Poliki, poliki” is the Basque word that sounds most often in our ears on our pilgrimage, “slowly, always slowly forward”. Because this seven hundred kilometer long path, which Ignatius of Loyola covered seven hundred years ago on a donkey, you have to explore with peace of mind. It is not as developed and worn out as the well-known pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela, and it does not lead steadily west, but south-east: in twenty-seven stages from Loyola’s birthplace of the same name near Bilbao in the Basque Country to Barcelona, from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, from apple trees to cornfields, vineyards, deserts, small villages, barren suburbs to olive groves. It is the path of reflection and conversion of a once rowdy knight to become a champion of God.
This is where it all began, under the Loyolas’ coat of arms, two wolves lurking over a cooking pot: in the family’s home castle with a farmstead, well and a brick defense tower. In the kitchen, Ignatius is said to have been born in 1491, the twelfth or thirteenth child of an impoverished noble family. This is what Juan Baptista Mendizabal, one of the chroniclers of the Basque province of Guipúzcoa, tells us. Young Loyola dreamed of becoming a knight. As a young page of King Charles V, the short, red-haired nobleman became more of a bon vivant who liked to dance and court women. But he also proved himself at the Battle of Pamplona, although he was badly injured on the field. When he returned to his family’s tower house as a nursing case, he found no chivalric novels there, only Christian devotional literature. He became so absorbed in reading that he wanted to imitate the life of Christ and the deeds of the saints, eventually founding the Jesuit order.
Nice and slowly: This is how you walk towards inner harmony
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On the day Ignatius had his revival experience, a storm raged and the tower house shook. Our guide points to a crack running through the brick wall from top to bottom, testifying to this. The high room in which the convalescent Ignatius had his visions is now filled with music by Bach. Our chronicler also tells us eloquently that the Basque children are sprinkled with the holy water from this room so that they become wise and learn to speak well. As his grandmother told his father, he himself probably got too much Ignatius water and that’s why he keeps talking.
The house castle is still cared for by Jesuit priests like a relic. Their ancestors built a baroque basilica and a 150 meter long convent around it. Especially older Fathers return to this place where they were formed to spend their retirement, like Father Txeme: “We Jesuits want to practice two ways of life: spirituality and justice or charity. And in Loyola we also want to cultivate hospitality, accommodate pilgrims and welcome visitors.” Your rooms are modern, paneled with wood, unadorned and functional, but the view from the window is fantastic: on the left the marble stairs to the mighty basilica, on the right another one Park, behind it wooded hills with green meadows.