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Personal Writings: Reminiscenes, Spiritual Diary, Select Letters--Including the Text of The Spiritual Exercises (Penguin Classics) Paperback – January 1, 1997

by Ignatius of Loyola (Author), Joseph A. Munitiz (Editor, Translator, Introduction), Philip Endean (Editor, Translator, Introduction)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 76 ratings
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The writings of a major Christian thinker

One of the key figures in Christian history, St. Ignatius of Loyola (c. 1491-1556) was a passionate and unique spiritual thinker and visionary. The works gathered here provide a first-hand, personal introduction to this remarkable character: a man who turned away from the Spanish nobility to create the revolutionary Jesuit Order, inspired by the desire to help people follow Christ. His Reminiscences describe his early life, his religious conversion following near-paralysis in battle, and his spiritual and physical ordeals as he struggled to assist those in need, including plague, persecution and imprisonment. The Spiritual Exercises offer guidelines to those seeking the will of God, and the Spiritual Diary shows Ignatius in daily mystical contact with God during a personal struggle. The Letters collected here provide an insight into Ignatius' ceaseless campaign to assist those seeking enlightenment and to direct the young Society of Jesus.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    448 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Penguin Classics
  4. Publication date
    January 1, 1997
  5. Grade level
    12 and up
  6. Reading age
    18 years and up
  7. Dimensions
    7.75 x 5.08 x 0.83 inches
  8. ISBN-10
    0140433856
  9. ISBN-13
    978-0140433852
  10. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) was trained as a page at the court of Castile. Wounded at the siege of Pamplona in 1521, he underwent a deep conversion, eventually travelling to Jerusalem and beginning to study. He attracted like-minded students and in 1534 they took vows and formed the 'Society of Jesus', popularly known as the Jesuits. From 1540 he was elected Superior General and lived in Rome, organising the astonishing spread of the Jesuits. He was canonized in 1622.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Classics; First Edition (January 1, 1997)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0140433856
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140433852
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
  • Grade level ‏ : ‎ 12 and up
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.5 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.75 x 5.08 x 0.83 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 76 ratings

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Saint Ignatius of Loyola

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Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
76 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Vivian White
5.0 out of 5 stars This is one of the most important books. It ...
Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2015
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This is one of the most important books. It has changed my life and the way I think and feel by reading it while doing the 30 weeks Ignatius Exercises. If you get the chance to do the exercises. Go for it.
8 people found this helpful
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Anthony Fisher
5.0 out of 5 stars Check it out, it was pretty cool
Reviewed in the United States on April 2, 2014
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Really cool collection. Best parts: The autobiography at the beginning and the letters (the Diary is pretty cool, but somewhat repetitive [sections of days that just say "With Tears." "No Tears" "With Copious tears"]; and of course the Spiritual Exercises are classics in themselves)
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AMan
5.0 out of 5 stars I got a B+ in my Renaissance class because of this book
Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2019
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Honestly I mean I guess
2 people found this helpful
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Michael A.
4.0 out of 5 stars First Rate Documents
Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2018
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Briefly, I am delighted with the quality of this translation.
The texts shed light on the origins of important
dimensions of the human condition.
Enjoyable reading and useful insights.
2 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2017
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Excellent book. The Steps in Discernment is a must read.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2015
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Journey of one's inner sanctuary and spiritual growth.
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OverTheMoon
5.0 out of 5 stars This is the best of the Saint Ignatius books around for its price and content.
Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2006
If you are looking for a common and useful type of Catholic spiritual exercise, you should know first that the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola may be a bit too dense and problematical for what you want. Many people like to pretend that they can do them on their own without an experienced Jesuit to monitor them. That is a 'new age' invention. It has nothing to do with how these exercises are actually praticed by those who hold the rightful ownership over them, namely the Jesuit order in full communion with the Holy See.

I would instead point you in the direction of The Divine Office (also called The Liturgy of the Hours) as a very wholesome and progressive type of daily prayer that is recommended to all the laity around the globe by the Holy See. The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola are certainly more than a little too heady and intense because of its meditations on topics like sinners in hell. I would recommend that you maybe read through the Spiritual Exercises and try to answer the questions without too much spiritual intensity (using more reason and logic than feelings) or adopting the extreme environmental settings that Jesuits would undertake in doing them. As laity you are not supposed to be doing these on your own anyway. After talking to a Jesuit, I found out that the exercises are not for everybody and the person undertaking the exercises, needs supervision. This can not be understated. Anything to the contrary would be a brand new invention by the reader.

