great conquerors had climbed or ridden to leave their laurels by Mary's throne, but never had there been nor would there be a pilgrim quite like the man on a mule who wound his way up the mountain on March 21, 1522.

Inigo would have had plenty of company that day, for it was the feast of St. Benedict, always a great occasion on the mountain, and only four days off was the great feast of the Annunciation. As many as five thousand pilgrims would come at such times, of all classes and conditions and even nationalities. Ten years before Inigo's arrival, a certain French parish priest named Jean Chanon came, and stayed for fifty-six years, to be one of the saintliest monks the Abbey ever produced.1 He was the confessor mentioned by Inigo, a man, as his Abbot said of him, sent by God whose name was John. At the Abbey he had been formed according to the spirit of its greatest Abbot, García Jiménez de Cisneros, a first cousin of the famous Cardinal Regent of Spain, who had been sent from Valladolid to Montserrat in 1492 for the express purpose of reforming the mountain monastery. To this end Abbot Cisneros composed or, more exactly, compiled for the instruction of his monks a book entitled Ejercitatorio de la vida espiritual, of which 1,006 copies were printed at the Abbey in the year 1500. It is certain that Inigo was given and read this book of quite modest size during his brief stay on the mountain. The question of its influence on him will recur in a lively context later on. Meantime, the Pilgrim, as he has taken to calling himself in the narrative of his life, had stabled his mule, gone to pray before the statue of our Lady, and sought out Dom Jean Chanon, official confessor to pilgrims, whose Spanish, at first non-existent, had had ten years to grow. Inigo was still clad in all his gentleman's finery and wearing the high boots that must have chafed and tormented his wounded leg. The mule was not disposed of as easily as the extremely laconic narrative might lead one to think. At first the Abbot refused the useful gift. Why should the caballero want to be rid of such a fine animal,

1 The long obituary of this holy man who practised in a high degree all the Beatitudes was written by his Abbot, and is given in MHSJ, Scripta de Sancto Ignatio de Loyola, II, pp. 441-8.

and what if he later had second thoughts and wanted it back? However, without revealing Inigo's confidences, Chanon succeeded in persuading his superior that all would be well, and so the excellent mule, fully caparisoned, which had saved the life of an innocent Moor, became Benedictine property and served the Abbey faithfully for many years.1

On the eve of the Annunciation, Inigo read his long general confession to his kindly director, the only man on earth who then knew his closely guarded secret of renouncing the world and assuming the life of a mendicant, as St. Francis of Assisi had done. It was customary to require the names and addresses of pilgrims who wished to stay two or three days at the Abbey, but the friendly and resourceful confessor overcame that difficulty also and Inigo kept his anonymity. It was easy to obtain permission to hang the sword and dagger from the grille which separated the chapel of our Lady from the body of the church, as ex-votos were constantly being left by pilgrims and the monastery was full of them. But how to dispose of the gentlemansoldier's rich apparel was another matter, in which Inigo's new friend could not help. No pilgrim before had ever wanted to make an ex-voto of his clothes. But circumstances helped this particular Pilgrim. The monastery precincts were inevitably crowded with beggars and similar persons with an eye to the main chance. Among them, after night had fallen, Inigo with the utmost secrecy chose his man, took him aside, and explained that he wished to change into other clothes for a penitential reason. Would the good fellow oblige by accepting the suit he was then wearing? Though, no doubt, astonished, the good fellow was also delighted. The change was quickly made in some dark, secluded corner, and Inigo put on jubilantly, next to his skin,2

1 Albareda (Dom Anselm, monk of Montserrat, now Abbot and Prefect of the Vatican Library), Sant Ignasi a Montserrat, printed and published at the Abbey, 1935, p. 62. This learned, genial, and highly controversial book is written in Catalan, which language a little Spanish, French and intelligent guessing will enable most people to understand sufficiently for their purposes.

2 His own relation runs: At night on the Vespers of our Lady of March, of the year 22, he betook himself as secretly as was possible to a poor man gave him all his clothes, putting on instead the garment of his desire.'

and

the long sack-cloth robe which he had bought for that immortal hour, tying it at the waist with a piece of rope. Then, having fixed on his right foot the hempen sandal, leaving the other bare, he took his stand, with his staff and calabash, before the altar of our Lady, lit by a hundred lamps of silver and gold.1 He was not, as usually shown in pictures, inside the chapel, but stood or knelt all night immediately outside the reja or grille, so often in Spanish churches a thing of rarest beauty. Nor was he by any means alone. Groups of pilgrims sang hymns all around him, or prayed by his side or prepared to make their confessions. At midnight, the fifty monks came in solemn procession to sing the Matins and Lauds of the Annunciation. In March at Montserrat the cold can be terrible, but in Inigo's heart burned a fire which annulled it. He is the only saint known to have dedicated himself utterly to God by a vigil of arms. The idea had come to him from an old romance, but the deed itself transcended all ceremony, and was an act of supernatural love, inspired by Heaven. Just before dawn Mass was solemnly sung, and then the Watcher of our Lady, having received Holy Communion, slipped quietly away down the mountain, in the gathering light of a new day.

