monasteries of Spain. Thereupon a Bull was sought from Alexander VI in 1494, by which Cisneros was empowered to visit and set in order all the regulars of Spain; and he inaugurated the most drastic reformation, perhaps, that Religious Houses ever sustained. His action was in general submitted to; but his own Order, which was the worst of all, resisted strenuously, and obtained a Bull of prohibition against him. On further information the Pope annulled this, and the work went on. The monasteries were disciplined, their "privileges" burned, and their rents and heritages taken away and given to parishes, hospitals, &c. A large number of monks who were scandalous evil-livers, and who seemed irreformable, were deported to Morocco, and the work was complete. With the seculars Cisneros was less successful. But by degrees the regulars reacted healthfully upon them; Bishops and provincial synods took them in hand; and the earlier Inquisitors, especially Adrian of Utrecht, did much to put away abuses amongst them. Without doubt, therefore, the moral state of the Spanish clergy in the sixteenth century, especially that of the monks and friars, was immeasurably superior to that of the clergy in any other part of Western Christendom.
Moreover, the purging of the Spanish clergy had been accompanied, or followed, by a revival of learning. Ximenez was a scholar and a munificent patron of scholarship; and under his fostering care the University of Alcalä had become famous throughout Europe as a centre of theological and humane learning. The Cretan Demetrios Ducas taught Greek; Alfonso de Zamora, Pablo Coronel, and Alfonso de Alcalâ were expert Hebraists; and amongst other scholars there were the two Vergaras, Lorenzo Balbo, and Alfonso de Nebrija. The greatest monument of the liberality and enterprise of Ximenez was the famous Complutensian Polyglott, which was in preparation at the very time when Erasmus was working at the first edition of his Greek Testament, though it did not begin to appear till 1520.
These facts have no little bearing upon the way in which the writings of Erasmus were received in Spain. To some he was a literary colleague whom they with all the world were proud to honour: to others he was a rival, whose work was to be depreciated wherever possible. Nor was it difficult to do this; for his satirical writings against clerical abuses really did not apply to Spain. Elsewhere, all good men were agreed in corn-batting the evils against which he wrote. In Spain, the earnestness of his crusade was easily overlooked by those who had not lived abroad; on the other hand, nowhere was there so keen a scent for heresy. His liberal thought, and his ridicule of religious customs which, however liable to abuse, were in themselves capable of justification, seemed most dangerous to the orthodox Spanish mind; and only the more large-hearted were able to discern the genuine depth of his piety.
Nowhere, therefore, did Erasmus' writings rouse such feelings as in Spain. Diego Lopez de Stüniga and Sancho Carranza de Miranda
