It was a combination to leave its mark on the spiritual life of those around him; the more that the admiration which his character inspired in the Queen was soon to widen his sphere of action. At the beginning of the year 1495 Pedro Gonsález de Mendoza died. The Queen had visited him during the last days of his illness and consulted him as to a fitting successor in the Primacy; on which the old Cardinal frankly advised her not to give the office to any man of great family or wealth, lest he should be tempted to use it for his own ends. Instead he suggested the humble Franciscan friar, whose life to both their minds represented the highest earthly fulfilment of Christianity. Isabel joyfully agreed, refusing to yield to Ferdinand’s wish that the honour should go to his own illegitimate son, Alfonso, Archbishop of Saragossa. Knowing her confessor’s character, she sent secretly to Rome for the bull of nomination. When it arrived, she handed it to him; but Cisneros, reading the opening address, “To our venerable brother, Fra Ximenes de Cisneros, Archbishop-elect of Toledo,” pushed it away, saying “Señora, this cannot be meant for me.” He quitted the royal presence abruptly and hastened from Madrid, replying to all appeals and arguments that he did not feel himself worthy to enter on so high an office. It was not till some six months later, on the receipt of another bull from Rome, commanding him to accept the archbishopric without delay, that the friar withdrew his opposition. Never had the Spanish Church witnessed a more curious transformation. The humble Observant had become an ecclesiastical prince, the holder of the see in Christendom coveted, according to contemporaries, next to Rome itself. Henceforth his annual revenue would amount to over 80,000 ducats a year, the value of the patronage at his disposal far exceed that sum, his military retainers would make a small army, his judicial rights over his diocese were to be those of a viceroy. Warned by the Pope that it befitted the Primate of Castile to maintain a certain state and dignity, Cisneros grimly adopted the splendour of his predecessor’s régime, tolerating as a necessary evil the rich furniture and food, the household of young nobles, and the velvet and silk of his outward clothing, that to many a priest of the day would have filled the foreground of the picture. Some indeed believed that the Archbishop had shed the fine ideals of the monk; and once in his presence a Franciscan boldly preached to this effect. Cisneros listened in silence; but after the service was over took his critic apart and, drawing aside the gorgeous vestment in which he was clothed, showed beneath it the friar’s rough woollen shirt. This, with the frugal dishes, that were his own portion from his loaded tables, and the hard straw mattress that shamed his canopied bed, were the realities of Ximenes’s material life in the midst of all his glory.