CHAPTER XII

SALMERÓN, RODRIGUEZ AND BOBADILLA

THE fourth disciple was Alfonso Salmerón, of Toledo. He was born in September, 1515, and in due course went up to the University of Alcalá. He studied Latin, Greek and philosophy, and then went with Lainez on to Paris in order to take a course in theology. As with the other early Fathers, little or nothing is told of his youth or of his personal traits. In after life his most noted service was the part he played at the Council of Trent. His learning was unquestionable, and he seems to have been somewhat of an orator; it is said that his wits were keen, his voice agreeable, his gestures dignified, and his command of language copious. With reference to the Council of Trent, Polanco says:

When Fathers Lainez and Salmerón, at the request of the papal Legates, delivered their opinions before the assembled theologians [the subject under discussion was Justification] they did so well (by God's help) that they found extraordinary favor with the Legates and all the prelates and theologians. The Spanish bishops, in particular, who had previously looked askance at them, changed their minds and could not see enough of them.

For the benefit of any reader more interested in poetry than theology, I had better add that when Vittoria Colonna besought Ignatius to send one of the fathers to Ferrara, where she could hear him preach, Salmerón was chosen to go, and preached to her great satisfaction. These were peaceful undertakings, but Salmerón's life did not lack its

share of adventure. He and Father Broët were sent on a mad expedition to Ireland, where they ran the risk of summary execution, in the days when Henry VIII was raging against the Pope and his emissaries. I shall return to this later.

Salmerón's letters, like those of the others, confine themselves strictly to business, but the language of the ballot he cast in favor of Ignatius, April 4, 1541, when voting for the first general, reveals the tenderer side of these austere Christians. In every one of the first Fathers, I believe, may be found touches of early Franciscan love and simplicity, but they must be sought diligently, turning over many leaves, as one searches for the first May flowers in March.

I, Alfonso Salmerón, a most unworthy member of the Society, after praying to God and reflecting maturely over the matter to the best of my judgment, choose and proclaim as General and Superior for myself and for the whole Society, Don Ignatius Loyola, who according to the wisdom given to him of God begot us in Christ and fed his little ones on milk, but now that we are grown up in Christ he feeds us with the strong meat of obedience, and guides us through the rich pastures of Paradise to the fountain of eternal life, so that when he shall deliver his little flock to Jesus Christ, that great Shepherd of the sheep, we may truthfully say, "We are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand," and he, verily, may say, "Lord, of them which thou gavest me, have I lost none." May Jesus himself, the good Shepherd, deign to grant this unto us. Amen. This is my vote.

I also quote a minute of thanksgiving entered in a letter to Loyola after recovery from an illness while at the Council of Trent:

May the Lord be always blessed and praised for the great mercies He has deigned to confer upon me in this illness, in that, besides having favored me with the Sacraments of the

Church and such goodly company [Lainez?], He has comforted me in the extremity to which I was come, bringing my will, to my great content and joy, into conformity with His holy will, and giving me a keen realization of my sins and shortcomings, and a lively hope in the greatness of His compassion and mercy, by which He has been pleased, contrary to the expectations of the physicians and all—to restore me to life, if I may rightly use this expression. May it please His Divine Majesty that my life may be to His greater service, glory and praise.

The next disciple in order was Simon Rodriguez, a Portuguese. At that time, I believe, the University of Coimbra either did not teach theology or taught it but indifferently well, and the King of Portugal, as I have said, maintained a number of deserving students at the University of Paris, paying their expenses out of his royal purse. Dr. Govea, the principal of Sainte Barbe, had seen to it that his young fellow countrymen should go to his college; and so, Rodriguez, who had won this Prix de Paris, went there, made the acquaintance of Loyola, and touched to the heart by the "immenso hominum salutis desiderio" with which Loyola was on fire, he joined the little band that cared above all things else to serve their God. Of all the first Fathers Rodriguez, perhaps, was the least successful in attaining to the high ideal that Ignatius set before his disciples. Vigorous qualities he must have possessed for when the King of Portugal asked that some Fathers should be sent to India, he was selected to go with Francis Xavier; but on his way through Portugal, waiting for the final preparations of his voyage, he made himself so acceptable to everybody that Ignatius, at the King's request, decided to leave him there at the head of the Jesuit mission. So he stayed; but the decision proved unfortunate, for he brought the affairs of the Society into much confusion. He was of a volatile disposition, and when he wanted to do a thing, he was for doing it at once without waiting for orders. He was impulsive and imprudent, at least it appeared so to fellow members of the Order. He took too lively an interest in the

