Anima Christi

Anima Christi is frequently misattributed to Ignatius of Loyola, the sixteenth-century founder of the Jesuits, because he placed it at the very opening of his highly influential Spiritual Exercises, but manuscript evidence shows versions of the prayer circulating in Europe well before Ignatius's time, with some scholars tracing elements of its imagery back to the fourteenth century or earlier among texts of uncertain and probably composite authorship. Its structure is a sequence of short petitions, each asking to be sanctified, made drunk, hidden, protected or defended by some aspect of Christ, his soul, body, blood, wounds and passion, before closing with a request never to be separated from him and to be called into his presence at death, imagery scholars of medieval devotion connect to a broader late-medieval tradition of intensely physical, wound-focused meditation on Christ's passion.

Ignatius's decision to place an already-existing prayer, rather than one of his own composition, at the head of his Exercises has itself been read by historians of spirituality as evidence of how thoroughly this prayer had already become associated with entering a period of intensive spiritual retreat and self-examination well before the Jesuits existed as an order.

In ordinary Catholic devotional use outside the Spiritual Exercises, Anima Christi is most commonly prayed silently after receiving communion, functioning as a personal meditation on union with Christ during the period immediately following reception rather than as public liturgical text spoken aloud during the Mass itself. This distinguishes it functionally from prayers like the Collect for Purity, which are spoken by or on behalf of the whole congregation as part of the fixed liturgical order, since Anima Christi's use is largely a matter of personal devotional custom layered on top of the official liturgy rather than a required element of it. Its intensely physical, almost visceral imagery, being washed in Christ's blood or hidden within his wounds, has made it a frequent example cited in discussions of affective, emotionally engaged medieval and early modern Catholic devotion, contrasted with more restrained or doctrinally worded prayers from the same general period.

Musical settings of the prayer, particularly a well-known melody often used in contemporary Catholic worship, have also given Anima Christi a life as a hymn sung congregationally, in addition to its older role as a text of silent personal recitation, broadening its use well beyond the private post-communion meditation Ignatius originally recommended.