p. 1The Dawn

While Henry the VIII. was about to sever England from the Communion of the Faith, and Martin Luther and Calvin were preaching revolt against the Church of Christ, God in His goodness was raising up valiant and holy souls to fight for His cause and to exalt His name. When the holiness of that Church was most denied, He was pleased to give to earth a cloud of saintly witnesses, whose lives have been the best proof that she was still, as ever, spite of the wickedness of many, the unspotted Spouse of her Lord. Among these many saints, who glorified the 16th and 17th centuries, is he whose life forms the subject of these pages.

Our story is cast in Spain—Spain essentially Catholic, where the faith was living and strong, and whose children were to furnish so large a quota to that band of saints who were to make reparation for the scandals of a time of shame. To the north of the gaunt Guadarrama mountains, the ancient city of Segovia is proudly seated, upon a ridge of rock rising high above the lofty table-land of arid Castile. A place for pleasure-seekers in Roman days, a flourishing city under the Arabs, it had grown wealthy after its reconquest by the Christians, as a centre of cloth manufacture which was famous through all Europe. The broad steppes of the Guadarrama range were what the Cotswolds have been for cloth workers of the West of England. They were pasture lands whose countless flocks furnished the raw material for the many looms of the busy city, from which came some of the finest and best cloth of the time. Segovia had been long time a fortress on the frontier, between Christian and Moslem. And next to the many noble descendants of those knights and fighting-men who had borne the brunt of long struggles with the Moors, came, in honour and place, its wealthy manufacturers.

Blood had, too lately, stained its streets in the insurrection of the communeros, by whom the cathedral had been destroyed; but the firm hand of Charles V. had given back internal peace to Spain, and the last of the mediæval cathedrals of Spain was growing out of the ruins of its predecessor, thanks to the liberality of the nobles and burghers. The splendid Alcazar, or Moorish palace, which rises like the forecastle of an ancient galley from the farthest and highest point of the rock, just where it goes sheer down for many a fathom into the ravine below, was then frequently visited by the sovereigns of Spain; and the lofty bell towers of numerous and magnificent parish churches and churches of religious houses, within and without the circuit of the city walls, marked out Segovia as a place where God held His own.

The cyclopean aqueduct of Trajan’s day spans the valley at the end of the city opposite to the Alcazar, and loses itself in the city wall. Beneath the shadows of its many arches is a large suburb of the city; in the time of which we are speaking, a busy quarter where cloth merchants and cloth workers lived. Close beside the eastern limit of the city wall, not far from the gate of St. John, just at the foot of the immense arches of the magnificent Roman work, there lived in the parish of St. Coloma, a fairly well-to-do cloth manufacturer, by name, Diego Rodriguez. He had married a good lady, Mary Gomez de Alvarado, and God had blessed them with the large family of seven boys and four girls.¹1Colmenares, the historian of Segovia, gives their names in the order of their birth:—“Mary, who married Francis Gallego, and whose son became wax chandler to the King (of Spain); Diego; St. Alonso; Manuela, who married Alonso Assenzo, a cloth merchant in Segovia, who removed to Madrid and who appears to have had two daughters, both married in Madrid; Santiago and Ventura, who died unmarried; Juliana and Antonia, who dedicated themselves to God; Melchior, who died unmarried; Gaspar, who married Jane de Coca, and whose sons, Diego and Peter, became curriers, both of whom married and had children; and Balthasar, who died unmarried.” MS. in 4to, Escritores Segovienses, Vol. IV. Archiv. Cathed. Segov.

Both husband and wife were of good Catholic stock, without strain of Moorish or Jewish blood, a privilege then, as now, much esteemed in Spain. They had nothing more at heart than the good bringing-up of their children; and, in fact, the whole family was noted through the city for its piety, and for its frequentation of the Sacraments at a time when Communions were so rare.

