage,” and this messianic heritage found new expression in a vast array of literature about the king that explicitly connected him with the liberation of the Holy Land ³⁰ . For example, as early as 1473, when he was still prince of Aragón, literature appeared that heralded Ferdinand as the one who would conquer Jerusalem ³¹ . And this continued right up until the last year of his reign in 1516 with the messianic prophecy of the beata Sor María de Santo Domingo ³² . What is more, this literature on the king and Jerusalem circulated in multiple genres—poetry, drama, historical narratives, and sermons—all of which was destined for wide dissemination ³³ . A brief overview of some of these texts will suggest the vibrancy with which the hope and desire for a Christianized Jerusalem circulated in the Iberian Peninsula.

First, however, a word on how I will read this literature. An adequate hermeneutic to interpret these documents is that which considers them as the ideals that the Catholic Monarchy both projected and incarnated ³⁴ . The documentation that associates Ferdinand with Jerusalem is clearly ideological and propagandistic in nature, and for that very reason provides us with some indication of what religious and political thought looked like at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries.

Given that my intent is to understand more critically the historical background of Ignatius’s own desire for Jerusalem, the question is not whether he had access to these particular texts, sermons, or chronicles about the hopes attached to the monarchy, but rather how these documents point to the religious and political worldview that very possibly undergirded Ignatius’s own religious and political thinking. If priests, chroniclers and artists were legitimizing Ferdinand’s right to conquer Jerusalem, it is plausible to consider that the thoughtful and introspective Ignatius was not unaware of them. In short, the circulation and of the desire for Jerusalem suggests that it was a sign of his times.

From the cross, Christ looked to Spain

One such source to discover the messianic aspirations ascribed to Ferdinand with a clear reference to the liberation of Jerusalem can be found in the sermons given in the royal court by the Dominican preacher Don Martín García. Preacher to the king and the queen comprised just one of many important positions that this Dominican held. He was a personal confessor for Queen Isabella, Canon of the Metropolitan Basilica in Zaragoza, bishop of Barcelona, as well as General Inquisitor of the Kingdom of Aragon. As a sign of his political and religious relevance, a compilation of his sermons, all told some 156 documents, were published in Zaragoza in 1520. In brief, Don Martín García was a well-placed figure, and it is likely that his sermons, more than just pious exhortations, reflect broader thinking in peninsula regarding the king and the Holy Land ³⁵ .

In one sermon of his, titled “Pro adquisitione cvitatis Hierusalem”, Martín García directly addresses the legitimacy of Ferdinand’s conquering Jerusalem ³⁶ . All of his highly elaborate and erudite reflections begin with a passage from Scripture; this sermon opens with a passage from the prophet Zechariah: “For your king is coming” (Zec 9:9). More than a captatio benevolentiae, the sermon unfolds as an exposition of how this scripture passage, deeply messianic in character, legitimates Ferdinand’s right to exercise, efficaciously, his kingship in Jerusalem. This sermon proceeds with three main lines of argument ³⁷ . First, the Dominican preacher expounds upon the Aristotelian idea that every unit or set can be reduced to a common origin. This concept allows the preacher to arrive at his conclusion: the best governments are those in which power is centered in one person. This philosophical part of his argument then gives way to a series of theological arguments. Here his reasoning is intricate. Briefly, the Dominican argues that Ferdinand shares qualities with Christ. He reminds themonarch that Christ was anointed twice, once as the authentic king of Jerusalem and a second time as high priest. Ferdinand too, in the vision of the preacher, experienced two anointings: one as King of Sicily and the other as King of Jerusalem. Given this similarity to Christ, Ferdinand has every right to reclaim the throne that belongs to him by law. The argument seems forced, but this quality actually works in its favor, as it indicates that Martín García is taking the identification of Ferdinand with Christ to a higher theological level.

The next block of arguments is more cultural in nature. For example, the royal preacher argues that the King of Jerusalem should come, not surprisingly, from Europe. Asia and Africa suffer from sinfulness, that is, they have abandoned the faith. It is not that Europe is not without its own sinful past—he admits that the continent was almost totally destroyed by pagan invaders from the north—but that Christ, on the cross, chose Europe as the place from which would come the evangelization of the rest of the world. If Europe holds a special place before the Son of God, there is one place within Europe whose position is even more privileged: Spain. To make this point, the preacher suggests that before his death on the cross, Christ beheld Spain ³⁸ . The eyes of the Messiah, before handing over his spirit, looked to the Iberian Peninsula. It is as if, along with Mary and John, Spaniards were looked upon by Jesus on the cross, and to them too he entrusted his mission.

Lest there be any doubt about Spain’s privileged place in the eyes of God’s Son, Don Martín García rounds out his sermon with other arguments which highlight Spain’s particularly privileged place in Christ’s redemptive work. The preacher reminds Ferdinand of the emblem of the red cross that was used by previous kings to combat Muslims. That history is invoked to argue that the King of Spain should liberate Jerusalem with the cross. Likewise, he points to other mundane factors, such as the warm climate in the peninsula. In his view, warm Spanish climes produce warriors better equipped to fight. And there is more: the aridity of the climate makes them more aggressive. And this aggressive nature appears at an early age, since, even from their infancy, Spanish babies are quite pugnacious. Finally, descending to practical considerations of the desired future conquest of the Holy Land, the preacher suggests that the best route to Jerusalem is by way of the south and not the north. In this way, the Dominican reminds the King of his conquests in Northern Africa ³⁹ as signposts that point to Jerusalem as a final destination ⁴⁰ . Jerusalem will see then, just as the prophet Zechariah preached, that its king is coming.

