Restored to health in 1561, he was summoned to Rome and named Vicar-General of the Company of Jesus. Let it never be forgotten that, while the Borgia Pontiffs paved the way for, Padre Francisco de Borja governed the Jesuits throughout the world while the General Padre Jago de Laynez was present at, the Œcumenical of Trent. The connection between the House of Borgia and the Tridentine Decrees is of enormous significance. Here, at last, was the General Council for the Reformation of the Holy Roman Church, summoned and legally constituted by lawful authority. For years, self-seeking malcontents, ecclesiastical and royal, had howled for it. Now, it was come: but the German schism was an accomplished fact. The cry had gone through Christendom that Rome was effete, corrupt, on the verge of decay and dissolution. And lo, She arose in Her strength, and cut away the parasitic ulcers that long had blurred with open wounds Her contours; refurbished spiritual arms long rusted; set Her house in order; and was ready again, like a giant refreshed, for Her interminable affray. The Barque of Peter went into dock. The Garden of Souls was weeded. The Council of Trent reformed the Holy Roman Church: and a Borgia, as General’s deputy, was ruling the Company of Jesus in all the world. During four years, Padre Francisco was Vicar-General in Rome. He preached often in the Spanish church of San Giuseppe on Via del Monserrato. The Religion of Padre Iñigo de Loyola endured one of its numerous phases of attack. In this world, things being as they are, to such an institution a liability to disesteem is inevitable. Persecutors and calumniators arose; and Padre Francisco showed a talent for successful defence. Having completely crushed himself, he could bring to his cause an amount of irresistible force of which the ordinary man, distracted by the whimsy interests of this and that, is altogether unaware. [Illustration: _Saint Francis Borgia._] His behaviour, in one of those cases with which the Holy Roman Church occasionally shocks the world, is quite remarkable. His son Don Alvaro de Borja, who was about the age of twenty-seven years, and Ambassador of Spain in Rome, desired to marry Doña Laniparte de Almansa y Borja, daughter of his own sister Doña Juana, and of the age of about fourteen years. Padre Francisco refused to countenance a marriage between his grand-daughter and his son, between uncle and niece: refused to ask the Pope’s Holiness for the necessary dispensation. Whereupon, Don Alvaro approached the Lord Pius P.P. IV directly, in his capacity of ambassador, and obtained the dispensation; while the Pope scolded Padre Francisco for his conduct in the matter.