The Life of St. Alonso Rodriguez: A Biography of the Jesuit Lay-Brother

Chapter I. The Dawn

1531-1562.

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 9 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.

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 10 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 1531. 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. 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, 11 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. 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,” 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.”

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 12 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. Mary Gomez, with her large family to support and the business 13 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.

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, 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. 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 14 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.

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, 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. 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 15 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 16 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 Society 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. Things were going rapidly from bad to worse with his business. He sustained serious losses. His brother Diego seems to have come to try to set matters right, and was apparently in partnership with him in 1561 and 1562. 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 17 crown all, he lost his little Mary, the light of his eyes, 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. 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.

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Chapter II. Life of Penance in the World

1532-1571.

IN the light of his new knowledge of God’s holiness and goodness, his life, which to others had seemed so upright and blameless, appeared to Alonso to have been utterly wasted and misspent. Full of the sense of his guilt, and of his ingratitude for so many graces, his tears flowed so constantly that his eyes grew red and the lachrymal ducts were inflamed during the rest of his life. It was in the early days of his widowhood and penance, while still in his own house, that during his sleep he saw as in a vision Our Blessed Lord surrounded by twelve saints, who were clothed in a heavenly splendour. His patron, St. Francis of Assisi, was the only one of these whom Rodriguez recognised, though there was no special mark by which to know him. The Seraphic Saint stepped forward from the rest and asked Alonso, “Why do you weep so much?” “How can I help weeping,” was his answer, with a fresh outburst of scalding tears, “knowing as I do the gravity of my sins, when merely a venial sin committed against God deserves to be bewailed for a whole lifetime?” And so the vision departed, leaving such a memory behind it that it was fresh and sharp forty years after, when, under obedience, the Saint recorded it at the bidding of his Superior. Then it 19 was he learnt his constant practice in face of any temptation, to beg God most fervently through the love He bore him that he might suffer all the pains of hell rather than that He should let him fall into even venial sin.

“January 16, 1560, a son of Alonso Rodriguez, merchant, was baptised. He was named Gaspar, and Senor 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.

Another vision, or spiritual dream, happened about the same time, in the very first year of his turning entirely to God. He saw in his sleep a dense flight of birds, black and noisy, rise up like a massive tower against the sky. A beautiful bird like a dove, with the cypher of the Holy Name, IHS., in letters of silver inscribed on its breast, came down into the midst of them, and so great was the havoc he made amongst them that the air was filled with their fragments, and the survivors flew away. After a considerable time they gathered together again; and again the conquering dove began its work of destruction, till once more the cloud dispersed. A third time, after another long interval, the birds gathered up once more in serried ranks. No sooner had they formed up, than the dove swooped down and beat them back, killing and tearing them to pieces, until the remainder dispersed for good and all, leaving the ground covered with the victims. St. Alonso recounted the dream to Father Martinez, his director, one of the best Jesuit preachers in Segovia. He recognised in it the signs of a supernatural warning, and prayed long and earnestly to know its meaning. After much and earnest consideration, he told his penitent that he was to enter the Society and would meet there with terrible assaults on his virtue; but that under the device of his Saviour, he would come off victorious. The future showed how rightly he explained it, and St. Alonso in after years experienced its truth in 20 terrible fulness.

This thought of religious life seems already to have come before him. About a year or so after the death of his wife, Alonso lost his mother.

As an entrance upon a new life and with aid of his new knowledge of himself, he set himself, after the vision of St. Francis, to prepare by penance and selfexamination for a general confession of his whole life. He fasted on Fridays and Saturdays, and began to take the discipline. Out of his devotion to Our Lady he chose one of Her feasts, Our Lady of the Snow, which that year, 1564, fell on a Saturday, as the day on which to begin to go to confession and communion each week. Several days were spent in the examination of his past life, and he only stopped when he could find nothing more to note down. The general confession was made with deep contrition to Father Martinez. He increased his penances after this confession, fasting more rigorously and more frequently, and scourging himself every day; he began to wear a terrible hair shirt, fitting tight like a jacket, and reaching from his shoulders to below his waist, and he gave himself to a greater watchfulness of life and to more frequent prayer. For this he resolved to abandon business and the house in which he was dwelling, and make to himself a sort of hermitage in the large family house, in a part of which his sisters were living their sequestered and penitential life. He had still enough left from the wrecks of his family fortune to support himself, his child, and his two sisters.

