Jerónimo Nadal

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[edit] Early Life

Jerónimo Nadal

Jerónimo Nadal (1507-1580) was born on August 11, 1507 at Majorca, an island off the coast of Spain. In 1526 he began his studies in Alcala where he first encountered Ignatius, founder of the Society of Jesus commonly called the Jesuits. His initial impression of Ignatius was negative. He saw a beggar in pilgrim garb, attracting women while incurring the criticism of ecclesiastical authorities. Ignatius left for the University of Salamanca and then the University of Paris in 1528. In 1532 Nadal also enrolled in the University of Paris where he found two former students from Alcala, Diego Lainez and Alfonoso Salmeron, joined later on by a third, Nicolas Bobadilla. All accompanied Ignatius and others every Sunday to the Carthusian church for confession and Communion. Nadal would also meet Pierre Favre and Francis Xavier.

Despite the newly found community, Nadal rejected all proposition to be a part of the new movement. Ignatius tried to persuade him by taking him to the baptismal font of a church and reading him a letter about leaving the world and seeking perfect; “but the devil recognized the power of the letter and of Ignatius, and violently alienated me from the Spirit who was passionately seeking me”(EpistNadal, 3, no. 9). In his Chronicle, the story of his journey and vocation, he states: “This is how I felt: I do not want to join these people. Who knows where they will one day fall into the hands on the inquisitors?...I saw them no more in Paris, neither Ignatius no anyone else” (EpistNadal, 3, no.10). Nadal had little desire to be associated with unorthodoxy.

Nadal left Paris in 1535 and went to Avignon. He studied Hebrew in the Jewish community in Avignon. There he had little thought or contact with his former friends who would be the first members of the Society of Jesus. During this time period he wrote: “A dangerous cure for a disease, and in it not a spiritual thought; I was never farther from devotion” (EpistNadal,4, no 12f).

[edit] Ordination and Entrance into the Society

Nadal was ordained a priest in Avignon in 1538. He received his doctor’s degree in theology a few days later and a month later returned to Majorca. Soon he fell into deep depression. For seven years he wandered listlessly through life. One day he received a letter containing a copy of a letter from Francis Xavier to Ignatius that told of the progress of the Church in his three years in India. He expressed joy that the Society had been approved by the Pope. The letter deeply moved Nadal, “as though awaking from a long sleep” (EpistNadal,, 11,no. 31). A few days later a Majorcan priest in the Roman Curia invited him to Rome to assist in preparing a general council of the Church, later to be known as the Council of Trent. In Rome he visited the Jesuits but with the intention of remaining a secular priest. Father Jeronimo Domenech along with Lainez suggested that he make the Spiritual Exercises. He agreed but when finally telling the story of his left stressed why he would not fit into the Jesuit way of life. Ignatius responded that if God called him, the Society could find some use for him (EpistNadal,, 15, no. 42). He began the Exercises in November under Domenech’s direction (EpistNadal, 16, no. 43).

He would have to choose between keeping his benefices and remaining a secular priest or becoming a Jesuit. The election caused physical pain and mental agitation. However, “a special grace of God came to [his] help.” He was moved by extreme consolation upon the realization that reasons against joining the Society were completely insubstantial. Obstacles then became confirmations. Nadal found sheer repugnance for the opposing arguments. Such thought he considered “a perverse will, the world, prestige, a kind of lack of faith by thinking too much of difficulties – that cannot receive the Kingdom of God and are opposed to the Spirit…” (EpistNadal, 18f., nos, 49f). Nadal’s experience that night affected the way he thought of vocation throughout his life. He believed that when God calls a man into the Society, a star arises within him which leads him to seek Christ born in him and to offer gifts to Christ. Nadal became a novice of the Society of Jesus on November 29, 1545.

[edit] Roles within the Society

From the moment Nadal entered the novitiate in Rome, Ignatius began to train him in the Institute of the Society, its spirit and aims, its way of proceeding. In 1548 Ignatius sent Nadal to found and govern the college of Messina, the first Jesuit College for laymen. He befriended Juan de Vega, the viceroy and also established a novitiate. Nadal structured a program of studied based on the method followed at the University of Paris which put into practice the highest humanistic ideals of the Renaissance. Educational foundations for college institutions focused on “the care of those souls for whom either there is nobody to care or, if somebody ought to care, the care negligent. This is the reason for the founding of the society. This is its strength. This its dignity in the Church.” Nadal saw the role of Society as forming social consciousness through education. Nadal along with Hannibal du Coudret would lay the foundation for the Society’s Ratio studiorum or program of studies.