The third child, the subject of this biography, was born on the feast of the great patron of Spain, St. James, the 25th of July. The year is not certain, for the baptismal register has never been discovered, but it was most probably in 1531²2The register was sought for, but in vain, at the time of the first process of his Beatification. Parochial books were kept but carelessly, if at all, before the promulgation of the decrees of the Council of Trent, nor at St. Coloma’s was there discovered any register earlier than 1580. V. Nonell. Append. A., p. 643. Marimon and Colin say, “Our Saint was born about 1531.” And this date is adopted in the brief of Beatification. The earliest printed life (circa 1617) gives 1530; while Father Gil, who was one of his Rectors at Majorca, assures us that St. Alonso told him he was born in 1533. MS. Residence S.J., Majorca. But our Saint was then very old and his memory was failing. The Church of St. Coloma (Columba), was destroyed by the fall of its tower in 1818. The walls were rebuilt, but never roofed in, and spite of its holy memories it stands an unsightly ruin, on the opposite side of the aqueduct to the traditional birthplace of our Saint.. The name given at the font was the truly Spanish one of Alonso, as he was always called. At that very time, in face of the dangers that were threatening Holy Church, Ignatius de Loyola was recruiting his little company of Apostles, from some of the noblest spirits of the University of Paris.

Alonso was early, like so many of the saints, marked out by God for His own. Love of Our Blessed Lady seems to have been born with him. Her glories were a favourite topic in his pious home, and he never heard Her name without his eyes sparkling with delight. When still a baby, if he found a print of his heavenly Mother, or a prayer in her honour, lying about, he would clutch it and hide it in his breast; and if anyone sought to take it from him he would burst into tears. His relations noticed, too, that when but a child of four, he often fixed his eyes wide open as if gazing at some object, which was unseen to all the rest, while at the top of his little voice he invoked Our Blessed Lady. He remained so utterly insensible to all around that though they shook and struck him, and even pulled his hair, they failed to rouse him from these strange trances. In after life he told that he used then to see something small as a mustard seed spring from his breast and rise up, ever increasing, to the sky, till it grew as vast as a mighty church, and spreading abroad like a widening cloud, or like an island in the blue, then gradually faded away.

When yet a child Alonso was sent to school, probably with the Franciscans, whose church and convent were on the other side of the open space in which he then lived.³3The claim of the house called St. Alonso’s in the Plaza Azoquejo, the “little square,” to be that in which he was born (v. Month Nov., 1888, p. 364) has many facts in its favour. The Franciscan Convent is now the Royal College of Artillery, and its church is the Military Chapel of that establishment. One difficulty is that the house is described as actually in the Calle San Juan, which can hardly be said of this house, though it is very near to that street. When a boy of ten, two Priests apparently of the Society of Jesus came to Segovia to preach. The Order had only just received in the previous year, 1540, the formal approval of the Vicar of Christ. One of the two was the first companion of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the prayerful Savoyard, B. Peter Favre,⁴4V. Nonell, who proves this statement in App. B, p. 644 seq. Cf. Boero’s Life of B. Peter Favre, Quart. Series, p. 77 seq. who had come into Spain as companion to Dr. Peter Ortiz, the faithful friend of Catherine of Aragon. While staying at Galapagar, a town not far off Segovia, and where the doctor had a benefice, B. Peter, who had acquired Spanish, probably at Paris, evangelized the neighbourhood. Who was his helper we do not know, but it was possibly one of two chaplains of the Infantas of Spain whom the holy apostle received into the Society, John de Aragon and Alvaro Alfonso; or more probably his host, Don Peter Ortiz. For we read that when in Savoy, on his journey with B. Peter, Ortiz had been taken for a Jesuit, because he like Favre wore the dress of a Spanish ecclesiastic.⁵5V. Evid. of Peter Critain in process of B. Favre, Confirm: Cult &c. Rome, 1871, p. 10. Good Diego Rodriguez was only too glad to offer hospitality to the two Fathers; and when their successful mission was over, he invited them, as rest for soul and body, to go and stay in a house which belonged to him in the country. There were hardly any Jesuit foundations at that date, in Spain. Favre and his companion were glad to be able to give some days there to quiet prayer. Not content with entrusting them to the care of his servants, their worthy host sent his little son, Alonso, to wait upon them during their retirement, and to learn holiness from their great example. The boy served them with such a will that they in return taught him his Catechism, the way to say the Rosary, to serve and to hear Mass. Though he could not in after life recall the names of the two Fathers, or any details of their work, he always regarded it “as a special grace to have lived under the same roof with those saints,”⁶6V. Nonell, p. 644, F. Torrens, the saint’s director noted this at the end of the Memorial of St. Alonso, v. MS. Residence S.J., Majorca. and he was fond of recalling this his first meeting with the first Jesuits who had come to Segovia.

