Ignatius of Loyola
1491 — 1556
A courtier and soldier whose leg was shattered by a cannonball at Pamplona in 1521, forcing a long convalescence where, starved of romance novels, he read the lives of the saints instead. The contrast between the hollow aftertaste of worldly daydreams and the lasting joy of imagining saintly lives sparked his conversion. He laid down his sword at Montserrat, spent months in a cave at Manresa writing the 'Spiritual Exercises', and went on to found the Society of Jesus — an order vowed, uniquely, to go wherever the Pope directed.