The text was preached sometime around 1510 and undoubtedly influenced the King ⁴¹ . That influence is difficult to measure, but it is much less difficult to perceive how Don Martín García uses the genre of a sermon to craft a very sophisticated piece of propaganda ⁴² . It is a cogent expression of the idea of a king, demonstrating the belief that in the figure of the king all power should be consolidated. And as a rhetorical act, it clearly seeks to consolidate and create that universal kingship. In addition to its justification of Ferdinand’s right to conquer Jerusalem ⁴³ , the text indicates how Spaniards more generally saw themselves in relation to Jerusalem. Christ looked to all of them from the cross; they were, in a way, his chosen people from a chosen continent. Moreover, the particularities of the life on the peninsula, even the climate, made all of them ideally suited to carry out this project. In other words, if they were born with an irascible disposition in temperate climates, it was precisely to undertake this mission. In this way, the nature and the temperament of the Spaniards assumes a kind of vocational character in reference to Jerusalem ⁴⁴ . Much more than an apology for the king to conquer Jerusalem, the sermon is a not so subtle apology for the legitimacy of all Spaniards to think of themselves as justified in this territorial expansion to Jerusalem.

This imaginative context adds an important social and political dimension to Ignatius’s reflection on Jerusalem. As he read the lives of the saints and thought about imitating them in a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, his deeply affective and spiritual desires clearly take distance from the project of a conquest. Yet at the same time, this broad context favors the very consideration of Jerusalem as a place to imitate the saints, do penance, and follow Christ. Perhaps he understood the desire to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem as an expression, a very legitimate one, of who he understood himself to be ⁴⁵ .

“And they win the holy house / as it is prophesied” ⁴⁶

The value of this sermon lies not only in the way that it connects Ferdinand and the peninsula with Jerusalem, but also for the way that it synthesizes ideas of a longer tradition. The text felicitously pulls together an array of conceptions that circulated in the Peninsula and in the Italian states about the King. One such thought was the identification of Ferdinand with Christ. As an example, just three months after the assassination attempt on his life in Granada, in December of 1492, two plays appeared in Rome about this event. One was Fernandus Servatus by Marcelino Verardi, and another by Peter Martyr of Anglería titled Pluto furens. In their respective ways, both present the attempted regicide as a drama between good and evil, where the King, “a suffering king, to expiate this undeserved wrong, is identified with Jesus Christ himself” ⁴⁷ . The short period of three months in which these productions were composed and realized suggests that the identification of Ferdinand with Christ was an easy one.

Similarly, the idea of the conquest of Granada as the beginning of a longer movement that would lead eventually to Jerusalem was not the Dominican preacher’s geopolitical insight. At least as early as 1487, literature circulated in the court that the Spanish Monarchy would recover the Holy Tomb or, in Spanish, el “santo Santo Sepulcro”. As chaplain and musician for the royal court, Juan de Anchieta composed what has been titled “Romance al sitio de Baza”, whose verses present the expulsion of Muslims from Granada as a prefiguration of the recovery of the Holy Land. The royal musician and composer, who was also rector of the parish in Azpeitia whose patrons were the Loyola family, writes that the Sultan’s tenure of the holy tomb has come to an end; God, who will use the Kings, will give them victory ⁴⁸ .

It is tempting to think that as poems or as songs, this literature remained confined to the court. However, according to studies of panegyric poetry composed for the Catholic Monarchy, that would be a mistake. Poetry comprised the perfect genre for the transmission of political ideas to a wider audience ⁴⁹ . Moreover, in his commentary on Juan de Anchieta’s composition, the editor of these songs and verses from the 15th and 16th centuries suggests that the royal composer was giving voice to the sentiment of the Spanish people: the Catholic King and Queen were destined to liberate the Holy Land ⁵⁰ .

This literature not only expresses more erudite messianic currents of longer pedigree, but it also reveals the aspirations of Spaniards themselves. They hoped for the liberation of the Holy Land, and for this reason it is plausible to consider that the desire to participate in such a venture circulated widely. That this is the case is suggested by the fact that at the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th centuries, pilgrimages to Jerusalem peaked: men and women from all classes of society made the journey to the Holy Land ⁵¹ . This was the social milieu for the young Ignatius. And it was in this context that he too decided to embark on a pilgrimage. The occasion of a grave leg wound and a near death experience in subsequent surgeries might have provided the occasion for his reflection on this broad social desire which he was to make his own.

Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros—“a great warrior in the Church and defender of the faith” ⁵²

Sowing the seeds for a Spanish religious culture

One of the more important figures in the government of the Catholic Monarchy, indeed in all of the Iberian Peninsula during the late 15th and early 16th century, was the prelate and observant Franciscan Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros (1436-1517) ⁵³ . At the age of roughly 50, and after having achieved a rather comfortable political and ecclesial status, he changed paths, and radically so: he entered the observant Franciscan house at La Salceda, considered the most rigorous, and spent ten years there.

However, he was not to enjoy unabated periods of quiet and recollection. Named as confessor to Queen Isabella in 1492, he emerged on the political and religious scene, and he never flinched at his growing responsibilities in church and state life. Cisneros brought his personal zeal for a more rigorous religious life to other religious communities. He achieved this in his capacity as reformer of Poor Clare convents in Castile, in Spanish las clarisas, and then in 1495 as the officially designated reformer of all female monasteries in Castile. He accomplished this work with enthusiasm, even sponsoring a new branch of female Franciscans who took the name Conceptionists, or in Spanish las concepcionistas ⁵⁴ .

His vision for Church reform, however, included much more than life within religious communities. Well known is his founding of the University of Alcalá, and similarly important was his massive project of printing the Complutensian Polyglot Bible, a six-volume rendering of the Bible in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin. Yet, in terms of numbers of volumes, “Cisneros’s devotional library was on a vastly greater scale than his other projects” ⁵⁵ . In what has been felicitously called his mystical seeding, or in Spanish, la siembra mística, the Franciscan published a range of spiritual and devotional texts ⁵⁶ .

