Life of St. Ignatius of Loyola

A cannonball shattered his leg. A book about Christ shattered his soul. Frances Alice Forbes tells the extraordinary story of Ignatius of Loyola, the Basque nobleman whose life took an extraordinary turn after being wounded at the Battle of Pamplona in 1521. Confined to a sickbed for months, with only Ludolph of Saxony's "De Vita Christi" to occupy him, Ignatius experienced a spiritual awakening profound enough to redirect the entire course of his life. He abandoned his military ambitions, endured poverty and near-starvation, and ultimately gathered a group of like-minded scholars who would become the Society of Jesus. The Jesuits would go on to establish schools across Europe, become intellectual powerhouses of the Counter-Reformation, and produce missionaries who carried Catholic thought to every corner of the globe. Forbes renders this transformation with clarity and reverence, tracing how one man's wounded body became the site of a spiritual revolution. The biography offers both historical insight and spiritual meditation on the nature of conversion, showing how personal transformation can alter the fate of millions.