In 1491, there was born to a family of noble Basques in the Guipúzcoan castle of Loyola another mystic instrument of the Spanish will. Iñigo Lopez de Recalde had the crude upbringing of the gentlemen of his race. He learned to write Castilian; he served in the Court of the Catholic Kings; and he became a soldier. He was a good soldier and the eyes of his superiors were on him. At the age of thirty he took part in the defense against the French of Pampeluna, capital of Navarre. A cannon ball shattered his leg. During the long convalescence, grace came to the Basque captain. He renounced worldly arms and took the staff and habit of a religious beggar. He pilgrimaged to Rome and to Jerusalem. At thirty-three, he began to study Latin. His austerity and that of a few comrades whom he had attracted and whom he held for life brought him the usual displeasure of the Holy Office who discouraged any swerving, even in the path of piety, from the common norm. Loyola met distrust in the University of Alcalá: on his arrival at Salamanca, he was jailed on general suspicion of being either too holy or a fraud. Thence, still seeking theology, he went to Paris and to London. Everywhere he was coldly received, and forbidden to speak on religious topics. He was forty: he had abandoned a career of arms: he was not even a priest. But he had friends: they formed a band of seven including another Basque, Francisco Xavier, a Frenchman and a Portuguese. In 1534, they took a private vow of chastity, poverty and devotion. Three years later, Loyola was ordained a priest. Since his conversion at the age of thirty, eighteen years had passed, and they had been for him a constant wrack of suspicion and of impediment to his purpose. He waited eighteen more months ere he judged himself worthy to say Mass. And not until then did he put forth his plan of a Company of Jesus--a cohort of religious soldiers--to defend Christ in the world and to spread Him. Pope Paul III recognized the Order in 1540. Loyola against his will was elected General in 1541. Like its name, the _Compañía de Jesús_ was military in form and method. One year before Loyola’s conversion at Pampeluna, Martin Luther had burned the Papal bull of excommunication. Europe made this simultaneous gesture of antithesis. The north lurched from the medieval Body: and Spain took its fate unto herself, girded her loins to save and spread the Church. Born to war, converted in an experience of war, surrounded by the strife of faction, Loyola never ceased to be a soldier. He conceived Christianity in martial terms. The Church needed defense and aggrandizement. The nature of the man’s career and the will of his nation shaped the Company of Jesus.