royal court and its concerns; he lowered the standard of austerity in the matter of physical comfort, he failed sometimes in brotherly love, he neglected discipline, permitting superior and subaltern to be on even footing; he was lax in observing, both for himself and those in authority under him, the vow of obedience, the prime duty of all Jesuits; and he suffered discussions and denials of his prudence right under his nose. But at other times he carried his selfconceit to such a point that he spoke disparagingly of Ignatius, and when the latter disapproved of what he had done or proposed to do, murmured that the general had been governed by motives of ambition. To his more obedient comrades he appeared to be under the dominion of some spirit not of God, whether his own or of the devil, they could not tell. But these defects which seem to have proceeded from instability of purpose, rather than from any deeper fault, belong to a time twenty-five years later than these undergraduate days and did not reveal themselves then; on the contrary, when the little band of disciples left Paris to join Ignatius in Italy, Rodriguez mocked the efforts of his worldly friends, who did all they could to persuade him to turn back, and stuck to his purpose. In his old age he wrote a treatise On the Origin and Progress of the Company. This and his letters show him to have possessed a faithful and loving heart, but no very great intelligence. At any rate, he was not in the least intellectual.

The next among these fishers of men's souls is Nicholas Alfonso, usually called Bobadilla from the name of the little town in Old Castile where he was born, about the year 1507. He says that his parents were very devout Christians, who went regularly to mass and brought him up in the fear of the Lord. He prepared for college at Valladolid, and went to the University of Alcalá, where he took a degree in the arts and philosophy. He then returned to Valladolid to attend lectures at the University there upon Thomas Aquinas, and supported himself by teaching logic. His ambition was to study Greek, Latin and Hebrew and take more advanced courses in literature; in order to do this he went to Paris, where he matriculated in the College of Calviac, near the

Sorbonne. His purse was light, empty probably, and having got wind of Loyola's reputation for helping poor students to a means of livelihood, he sought him out, received aid, and like other serious young men who came within Loyola's magnetic attraction, felt himself drawn to a life of selfconsecration. Under Loyola's exhortations he abandoned the learned languages in favor of a course in dogmatic theology; this he was the more ready to do because he found Paris infected by the Lutheran heresy, and report said that the humanists who cultivated Greek literature were chief among those who inclined to the new ideas. In the jargon of undergraduate Latin he says qui graecizabant lutheranizabant.

Bobadilla in after life did much that called forth great praise. The famous English Cardinal, Reginald Pole, lauded him for the goodly fruits of his labors in Viterbo, "for his preaching, his teaching and the praiseworthy example of his life." Others speak of his vita innocentissima, of his scientia, bonitas, sinceritas et erga Deum fervor, and call him dottissimo e simplicissimo. But in addition to diligence, perseverance and many other virtues, Bobadilla had his faults; he lacked tact, talked over-freely, gave loose rein to his impatience when he should have curbed it, and was too ready to exhibit complacency at his successes and his elevation in the world. Some of these faults showed themselves in Germany. The Emperor had issued a decree known as the Augsburg Interim which from an orthodox point of view was far too favorable to the Protestants; for instance, it granted the priests permission to marry, and to the laity communion in both kinds. Bobadilla lost his temper, and in high indignation, drew up and circulated memorials against it. Partisans of the decree, in their turn, were angry with Bobadilla, and induced the Emperor to issue an order directing him to leave Germany. This was a great vexation to Loyola, always fully alive to the importance of securing the good will of persons in high place. A letter from Father Salmerón, then at the Council of Trent, who was much troubled in spirit by Bobadilla's conduct even before this, also complains of him: