7 From these Spiritual Exercises, whose fame spread very rapidly in the Church, many drew a stimulus to make them run with more alacrity in the paths of sanctity. And among these was one most dear to Us on many grounds, the Venerable St. Charles Borromeo, who as we have mentioned on another occasion, spread their use among the clergy and the people; and by this care and authority enriched them with appropriated rules and directions; and what is more, established a house for the special purpose of cultivating the Ignatian meditations. This house, which he called the Asceterium, was, so far as we know, the first among the many houses of this kind, which, by happy imitation have flourished everywhere. For as the estimation of the Exercises grew continually greater in the Church, there was a marvellous multiplication of these houses, which may be called most opportune places of entertainment, set in the arid desert of the world, wherein the faithful of both sexes are separately recreated and refreshed with spiritual nourishment. And, indeed, after the cruel carnage of the war, which has so bitterly troubled the human family, after so many wounds inflicted on the spiritual and civil prosperity of the peoples, who can count the vast number of those who having seen the fallacious hopes they cherished fail and fade away, clearly understood that earthly things must give place to those of heaven, and, by the most present aid of the Divine Spirit, fled to seek true peace of mind in holy retreats? Let all those remain as a manifest proof, how, whether drawn by the beauty of a more holy and more perfect life, or tossed by the turbid tempests of the time, or moved by the solicitudes of life, or beset by the frauds and fallacies of the world, or fighting against the deadly plague of Rationalism, or allured by the fascination of the senses, withdrawing themselves into those holy houses, have tasted again the peace of solitude, all the sweeter to them because of the heavy labours they have borne, and meditating on heavenly things, have ordered their life in accordance with supernatural lessons.
Source: Mens Nostra (Vatican.va)