Ignatius of Loyola: Legend and Reality by Pierre Emonet, S.J. (review)

Thomas McCoog, in his Preface to Pierre Emonet's Ignatius Loyola: Legend and Reality, provides the key for understanding the purpose and success of this work: "Why, given all the biographies [of Ignatius], did the editorial committee decide to publish this one? Unlike many biographies, this is succinct without being superficial" (p. viii). In fact, this biography is short, counting only 136 pages of text. It follows the autobiographical account which Ignatius recounted to Luiz Gonçalves da Câmara between 1553 and 1555. Emonet recognizes that this is not an autobiography in its strictest sense. He also acknowledges that contemporary historians of the early Jesuits are increasingly wary of the surviving documentation of the Founder. In this he (along with McCoog's Preface) cites Philip Endean's important essay, "Who do you say Ignatius Is? Jesuit Fundamentalism and Beyond" (Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 19/5 [1987]). Emonet even recounts the concerted effort by Father General Francisco de Borja to suppress da Câmara's account in favor of the official biography written by Pedro de Ribadeneira in 1572 as the cause for Ignatius's canonization was being introduced (p. 9).

Despite this growing suspicion, Emonet nevertheless relies on these official sources almost exclusively, and readily accepts the traditional interpretations of Ignatius's life and motivations. He does, however, refer to more recent scholarship to present some of the context for understanding Ignatius's world. Unfortunately, Emonet spends a whole chapter recounting the psycho-history of Ignatius as written by the Jesuit psychoanalyst William Meissner in 1992. The possibility of making psychological diagnoses of historical figures based on written sources that have been filtered by others is too much of a reach. To use psychology to explain motivations and behavior is even more risky.

The nineteen chapters are exceedingly short. The psychoanalysis of Ignatius takes three pages while the longest chapter, on Ignatius's generalate, only reaches 14 pages. The style of the translation is light and clear, making it accessible to the nonspecialist reader. It appears that some of the citations were added to the translated English text and so remain uneven throughout the book. The important and often disputed question on how the Jesuit Constitutions were promulgated, for example, lack the proper citations to send the reader for further study (p. 89).

In what is becoming a practice for which St. Joseph's University Press is gaining a well-deserved reputation, the book concludes with a 15-page selection of engravings on the life of Ignatius, "executed by Jean-Baptiste Barbé (1578–1649)—who enlisted the young Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) to contribute drawings for the project." (p. 137). The engravings were not originally colored, and the decision to do so distracts more than helps, especially when a Jesuit portrayed teaching catechism while Ignatius preaches appears to have been raised to the purple! (p. 148).

Despite its limitations, Emonet accomplishes what he intended—he has written a fresh and succinct biography of Ignatius for a popular audience. If it is not an academic work at the level of Candido Dalmases, Ignatius of Loyola: Founder of the Jesuits (St. Louis: IJS, 1983), or the more recent Ignacio de Loyola by Enrique García Hernán (Madrid: Taurus, 2013), it remains a very readable, handsome, short biography, "an aperitif to encourage further reading" (p. viii).