views. He at once began to preach and to write in Spanish, with the eagerness of fanaticism and the self-confidence of ignorance. Returning to Flanders, he was arrested and examined; his books were burnt, and he himself was imprisoned. Being released after six months, he went to Louvain, where he met Enzinas, who rebuked him for risking his life uselessly by shrieking like a madman in the market-places, and for impiously taking upon himself to preach without a call from God, and without the requisite gifts or knowledge. The rebuke made no impression. In 1541 he went to Ratisbon and. presented himself before Charles, who heard him patiently again and again, but at length ordered his detention as a heretic. He was taken to Spain, handed over to the Inquisition, and burned in an auto-de-fé at Valladolid in 1542. His fidelity won him commendation where his rashness and ignorance had failed; and after his death Speng wrote to Enzinas with the tenderest reverence and love for the man whom they had little esteemed while he lived.
Passing over Pedro Nunez Vela of Avila, of whom little is known save that in 1548 and again in 1570 he is spoken of as professor of Greek at Lausanne, we turn to Reform movements within Spain itself. Precautions had been taken from 1521 onwards to prevent the diffusion of Lutheran books in Spain. Attempts were not infrequently made to introduce them by sea: in 1524 two casks full were discovered and burnt at Santander, and in the following year Venetian galleys were attempting to land them on the south-eastern shore. But it was neither in Biscay nor in Granada that the storm burst, nor was it caused by the importation of Lutheran books. It began in Seville and in Valladolid, then the capital of Spain; and amongst its leaders, even if they were not its founders, were three chaplains of the Emperor, Dr Agustin Cazalla, Dr Constantino Ponce de la Fuente, and Fray Bartolomé Carranza, Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain.
To begin with Seville. A noble gentleman there, Rodrigo de Valer, suddenly turned from a worldly life to one of devotion, studying the Bible till he knew it almost by heart. He also began to inveigh against the corruptions of the Church, preaching in the streets and squares, and even on the Cathedral steps, saying that he was sent by Christ to correct that evil and adulterous generation. He was more than once cited before the Inquisition, but treated with great leniency, partly because he was thought to be insane, partly because he was a cristiano viejo, without admixture of Jewish or Moorish blood. At length he was condemned to wear a sambenito and to undergo perpetual imprisonment in a convent. There he died about 1550. His life had not been fruitless: he had made many converts, amongst them the canon Juan Gil, of Olvera in Aragon. Gil, or Egidio (as he was also called), had studied with distinction at Alcala, and was a master of theology of