“The acquaintance which Diego Rodriguez had made in his own home with the Fathers of the Society of Jesus, and of their mode of life, made him anxious to entrust his sons to them, to be brought up by them and under their wing.”⁷7Marimon, Lib. I., § 3.

To the new University of Alcalá, which the saintly Franciscan Cardinal Ximenes de Cisneros had lately called into being, Father Simon Rodriguez—one of the six first of St. Ignatius’ companions—sent from Coimbra Brother Peter Villanueva to continue his studies there. Peter was emphatically one of those whose foolishness confounds the wisdom of the world. Short, dark, ungainly and uneducated, Peter was the son of poor tenants of a Count of Villanueva, from whose estate he borrowed his name. He had been Sacristan to a small church at Placencia, and had gone to Rome to further some suit ecclesiastical which the priest who employed him had in hand. There he came to know St. Ignatius, who, with his superhuman knowledge of character, saw what a pearl was hidden under so rough an outside. He tested his humility by severe trials, and then sent him to the University of Coimbra to be educated.

At Alcalá, where he arrived in 1543, though a mere beginner in human learning, and lodged out of charity in a room of his aged master, so great was the spiritual light vouchsafed to him, that the most learned and best men in the University came to seek counsel and guidance at his hands. But specially wonderful was the reform which he wrought among the students of the college to which he was attached, nearly all of whom became religious. The wonderful work which this simple brother was doing gave promise of a great increase, if a regular college of the Society was founded in the University town. B. Favre was then Superior over the whole order in Spain, and he frequently came to preach before the two Infantas of Spain, the daughters of Charles V., whose residence was, at the time, in Alcalá. Encouraged by their promise of help, B. Peter ordered Villanueva to look out for some place where he could receive two scholastics and a lay brother who were on their way from Coimbra. He did find a house, but so wretched that its owner was glad to let him have it for nothing, if only he would clean it out and set it in order.

Did Favre remember his kind host of Segovia, and was it from him that Diego Rodriguez learnt that the Society had begun a college at Alcalá? At all events, as soon as Diego heard of the new foundation, he hastened to send his two eldest sons, Diego and Alonso, to the University, confiding them to the care of Villanueva. If the two boys lived in the temporary college, they would have had poor lodgings and poor board, for everything was wanting there; though the courage and holiness of the Superior made all bear their hardships bravely, and, on a soul so pure as that of St. Alonso, lessons in virtue from such a master as Villanueva must have produced great fruit. But before a twelvemonth had run, a terrible trial came on the two students: they lost their father, and both were recalled home.⁸8The last signature extant of Diego Rodriguez, the father, was of August 26, 1545, v. Nonell, p. 36. Mary Gomez, with her large family to support and the business to conduct, needed a helping hand. Diego, the eldest son, on whose education and for whose degrees so much had been spent, had made such progress in his studies, and had, no doubt, shown such promise, that it was decided that he should continue his education, and study for the law. Alonso, who had but just begun his college course, was to stay at home and learn the business. He would then have been about fifteen. This was an early age at which to have the burden of supporting his family; so his mother continued to act as the head of the firm till Alonso reached his twenty-third year, though we meet with Alonso’s signature alone as early as 1552.⁹9In 1554, the name of his brother Ventura, who was at least three years younger than Alonso, appears conjointly with his as witness to some transactions of his mother. MS. in Archiv. Segov. Possibly Santiago, the next brother to our Saint, was then dead.

The division of the property consequent on the death of the father, the number of the children, and, above all, the absence of the experienced head who had hitherto conducted the business, made the house in the “Little Square” feel somewhat the pinch of want. Diego, the eldest son, passed from the University of Alcalá, after a few years,¹⁰10Covarruvias was named Archbishop of St. Domingo in 1549. If he left his chair in consequence, Diego must have gone to Salamanca some time before that date. to that of Salamanca, where he studied law under Covarruvias, the friend and patron of St. Teresa, one of the first legists of his time, and, in after years, Bishop of Segovia. Diego took his law degree, and then went to plead at the bar at Seville, where he appears to have been successful, but he never forgot the lessons of Father Villanueva, and led a very holy life. In fact, later on in life, he grew disgusted with the turmoil and strife of the Courts, left the bar and devoted himself to writing a valuable work on wills.¹¹11A copy of this rare work is in the British Museum. He married a girl of good family, of the name of Mary Izcara, and had a family of his own to support.

