Their manor house was demolished on the orders of the King of Castile in 1456 for their depredations in Gipuzkoa, with Iñigo's paternal grandfather being expelled to Andalusia by Henry IV.

Their eldest son, Juan Pérez, had soldiered in forces commanded by Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, but died fighting in the Italian Wars (1494–1559).

[10] Instead, Íñigo became a page in the service of a relative, Juan Velázquez de Cuéllar, treasurer (contador mayor) of the kingdom of Castile.

During his time in the household of Don Velázquez, Íñigo took up dancing, fencing, gambling, the pursuit of the young ladies, and duelling.

He patterned his life after the stories of El Cid, the knights of Camelot, The Song of Roland and other tales of romantic chivalry.

[17] He joined the army at seventeen, and according to one biographer, he strutted about "with his cape flying open to reveal his tight-fitting hose and boots; a sword and dagger at his waist".

[18] According to another he was "a fancy dresser, an expert dancer, a womanizer, sensitive to insult, and a rough punkish swordsman who used his privileged status to escape prosecution for violent crimes committed with his priest brother at carnival time.

[21] Íñigo was returned to his father's castle in Loyola, where, in an era before anesthetics, he underwent several surgical operations to repair the leg, with his bones set and rebroken.

In order to divert the weary hours of convalescence, he asked for the romances of chivalry, his favourite reading, but there were none in the castle, and instead, his beloved sister-in-law, Magdalena de Araoz brought him the lives of Christ and of the saints.

It also inspired his method of meditation, since Ludolph proposes that the reader place himself mentally at the scene of the Gospel story, visualising the crib at the Nativity, etc.

[24][25][26] Aside from dreaming about imitating the saints in his readings, Íñigo was still wandering off in his mind about what "he would do in service to his king and in honour of the royal lady he was in love with".

There, he carefully examined his past sins, confessed, gave his fine clothes to the poor he met, wore a "garment of sack-cloth", then hung his sword and dagger at the Virgin's altar during an overnight vigil at the shrine.

[7] From Montserrat he walked on to the nearby town of Manresa (Catalonia), where he lived for about a year, begging for his keep, and then eventually doing chores at a local hospital in exchange for food and lodging.

These women were considered alumbrados – a group linked in their zeal and spirituality to Franciscan reforms, but they had incurred mounting suspicion from the administrators of the Inquisition.

[37] They were the Spaniards Alfonso Salmeron, Diego Laynez, Francis Xavier and Nicholas Bobadilla, with the Portuguese Simão Rodrigues and Peter Faber, a Savoyard, the latter two becoming his first companions,[19] and his closest associates in the foundation of the future Jesuit order.

[38] "On the morning of the 15th of August, 1534, in the chapel of church of Saint Peter, at Montmartre, Loyola and his six companions, of whom only one was a priest, met and took upon themselves the solemn vows of their lifelong work.

[39] In 1539, with Peter Faber and Francis Xavier, Ignatius formed the Society of Jesus, which was approved in 1540 by Pope Paul III.

Juan de Vega, then ambassador of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor in Rome, met Ignatius there and having formed a good impression of the Jesuits, invited them to travel with him to his new appointment as Viceroy of Sicily.

They created a centralised organisation of the order,[42][43] and stressed absolute self-denial and obedience to the Pope and to superiors in the Church hierarchy.

This was summarised in the motto perinde ac cadaver – "as if a dead body",[44] meaning that a Jesuit should be as empty of ego as is a corpse.

He describes the results in his De re anatomica libre XV: I have taken out innumerable stones with my own hands, with various colors found in the kidneys, in the lungs, in the liver, and in the portal vein.

[47] His body was dressed in his priestly robes, placed in a wooden coffin and buried in the crypt of the Maria della Strada Church on 1 August 1556.

In 1949 he was the subject of a Spanish biographical film Loyola, the Soldier Saint starring Rafael Durán in the role of Ignatius.

[56][57] Former coat of arms of the Argentine city, Junín, Buenos Aires used until 1941 bore Loyola shield under the Sun of May and surrounded by laurel wreath.