Noteworthy in these publications are works of female authorship, especially authors like Angela de Foligno whose writings emphasized a more affective, direct, and intense experience of the divine ⁵⁷ . Cisneros’s publishing of female authors demon- strates his interest in and kinship to feminine spirituality. This could be interpreted, as one scholar suggests regarding his publication of female writers, as “his notorious susceptibility to excesses of spinsterly piety” ⁵⁸ . However, a less prejudicial interpretation of this is that he was attentive to the signs of the times: female spirituality was emerging, and Cisneros helped usher in to Spain a spirituality that cultivated the female experience of God ⁵⁹ . Even more concretely, reading acquired a place in spirituality. If Ignatius was a reader of spiritual and devotional texts, personalizing what he read, it was, in part, because Cisneros had made this possible. In short, Cisneros is a multi-faceted figure, considered “by all accounts the foremost voice of his time” ⁶⁰ . His imprint on Spanish society was vast, and as twice regent of Spain (1506, 1516-1517), his influence was surely felt by many. He was an intrepid administrator working to promote and expand the evangelizing mission of the Church. And he did this in an evolving political landscape.

Though it is tempting to think that Cisneros’s life impacted a young Ignatius, the documentary evidence only permits suppositions regarding the Cardinal’s influence on him ⁶¹ . However, after the Franciscan’s passing in 1517, Ignatius would have an opportunity to recall the influential churchman. Upon opening Ambrosio Montesino’s translation of Ludolph of Saxony’s Life of Christ during his convalescence in Loyola, he would have found an image of the Franciscan kneeling before the King and the Queen presenting them with the book ⁶² . The image would have reminded him of the Cardinal’s impressive life. Quite possibly the pictorial representation of the Franciscan’s deep devotion to the King and Queen triggered in Ignatius’s mind one further and widely known recollection on the Cardinal: his desire to realize their project of liberating Jerusalem.

Your enkindled fervor gives us great pleasure ⁶³

Though it is difficult to ascertain when Cisneros began thinking about Jerusalem, there seems to be little doubt that the conquest of Granada enkindled these desires. In his capacity as Vice Provincial of the Franciscans in Castile, he travelled to Gibraltar in 1494, and, as biographers report, experienced a profound call to evangelize, even give his life as a martyr to Africa ⁶⁴ . Though perhaps not the first time that Cisneros imagined embarking upon a crusade through Africa, the conquest of Granada, as well as the capture of the port city Mazalquivir some years later in 1505, brought these dreams closer to reality. Furthermore, as a member of the order that was responsible for custody of the Holy Land, Cisneros would have been acutely aware of the difficult economic situation faced by his brother friars in Jerusalem. At least during the last decade of the 15th century, Franciscans were forced to beg to support themselves ⁶⁵ . Thus, the series of historical events, his increasing involvement in political life in the peninsula, and the penurious situation of his brother Franciscans in the Holy Land moved Jerusalem to the center of his vision for his mission in the Church.

The documentary evidence suggests that Cisneros was not alone in nurturing plans for the Christianization of Jerusalem. Two extant letters of the Portuguese King Don Manuel I addressed to Cisneros in 1506, provide the rough outlines of a coalition of forces—Portugal, England, and Spain—that would unite to liberate Jerusalem. Cisneros was a key figure, if not the architect of the project ⁶⁶ . The Portuguese King had such esteem for Cisneros that he declares to him that “the company of your person we esteem and we have such regard and we ought to appreciate it as if you were a king for the great power that you wield” ⁶⁷ . But Cisneros’s strategic political position was not all that enthused Don Manuel. In his letter, he makes repeated allusions to the preparation and studies that Cisneros must have already been undertaking to prepare for such a venture. Remarking on his happiness to learn of the Franciscan’s great desires and enkindled fervor for the project, the King alludes to the “great care that you take in everything” and “the particularities that in your letter you point out” ⁶⁸ .

In the same missive, this time commenting on the benefits of travelling by sea rather than by land, the King refers again to Cisneros’s knowledge and studies: “The great care is clearly demonstrated in this matter that you bring and you have studied this material and for that reason to favor the coast” ⁶⁹ . Cisneros appears to have been aglow with undertaking such a campaign and, in the years 1504-1506, immersed in the study of the economic, military, and geographic aspects of such an enterprise ⁷⁰ . The closing of the Portuguese King’s letter reflects the religious zeal with which this preparation was understood: “the enterprise is such that to live and to achieve victory or to give one’s life in it is the greatest achievement and glory and mercy of Our Lord” ⁷¹ .

It has been the greatest of mysteries more than by the force of arms ⁷²

Don Manuel’s desire that God would give them the satisfaction of receiving from Cisneros’s very hands Holy Communion in Jerusalem did not materialize ⁷³ . In part, the changing political situation with Italy impeded the Spanish Monarchy’s commitment to the project. Yet, Cisneros was not dissuaded. In fact, he and his admirers dedicated themselves more diligently to conquer the Barbary Coast so that they might one day “purify and transform the city [of Jerusalem]” ⁷⁴ . The clearest demonstration of his zeal for this project, and perhaps the most famous, is his campaign and conquest of the Algerian coastal city of Oran (1509).

Though the enterprise was controversial at the time given that it did not have the explicit backing of the Monarchy ⁷⁵ , the Cardinal undertook the campaign as if it were a crusade. The extensive preparation for this expedition—which he himself organized without help from the crown—points to the depth and the power that this religious vision exercised in him. Oran is clearly not Jerusalem, but given that the conquest of African coastal cities was seen as part of a larger movement to the Holy Land, a brief study of his letters regarding this venture can provide us with some indication as to how deeply the Cardinal yearned to arrive at Jerusalem.

