‘A Brief and Exact Account’: The Letter of Simão Rodrigues on the Origins and Progress of the Society of Jesus, translated by Joseph F. Conwell SJ

Simao Rodrigues was one of Ignatius of Loyola’s earliest companions. Asked by the fourth General of the Society of Jesus, Everard Mercurian, to put into writing an account of the Society’s origins, Rodrigues responded with a lengthy letter to the General in 1577, giving, as he put it, a ‘brief and exact account’ of Ignatius and his companions, from their earliest days in Paris to the formal confirmation of the Society by Pope Paul III in 1540. The ‘brief and exact account’ takes the form of a travelogue, inspired by the Acts of the Apostles but also heavily influenced by the medieval romance literature popular at the time: the spirit of Galahad and Amadis of Gaul permeates the narrative. The result is a portrait, not only of who the early Jesuits were, but also of the spirit that inspired them to accomplish a new set of magnalia Dei (great wonders of God) in their own times, just as Paul and the other apostles had done in first-century Jerusalem.

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