This welcome addition to the literature on Saint Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556) sets out to show the reality behind the legends about Ignatius, the gilded hagiographical one and the darker, condemnatory one, to arrive at the real, complex human being whose praises, according to the author, have been equaled by the criticisms of his detractors. To do this, Emonet proposes to draw upon Ignatius’s own accounts and to look at the witness of his closest collaborators. As his chief source the author takes the autobiographical narrative dictated to Ignatius’s colleague Goncalves da Câmara, from 1553 to 1555, as a sort of foundational testament. But it ends in 1540, the year of the foundation of the Society of Jesus, and so provides little about his role as founder and first superior general of the society from 1540 to 1556. Emonet suggests that the variety of opinions about Ignatius is due in part to what a critical observer might see as ambiguous characteristics, such as the regular tension between the freedom of the individual and loyalty to the institution; indeed, Silvia Mostaccio in her recent Early Modern Jesuits between Obedience and Conscience during the Generalate of Claudio Acquaviva (1581–1615) (2014) sees this tension as a feature of the Jesuits and even of the early modern world. The dictated autobiography was withdrawn from circulation in 1571 to be replaced by the more edifying biography by Pedro de Ribadeneira in 1572, which became the official account. It was only discovered in the archives in 1731 and did not circulate widely until the twentieth century.

The first fourteen of the book’s nineteen chapters take us up to 1540. It mentions only briefly the allusion in the autobiography to an allegedly dissolute life prior to his conversion. This took place while the soldier Ignatius recovered at the castle of Loyola from a wound suffered at the battle of Pamplona in 1521 between Spanish and French forces. The book then follows the journey of “the pilgrim,” a term Ignatius applied to himself, from Loyola to Montserrat to Manresa near Barcelona; then to Venice and from there to the Holy Land and back to Spain where he began to study for the priesthood; and from there to the University of Paris, to Venice again, and then to Rome where he settled with his companions. There the Society of Jesus was founded, and Ignatius was unanimously elected its first superior general. Throughout this journey the author highlights Ignatius’s understanding and then practice of discernment, a prayerful technique for discovering the will of God through reflection on the movements within one’s own soul that became a central feature of his Spiritual Exercises and of Ignatian spirituality.

Chapter 16 takes up Ignatius’s dealings with two of his early companions, Simáo Rodrigues and Nicolás Bobadilla, who became alienated largely because of the dominant position Ignatius assumed as superior general. Here both his tenderness and his firmness came to light. In the next chapter Emonet discusses Ignatius’s attitude to women. They supplied much support for Ignatius during his years as a pilgrim, and he offered them in return spiritual direction. But he later determined not to allow women into the society, and while he promoted the reform of female monasteries he would not permit Jesuits to undertake responsibility for them. In chapter 18 the author maintains that Ignatius was not a “counter-reformer” but a reformer who sought to “help souls” (122–23). But at the end of his life, in 1554, he drew up two instructions for Jesuits going to Germany. In the first he outlined, under pressure, Emonet suggests, “strong-arm” (124) measures that they ought to recommend that Emperor Ferdinand I take against Lutherans; in the second, he instructed them always to deal with Lutherans in a respectful manner and to avoid polemics.

A major omission and significant weakness of this book is the failure even to discuss the shift of emphasis by Ignatius after 1548 to the colleges and so to education as the main ministry of the society. Thirty-four colleges had come into existence by his death. This had not at all been foreseen at the society’s foundation in 1540. A feature of this book is the reproduction in color of fifteen images from eighty-one copper engravings from an illustrated biography of 1609. This book is not for beginners; it assumes considerable knowledge of the life of Ignatius and its historical background. There is no bibliography.