How to Study Memories in the Making

A the end of 1600, the elderly Flemish Jesuit Franciscus Costerus (1532–1619) returned from a pilgrimage to Rome—there had been another Jubilee—carrying two images of Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) and a letter from Claudio Acquaviva, the Society of Jesus’s Superior General. The first larger image had been painted on leather, the second smaller one was oval in shape. The Belgian province, the Society’s largest, was home to several older Jesuits who had met Ignatius in their youth. Acquaviva, who had joined the Society a decade after the death of its founder, wished to hear ‘the judgement of the fathers of this province who at some point have seen this blessed man.’1 This proved difficult to organize, both on account of the value of the paintings and the frailty of the witnesses, who were not all as sprightly and up for travelling as Costerus had been (on his death in 1619, Costerus was the last surviving Jesuit to have known Ignatius personally). The Jesuit to whom Acquaviva directed this request was Olivier Manare (1523–1614), a person well-accustomed to being in charge of everything: his enemies accused him of running the Belgian province as his personal fief.2 Manare had been vicar general following the