These letters point to the massive preparation that the project involved. Named in August of 1508 General Captain for the war in Africa, Cisneros was coordinating all of it. In addition to the minutia regarding troops, alimentation, weaponry, as well as the immense difficulty of moving men from one part of the country to another ⁷⁶ , his letters also testify to his deep emotional and spiritual investment in the work. He is anxious to start the campaign: “Here I am totally free of all other occupations, waiting to set off on the day that his majesty commands” ⁷⁷ . Likewise, his demands for information and news are constant; as he writes to Diego López de Ayala, his contact in the court: “Very particularly advise me of everything” and in the same letter he reminds Ayala, “it is necessary to be advised in the moment and to send a letter with utmost haste… so that I know what I have to do” ⁷⁸ . In brief he is eager to get on with the campaign: “Procure that everything happens quickly, and always advise me of everything that you perceive and communicate it to me” ⁷⁹ . Furthermore, the work contained a patent spiritual dimension. Disturbed with the prospect of a delay, he believes that anything that obstructs the campaign is the work of the evil one, for “Satan could try if he were able to impede such a good work” ⁸⁰ .

This spiritual and religious vision of the enterprise becomes more evident in his letters after the victorious conquest of the city. Not surprisingly, he believed that it was God’s providence that prevailed. The Cardinal puts it this way: “we should give such thanks to Our Lord for such a great victory […] which has been [achieved] more by mystery than by the force of arms” ⁸¹ . In this same letter to a priest in Toledo, he implores his addressee to thank all of the monasteries who with their prayers and sacrifices “have helped us with the holy enterprise” ⁸² .

Finally, he reveals his hopes: “That Our Lord might preserve and increase however he may” that which they have started. As such, Oran seems to have represented in his mind only the beginning of a larger campaign through the North African coast to Jerusalem. In another letter of his written from Cartagena, he writes that “it is incumbent upon us to give thanks to God for what He has done, and to understand afterwards, the way to conserve and continue the war” ⁸³ .

That all of Africa might be ours ⁸⁴

The question for us is how this would have affected the religious and political sensibility of a then 18-year-old Ignatius. That is a hard question to answer. Ignatius was certainly not in on the planning, and it is hard to know to what extent he was aware of the tremendous zeal for the project that engulfed the Cardenal from Toledo ⁸⁵ . At the same time, the missionary-political project of the Barbary Coast could not have been limited to Cisneros, his circle of admirers, and the court. This was a campaign that mobilized Spanish society. War moves people, stimulates an economy, and impacts the imagination of a nation. And this endeavor, though not massive, certainly would have been felt. Though hardly comparable to the importance of the conquest of Granada, Oran was a campaign connected to the expulsion of Muslims from southern Spain and forming part of a larger narrative that included Jerusalem. It is not hard to imagine that this connection was made by men and women of the peninsula. Perhaps with the conquest of Oran, Spaniards would have seen themselves as a nation on an itinerary to Jerusalem ⁸⁶ .

To feel themselves on a journey to the Holy Land in a divinely inspired mission appears to be one of the ways that the conquest of Oran was interpreted. A remarkable account of the venture, written only several weeks after the conquest, constructs that very narrative. This chronicle of the conquest interprets the events for men and women of the peninsula, and it reminds all of its readers of the special place that the Holy Land occupies in their lives.

We went to look for the Cross in Africa ⁸⁷

At the request of Cisneros, Juan de Cazalla (1480-1535) ⁸⁸ , Bishop of Verissa, Cisneros’s own chaplain, and author of the spiritual treatise Light of the Soul, or in Spanish, Lumbre del alma, recounted in a letter the conquest of Oran to the then ecclesial governor of Toledo ⁸⁹ . Written only several weeks after the capture of the African city, the document narrates the conquest, the role of Cisneros, as well as the “great mysteries and miracles” that accompanied the capture of the city. Additionally, it is an important text in that it “communicated to the country news of the conquest” ⁹⁰ . It was printed in Toledo, and there is every indication that it was intended for wider circulation ⁹¹ . And this seems to have been precisely the intent of the writer. Cazalla declares that he is informing his addressee, Doctor Villalpondo, of the great news, but he is not the only recipient; Cazalla imagines his intended audience as “the entire people and the Catholic Church” ⁹² .

The author of the missive relates the departure of Spanish fleet on March 16th and their arrival several days later at the port of Mazalquivir, near Oran. Viewed retrospectively, the journey was already foreshadowing what was to come. Not only was the wind favorable, but “it seemed to be from God” ⁹³ . Elaborating on their arrival, the author declares: “It was as if this wind were moved by God’s will and the storms of the sea were changed and pacified by the angels” ⁹⁴ . However, Cazalla does descend to less spiritualized details such as the movement of the Spanish artillery—at times not very well organized ⁹⁵ —and the capture and implantation of the Spanish flag as the conquest proceeded, noting that the fighting was especially fierce in houses of the city. The writer, too, helps situate his readers so that they can get a sense of the city. Clearly with Castile as the point of reference, he writes, “it is twice as big as Guadalajara” ⁹⁶ , as well fortified as Toledo and Segovia ⁹⁷ , and in another section he indicates that “in the city there are very nice houses and it resembles Toledo, and there is a dock and a beach” ⁹⁸ . He also adds: “It is a paradise of gardens, with fertile fields and a sierra, better than that of any city in Spain” ⁹⁹ .

The point of this document, however, is not to furnish details of the city of Oran, rather, as he states at the outset, it is to make known the news of joy and happiness, and, in part, these revolve around the figure of the Cardinal. Cazalla reports on Cisneros at almost every moment in his missive. He reports his mealtimes, when he disembarked from the ship, and how on a mule he, with a cross proceeding him, gave a blessing to the troops. In the author’s estimation, “he [Cisneros] had done much more than what his corporal forces allowed him to do” ¹⁰⁰ . As an example, the Cardinal did not retire to his quarters to sleep; Cazalla describes how he passed the night praying with his hands raised above him. The image of the aging cardinal praying with his hands lifted as his men march off to battle seems intentional: Cisneros is like Moses, arms raised, praying for the safe passage of his men. According to the author, this was his way of participating in the conquest, and the writer underscores this: “He was fighting more than all the others” ¹⁰¹ .

