Ignatius is a difficult name to explain. Its associations are with the
Eastern Church; but it occurs at a time when Latin names prevailed as
much as Greek ones in the Asiatic portions of the Roman empire, and thus
the Latin _ignis_ (fire) is, perhaps, the most satisfactory derivation,
though it is not unlikely that the word may come from the source both of
this and of the Greek ἁγνός, purity and flame being always linked
together in Indo-European ideas.
The birth-place of the great St. Ignatius is unknown, but tradition has
marked him as the child whom our Lord set in the midst of His disciples,
and he is known to have been the pupil of St. John, ordained by St.
Peter, and at the end of his long episcopate at Antioch, he was martyred
at Rome by command of Trajan, writing on his last journey the Epistles
that are among the earliest treasures of the Church. So much is his
memory revered in his own city, that to the present day the schismatic
patriarchs of Antioch of the Monophysite sect uniformly assume the name
of Ignatius on their election to their see.
The Greek Church has continued to make much use of this name, called in
Russia Ignatij, Eegnatie, or Ignascha; and in the Slovak dialect cut
short into Nace. The Spanish Church likewise adopted it in early times,
and among the Navarrese counts and lords of Biscay, as far back as 750,
we encounter both men and women called Iñigo and Iñiga, or more commonly
Eneco and Eneca, used indifferently with the other form, and then
Latinized into Ennicus and Ennica.
Navarre preserved the name, and it was a Navarrese gentleman, Don Iñigo
Loyola, who, while recovering from his wounds, after the siege of
Pampeluna, so read the lives of the saints as to become penetrated with
enthusiasm as fiery as his name. Where the Jesuits have had their will
may be read in the frequency of this renewed Iñigo, or Ignace, as it was
in France, Ignaz in Roman Catholic Germany. It is Bohemia, where the
once strong spirit of Protestantism was trodden out in blood and flame,
that Ignaz is common enough to have turned into Hynek, and in Bavaria
that it becomes Nazi and Nazrl.
Our English architect, whose name is associated with the unhappy medley
of Greek and Gothic which was the Stuart imitation of the Cinque-cento
style, was a Roman Catholic, and was no doubt christened in honour of
Loyola. The few stray specimens of Inigo to be found occasionally in
England are generally traceable to him; one occurs at St. Columb Major,
in 1740.[82]
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Footnote 82:
Michaelis; Cave; Stanley, _Lectures on the Eastern Church_; Mariana,
_Istoria de España_; Anderson, _Royal Genealogies_.