Valerio became one of the apostles of the doctrines of Luther and the other reformers.[31] 'It was not in their own writings that he had learned these. He had derived them directly from the Holy Scriptures. Those sacred books, which, according to some, are the source of such various doctrines, then produced in every country of Christendom the same faith and the same life.' He soon began to diffuse around him the light he had received. People were astonished at hearing this young layman, who had recently made one of every party of pleasure, speaking with so much fervor. 'From whom do you hold your commission?' asked some one. 'From God himself,' replied he, 'who enlightens us with his Holy Spirit, and does not consider whether his messenger is a priest or a monk.' [Sidenote: JOHN DE VERGARA.] Valerio was not the only one to awaken from sleep. A literary movement in the path opened by Erasmus had, as we have already said, prepared the way of the Gospel in Spain. One of its chiefs was John de Vergara, canon of Toledo, who had been secretary to Cardinal Ximenes. An accomplished Greek and Hebrew scholar, he had pointed out some errors in the Vulgate; and he was one of the editors of the Polyglot of Alcala. 'With what pleasure do I learn,' wrote the scholar of Rotterdam to him in 1527, 'that the study of languages and of literature is flourishing in that Spain which was of old the fruitful mother of the greatest geniuses.' John de Vergara had a brother named Francis, a professor of Greek literature at Complutum (the present Alcala de Henares). Alcala, near Madrid, the seat of the foremost university in the kingdom next to Salamanca, was at this epoch a centre of intelligence, and had acquired a European renown. A breath of freedom and life seemed to have passed over it. John and Francis, with another Spaniard, Bernardin de Tobar, apparently their brother, put forth their united efforts to revive the pursuit of literature in their native land, and kindled bright hopes in the breast of the prince of the schools. Calling to mind, as was his wont, the stories of ancient times, Erasmus compared these three friends of letters to Geryon, king of the Balearic Islands, the most powerful of men, of whom the poets had made a giant with three bodies. 'Spain,' said he, 'has once more its Geryon, with three bodies but one spirit, and the happiest anticipations are excited in our minds.'[32] The modern Geryon, however, failed to win the honor of the triumph promised by Erasmus. In the Inquisition he met the Hercules who vanquished him. These eminent men had found their way through the love of learning to the love of the Gospel; and John had carried his audacity to such a pitch that he aimed at correcting the Vulgate. Hereupon certain monks who knew nothing of Latin beyond the jargon of the schools raised the alarm. John and Tobar were arrested by the inquisitors of Toledo, cast into a dungeon, and called upon to renounce the _heresies_ of Luther. This