We follow Ignatius with Brian Grogan SJ as he goes to Rome and on to Venice hoping to go to Jerusalem.
Ignatius crossed from Barcelona to Gaeta in Italy in five days, thanks to a strong following wind. When the passengers disembarked, on about 20 March 1523, the plague was ravaging Italy. The pilgrim set out immediately for Rome. He was joined by a young man, and a mother accompanied by her daughter, who was dressed as a boy. All of them begged along the way. The trek was long and not without frightening moments.
They intended to spend the first night in an inn, near which there were many soldiers huddled around a large fire. The soldiers gave them food to eat and were particularly generous in sharing their wine with the newcomers, ‘as though they wanted to warm them up’, commented the pilgrim, who knew very well the ways of soldiers. Afterwards, the travellers divided into pairs, the two women retiring to a room at the inn, and the pilgrim and the young man to the stable.
About midnight, Ignatius was awakened by the shouts of the woman and her daughter, who, by the time he got to the inn, were already in the courtyard weeping and saying the soldiers had attempted to rape them. For a few oments the former bold and valiant soldier came to life again in the humble pilgrim. So angry did he become, and so loud did he shout, that all the people in the house were frightened and the soldiers gave up what they had intended to do.
The young man had vanished under the protection of the darkness, but the two women and the pilgrim continued their journey even though it was still night. They arrived at Fondi, but the gates of the town were closed and so they had to sleep in a church. But even during the day they were not allowed to enter the city because of sanitary precautions, and outside the city they were not successful in collecting alms.
They went to a nearby castle, but the exhausted Ignatius, already weakened by the hardships of a sea journey, could go no further. The mother and daughter continued their trip towards Rome.
As fortune would have it, on that very day, crowds of people came out of the city to receive the noble lady to whom Fondi belonged. In a gesture of desperation, the pilgrim literally planted himself in the middle of the road so they would not take him for a victim of the plague because of his drawn face, but would say ‘he was ill only from weakness’, and was asking the favour to enter the city. Once inside, he collected a good number of small coins, recovered his health and arrived in Rome on Palm Sunday, 29 March, 1523.
Ignatius spent Holy Week in Rome in prayer and in begging alms. He received the blessing of Adrian VI , and the required pontifical permission to go to the Holy Land. Someone had written out for him, in Latin, the form petitioning the licence, which has since been found in the Vatican archives.
Again, he was assured that without money it would be absolutely impossible for him to book a passage from Venice to Jerusalem. But nothing could change his mind, because ‘in his soul he had great certainty, which would admit of no doubt, that he would find some way of getting to Jerusalem.’
About 13 April 1523, Ignatius took the road to Venice with six or seven gold coins that he had been given to defray his passage. He had accepted this money ‘because of the fear with which others had inspired him of not being able to get to Jerusalem otherwise’. Two days after he left Rome, he repented of his lack of confidence by taking the money, and so he determined to use it as alms for the poor.
The trip, which was made all the way on foot, was rich in misfortune and hardships. His itinerary, through a succession of Italian towns, would today be considered an ideal tour of the back roads of Italy, but at the time it was made difficult because of the plague. He ate as he could and slept under porticos or in the open fields. One morning a man, who had spent the night near him, fled when he saw Ignatius’s sallow, drawn face, for he thought for certain that he was looking at a man stricken by the plague. Such was our pilgrim ‘of the sorry countenance’.
Getting into Venice presented more problems. Some of his fellow pilgrims went off to get a health certificate at Padua. He could not keep up with them because they walked too fast, and so they left him behind ‘at nightfall in a vast field’. It was one of his worst experiences of total abandonment, but he tells us that here ‘Christ appeared to Him in His usual way’, referring to his Manresa days. This vision consoled him, gave him strength, and helped him to arrive in Padua, where he went in and out of the city without having to show a health certificate, much to the amazement of his more prudent fellow travellers.
Then, still without the required certificate, he came to Venice. The guards inspected everyone who had arrived there in a boat, allowing only him to enter the city of the canals undisturbed. It was mid-May; he still had two months to wait for passage to the Holy Land.
Ignatius supported himself by begging and he slept in the Piazza Di San Marco. One day he met a rich Spaniard living in Venice who asked him what he was doing there and where he was going. This man invited him to come and eat in his house, and gave him a few days’ lodging. At first, the pilgrim remained silent at the table, listening, eating, and answering the questions he was asked, and then at the end of the meal, picking up bits and pieces of the table talk, he began to speak about God.
The family of this unexpected host became fond of him and persuaded him to remain with them. What is more, this unknown Spanish gentleman was successful in getting him a private audience with the Doge of Venice. The end result was that the Doge ordered that he be given passage aboard a ship that was taking the Venetian governor to Cyprus.
For Pondering:
How do you cope with misfortune and hardships?
