Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 1.djvu/687

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Other names deserve honourable mention. Cardinal Mendoza, Primate of Spain, had lived up to his high duties. Corillo, his predecessor, at the Synod of Aranda in 1473, had laid down twenty-nine chapters of reformation. Talavera, who held the see of Granada, would have converted the Moors by kindness and put into their hands a vernacular Bible, for which he fell under grave suspicion and was censured by Ximenes. Yet this ascetic Franciscan, who had been a secular priest, was himself a lover of learning, not cruel by temperament, though severe with the ungodly as in his own person. He lived like a hermit on the throne of Toledo, which he had accepted only out of obedience to the Pope. In 1494, with the aid of Isabel, against Alexander VTs terrified protestations, he corrected the Observantines with such rigour that thousands fled to Morocco sooner than obey. Of Arabic manuscripts deemed antichristian he made a famous holocaust. He risked his life at Granada in 1499; offered the Moors baptism or death; and brought over many thousands. His services to sacred and secular erudition were perpetuated in the restored University of Alcalä and the Polyglot Bible, first of its kind since Origen's Hexapla. Like Wolsey, the Spanish Cardinal obtained unlimited legatine faculties; he would hear of no exemptions and, being Primate, Grand Inquisitor, and chief of the government, he became irresistible. In two synods, of Alcalä in 1497 and Talavera in 1498, he published his regulations. Spain had been suffering from ruffianly nobles, undisciplined monks, immoral and insolent clerics. Bishops attempted to withstand Queen and Cardinal; they were compelled to give way. The result may be briefly stated. The worst abuses were purged out of the Iberian Church; and while other European clergy were accused of gross licentiousness, the Spanish priests became for the most part virtuous and devout.

As early as 1493 the Benedictine Abbey of Monserrat accepted under compulsion the stricter rule of Valladolid. Its new Abbot, Garcias Cisneros, nephew of the Cardinal, composed a Book of Spiritual Exercises, from which Ignatius of Loyola may have borrowed the title for his very different and much more scientific treatise, when he retired to this convent and was guided by the Benedictine Chanones. As is well known, he received his celebrated wound in fighting the French, who were then at war with the Pope, at the siege of Pampeluna in 1512. The pseudo-Council of Pisa was shortly to be answered by the Fifth of Lateran. In 1511 King and Bishops at Burgos uttered a series of demands which came to this;-that reformation must begin at Rome, the reign of simony end, dispensations no longer make void the law of God; that learning must be encouraged, Councils held at fixed times, residence enforced, pluralities abolished. An unsigned Spanish memorial of the same date is bolder still. It paints in darkest hues the evils tolerated by successive Pontiffs; it proposes sweeping measures which were at last carried into execution by the Council of Trent, aided by