Ximenes de Cisneros better known, perhaps, under his first name alone, was the scion of an ancient but decayed family and destined from his youth for the Church. He studied at the University of Salamanca and evinced marked ability. After a stay in Rome, the best field for preferment, he returned to Spain with the papal promise of the first vacant benefice in the See of Toledo. The archbishop had other views, however, and when Ximenes claimed the cure of Uceda, he was sent to prison in its fortress and not to the presbytery. For six years Ximenes asserted his pretensions unflinchingly and was at last nominated, when he exchanged to a chaplaincy in another diocese, that of Siguenza, where he continued his theological studies and acquired Hebrew and Chaldee. Here he came under the observation of the Bishop Mendoza, who afterwards became Cardinal Primate of Spain, and who enjoyed the unbounded confidence of Queen Isabella. Mendoza when invited to recommend to her a new confessor, in succession to Talavera on his translation to the See of Granada, fixed upon Ximenes of whom he had never lost sight since their first acquaintance at Siguenza. Ximenes, meanwhile, had become more and more devoted to his sacred calling. His marked business aptitudes had gained for him the post of steward to a great nobleman, the Conde de Cifuentes, who had been taken prisoner by the Moors. But secular concerns were distasteful to him and Ximenes resigned his charge. His naturally austere and contemplative disposition had deepened into stern fanatical enthusiasm and he resolved to devote himself more absolutely to the service of the Church. He entered the Franciscan order, threw up all his benefices and employments, and became a simple novice in the monastery of San Juan de los Reyes in Toledo, where his cloister life was signalised by extreme severity and self-mortification. He wore haircloth next his skin, slept on the stone floor with a wooden pillow under his head, tortured himself with continual fasts and vigils, and flogged himself perpetually. At last he became a professed monk, and because of the fame of his exemplary piety, great crowds were attracted to his confessional. He shrank now from the popular favour and retired to a lonely convent in a far off forest, where he built himself a small hermitage with his own hands and where he passed days and nights in solemn abstraction and unceasing prayer, living like the ancient anchorites on the green herbs he gathered and drinking water from the running streams. Self centred and pondering deeply on spiritual concerns, constantly in a state of mental exaltation and ecstasy, he saw visions and dreamed dreams, believing himself to be in close communication with celestial agencies and was no doubt on the eve of going mad, when his superiors ordered him to reside in the convent of Salceda, where he became charged with its administration and management, and was forced to exercise his powerful mind for the