God is love. Christianity without love is not Christianity.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola `Personal Writings' is a very interesting book that reveals a lot of details about somebody who many of us would have taken for granted as a person who was born into a Christian vacuum and probably had a life full of Christian happiness that made him a Saintly person. Nothing could be further from the truth. Saint Ignatius was a warrior who sought glory through armed combat. After having his legs shattered he spent months recovering with multiple corrective surgeries, while reading books about the lives of Saints. He then set out on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to find himself and Christ, had many visions (which he continued to have until his death), sought alms, returned to Europe, often used his alms to support others in poverty, had one to one spiritual talks with people about Christianity, converted them, was accused by the inquisition of heresy several times, although never proven, wound up in Paris studying, went home to Spain, before going to Italy where he studied to become a priest and founded the Society of Jesus, whose members are better known as Jesuits today. This is all covered in Part 1 of the book called `Reminiscences' an 80 paged autobiography. It is interesting to note that Saint Ignatius appears to be a very strange character with possible delusions, doing many crazy things (like telling a wild ship crew that they better change their sinful ways while alone with them out at sea for months; feeling the sores of plague sufferers and walking through the middle of a battle) but none-the-less was sane enough to talk his way out of many a situation including the Inquisitions where he left many an impression on the Inquisitors and the local populace. The Holy See eventually got around to incorporating his style of conversion into the Church. Part 2 of the book is a spiritual diary that he worked on. It is here for more historical reasons than anything, often very repetitive and hard to penetrate, but an authentic writing about his private conversion experience. Part 3 is a short sample of letters from over a couple of thousand that he wrote. Part 4 are the Spiritual Exercises. I think the book is worth it for the autobiography and the letters for learning more about the historical record at this time. The Spiritual Exercises are also here, with a very good introduction. Although their value for the Church in the Middle Ages was undoubtedly of remarkable importance, post-Vatican II readers should apply great caution with them and seek guidance from clergy who have experience with them, or just read over them gently baring in mid that much of these perceptions have matured in the Church since Vatican II.
28 people found this helpful
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R. S. Arthur
4.0 out of 5 stars "Let the donkey decide"
Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2014
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A superb new translation of some old favorites. The problems of the world are nothing that cannot be encountered with a soldier's discipline and a saint's faith. This is the first book I recommend to people who want to understand Jesuit spirituality after reading Martin's "The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything".
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars very sweet
Reviewed in India on September 14, 2017
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very nice
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D. MacLaren
5.0 out of 5 stars Ignatius - medieval and modern
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 9, 2007
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This edition is a mixed bag of Ignatius' writings (1491-1556), including the Reminiscences, Spiritual Diary, forty of his letters, and the famous Exercises themselves. It comes with a helpful introduction, and extensive, often fascinating, endnotes.

The Reminiscences were dictated towards the end of his life to a friend who write them down. Although they miss out much important material regarding the growth of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), they provide a fascinating first-hand account of Ignatius' early life and the key moments in his journey. It is astonishing to discover that he didn't make it to university in Paris until he was 36 years old, that he paid his way over six years there by begging, and that among his friends and founding members of the Jesuits was Francis Xavier. What's more, he shared the Paris college with none other than John Calvin!

The spiritual diary is really quite bizarre. Given that Ignatius' genius is often said to lie in his ability in `finding God in all things', his spiritual diary records his highly emotive responses while narrowly saying the Mass. Many of the entries merely record either `tears' or `no tears'. The diary is doubly inaccessible to readers: most of us are not in a position to say the Mass, and few of us can identify with his strange ecstatic experiences. There is something almost adolescent in the way they are recorded. It is hard to believe that these are the experiences of a highly influential man in his mid-fifties - but then perhaps the later medieval world is further removed from us than we (I) commonly think.

With the letters, I began to feel I was getting to know the man. They contain sober wisdom, compassion, balance, godliness, tact, discretion, and many qualities that would explain why Ignatius came to lead one of the most influential reform movements of the sixteenth century, and to detonate a spiritual depth charge whose shock waves are still reverberating around the world today. At the same time, I am left feeling that Ignatius is a contradictory character. There is a grandiose, perfectionist, striving element within him, which seems to make him want to be larger than life. This can be seen pre-conversion in his willingness to have his badly-set broken leg re-broken and set properly for the sake of macho vanity. You can see it in his striving after God, his radical embrace of poverty, his determination to visit Jerusalem, and his desire to gather other uncompromising men around him in a united cause. This is the medieval Ignatius. You can see it in Week One of the Exercises, which could easily be misconstrued by the modern reader as an incitement to self-harm.

On the other side of his character, much of his pastoral advice in the letters is concerned with encouraging a more moderate approach to devotion on the part of members of the Society. He challenges the necessity of spending four or five hours a day in prayer, as some zealots were doing, and he encourages those who self-flagellate to avoid piercing to the bone. On the whole, it is on this side of his character that the `adult' seems to speak. This side is temperate, gracious, wise, loving, and it is this side that proffers the jewel of imaginative contemplation.

The counterpart of the `medieval' Ignatius is the man who ultimately doubts himself. The perfectionist typically suffers from low self-esteem, and no amount of achievement can permanently repair the cracks. Most revealing of this aspect of Ignatius' character is a letter in which, at the age of sixty, he offers his resignation as superior of the Jesuits on the grounds that he is simply not up to the job. How, one asks, could a man of this wisdom, influence and spiritual genius, come to conclude that he was unfit for office? Presumably, because in his inner life he had never resolved the wounds of low esteem, wounds which he rationalised in his perfectionist moments, but which he transcended by the grace of God in his moments of graciousness.

Then there are the Exercises themselves. It seems significant that they were hammered out over the course of his life, as some parts seem more in tune with the 'striving' Ignatius, while others display the more spacious, grace-filled, creative aspects. The first form of the exercise was written just three years after his conversion at the age of thirty. By any standards, he was new to the faith. It may not be surprising, then, that the first of the four `weeks' of the Exercises make scary, and even disappointing, reading. The emphasis on examining oneself to uncover sin is right and good - but done carelessly, in the spirit of the medieval system of penances, is a terrifying prospect. Reading through week one, I could not but help feel that there were elements here that were abusive. In the subsequent three `weeks' there is calm after the storm, and Ignatius' great insights are given space to flourish. Perhaps those who have undertaken the Exercises themselves would be better qualified to comment here.

By the end of the book I felt as if I had met the man, a contradictory and complex character who stands at the pivot of the medieval and the modern world, a combination of mystic piety and modern self-help. Perhaps for this reason, above all others - this ability to speak to modern people while harnessing the power of ancient currents of spirituality - Ignatius stands as one of the giants of devotional life, and a tutor to those of us frantic moderns who still long to learn how to pray.

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Sr Anne O'Brien
5.0 out of 5 stars A perfect book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 27, 2020
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This is a perfect book for my present studies.
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Dermot McCarthy
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 29, 2019
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A fascinating read
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Rex
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 24, 2016
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Came on time. Great book.
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