with the utmost vigour those scholars who went back to the Hebrew original. Such Hebrew scholars he called “Jews,” a name that smelt of fire in that age. (Against Luis de León the accusation was actually brought of being a Jew, and descended from Jews.) If it was shown that the Hebrew text differed from the Vulgate, Castro answered that the Hebrew text had been altered by the “Jews” since the translation had been made. His position was thus impregnable. He would listen to no arguments, but shouted down his opponents. In a narrow age he might persuade himself that in thus asserting his opinions he was doing good service to the Church. His influence was without doubt great, and it needed no little courage to oppose him. Luis de León, however, was not a man to lie flat and love Setebos. He was frank and open by nature, even to rashness and indiscretion, and in his eagerness for reform was not afraid of making enemies. When he took his degree he attacked certain abuses in a Latin speech of Ciceronian violence, and on another occasion he publicly upbraided the Dominicans with the heresies of their order, and the thrust seems to have gone home, for he himself says that they felt it keenly, “_sintieronse fieramente_.” Above all, he had no sympathy with pedantry and intolerance. It was impossible that two men of characters so different should not come into collision, and in fact the discussions between professors were often marked by boisterous disputes and all the venom of ill-feeling and discourtesy that sometimes strangely enough creeps into the daily life of the learned. On one occasion Luis de León threatened to have Castro’s book--a commentary on Isaiah--burnt by the Inquisition. On this book Castro had spent much trouble and much money, and the threat cut him to the quick, so that he answered that he would have Luis de León himself burnt. And such threats were not empty words, or the thoughtless bickering of an idle hour. That Luis de León had many malignant enemies was amply shown at his trial. III.--IN A VALLADOLID DUNGEON.