Note 675 — Chapter IV

A careful study of the Exercises, of the Directory, of Loyola’s correspondence, and of his sayings recorded by early and contemporary biographers, has convinced me that the book was mainly constructed out of the abundant notes which Loyola took of his own inward experiences at Manresa, and that the only book he used in compiling it was the De Imitatione Christi of Thomas à Kempis—a book which Ignatius believed to have been written by Gerson. We know otherwise how highly Ignatius prized the De Imitatione. When he visited the Abbey of Monte Cassino he took with him as many copies as there were monks in the monastery; it was the one volume which he kept on the small table at his bedside; and it was the only book which the neophyte was permitted to read during the first week of the Exercises: “si tamen instructori videbitur, posset in prima hebdomada legere librum Gersonis de Imitatione Christi” (Directory, iii. 2).