There is no question that Cisneros is one of the central figures in the drama that Cazalla portrays. However, he reserves a special place for the portentous signs and wonders that appeared during the fighting. Not only was the trip to the African coast accompanied by “great mysteries and miracles”, but the entire unfolding of events signaled a kind of divine presence. For instance, upon arriving in Africa, he signals that the first thing that he saw was a cross ¹⁰² . They had come to find the cross in Africa, and it is precisely what they see on landing. But this is not all. In the battle on the sierra, Cazalla reports that there was a kind of black cloud that covered the 15,000 Muslim soldiers. Yet, the Christian Spanish fighters were left in the light and with the tranquility of a fresh climate ¹⁰³ . And when the Christian soldiers arrived in the city of Oran, there appeared in the sky two arches. A sign, according to a companion of the writer’s, that the city had been taken. Moreover, it was as if the day was extended, “as in the time of Joshua”, and the Muslim residents, sensing these cosmic signs, and a day which seemed to never end, gave up fighting and asked to be baptized ¹⁰⁴ .

These signs and wonders reveal the manifest biblical layering of the document. For instance, the passage across the Mediterranean echoes the crossing of the Israelites in their journey to the promised land. Cisneros is cast in the image of Moses, and he leads his people, arms extended, in prayer. Drawing from the same biblical drama, the scene in Oran unfolds as does the journey of the Israelites to the promised land. They are guided by light, whereas their enemies are shrouded and covered as if in a black cloud. And in this clear allusion to the Exodus story, it is not only that the soldiers stand in for the chosen people. The account, meant to be read by the whole Church in Spain, places Spaniards as the chosen people; they are the ones that God has selected to liberate the promised land.

In this way, the text brilliantly implicates its readers as forming a part of this mission to the Holy Land. Oran is but the beginning of something much larger. The arches that appear over the city, though not named as rainbows, evoke the story of Noah, and in this way, remind the readers of God’s special covenant with them in their journey to Jerusalem. Should this not be clear, Cazalla ensures that the larger significance of the conquest of Oran is not missed. Though the biblical allusions are hardly in need of deciphering, he interprets for the reader the significance of these divine signs and wonders: “It is clear I will say that [by all of these signs] all of Africa might be ours” ¹⁰⁵ .

Far more than merely recounting an event, this document provides a glimpse into the way in which Cisneros and the Spanish conquest of the African Mediterranean coast were being interpreted. The overlay of biblical allusions is not just an erudite representation of the event, rather it points to the ways that Spanish culture was reading its place in the world, its relationship to Jerusalem, and its unique relationship with God. And as a piece of propaganda, Cazalla’s text enacts what it recounts. It shapes a collective imagination to believe that Cisneros is Moses and Spaniards are the chosen people on a journey guided by angels. These are the powerful ideological trends that circulated in Spanish culture when Ignatius was a young man. He came of age in a society in which the idea that Africa and, by extension, and most importantly, Jerusalem “might be ours”. That this idea occupied a considerable place in the Spanish religious and political imagination is suggested by the intricate layering it involves: military conquest, evangelization, and national identity. It was an affective and effective component of religious thinking. In light of this context, it is plausible to imagine the multiple layers of Ignatius’s own desire to pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The heroic feats of saints were important aspects of his motivation, but it is unlikely that they were the only ones motivating a young Ignatius. He may not have expressed the desire that Jerusalem be ours, but this thinking hovers just in the background to his own journey.

Conclusion

Ignatius’s desire to travel to Jerusalem coalesced in his powerful, Spirit-driven encounter with two profoundly important religious texts. This was not all. Going to Jerusalem offered him a way to do penance for his past life, to imitate the heroic example of the saints, and to undertake a pilgrimage. Yet, the point of this study has been to suggest that Ignatius inhabited a diverse and complex cultural and religious environment, and in that diversity, the desire for Jerusalem circulated widely.

The two aspects of this social history that I have presented, represented in texts about and generated by King Ferdinand and Cardinal Cisneros, far from undermining the spiritual nature of Ignatius’s spiritual journey or questioning the spiritual motives inherent in it, provide the backdrop to it. Jerusalem occupied a considerable place in religious and political discourse of his time, and these ideas favored the personal appropriation and decision to undertake the perilous journey to the Holy Land. Propped up on his bed, relearning how to walk, Ignatius thought about Jerusalem, and that thinking and reflection, for as unique as it was, did not occur at the margin of his history. That history can be seen in the reflections of men like Don Martín García, Juan de Cazalla, or Cisneros ¹⁰⁶ . Not unlike them, Ignatius, in his own way, seems to have imagined that Christ on the cross looked to Spain. He felt that gaze in Loyola, and he wanted to return it in Jerusalem.

The analysis of these documents reminds us that not everything about Ignatius is to be found in in the Autobiography ¹⁰⁷ or in normative documents issued by the Society of Jesus. To understand the saint from Loyola, it is incumbent upon us to discover the many stories that filled his mind ¹⁰⁸ and the minds of men and women of his epoch. Sermons, songs, and chronicles that circulated in his youth help us understand more critically his desire to go to Jerusalem as participating in a much wider social desire. To many readers this may have been obvious: he was a man of his era. But the literature presented in this study helps situate his desire for Jerusalem as an eminently recognizable expression of Christian ideals of men and women of his era. What is less obvious is that this investigation into the signs of his times locates another moment in his life as a conversion experience. Perhaps the time when he abandoned, twenty years later, the project to go to Jerusalem altogether was as significant as his setting out from Loyola for the Holy Land in 1522. That later decision suggests that he saw Christ on the cross looking to all, and not just to Spain. He no longer believed it necessary to be in Jerusalem to return that gaze.

