Brian Grogan SJ looks at how being wounded in action at the siege of Pamplona brought Ignatius to a sense of crisis in his life where he had to make a decision about his future. It also revealed how he now looked at the life he led up til then.
Since the kingdom of Navarre was seen as the key to control of Spain, both France and Spain were determined to possess it. Ignatius’s master, the Spanish Viceroy in Navarre, saw that an attack by French forces seemed likely, and so he accelerated construction on a new fortress in Pamplona, Navarre.
As it happened, in 1516 the greater part of the castle where Francis Xavier lived was partly demolished and reduced to an ordinary dwelling manor, as a punishment for the family’s support of the Navarrese, and the solid beams from this house were used in the building of the new fortress. By the beginning of 1518, it was manned by a permanent garrison and stocked as an armoury.
Two years later, an insurgency against Spanish rule was brutally repressed by the Viceroy, with imprisonment, confiscation of property, executions, and a horrible pillage of the town ‘according to the practice of war’. Ignatius was in the Viceroy’s army. He had fought and won but did not want to participate in the pillaging.
‘Even though he could have taken a large part of the booty, it seemed to him of little value, and he never wanted to take the smallest bit.’ His was a gesture of decency on that inglorious day, 18 September 1520.
Further insurgency persuaded the Viceroy to buy peace at whatever price he could, and he went to extremes in showing wisdom, patience, and even leniency.
A peace was negotiated with the citizens of Navarre on 12 April 1521 and behind the scenes, Ignatius was one of the negotiators. He distinguished himself by his insight into the workings of the world, his dexterity in discerning ‘the way of men’s thinking’, and particularly his gift for resolving differences and disagreements. But several days later it was reported that the king of France, joined by seven thousand Germans and formidable artillery, was preparing to support the people of Navarre in their struggle against Spain.
In the spring of 1521 the fortress of Pamplona and some local castles sent out calls to the Spanish throne for help. But the King of Spain had his own problems, and troops from Pamplona were sent to Castile instead, leaving Pamplona in worse shape than ever.
In mid-May the French army began to march south. From the French point of view, the issue was the liberation of Navarre from Spain. From the Spanish perspective, the French were guilty of invasion of Spanish territory. On 16 May 1521 the French army made its appearance half a league from Pamplona.
Panic ensued: the Viceroy fled to seek reinforcements and to save his life. Supporters of Spain also fled, with the result that on 18 May, Pamplona was helpless and on the verge of becoming a ghost town.
The town council requested that the command of the city be turned over to them so that they could negotiate with the French. At this critical moment, the first Spanish reinforcements arrived under the command of Ignatius’s brother, Martin. Ignatius met his brother on the outskirts of Pamplona, and the Loyolas demanded that they be entrusted with the command of the remaining Spanish garrison, but the town council refused this.
Martin, wild with bitterness and anger, retired with his troops, but Ignatius felt that to abandon the city would be shameful. With a few supporters, he galloped into Pamplona. ‘He judged it disreputable to retreat.’ In time, Ignatius would write in his Exercises that ‘shame and fear for one’s good name in the eyes of the world’ would instead be obstacles for the person who strives to serve God freely.
In 1553, when dictating his Autobiography, Ignatius tells us of the impetuous gesture that was his and his alone: ‘He was in a fortress that the French were attacking, and although all the others saw clearly that they could not defend themselves and were of the opinion that they should surrender, provided their lives were spared, he gave so many reasons to the commander that at last he persuaded him to defend it. This was contrary to the views of all the knights, but they were energized by his courage and gallantry.’
The city of Pamplona could not be effectively defended, but the fortress might, and Ignatius’s heroism was contagious. On the following day, the magnificent French army marched into the city, and it welcomed the two flags of France and Navarre. The fortress was the last place of resistance. Ignatius ‘gave his opinion that they should not surrender, but that they should defend or die’. And then, ‘when the day arrived on which they expected the bombardment, he confessed his sins to one of his companions-in-arms’.
The sins of his lifetime were weighing heavily on him. When he poured out his conscience to his surprised confessor, the latter with some astonishment learned more about the hidden and unsuspected facets of the personality of his proud penitent than he did about the man’s serious, but run-of-the-mill, sins.
‘After the bombardment by the French had been going on for some time, a cannon ball struck him on one leg, crushing its bones, and because it passed between his legs the other was also seriously wounded. Shortly after he fell, the defenders of the fortress surrendered to the French…’ This was Ignatius’s own account of 20 May and the event which was to change his life.
He may have lain wounded and helpless for several days in one of the corners of the fortress before the terms of a ceasefire were agreed. In that interval he would have received inadequate emergency care as he waited feverishly for the victor’s arrival, and he may well have embarked on the road that led within. He would have had to contemplate his whole past, like every prodigal son who must retreat within himself to find himself and to examine the long road that had led to his self-estrangement.
Perhaps his intuition told him that ever since those intoxicating days at Arevalo, his life could be summed up in two words: running away. Had he not been, in the words of St. Augustine, a stubborn ‘fugitive from his own heart’? Would he have felt a new kind of shame – the shame of vain honour, of the emptiness of life, the numbness of his dormant faith?
At this moment, in a corner of Pamplona’s fortress, he must have remembered his old aunt’s prediction: ‘Inigo, you will never learn or become wise until someone breaks your leg!’
For Pondering: How has illness changed your view of your life?
This article first appeared in The Messenger (May 2008), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