St. Alonso had learned the Rosary as a child from B. Peter, but he does not seem at first to have done much more than recite the holy words with reverence and attention. Each day he used to say the entire fifteen mysteries very slowly and on his knees. God rewarded his extraordinary devotion by a supernatural apparition, for as he said each “Our Father,” he used to see almost always a bright red rose before him in the air, while at each Hail Mary one of dazzling white appeared, each as fragrant as it was beautiful.

On the eve of the Feast of Our Lady’s Assumption, apparently in the year when he gave himself entirely to God, 1564, our Saint had prepared himself with special care for Holy Communion, by discipline and hairshirt, by almsgiving and by extra time spent in prayer. On the morning of the day he went to 21 Confession in the temporary Church of the Jesuits, and stayed a long time meditating on the Great Guest whom he was about to entertain. As soon as ever he had received his Lord and had knelt down to make his thanksgiving, swifter than thought, he felt himself carried “whether in the body or out of the body he knew not,” beyond the limits of this world into the midst of countless angels in the Heavenly Court. All he knew was that Our Lady was there with his Angel Guardian and St. Francis of Assisi at either side, that his soul was in Her hands, and that she presented it to the Eternal Father, who received it with great kindness. How long the Vision lasted our Saint could not say, but it seemed to have been a very long time, and when he came to himself, as he went home through the streets, so dazed was he with the Vision, that he could scarce find his way. When his confessor, Father Martinez, learned that Alonso had had to grope for the door of the church and was half beside himself when he was outside, he bade him to shun as far as possible all such raptures in public. Such, however, was their power when they came upon him that though our Saint struggled to obey, it was all in vain. In spite of the constant favours of a like kind which he had received through his life, and though with a failing memory he forgot so many of them, this one he never could forget, but he spoke of it to Father Torrens, his friend and confessor, very shortly before his happy death. The narration of it forms the conclusion of his Memorial, of which we shall speak later and to which we shall constantly refer.

The love of Our Lady which had been so marked in his earliest childhood increased ever as he advanced in the service of God. It was noted of him how frequent were his visits to the churches dedicated to Our Lady, and tradition tells us that he was, as well as one of his brothers, a member of the Confraternity attached to the Sanctuary of Fuencisla, the most noted shrine of Our Lady near Segovia.

His loving familiarity made him speak to Mary as a child to the best of Mothers. As our Saint was begging of Her one day to obtain for him from Her Son the grace to imitate closely the Mother and the Son, he dared to say that he loved Her more than She loved him. And Our Lady deigned to answer, “No, no, not 22 so; for I love you more than you love me.”

But while God chose by these marvellous favours to cheer our penitent, he only grew in his knowledge and horror of sin. His own experiences had taught him how fleeting are the purest and noblest pleasures that earth can give, how terrible the risks and perils with which life is filled, how hard to pass through it without offence of God and danger of salvation. And as he was gazing one day at his little son, then in all the innocence of infancy, a bright boy of three years of age, so strongly did all this come before him, that, like another St. Blanche, he implored God that if He saw that that child was ever hereafter to offend Him, He would rather take him—dearest and nearest though he was—to Himself. Nor was this a mere passing aspiration of enthusiasm. He continually offered up the self-same prayer, till once, when in bed, with the little boy at his side, he seemed to see him as if laid out for burial, though at the time the child was in good health. Yet in a month or so the dream was realised, and little Alonso went to take his place in Heaven. The heroic father not only ratified the sacrifice which he had freely made, but, taking it as an answer to his prayer, gratefully believed that God had rescued his boy from a peril far worse than death.

Nothing now stood between our Saint and the complete surrender of himself to God’s service; and the thought of religious life came up with new force before him. He frequently consulted Father Santander about the affairs of his soul, and was very assiduous at his sermons and learned very much from them. In 1566, Santander ceased to be Rector. His place was taken by Father John de Leon, while he was sent to Valencia, where he became Rector in the October of 1567. After his departure, Father Martinez continued to be the director of our Saint.

