On the Cover

The Serpent & The Cross

Jesuit President Explains His Original Cover Design

Devotees of St. Ignatius Loyola are typically aware of what could be called the saint’s “spiritual awakening.” On the bank of the river Cardonere near

Manresa, this well-known episode occurred after his convalescence, which was necessitated by his famous cannonball wound at the Battle of

Pamplona.

“While seated there, the eyes of his soul were opened,” reads his autobiography, written in the third person with the help of the Jesuit Luis

Gonzalez de Camara. “He did not have any special vision, but his mind was enlightened on many subjects, spiritual, and intellectual. So clear was this knowledge that from that day everything appeared to him in a new light.”

Such is the preferred image of St.

Ignatius: tremendously insightful but not fanciful; stoic, perhaps, but still deeply in touch with the subtle movements of the Spirit. For the 500th anniversary of his conversion, I set out to offer a portrayal that might illustrate less popular but nevertheless crucial realities of the saint’s spiritual life and teachings.

St. Ignatius enjoyed no shortage of consoling, mystical visions, but one stands apart from the rest. “It seemed to be something most beautiful, and, as it were, gleaming with many eyes,” de Camara recorded, referring to a glimmering serpent that appeared to

St. Ignatius. “This is how it always appeared. There was a cross near which he was praying, and he noticed that near the cross the vision had lost some of its former beautiful color. He understood from this that the apparition was the work of the devil; and whenever the vision appeared to him after that, as it did several times, he dispelled it with his staff.”

This terse and esoteric description of the saint’s vision serves as the inspiration for the cover for this edition of Jaynotes. The serpent, at first “gleaming” and “beautiful,” takes on a paradoxically less alluring and consoling character for St. Ignatius when compared to the apparent plainness of the cross. With flowing symmetry to exaggerate the nimbus behind St. Ignatius’s head, the snake’s form makes its way around the frame until it ends with its head beneath the saint’s foot.

Rather than recoiling from the French cannon or hopelessly battling it, St. Ignatius leverages the cannon wheel for support. This embrace of his own earthly undoing—even to the point of reforming it into a source of strength— echoes St. Paul in his epistle to the Romans 8:26-29. Of course, St. Ignatius steadies himself with the banner of the Cross of Christ while simultaneously holding it high to “dispel” the devil.

The greatest temptations can often manifest with beginnings that seem positive or seem to be “something most beautiful.” This work aims to capture St. Ignatius’s ability to discern between the false beauty that is temptation to worldly glory and the abiding beauty that is the glory of God. He formed early Jesuits to practice in this discernment, teaching that this false beauty becomes apparent “when the enemy of human nature has been perceived and known by his serpent’s tail.”

For us today, there is an important corollary to this insight: just as we can learn to discern when the devil hides behind a veneer of beauty, so too should we recognize God in our misfortunes. The victory of the cross is total, and moments of suffering are an opportunity to give glory to God. May the Crucifix and the cannonball guide us closer to Our Lord. 

Rev. John Brown, S.J. President