Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola
Exercitia Spiritualia
Homo creatus est ad laudandum, reverentiam et serviendum Deo Domino nostro, et per hoc animam suam salvare.
Our renderingThe human being is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul.
What it is
The foundational manual of Ignatian spirituality, structured as four 'weeks' of meditations guiding a retreatant from self-knowledge and sin through the life of Christ to apostolic commitment. Eleonora di Toledo, Duchess of Florence and wife of Cosimo I de' Medici, became the primary Medici patron of the Jesuits in Tuscany from the late 1540s: she negotiated with Diego Laínez, whose sustained advocacy led to the first Jesuit school in Florence, and she died in 1562 attended by a Jesuit confessor. The Spiritual Exercises were the foundational formation manual of her Jesuit confessors and spiritual directors, making the connection strongly documented through institutional proximity even though no inventory record confirms Eleonora personally held a copy.
Why it still matters
The Exercises remain one of the most widely used Christian formation manuals in the world; the 30-day retreat or the 'Exercises in Daily Life' (19th Annotation) version offers direct and structured continuity with Eleonora's Jesuit-shaped devotional life.
Kept alongside
Opuscules de piété (Oeuvres de piété) of Bérulle
Les oeuvres de l'éminentissime Pierre cardinal de Bérulle… augmentées de divers opuscules de controverse et de piété
A collection of shorter devotional and mystical writings by Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle, gathered posthumously by his successor as Oratorian superior François Bourgoing. The texts include meditations on the Incarnation, prayers in union with Christ's interior states, and spiritual instructions composed for Oratorians and the lay dévot associates who surrounded Marie de' Medici's court. Bérulle was Marie's documented spiritual confidant and his French Oratory, founded under royal patronage in 1611, supplied confessors to the leading families of court throughout her regency and beyond. The Opuscules represent the private devotional currency of the entire dévot milieu that Marie anchored during the first decades of the 17th century.
Lace Prayer Book of Marie de' Medici (Walters W.494)
Livre de prières de Marie de Médicis (Walters Art Museum MS W.494)
A bespoke devotional manuscript made for Marie de' Medici in the second quarter of the 17th century, most plausibly during her post-1631 exile rather than during her regency, which ended in 1617. It contains French verse prayers meditating on personal suffering alongside 28 miniatures of the Passion cycle; the parchment margins are elaborately cut in the canivet lace technique that gives the book its popular name. Nine Flemish miniatures from a c. 1450 Bruges Book of Hours were incorporated, and the manuscript bears Marie's coat of arms with the full inscription 'MARIE DE MEDICIS' on folios 15r and 38r. It was catalogued by Lilian Randall in 1989 and is fully digitised on The Digital Walters (W.494).
The Imitation of Christ (De imitatione Christi)
De imitatione Christi
The most widely read Christian devotional work after the Bible, composed c. 1418–1427 by Thomas à Kempis at the Augustinian monastery of Mount Saint Agnes near Zwolle. Hundreds of printed editions appeared across Europe before 1600; French translations were in print from 1488 (Toulouse) and 1493 (Paris), and the text was standard reading in every Jesuit novitiate, including those that trained the French royal confessors Coton and Caussin. Its four books counsel contempt of worldly vanity, interior self-knowledge, spiritual consolation, and sacramental devotion — an architecture that moves the reader systematically from self-examination to union with Christ. While no single documented ownership record for either Medici queen has been identified, its universal penetration of Catholic court culture across two centuries makes its presence in any royal household effectively certain.