But God, Who always loves the simple and humble, deigned to be his chief teacher. So far, Alonso had given himself to bewailing his sins in the light of the tremendous truths of God’s Justice, and to the expiation of them by tears and austerities, while he was feeding his soul with the Sacraments, and with merely vocal prayer. But little by little the sense of the love of God began to prevail over all other views of his Lord and Master; his tears, though so bitter, became sweet by the overmastering sense of the Divine Charity, and his heart broke forth into tender colloquies of sorrowing love. It seemed to him as if these cries of his heart came back upon him from heaven, wounding it with still deeper wounds 23 of love. This was about the year 1566.

What helped him greatly along this new and higher path was the practice of mental prayer. When he told his sisters of the vision of the roses, they in turn taught him, as they had learned from their director while reciting the vocal prayers of the Rosary, to consider the various mysteries; and in about a twelvemonth or so he had been lifted up by this means to the practice of meditation. Such was the delight which he found in its exercise that, besides hearing Mass, he used to give to it two hours regularly morning and evening, with an additional quarter of an hour’s thanksgiving for God’s love and His favours towards him at the end of each meditation. And these four hours and a half do not include the continual aspirations which almost filled up the rest of the day. During Mass, in presence of the Bloodless Sacrifice, he carried on the affections which he had aroused before the mysteries of the Passion. Our Saint began by taking the events of Our Lord’s life, as they occur, in the Rosary, for the subjects of his mental prayers, but “this did not last long; for he found such facility, such favours, such profit, so deep a feeling of compassion at the sufferings of Our dear Lord, that he thought it best to give himself up to the meditations of the Passion in preference to all others.

“His favourite subjects,” to quote his own words, “were the Ecce Homo, and the carrying of the Cross when Our Lord was led to be crucified amid the shouts of the herald and of the mob; or again, when the Son met His Mother on the way, and they looked at one another; when they nailed Him to the Cross and raised it up, and what there happened to the Mother and the Son; then the descent from the Cross and how His Blessed Mother received the Sacred Body and what happened to it.” God deigned Himself to be his master in the art of prayer, and taught him what no human wisdom had suggested; and among 24 other methods, that when by careful meditation he had so thoroughly realised the truth and tasted of its hidden virtue that his soul was all inflamed with love for his Lord, he was then to cease further effort of the mind, and to pause and enjoy the favours which were being offered to him. This restful contemplation he thus explains:—“When the soul was wounded by love and steeped in its Lord at the sight of what He was suffering for it, his Lord placed it within His sacred heart, and there He communicated to it wondrous things about His Passion and the immense and many sufferings which He had endured for it.”

One of these most marvellous communications was a real share, which Alonso felt, not merely in the soul, but often even in his body, of the sufferings of our Crucified Lord. With the Adorable Victim he bore the agony of the stripes, of the buffetting, of the thorn pricks, of the piercing of the nails. And he shared them joyfully, thanking God for the grace. “This method of prayer,” as Father Marimon notes, “was merely in the rough, a first sketch; but it went on ever growing more perfect till eight or ten years after the Saint’s arrival at Majorca, where the favours, the visions of our Lord, became so marvellous, lifting him up to the contemplation of His Divinity to a degree that would seem almost impossible.”

Nor were these first gifts like those to be vouchsafed to him afterwards, visions purely intellectual, but of a lower order, affecting his external senses; they were as the milk of beginners to support the humble penitent, and to lure him on to still more sublime perfection.