Ribadeneyra in his life adds the words, hasta la camisa '-he gave the poor man all his clothes, down to and including his shirt.

1 Albareda, Sant Ignasi a Montserrat, pp. 64-6. The lamps were the gifts of Popes, Kings and Queens, among the more recent being Germaine de Foix and Emperor Charles V. In that year of Inigo's vigil, the new Pope, Adrian VI, sent to Montserrat from Tarragona, on his way from Spain to Rome, a splendid silver lamp and two hundred ducats. Besides the lamps there were forty huge candles bearing the names of as many Catalan towns to light the church that festive night.

'NUEVA VIDA'

'NIGO'S anxiety to remain unknown and unidentified in his new rôle was caused partly by his fear that his family and friends might try to hinder him, but much more from fear of his own still untamed heart. The incident which decided him, so many years later, to tell his story to Luís Gonçalves was that good man's recourse to him for help against the commonest of human failings, temptations to vanity. He comforted him by revealing how he had himself been tormented by the same temptations for two whole years after the time when he had given himself irrevocably to God, so that he dared not mention to a single soul except his confessor at Montserrat the things he proposed to do 'por amor de Dios'. If they became known, people might praise him, and praise he knew to be a sweet poison for his soul. A shrewd and cynical observer of human nature has said that 'vanity leers even in the humility of the saint'. Inigo, the saint-in-the-making, was already advanced enough to recognize the leer and be terrified of it. After an agonizing struggle, he broke, with God's grace, the subtle pervasive power of vanity in his soul so completely that he could tell how brave he had been at Pamplona and what magnificent fortitude he had shown in his subsequent sufferings, without the slightest tremor of self-satisfaction. These good natural qualities were no less the gift of God than the supernatural grace which enabled him to see them as such and to refer the glory to where alone it belonged.

One of the careful defences which he had erected against the encroachments of the dexterous foe, his anonymity, came very near to being overthrown before he had gone far on the long, winding way down the steep and sacred mountain. His own account of the happening is the best:

He left [the monastery] at daybreak in order that he might not be recognized, and took, not the direct road to Barcelona on which he might encounter many people acquainted with

him and prepared to show him marks of respect, but a side road leading to a town called Manresa. For he had made up his mind to stay for a few days in a hospital of that town, and at the same time to write down some thoughts in his book, a treasure which he guarded carefully and from which he derived much consolation. When he was already a league1 from Montserrat, a man overtook him in a great hurry and asked him whether he had given his clothes to a beggar, as the beggar asserted. He said that he had, and tears of compassion for the pobre filled his eyes, because he learned that he had been molested on suspicion of having stolen the clothes.2 But though his desire to escape public esteem was very strong, he had not been more than a brief time in Manresa when people began saying great things about him, rumours having reached them from Montserrat. Soon, they were exaggerating his repute, saying that he had given up a great income, etc.

At this point in the relation there occurs a definite break. Either because he was too ill, or too busy with other affairs, Ignatius discontinued his meetings with Luís Gonçalves for no less than seventeen months (October, 1553, to March, 1555). When, under pressure from Nadal and others, he resumed the meetings, it was to tell his absorbed listener a story of spiritual experiences at Manresa lasting, not algunos días', but more than ten months. There is a little mystery here, an explanation withheld, which has caused a great deal of discussion, not to say controversy. Inigo, who had been in so much of a hurry to be

1 The length of Spanish leagues in those days is difficult to determine. The Venetian Ambassador Andrea Navagero, who was fond of counting his leagues, was puzzled by their diversity of length. Some', he says, are grandísimas, others not so big, and still others quite small. The leagues of Catalonia are grandísimas, and each, in my opinion, measures a good five miles' (Viaje a España, 1524-1526, p. 36). Before accepting his Excellency's estimate, it would be necessary to know whether his miles corresponded to our English ones. The distance of the Abbey of Montserrat from Manresa by the St. Cecilia road is about twelve English miles.

2 Ribadeneyra, whose biography is based on Luís Gonçalves' work, states that Inigo was questioned by the official from the Abbey as to his identity, his name, and his place of origin, but declined to reply, as such details were not necessary in order to help the poor man in his predicament.