Sixtus IV had bestowed upon him the reversionary grant of the first benefice which should fall vacant in Spain. This proved to be Uceda; and, on the demise of the incumbent, he produced his letters, and took possession with such promptitude and despatch that he baffled the Archbishop of Toledo, who considered the benefice to be in his gift, and had promised it to one of his dependents. Like Richelieu he took the field in person, and in spite of the jealousy of the King, the dissensions of the generals, and the mutiny of the soldiers, he succeeded in taking the town of Oran on the coast of Barbary; the first success of any moment which the Spanish army could boast in a campaign of four years’ duration. He devoted himself, in after-life, to the encouragement of popular education and the advancement of higher learning in no less degree than his brother Cardinals before named. He founded a school for the education of the daughters of the poorer nobility, and subsequently provided them with marriage-portions. He established the University of Alcala, richly endowed it, and filled its professorial chairs with the most distinguished learned men of Europe. Here he undertook the magnificent work, known as the Complutensian Bible. It was the first Polyglott Bible ever published, and as such affords a striking contrast to the otherwise undeviating opposition which Spain has offered to the spread of true Christianity and the circulation of the Scriptures. It should, however, be remembered that even this was a sealed book to the laity, since it did not comprise a version in the vernacular. It contained the Old Testament in the Hebrew, the Septuagint, the Vulgate of St. Jerome, and the Chaldee Paraphrase with Latin translations, and the New Testament in the Greek and Vulgate. It was the work of fifteen years, and when the last volume was brought to Ximenes, shortly before his death, he exclaimed: “Many high and difficult matters have I carried on for the state, yet is there nothing which I have done, that deserves higher congratulations than this edition of the Scriptures—the fountain-head of our holy religion, whence may flow purer streams of theology than those which have been turned off from it.” The whole cost of the work, fifty thousand gold crowns, was defrayed by Ximenes.