References

Notes

* Article of Reflection. I would like to thank Gabino Uríbarri, S. J., and Jared Wicks, S. J., for their very helpful observations on this text. Also, my thanks go to Eric Styles for his trenchant analysis of this text’s content and form.

¹ Critical version in Gonçalves Da Câmara, “Acta Patris Ignatii”, I, 353-507; reference will be made to the modern version in Spanish found in Iparraguirre and Ruiz Jurado (eds.), Obras de San Ignacio de Loyola, 23-105.

² García Hernán, Ignacio de Loyola, 102.

³ Iparraguirre and Ruiz Jurado (eds.), Obras de San Ignacio de Loyola [17].

⁴ Melloni, Éxodo y éxtasis, 17.

⁵ Ruiz Jurado, El peregrino de la voluntad de Dios, 9.

⁶ Iglesias, “Actualidad de Ignacio de Loyola, actualidad de su experiencia”, 6; Ruiz Jurado emphasizes a similar idea: “…su potencial de interiorización de los valores y de reflexión se está mostrando extraordinario” (Ruiz Jurado, El peregrino de la voluntad de Dios, 19).

⁷ See, for example, Leturia, “Jerusalén y Roma en los designios de San Ignacio de Loyola”, 182-183; Dudon, San Ignacio de Loyola, 51. Even in his very intelligent essay on Ignatius and Islam, Emanuele Colombo takes this for granted (Colombo, “Defeating the Infidels, Helping their souls—Ignatius of Loyola and Islam”, 185).

⁸ Endean, “Who Do You Say Ignatius Is? Jesuit Fundamentalism and Beyond”, 27.

⁹ Endean is much more forceful on this point: “… we cannot claim, historically, to know the original inspiration of the Society of Jesus without some credible account of the sociopolitical context from which it emerged” (Endean, “Who Do You Say Ignatius Is? Jesuit Fundamentalism and Beyond”, 31).

¹⁰ See from anonymous poem, composed in 1473, on the occasion of the arrival of Ferdinando in Barcelona (cited in Carrasco Manchado, “Propaganda política en los panegíricos poéticos de los reyes católicos”, 538).

¹¹ And in terms of the organization of armies and forms of waging war (García Fitz, “Las guerras del rey Fernando”, 47-71).

¹² Suárez Fernández, Claves históricas en el reinado de Fernando e Isabel, 8.

¹³ Rodríguez Cancho, “Conocer a Fernando el Católico: mitos, tópicos y realidad histórica”, 43-44.

¹⁴ Suárez Fernández, “Fernando II de Aragón y V de Castilla”, 660.

¹⁵ The relationship between the Monarchy and Rodrigo de Borja was, at least initially, not very cordial (García Oro, “Programas y logros en la reforma durante el período de los reyes católicos”, 276).

¹⁶ For an overview on the historiography on the catholic King, see Rodríguez Cancho, “Conocer a Fernando el Católico: mitos, tópicos y realidad histórica”, 27-46.

¹⁷ The expression comes from Belenguer, Fernando el Católico, 188.

¹⁸ Suárez Fernández, Claves históricas en el reinado de Fernando e Isabel, 14.

¹⁹ Fernández, Claves históricas en el reinado de Fernando e Isabel, 266. See also the previously cited chapter by García Oro, “Programas y logros en la reforma durante el período de los reyes católicos”, 268-290.

²⁰ Ibid., 268.

²¹ Fernández de Córdova Miralles, “El ‘Rey Católico’ de las primeras guerras de Italia. Imagen de Fernando II de Aragón y V de Castilla entre la expectación profética y la tensión internacional (1493-1499)”, 198.

²² Castro, Aspectos del vivir hispánico, 23.

²³ Goñi Gaztambide, Historia de la bula de la cruzada en España, 467.

²⁴ Milhou, Colón y su mentalidad mesiánica, 171.

²⁵ Gracián, El político, D. Fernando el Católico, 110.

²⁶ Belenguer, Fernando el Católico, 183.

²⁷ For more on this tradition both from the Kingdom of Aragón as well as Castile, see Quecedo, “Influencia diplomática y económica de España en Tierra Santa”, 7-11.

²⁸ In large part due to Franciscans and their work in the 13th century, see, Sanz Hermida, “Cancioneros y profecía: algunas notas sobre el mesianismo durante el reinado de los Reyes Católicos”, 8.

²⁹ For the messianic prophecies associated with Castile, see, Milhou, Colón y su mentalidad mesiánica, 387-389.

³⁰ Ibid., 389.

³¹ Carrasco Manchado, “Propaganda política en los panegíricos poéticos de los reyes católicos”, 521-523.

³² An excellent, synthetic summary of this literature, in Milhou, Colón y su mentalidad mesiánica, 391-394.

³³ Very clearly the case in panegyric poetry addressed to the king and queen (Carrasco Manchado, “Propaganda política en los panegíricos poéticos de los reyes católicos”, 529).

³⁴ I will be referring to the fascinating study of an array of propaganda literature that surrounded the Catholic King, in Fernández de Córdova Miralles, “El ‘Rey Católico’ de las primeras guerras de Italia. Imagen de Fernando II de Aragón y V de Castilla entre la expectación profética y la tensión internacional (1493-1499)”, 197-232.

³⁵ Commenting on the very same homily that I will study, García Hernán remarks that this text of Martín García reflects broader thinking of the era (García Hernán, Ignacio de Loyola, 51).

