User:Jbhunley/sandbox/Ignatius of Jesus

Ignatius of Jesus (1596 – 21 February 1667), born Carlo Leonelli in Sorbolongo near Fossombrone in the province of Pesaro, in the Papal States, was a Discalced Carmelite friar and missionary. He earned a degree in civil and canon law before taking his holy vows on February 27, 1623 at the age of 27. Upon entering the order, he took the name Ignatius of Jesus. In 1629 he was sent as a missionary to Persia and did not return to Rome until 1664, less than three years before his death in February 1667.

He is well known for his study of Mandaeism while he was on mission to Basra. His book, Narration of the Origin, the Rituals and the Errors of the Christians of Saint John, of the Mandaeans and their beliefs. He also wrote several works on the languages of the region, including a grammar and dictionary of Persian for use by fellow missionaries.

Family
Carlo was the the fifth of six siblings, having three sisters and two brothers. His family, the Leonelli Sorbolonghi of Fossombrone were a rich and semi-noble family. His father, Giulio Leonelli, was a lawyer and his mother, Virginia Leonelli née Fornari, was reported to be very pious and to have passed her strong faith on to her children. Carlo’s eldest brother, Mutatesia Leonelli, was a lawyer, poet and Tesoriere Pontifica; His brother, Innocenzo Leonelli, was a soldier who later gave up his name and wealth to become a hermit and was granted the epithet il Venerabile by the Church after his death; While one of his three sisters became a nun.

The Carmelites in Persia
In 1604 Pope Clement VIII concluded negotiations, begun by his predecessor Pope Pius V while seeking allies against the Ottomans, with the Persian Shah. As a result of this Shah ʿAbbās allowed the Discalced Carmelites to send a mission to Isfahan. He welcomed them with the gift of a royal residence near Meydān-e Mīr wherein to establish their monastery. The Carmelites established an Armenian boys' school in the monastery. In January, 1629 – several months before Ignatius arrived there – the first Persian language movable type printing was delivered there from Rome at the request of the Shah. This is where, after years of study in Rome, Ignatius began his mission. .

Ignatius set out from Naples for his first foreign mission on the eighteenth of February, 1629. He traveled with a delegation of fellow Carmelites which included Visitor General Fr. Epiphanius of S. John Baptist and two other Carmelite friars. Six months later, on the seventeenth of August, 1629, they arrived at the Discalced Carmelite mission in Isfahan.

Isfahan
A year later a report sent to Rome by his superior, Fr. Dimas, says he is working diligently to learn Persian and has already obtained a degree of fluency in the language. During this time Ignatius writes a letter to his superiors in Rome in which he complains about the boys school in the Convent. He is remarks particularly on how he feels it inappropriate for the school boys to live among and take their meals with the friars.

After five years of learning the ropes at the Carmelite's most important mission in Persia, he was instructed, in November of 1634, to accompany the Vicar Provincial to Shiraz to reopen the convent.

Shiraz
The convent at Shiraz In 1632 the Definitory General ordered the closing of the convent. It remained closed until November of 1634 when Ignatius was appointed Vicar of the re-opened convent.

Records show that in Other than this report there is no further record of his work with these Christians.

In Shiraz we see the first evidence, through a report of his experimentation with bringing in Portuguese ships to a port nearer to Shiraz than the their usual destination in Kung, of his dealings with the Portuguese, which will become much more significant after his move to Basra and  notes that which port he chose is unclear due to the spelling in his reports and suggests it could have been Rig or Rishir. Whichever it is there is no further mention of these trials but by the time Ignatius arrives in Basra it is evident he has good relations with both the Portuguese and the East India Company.

By late 1635 he had sowered on Shiraz following  and at the end of 1641 the Praepositus General gave him permission to return to Rome.

Basra and the Mandaeans
His superior in the province and the Visitor requested he stay on because there were not enough friars to manage the convents. He agrees to stay and is made Vicar of the convent in Basra towards the end of 1641 or in early 1642 and serves in that position until the end of May, 1649.

While in Basra Ignatius acted as an agent handling correspondence between Indian and European representatives of the East India Company. A message, in February of 1650, from President at Swally to the Company reads, in part, " Any letters overland may be directed to Basra for the care of a Carmelite Padre, one Ignatio an Italian, whoe hath a good report as a lover of our nation."

After Basra
On the tenth of December 1652 he leaves Basra on a steamboat intending to travel to Baghdad and then back to Rome. The records of the Discalced Carmelites, as reported in A Chronicle Of The Carmelites In Persia, have no record of him from that time until he is reported as the "Vicar of the missions in Mt. Libanon" in 1656. There is again a gap until he is reported as being in Tripoli from 1658–1663 from whence, in 1658, a report from another missionary is received in Rome describing him as "decrepit". Sometime in 1664 the Definitory General of the order instructs him to return to Rome and he arrives there before the end of 1664.

The only record of Ignatius after his return to Rome are of requests he made in March 1665 to de Propaganda Fide for several printed copies of Narratio originis rituum et errorum Christianorum Sancti Joannis and of his Grammatica Linguae Persicae to be provided to the Procurator of the Order of Discalced Carmelites.

Ignatius of Jesus died on the twenty-first of February 1667. His epitaph read "mighty in speech— he wrote many things in the Persian tongue". He is buried at the church of Santa Maria della Scala in Rome.

Works
Ignatius was the author of several works which exist only as manuscripts in. These include a translation into Persian of Roberto Bellarmino's Dottrina cristiana.

Scrinium Duarum Linguarum Orientalium
Includes:
 * Grammatica Linguae Persicae was written at the request of de Propaganda Fide." and was the third work on Persian grammar published in Europe.
 * A Latin-Persian dictionary — printed and published 1651 by de Propaganda Fide.
 * A grammar of the Arabic language — printed and published 1652 by de Propaganda Fide.