Whatever was the cause, affairs began to go from bad to worse. The constant wars in which the Emperor Charles V. involved Spain, the number of Spaniards drafted off to fill up the gaps in his armies, the immense emigration to the new world, and, still more than all this, the fiscal measures of the government, had probably their share in these domestic difficulties. In accordance with the economic ideas of the time, the Cortes, in 1552, forbade the export of cloth, as well as of all spun and combed wool; and heavy duties were levied on the exportation of all manufactured goods, and on the importation of raw materials. The necessary result was the destruction of home manufactories; and fashion consummated the ruin of national prosperity by refusing to wear any but foreign materials.¹²12V. Dyer’s Modern Europe, London, 1861, Vol. II., p. 403.

Partly in deference to his mother’s wishes and to those of his relations, and partly in the hope that the dower of his bride would enable him to retrieve his fortune, Alonso, in 1557,¹³13V. Bolland, p. 606, F. married Mary Suarez. She was from the neighbouring walled town of Pedraza, which, with its feudal castle of the great House of Velasco, is on the sierras of the Guadarrama mountains. Alonso was then twenty-six. Mary was of his own station in life, probably the daughter of some well-to-do grazier, and of an excellent family and very pious. The young couple went to live in the Calle del Mercado—Market Street—then one of the busiest parts of the city, where to this day there is a wide, open space, which served for the wool and cloth fairs, near to the old parish church of St. Eulalia.¹⁴14Nonell, p. 42. St. Eulalia was a virgin martyr of Merida. The picturesque old houses with their colonnades, with the grand form of the mountains rising above them, are as they were in the days of the Saint; but tradition is silent as to which was his new home.

St. Ignatius de Loyola had been to Segovia, and he had still, at the time of which we write, many acquaintances in that city. For years the room where he had lodged was venerated as a holy place. Among his most intimate friends was Don Lewis Mendoza, a minor canon of the cathedral, who had known him intimately at Rome, and had given him for the Society a church and a garden at Tivoli, and had kept up a long correspondence with him ever since. Another was the Archpriest of the Cathedral, Don Ferdinand de Solier, a very close friend of the saint. The new bishop, a friar of the order of St. Jerome, Fray Francis de Benavides, was particularly anxious to have a college of the Society in his city, not only to procure for the youth of his diocese a thoroughly Catholic education, but to have the help of the Fathers in bearing the heavy burden of the episcopal office. He wrote accordingly to St. Francis Borja, then Commissary-General of the Society in Spain, begging him to send some of his religious to establish themselves in the city. No doubt, the labours of B. Peter and his companion were not forgotten by the grateful towns-folk, and people and clergy alike were anxious for the new foundation. A first detachment arrived on February 20th, 1559, of three Fathers and three Brothers; one of these was Father Ferdinand Solier, nephew of the canon of that name. The little community were lodged in a hired house near St. Martin’s, a noteworthy church with a beautiful external cloister running round it. They made use of the chapel of a hospital wherein to hear confessions and give holy communion.

St. Francis Borja appointed Father Lewis Santander as rector. This Father, who was to have such an influence on the future life of St. Alonso, arrived in the beginning of June of the same year, with three more Brothers who were sent to begin the work of teaching. The Society was welcomed by all. Much of the success they achieved was owing to F. Lewis Santander. An old disciple of the venerable John de Avila, he was already a Doctor of Theology when he entered the Society, in 1554, at Alcalá. His singular power in the pulpit found its true source in his great holiness. He was chosen by St. Teresa as her director when she came to Segovia, and he helped her to make a foundation there. He preached his first sermon in that city on the Sunday after the octave of Corpus Christi, June 4th, in the cathedral, and was constantly invited after that to preach in many of the other churches, and wrought a wondrous change in the lives of the inhabitants. Though still in a hired house, the schools were inaugurated by a Latin discourse in the cathedral, which was delivered by Brother Joseph de Acosta, one of the young Jesuits, on June 11th. Nor was the humble exercise of zeal by catechisms given in the public places and in the streets less blessed by God. Thousands of children used to gather around the Fathers, and thousands of grown-up people of every rank in life were glad to share in the instructions.

