On 23 September 1523, Ignatius left Jerusalem. He arrived in Venice in mid-January 1524 and stayed there until mid-February. It was probably in late February or early March that he arrived back in Barcelona. Although he was already in his thirty-fourth year, Ignatius now resolved to study so that he might be better prepared to “help souls.” Some ladies of Barcelona befriended him, attracted by his obvious goodness and sincerity in his pursuit of God, and they became his main support during his long years of study, not only in Barcelona but also in Alcalá, Salamanca, and Paris.
Barcelona had no university, but its schools formed a kind of consortium where the classical Latin authors were taught. Thanks to his friends, Ignatius was accepted without charge as a pupil of Jerónimo Ardévol, a strict, able, and inspiring teacher in the school of grammar. Ignatius, however, encountered a problem. When he tried to memorise Latin declensions and conjugations, he was wildly distracted by powerful new insights into spiritual things. Deciding that it was a subtle temptation of the evil spirit “under the appearance of an angel of light” that was keeping him from his studies, he talked frankly to his teacher, promising henceforth to apply himself without distraction to his work and not to miss any of his classes.25
Ignatius lodged at Iñes Pascual’s house close to the Church of Santa Maria del Mar, where he worshipped and where he met his teacher to discuss his difficulties. He did not eat with the Pascual family but, after begging his food from door to door, sorted out on his return all he had been given, setting out three portions: one for the poor, one for the sick, and the final one for himself. His room was an attic measuring fifteen feet by thirteen feet. It was no more than five feet high. Ignatius slept on the floor.
Also living in Barcelona was Isabel Roser, who belonged to the Catalan nobility. Her marriage had been childless. In social and academic circles, the family was very influential in Barcelona and it was probably to them that Ignatius owed his introduction to Ardévol.
At the convent of Santa Clara in Barcelona, founded in 1233 for Poor Clares but now following the Benedictine Rule, Ignatius may have met the saintly nun Teresa Rejadella for the first time. Teresa was to become the leader of a group of eleven sisters anxious for reform. Over the years, she became the recipient of some of Ignatius’s finest letters of spiritual direction. His initial attempt to bring back the nuns in the convent to a regular life ended in a severe beating by young gallants who frequented the place to satisfy their lust. One can understand why Sister Teresa was hoping for reform.
Juan de Polanco, alludes to these Barcelona years when he says, “Ignatius began from that time on to have a desire to gather certain persons to himself in order to put into operation the plan he had, beginning at that time, of helping repair the defects he saw in serving God, namely, persons who might be like trumpets of Jesus Christ.”26 His first companions were Calixto de Sa, Juan de Arteaga, and Lope de Cáceres. They followed Ignatius when he left Barcelona, but their initial enthusiasm dimmed with time and they eventually went their separate ways.
At the end of Ignatius’s second year of Latin studies, Ardévol told Ignatius that he was now competent enough to begin his course in arts and philosophy and recommended that he go to the University of Alcalà, thirty-five kilometers north-east of Madrid. So, in early spring of 1526, Ignatius set out on foot for Alcalà, a journey of some 600 kilometres.