Nadal was recalled to Rome toward the end of 1551 to join a group reviewing the Constitutions of the Society. During Nadal’s time in Rome, Ignatius drew on Nadal’s experience to establish norms for the Roman College. Due to the influence of the Roman College, Nadal’s work in Messina affected every school established by the Society even schools today. After two months in Rome, Nadal went back to Sicily to promulgate the Constitutions, returning to Rome in March 1553. Nadal felt a profound attraction to the Constitutions and rules of the Society and understood that he should devote his energy to the Constitutions.

In 1553 Nadal was sent to Portugal and Spain by Ignatius to put order into the growing Society there. The cadence of the Formula of the Institute was in conflict with the thought prevailing in the Iberian Peninsula regarding penance and prayer and even regarding the nature of religious life. Nadal found out he was appointed vicar-general with full authority over the whole society through papers Ignatius had dispatched to him. The appointment made Nadal so uncomfortable that Ignatius appointed Nadal commissary-general, limiting his authority to Spain and Portugal.

Nadal stayed in the Iberian Peninsula for sixteen months. He visited all the Jesuit colleges and adapted the rules each college to that of the Roman College. He also begun to explain the General Examen for an hour each day, and the Jesuits there had received this explanation with great joy and consolation. He started to explain the Constitutions also to the great consolation of all. The Society of Portugal was beginning to experience a renewal of spirit.

Nadal returned to Rome after his visit to Portugal and Spain and found Ignatius in health so poor that he was confined to bed most of the time. Nadal was chosen by majority rule as the person to act in Ignatius’ name with full authority to relieve him of much of the work of governing the Society. Ignatius named Nadal commissary general, with full power of the general while visiting Italy, Austria and other regions to promulgate the Constitutions. Lainez also possessed full power of the general. Nadal left Rome on February 19, 1555. He would continue to travel throughout Europe to promulgate the Constitutions.

After Ignatius' death in 1556, during the turbulent period of transition, Nadal stayed in Rome late into the year 1560. Then Laínez sent him again to Portugal and Spain, and afterwards for visitations to France, the Netherlands and Germany. Under the new Father General Borja he traveled repeatedly through Europe, and was from 1571 to 1572 - during Borja's absence (Spain and France) - Vicar General of the Jesuit Order in Rome.

After the third General Congregation, from which the Belgian Mercurian came out as General (1573), Nadal was like Polanco ousted by the trend in Rome then averse to Spain, and lived in Hall in Tirol where he worked as an author. In 1578 he returned to Rome and died there on April 2nd 1580, at the age of seventy three.

[edit] Writings and Illustrations

Ignatius himself urged Nadal to compile and distribute an illustrated guide for prayerful meditation on the Gospels, in the tradition of the Spiritual Exercises, although the work was not completed until after both men had died. Nadal selected the biblical scenes to be included, commissioned and directed the layout of the illustrations, and composed notes to accompany each scene. With the cooperation and support of Antwerp publishers Christophe Plantin and Martinus Nutius, 153 engravings were eventually produced by Bernardino Passeri, Marten de Vos, and Jerome and Anton Wierix.

In 1593 these illustrations were published in a volume entitled Evangelicae Historiae Imagines ("Illustrations of the Gospel Stories"), arranged in chronological order of the life and ministry of Jesus. In 1594 and 1595 they were again published in larger volumes, entitled Adnotationes et Meditationes in Evangelia ("Notes and Meditations on the Gospels").

[edit] Prayer and Action

Nadal coined the phrase “simul in actione contemplativus” (contemplative likewise in the midst of action). The phrase has become a slogan in Ignatian circles. The Jesuits sometimes refer to their vocation as one of being "contemplatives in action." Ignatius wanted them to be actively engaged in bringing Christ to the world, but he realized that such apostolic activity would be fruitless unless grounded in a discipline of prayer. Contemplation leads to action and this action should be contemplative action.