Avarice stimulated zeal.Zeal consecrated avarice.Proselytes and gold mines were sought with equal ardour.In the very year in which the Saxons, maddened by the exactions of Rome, broke loose from her yoke, the Spaniards, under the authority of Rome, made themselves masters of the empire and of the treasures of Montezuma.Thus Catholicism which, in the public mind of Northern Europe, was associated with spoliation and oppression, was in the public mind of Spain associated with liberty, victory, dominion, wealth, and glory.
It is not, therefore, strange that the effect of the great outbreak of Protestantism in one part of Christendom should have been to produce an equally violent outbreak of Catholic zeal in another.Two reformations were pushed on at once with equal energy and effect, a reformation of doctrine in the North, a reformation of manners and discipline in the South.In the course of a single generation, the whole spirit of the Church of Rome underwent a change.From the halls of the Vatican to the most secluded hermitage of the Apennines, the great revival was everywhere felt and seen.All the institutions anciently devised for the propagation and defence of the faith were furbished up and made efficient.Fresh engines of still more formidable power were constructed.Everywhere old religious communities were remodelled and new religious communities called into existence.
Within a year after the death of Leo, the order of Camaldoli was purified.The Capuchins restored the old Franciscan discipline, the midnight prayer and the life of silence.The Barnabites and the society of Somasca devoted themselves to the relief and education of the poor.To the Theatine order a still higher interest belongs.Its great object was the same with that of our early Methodists, namely to supply the deficiencies of the parochial clergy.The Church of Rome, wiser than the Church of England, gave every countenance to the good work.The members of the new brotherhood preached to great multitudes in the streets and in the fields, prayed by the beds of the sick, and administered the last sacraments to the dying.Foremost among them in zeal and devotion was Gian Pietro Caraffa, afterwards Pope Paul the Fourth.In the convent of the Theatines at Venice, under the eye of Caraffa, a Spanish gentleman took up his abode, tended the poor in the hospitals, went about in rags, starved himself almost to death, and often sallied into the streets, mounted on stones, and, waving his hat to invite the passers-by, began to preach in a strange jargon of mingled Castilian and Tuscan.The Theatines were among the most zealous and rigid of men; but to this enthusiastic neophyte their discipline seemed lax, and their movements sluggish; for his own mind, naturally passionate and imaginative, had passed through a training which had given to all its peculiarities a morbid intensity and energy.
In his early life he had been the very prototype of the hero of Cervantes.The single study of the young Hidalgo had been chivalrous romance; and his existence had been one gorgeous day-dream of princesses rescued and infidels subdued.He had chosen a Dulcinea, "no countess, no duchess,"--these are his own words,--"but one of far higher station"; and he flattered himself with the hope of laying at her feet the keys of Moorish castles and the jewelled turbans of Asiatic kings.In the midst of these visions of martial glory and prosperous love, a severe wound stretched him on a bed of sickness.His constitution was shattered and he was doomed to be a cripple for life.The palm of strength, grace, and skill in knightly exercises, was no longer for him.He could no longer hope to strike down gigantic soldans, or to find favour in the sight of beautiful women.A new vision then arose in his mind, and mingled itself with his old delusions in a manner which to most Englishmen must seem singular, but which those who know how close was the union between religion and chivalry in Spain will be at no loss to understand.He would still be a soldier; he would still be a knight errant; but the soldier and knight errant of the spouse of Christ.He would smite the Great Red Dragon.He would be the champion of the Woman clothed with the Sun.He would break the charm under which false prophets held the souls of men in bondage.His restless spirit led him to the Syrian deserts, and to the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre.Thence he wandered back to the farthest West, and astonished the convents of Spain and the schools of France by his penances and vigils.The same lively imagination which had been employed in picturing the tumult of unreal battles, and the charms of unreal queens, now peopled his solitude with saints and angels.The Holy Virgin descended to commune with him.He saw the Saviour face to face with the eye of flesh.Even those mysteries of religion which are the hardest trial of faith were in his case palpable to sight.It is difficult to relate without a pitying smile that, in the sacrifice of the mass, he saw transubstantiation take place, and that, as he stood praying on the steps of the Church of St.
Dominic, he saw the Trinity in Unity, and wept aloud with joy and wonder.Such was the celebrated Ignatius Loyola, who, in the great Catholic reaction, bore the same part which Luther bore in the great Protestant movement.