In this religious movement, we may be sure, not the least forward would be the Rodriguez family. Mary Gomez, the widowed mother, placed herself under the direction of the Fathers, and her children followed her example. They made them their advisers in all matters of importance, but especially in spiritual things. In August, St. Francis Borja came to encourage the fresh beginning. He preached in the cathedral on St. Bartholomew’s day, and we cannot doubt that Alonso was there to hear him. It was not until 1562, that, by the orders of Father Nadal, who, as Visitor-General of the Society, came to Segovia on January 4th, a new site was definitively purchased, the one on which the church and college of the Society¹⁵15Now, 1889, the Episcopal Seminary. These details are gathered from the MS. Historia del Colegio de Segovia. were afterwards built. It stands close to the walls of the city at its southern extremity. A building which had served for a prison then occupied the ground, and it was adapted as best it could, to serve as a temporary college. A poor church or chapel was also fitted up within it, and our Sacramental Lord took possession of it with all solemnity on December 6th, 1562. It was only on the 1st of May, 1565, that the new Bishop Don Diego de Covarruvias blessed the site for the new church, but it was not begun till after many years later, in 1582. Meanwhile the community had largely increased, to over twenty members, of whom nine were priests. Alonso, though his mind was so filled with anxieties, and his time so occupied with his business, went regularly to the sacraments and found leisure for reading spiritual books.

Meanwhile Alonso’s difficulties were thickening around him. He had moved to the neighbouring parish of St. Juste, and there he had a little family, two boys and a girl.¹⁶16The baptismal registers of the two boys are still extant in the church of San Salvador, at Segovia. “January 16, 1560, a son of Alonso Rodriguez, merchant, was baptised. He was named Gaspar, and Señor Saint Antony was chosen his patron. His godfathers were Gaspar de Oquendo and John Lebron; his godmothers Mary Gomez” (the child’s grandmother) “and Anne Gimines.” Gaspar Oquendo was a gentleman of high position in the town. “To-day, Monday, the 16th of January, 1562, there was baptised a son of Alonso Rodriguez, to whom was given the name of Alonso; his godfather was Francis Rodriguez” (a wealthy cousin of our saint), “and his wife.” The birth of the girl is testified to by Colmenares, who says (MS. quoted above, p. 159. b.): “He had two children, Alonso and Mary, who died young.” This is confirmed by Colin. Things were going rapidly from bad to worse with his business. He sustained serious losses.¹⁷17Breve relacion. His brother Diego seems to have come to try to set matters right, and was apparently in partnership with him in 1561 and 1562.¹⁸18MS. 2857, Archiv. de la Prov. Segovia. It was not certainly through any fault of Alonso’s if things had gone wrong, unless scrupulous honesty is to be counted as a fault. His strict uprightness was so well known, that people would send their errand boys to him for wool, with the certainty that he would not take any advantage of their years to defraud. To crown all, he lost his little Mary, the light of his eyes,¹⁹19Colin, p. 3. and then his young wife fell sick; and, after a very protracted illness, which involved him in serious expenses, she died shortly after the birth of the second boy.²⁰20In his Memorial, St. Alonso says that he was 31 or 32 when his troubles came upon him. Of these, the loss of his wife was the chiefest; which would date her death about 1562 or 1563. This is confirmed by the Burg. MS., v. Boll., p. 606, E. (g), which says it occurred about four years after his marriage, that is about 1562. This child, Gaspar, seems to have died about the same time. Thus Alonso was left a widower at thirty-one, with but one little boy.

The world seemed to go down before him, and to leave him face to face with God. Two of his brothers and two of his sisters were married. Four of his brothers seem to have died before this date, some of them, perhaps, in childhood. Two other sisters, Antonia and Juliana, who, when but 13 or 14, had dedicated their virginity by vow to God, had given themselves up entirely to a life of devotion along with their mother, and lived a retired life in their old home. Two truths came out with a new force and a new light before him—the greatness and goodness of God, and the disorder of his past years. Not that his life, spite of his self-accusation, had been even worldly, still less had it been wicked. The care of his soul, the service of God, preparation for the sacraments, had always occupied his mind, rather than any temporal matters. But the grace of God gave him a supernatural sense of the heinousness of sin, and the hollowness of all of which death can rob us. Night and day his soul was pierced with repentance for the past, and he wept so bitterly that his face became blanched, and he looked more like a monk of some penitential rule than a man engaged in business.