In 1500 was founded, and in 1508 was opened, the university of Alcalá de Henares, which, fostered by Cardinal Jimenes, at whose sole expense it was raised, attained a great pitch of outward magnificence and internal worth. At one time 7000 students met within its walls. In 1836 the university was removed to Madrid, and the costly buildings were left vacant. In the hopes of supplanting the romances generally found in the hands of the young, Jimenes caused to be published religious treatises by himself and others. He revived also the Mozarabic liturgy, and endowed a chapel at Toledo, in which it was to be used. But his most famous literary service was the printing at Alcalá (in Latin _Complutum_) of the Complutensian Polyglott, the first edition of the Christian Scriptures in the original text. In this work, on which he is said to have expended half a million of ducats, the cardinal was aided by the celebrated Stunica (D. Lopez de Zuñiga), the Greek scholar Nuñez de Guzman (Pincianus), the Hebraist Vergara, and the humanist Nebrija, by a Cretan Greek Demetrius Ducas, and by three Jewish converts, of whom Zamora edited the Targum to the Pentateuch. The other Targums are not included. In the Old Testament Jerome's version stands between the Greek and Hebrew. The synagogue and the Eastern church, as the preface expresses it, are set like the thieves on this side and on that, with Jesus (that is, the Roman Church) in the midst. The text occupies five volumes, and a sixth contains a Hebrew lexicon, &c. The work commenced in 1502. The New Testament was finished in January 1514, and the whole in April 1517. It was dedicated to Leo X., and was reprinted in 1572 by the Antwerp firm of Plantin, after revision by Benito Arias Montano at the expense of Philip II. The second edition is known as the _Biblia Regia_ or _Filipina_. The work by Alvaro Gomez de Castro, _De Rebus Gestis Francisci Ximenii_ (folio, 1659, Alcalá), is the quarry whence have come the materials for biographies of Jimenes--in Spanish by Robles (1604) and Quintanilla (1633); in French by Baudier (1635), Marsollier (1684), Flèchier (1694) and Richard (1704); in German by Hefele (1844, translated into English by Canon Dalton, 1860) and Havemann (1848); and in English by Barrett (1813). See also Prescott's _Ferdinand and Isabella_; _Revue des Deux Mondes_ (May 1841) and _Mém. de l'Acad. d'hist. de Madrid_, vol. iv.