Devotion to the Mystery of our Redemption necessarily filled Alonso with deep interest for souls. One night in 1568, when he had been praying fervently to God for the whole Church, and very specially for the needs of his own land of Spain, he began for the first time to read in God the future, or at all events what was at the time unknown and unknowable to those around him. While in his sleep, he saw the country round about Granada, which he recognised as he had been there, probably on business, and where the Moors still lived who had conformed outwardly to the Faith. He saw the whole of that fair land full of strife and bloodshed, and men hurrying in search of their victims to destroy them. Then he entered a church and beheld two monsters with their heads upon the altar, eating off it as if it were a manger. He raised his eyes to the Retablo, 25 or lofty reredos so universal in Spanish churches, and saw in its midst a great statue of Our Lady. The figure was very beautiful and devotional, looking down on the desecration of her church. At this outrage against his good Mother he was deeply grieved, and he wept bitterly. A short time after, the news reached Segovia of the terrible revolt of the Moriscoes in the Christmas of that year, and of the awful sacrileges and hideous cruelties which they had committed. At the close of the year all the Moors in the mountainous fastnesses of the Alpujarras were in insurrection; and whatever might have been the faults of their rulers, horrible was the vengeance which they wreaked upon the Christians around them. The first fury of the insurgents fell upon the churches and the clergy; and the outrages committed against God’s House, and the tortures to which the priests were submitted could hardly be exceeded. No less than 3,000 Christians were put to a cruel death, not to speak of horrors worse than death.

Six years had nearly gone by since Alonso had practically left the world, but the question of his vocation was not yet settled, or rather, an apparently insurmountable difficulty stood in the way of its realisation. It was no doubt only after a struggle with his humility, and out of obedience to the clear call of God, recognised as such by his confessor, that our Saint ventured to ask for admission into the Society. The divine seed had been sown, we may be sure, in his father’s country house by B. Peter Favre. What he had seen of Francis Villanueva and his companions at Alcalá had pushed forward its growth; and if circumstances had prevented its coming sooner to maturity, in God’s good time, thanks to the winter of worldly losses and troubles, the vocation had come forth tried and strong.

But Alonso was then 38 years old; his education was so deficient that he could not be admitted as a scholastic, that is to say, as one who was to be raised to the priesthood; while his strength was so broken down by his long course of austerities as to forbid any prudent hope of his being useful as a lay brother. So 26 argued the Fathers of the College at Segovia, and with apparent reason, and they declined the responsibility of accepting him. The decision of course did not rest with Father Martinez. Whether at the suggestion of his confessor, or by direct guidance from God, we do not know, but strong in his surety of a divine call, St. Alonso determined to go as far as Valencia, in the hopes that his old friend, Father Lewis Santander, might be able to help him in his need. He was ready, as St. Stanislaus had done some two years before, to leave friends and home, if by any means and at any cost he could compass the one desire of his heart, to give himself entirely to God in the Society.

St. Alonso made over by a deed to his two sisters, las Beatas , as they were called, all that he possessed, save just enough money for his journey. His affairs were in perfect order, nor had he any outstanding debts. His other brothers and sisters were either dead or settled in life. Diego was at Seville. Manuela was with her husband at Madrid. Juliana and Antonia, after his departure, took a little house near the Jesuit church, and there they lived in complete solitude, doing their own household work, and for nearly fifty years rivalling the prayer and penance of their holy brother. He kept up a correspondence with them, inciting them ever to still higher perfection.

To Valencia then, after a long winter’s journey, at the end of 1568 or the beginning of 1569, came St. Alonso. The beautiful country of Southern Spain was not unknown to him, but coming from bare and rugged Castile, the rich luxuriance of the Oriental Huerto-(garden), the teeming plenty of the richly irrigated plain around Valencia, must have been a pleasant change, recalling to him the pleasant valley by his old home, where the bright stream of the Eresma gives freshness and green to the trees and gardens along its banks. But the sea of verdure which, even in the winter months, spreads out before one till it joins the blue waters of the Mediterranean, the waving palms, the groves of almond and peach and apple, the vineyards and olive trees, all these delights did not delay him as he pressed on to his goal. Neither did the brilliant colour and the movement of the busy streets of the princely city, its noble churches and palaces, the cathedral with its lofty detached bell tower. Our Saint hurried to the new College 27 of St. Paul to find his old friend. The building was then rising in a quiet part of the city, close to the city wall. He had already written to Father Santander about his vocation, and the joy at meeting was mutual. It was resolved that the best thing Alonso could do would be to resume his studies, so as to fit himself for the priesthood, with the idea that a man of such fervour would not fail as a priest to do good work in the Society, if not as a learned man, yet as a useful helper in labouring for souls.