³⁶ Latin version of the text in Montoza Coca, “La legitimación del poder de Fernando II de Aragón para la conquista del Reino de Jerusalén secundum el Sermón XL del predicador real Don Martín García”, 586-599, text of sermon at 593-599.

³⁷ Here I follow the rough outlines of the analysis of Montoza Coca, “La legitimación del poder de Fernando II de Aragón para la conquista del Reino de Jerusalén secundum el Sermón XL del predicador real Don Martín García”, 587-591.

³⁸ “Hispaniam habuit ante faciem suam” (Montoza Coca, “La legitimación del poder de Fernando II de Aragón para la conquista del Reino de Jerusalén secundum el Sermón XL del predicador real Don Martín García”, 596).

³⁹ The mention of the conquest of Tripoli suggests that the sermon was composed sometime after 1510.

⁴⁰ In a letter of his, dated the 1st of January, 1512, it would appear that Ferdinand needed no reminder of his greatness, be it military or political: “Hace más de setecientos años que nunca la Corona de España estuvo tan acrecentada ni tan grande como ahora, así en Poniente como en Levante y todo, después de Dios, por mi obra y mi trabajo” (Suárez Fernández, Los reyes católicos, 947; emphasis mine).

⁴¹ Montoza Coca, “La legitimación del poder de Fernando II de Aragón para la conquista del Reino de Jerusalén secundum el Sermón XL del predicador real Don Martín García”, 592.

⁴² For more on the relationship between liturgy and propaganda, see, Carrasco Manchado, “Propaganda política en los panegíricos poéticos de los reyes católicos”, 526-532.

⁴³ Carrasco Manchado studies a sermon from the years 1475-1476 which functions in much the same way, legitimizing his kingship and divine election. Thus the tradition arrives to Martín García deeply solidified (Carrasco Manchado, “Propaganda política en los panegíricos poéticos de los reyes católicos”; see especially 526-532).

⁴⁴ Fernández de Córdova Miralles suggests that the monarchs understood their role with respect to the Americas as a kind of vocation to evangelize (Fernández de Córdova Miralles, “Sobre el encuentro de cristianismo con el islam en el mediterráneo occidental”, 153).

⁴⁵ Highlighting his loyalty to the Catholic Kings, García Hernán suggests that Ignatius would have shared “todos los ideales politicos y religiosos de los españoles de entonces”, one of which was “recuperar el Santo Sepulcro” (García Hernán, Ignacio de Loyola, 21).

⁴⁶ “Y ganen la casa santa / según es profetizada” (Barbieri, Cancionero musical español de los siglos XV y XVI, N.º 332, 173-174). Regarding this poem, the editor remarks that it dates to 1484.

⁴⁷ Fernández de Córdova Miralles, “El ‘Rey Católico’ de las primeras guerras de Italia. Imagen de Fernando II de Aragón y V de Castilla entre la expectación profética y la tensión internacional (1493-1499)”, 206-207.

⁴⁸ “Juan de Anchieta”, romance without title in Cancionero musical español de los siglos XV y XVI, N.º 328, 171-172.

⁴⁹ Carrasco Manchado, “Propaganda política en los panegíricos poéticos de los reyes católicos”, 519.

⁵⁰ Barbieri, Cancionero musical español de los siglos XV y XVI, 172.

⁵¹ Milhou, Colón y su mentalidad mesiánica, 24, 166. According to the author, “los franciscanos, guardianes de los santos lugares, se hicieron, en toda la Europa de los siglos XIV y XV, los mayores propagandistas de todo lo que se relacionaba con la Tierra Santa” (ibid., 166).

⁵² The description comes from a letter of Sor María de Santo Domingo to Cisneros, published in Blecua, La figura de Sor María de Santo Domingo, Appendix 1, no page number.

⁵³ For complete biographical details, see, see García Oro, “Jiménez de Cisneros, Francisco”, 804-809; for a more extended biography see the two-volume opus by the same author, El cardenal Cisneros, vida y empresas.

⁵⁴ García de Oro, “Programas y logros en la reforma durante el periodo de los reyes católicos”, 290.

⁵⁵ Fernández-Armesto, “Cardinal Cisneros as a patron of printing”, 159; for a review and commentary on Cisneros’s devotional library, see 159-168.

⁵⁶ Sainz Rodríguez, La siembra mística del cardenal Cisneros y las reformas en la Iglesia, 45.

⁵⁷ For a list of all of Cisneros’s publications, see the appendix “Avance bibliográfico de las publicaciones cisnerianas” (Sainz Rodríguez, La siembra mística del cardenal Cisneros y las reformas en la Iglesia, 95-111. The author, however, offers this caveat: “Ni siquiera tenemos la certeza de conocerlas [las publicaciones] todas” (ibid., 43).

⁵⁸ Fernández-Armesto, “Cardinal Cisneros as a patron of printing”, 166.

⁵⁹ Sainz Rodríguez, La siembra mística, 35.

⁶⁰ Giles, The Book of Prayer of Sor María de Santo Domingo, 44.

⁶¹ For an overview of Cisneros’s handling of the dispute that eventually led to Juan Velázquez de Cuéllar’s fall from grace, a series of events that impacted Ignatius, see, Fernández Martín, Los años juveniles de Iñigo de Loyola: su formación en Castilla, 154-163.

⁶² Analysis of Cisneros’s use of pictorial representations in his lifetime that demonstrate how he understood the power of images to cultivate his position and power in Castile (González Ramos, “Cisneros: iconografías de prestigio y santidad”, 97-156), image of Cisneros presenting the Catholic Kings with the book reproduced on 104.

⁶³ “Letter II Rey Don Manuel of Portugal to Cisneros” (Brochado, “Espiritualidade dos descobrimentos e Conquistas dos portugueses”, 18).

⁶⁴ García Oro, La cruzada del cardenal Cisneros: de Granada a Jerusalem, 678-679.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 726.

