For many years the prayer was popularly believed to have been composed by Saint Ignatius of Loyola, as he puts it at the beginning of his "Spiritual Exercises" and often refers to it. In the first edition of the "Spiritual Exercises" Ignatius merely mentions it, evidently supposing that the reader would know it. In later editions, it was printed in full. It was by assuming that everything in the book was written by Ignatius that it came to be looked upon as his composition. On this account the prayer is sometimes referred to as the "Aspirations of St. Ignatius Loyola".