Meantime a means of support must be found for St. Alonso, who, as we have seen, had given away all his fortune to his sisters. For some time he had to beg, as many poor scholars did in those days, from different religious houses and from the charity of the townsfolk. The Fathers of the Society were naturally amongst his best benefactors. Peter Juste, who was then a student of theology at St. Paul’s College, and who, in after years, was our Saint’s provincial, when distributing alms, noticed him among the poor scholars, on account of his marked holiness and humility, and gave him a larger share than the rest. Brother Jerome Espinel, who was then the hall porter of the college, was a man of very holy life. He soon came to know and to value Alonso, and not only gave him an extra share of charity, but much wise counsel and instruction, which was of great help to him.

So, bravely, as St. Ignatius had done before him at the school at Barcelona, the scholar of thirty-nine summers sat down among the little boys in the lower classes to learn with them the rudiments of Latin. He had to put up with much ridicule and even abuse from some of the rougher ones. But he turned it all to good account, and continued in Valencia the same course of prayer and penance which he had been following at Segovia. He put himself entirely under the direction of Father Santander, to whom he went to confession. The Father procured for St. Alonso a situation in the house of a merchant of position in the city, Ferdinand Chenchillos, as a sort of tutor to his son, whom he had to accompany to school and bring back home. Besides that he had to teach his little daughter to read. Rodriguez won high opinions for his holiness in that place, and left behind 28 him the character of a saint. Both the children in after life entered religion, and crowned holy lives by holy deaths.

Our Saint afterwards occupied a similar position in the palace of a great lady, the Marchioness of Terranova, of an illustrious Sicilian family. Her boy, Lewis de Mendoza, was placed under his charge. There, as in his former situation, Alonso was seen to be a saint. But, if he made great progress in virtue, his success in his studies did not keep pace with this advance. Not only had he to struggle against difficulties natural to one of his age, but he had a thorough repugnance for everything that was not directly spiritual. He had excellent masters, Viñas and Torella, and during his two years nominally went as far as the class of Rhetoric, the highest in classical studies. Still his studies proved a failure.

With the advice therefore of his confessor, he resolved once more to ask admission to the Society, leaving it entirely to the Fathers to decide as to whether he should enter as a lay brother or as a scholastic. But when apparently so near the attainment of what he had so long desired, St. Alonso narrowly escaped a snare which would have robbed him of his vocation, and with it too, most probably, of his salvation.

There was a man of like age and tastes, and apparently of like aims to himself, following the elementary classes at the school at Valencia. Very naturally Rodriguez and he formed each other’s acquaintance, and the more our Saint saw of the stranger, the more he learned of his love of poverty, of penance, of prayer, the more this acquaintance ripened into a close friendship. Alonso told him of his desire to enter the Society. His new friend approved his call to religious life, but said that for his part he did not care for life in a community, and extolled the charms and advantages of solitude. The very day after this conversation the man 29 left Valencia and wrote a short time after begging Alonso to come and join him in leading a hermit life at a place some little way off a town called St. Mateo, which is some eighty miles north of Valencia, nearly on the northern borders of the province of that name. He entreated him at all events to come and pay him a visit. It was vacation time and Alonso was free to go. The attraction of a life given up to prayer, and the influence which the hermit had gained over our Saint, determined him to accept the invitation; and he went, without asking the advice of Father Santander, or bidding good-bye to his friends at Valencia. He had not at all made up his mind to stay. But when he got to the hermitage, his host assailed him with every argument, to give up his idea of entering the Society, and to settle definitely in a cell which was all ready for him and near at hand.