⁶⁶ Bataillon, Erasmo y España, 52.

⁶⁷ “Letter II from Rey Don Manuel of Portugal to Cisneros”, in Brochado, “Espiritualidade dos descobrimentos”, 18.

⁶⁸ Ibid.

⁶⁹ Ibid., 20.

⁷⁰ García Oro, La cruzada del cardenal Cisneros: de Granada a Jerusalem, 751.

⁷¹ “Letter II from Rey Don Manuel of Portugal to Cisneros” (Brochado, “Espiritualidade dos descobrimentos e Conquistas dos portugueses”, 21).

⁷² “Letter of Gerónimo Yllan” (De la Fuente and Gayangos [eds.], Cartas del Cardenal Don Fray Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros dirigidas a Don Diego Lopez de Ayala, 45).

⁷³ “Muy presto todos tres podamos recibir el cuerpo de Nuestro Señor Jesus Christo de vuestras manos en la casa santa” (Brochado, “Espiritualidade dos descobrimentos”, 18: (“Letter II from Rey Don Manuel of Portugal to Cisneros”).

⁷⁴ The expression is from de Bevelles, French admirer of Cisneros, in a letter to the Cardinal, cited in Bataillon, Erasmo y España, 56.

⁷⁵ Bilinkoff, “A Spanish Prophetess and Her Patrons: The Case of María de Santo Domingo”, 33.

⁷⁶ More details can be found in Goñi Gaztambide, Historia de la bula de la cruzada en España, 470-471.

⁷⁷ “Letter from Cisneros to Diego López de Ayala” (De la Fuente and Gayangos [eds.], Cartas del Cardenal Don Fray Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros dirigidas a Don Diego Lopez de Ayala, 5).

⁷⁸ Ibid., 16.

⁷⁹ Ibid., 12.

⁸⁰ Ibid., 2.

⁸¹ “Letter from Cisneros to Cabildo of Toledo” (De la Fuente and Gayangos [eds.], Cartas del Cardenal Don Fray Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros dirigidas a Don Diego Lopez de Ayala, 42).

⁸² Ibid.

⁸³ “Letter from Cisneros to Diego López de Ayala” (De la Fuente and Gayangos [eds.], Cartas del Cardenal Don Fray Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros dirigidas a Don Diego Lopez de Ayala, 37).

⁸⁴ “Apéndice Primero” (De la Fuente and Gayangos [eds.], Cartas del Cardenal Don Fray Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros dirigidas a Don Diego Lopez de Ayala, 247).

⁸⁵ For his part, García Hernán suggests that Ignatius was present at the Royal Court in Madrid, in 1510, where Ferdinand proposed conquering Jerusalem and recovering the “Santa Casa”. This would suggest that he was very much aware of plans that were apace, whether those of Cisneros or the King, to seize Jerusalem (García Hernán, Ignacio de Loyola, 51).

⁸⁶ In studies of Ignatius, references to a Church atmosphere of crusades in early 16th Spanish society are made, but always in passing (Molina, “‘… la vera sposa de Cristo’ [Ej 353]. La Iglesia en la dogmática ignaciana”, 417-418).

⁸⁷ “Apéndice Primero” (De la Fuente and Gayangos [eds.], Cartas del Cardenal Don Fray Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros dirigidas a Don Diego Lopez de Ayala, 245).

⁸⁸ For a brief biography on this Franciscan author, see, Motis Dolader, “Cazalla, Juan de”, 844-845, according to Bataillon, “una de las figuras notables del franciscanismo español de entonces” (Bataillon, Erasmo y España, 62).

⁸⁹ Document can be found in “Apéndice Primero” (De la Fuente and Gayangos [eds.], Cartas del Cardenal Don Fray Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros dirigidas a Don Diego Lopez de Ayala, 241-248).

⁹⁰ De la Fuente and Gayangos [eds.], Cartas del Cardenal Don Fray Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros dirigidas a Don Diego Lopez de Ayala, xxxv: “Reglas que se han observado en la publicación de estas cartas”.

⁹¹ Bataillon, Erasmo y España, 53.

⁹² “Apéndice Primero” (De la Fuente and Gayangos [eds.], Cartas del Cardenal Don Fray Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros dirigidas a Don Diego Lopez de Ayala, 242).

⁹³ Ibid.

⁹⁴ Ibid.

⁹⁵ Cazalla is not sparing in his criticism of the army: the artillery was disorganized, the pursuit of the Moors was carried out without order, and because of the disarray, harm was done to the soldiers (Ibid., 244-245).

⁹⁶ Ibid., 245.

⁹⁷ Ibid., 246.

⁹⁸ Ibid., 247.

⁹⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰⁰ Ibid., 243.

¹⁰¹ Ibid., 244.

¹⁰² Ibid., 245.

¹⁰³ Ibid., 246.

¹⁰⁴ Ibid., 247.

¹⁰⁵ Ibid.

¹⁰⁶ And Ignatius’s thinking aligned “with the direction taken by the Church at that time” (Colombo, “Defeating the Infidels, Helping their souls—Ignatius of Loyola and Islam”, 190).

¹⁰⁷ See, for example, a general elaboration on this thesis in the wonderful essay by O’Malley and O’Brien, “The Twentieth-Century Construction of Ignatian Spirituality: A Sketch”, 40.

¹⁰⁸ Iparraguirre and Ruiz Jurado (eds.), Obras de San Ignacio de Loyola [17].

Author notes

^a Correspondence autor: cstaabsj@gmail.com

Additional information

How to cite: Staab, Christopher Michael. “The desire for Jerusalem: Historical Considerations of Ignatius of Loyola’s Desire to go to the Holy Land”. Theologica Xaveriana vol. 72 (2022): 1-27. https://doi.org/10.11144/javeriana.tx72.djhciljhcil

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