Alonso was sorely tempted to give in. His natural inclination led him to prefer a life of retirement and prayer to the distractions of study and to the life of a tutor in a nobleman’s house. He even preferred it to the mixed life and active duties of the Society. As, however, he had not given notice to the Marquesa, or said anything to Father Santander, he refused to put on the habit as his friend urged him to do, and, to avoid his importunity, left without a word, and returned to Valencia When he got home he felt very much ashamed of himself; he went to tell all that had happened to Father Santander. “What is all this about, my son, Alonso? Why have you been so long without coming to see me?” was the first salutation that met him. But far more astonished was his confessor when he heard where Alonso had been, what had been proposed and his half-intention of going back. “I fear greatly;” was Father Santander’s measured reply, who knew how easily Alonso could be led under the appearance of good; “that you will lose your soul.” “Why should I lose my soul?” rejoined Alonso. “Because I see you want to follow your own caprice; and if you do so, there can be no doubt that you will be lost.” God spoke through these words so loudly to the heart of our Saint, and showed him so clearly his danger, that, starting from the chair, he threw himself on his knees at the feet of Father Lewis. “Since that is the case, I make a firm resolution never, as long as I live, to do my own will. Father, you can do with 30 me what you like.”

Father Santander knew thoroughly well the fervour of Alonso, and that he required a strong hand to guide his will. Alonso accordingly at once, by his Confessor’s advice, ardently implored our Lady to obtain for him entrance into the Society of her Son, if she knew that it was His Holy Will. So clear an interior reply came to his prayer that he took advantage of the opportunity of the presence in Valencia of Father Cordeses, the Provincial, at a Provincial Congregation held in the January of 1571, to press for his admittance as a lay brother of the Society. The Father Rector, who valued most highly his holiness, and was convinced of the reality of his vocation and of his fitness for the Society, supported his application, and did all he could to remove any difficulties in the way. Father Cordeses carefully examined his vocation and the secrets of his soul, and, master as he was of the interior life, quickly saw what a treasure there was in that humble soul, and what profit could be drawn from it. He laid the matter before his consultors and some of them urged the same difficulties that had prevailed at Segovia—Alonso’s uselessness on account of his broken-down health, and want of education. But Father Cordeses over-ruled their objections, saying, “Well, Fathers, I have had a talk with Alonso, and examined carefully into his life and his purpose, and I really feel obliged to admit him as a Saint, for I intend that he shall be one, and a great one, and he will give great glory to the Society by his virtues and example.” Accordingly it was arranged that Alonso should be received on the following day. The Provincial was a man of great piety and discernment, and some six years before had insisted, in spite of the opposition of his advisers, on receiving at Valencia, a rough peasant from the mountains, John Ximenes, who seemed to them simply as if he could be of no use in the Order. Father Cordeses said he took him in order that a Saint might be made of him, for he saw there were the makings of a Saint in him. John’s love of hard work, his continual prayer, his marvellous union with God, his devotion to the Passion, and his happy death, all proved the clearness of the Provincial’s foresight.

The very night on which Alonso entered the college, on the eve of his formal admission, he was given a room in an entresol, which then served for an infirmary, the window of which was on the street, and could be easily reached 31 from it. Suddenly he heard a frantic knocking at the shutter, and, opening it, he saw to his amazement the Hermit of San Mateo. His face was distorted with rage, and he violently abused Alonso for breaking his word. He used no longer persuasions or entreaties, but imperiously ordered him to come the very next morning to the Hermitage, and to take up his abode there. Terrified at the sudden sight, and the fury of a man whom he had thought to be a Saint, Rodriguez hastily closed the shutter. He never more heard of or saw him again. How could he have learnt of Alonso’s decision, or, if he had heard of it, have followed him so swiftly? And when St. Alonso looked back quietly on the past, and saw how nearly he had missed his way, and, by putting on a habit, had closed for ever to himself the entrance into the Society, he could not but imagine that the whole thing was a stratagem of the enemy of souls. And, what in his charity he had not cared to judge, now came to confirm his suspicions—that, spite of their intimacy for two whole years, he had never seen his fellow-student approach the Sacraments, or even heard of his doing so. Thankful for his escape, and to prepare for the great event of the morrow, Alonso spent the whole night in prayer.

As the day of the week and the day of the month on which St. Alonso began his weekly communions are known, they enable us to fix accurately the year as 1564. And from records existing we learn that he was still in business the same year. The child Alonso was born in 1562 (v. supra) and died when 3 years old, or in 1565. These data prevent us from following Fathers Colin and Nonell in their chronology of these events.

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