In my eagerness to be in time, I arrived half an hour too early, so I whiled away the minutes watching the altar boys prepare for the ceremony. It was easy to read, in their air of proprietorship that their duties were an achieved ambition, the reward of good conduct. One of the lads climbed up on the big brass eagle of the lectern and gave it an affectionate polish; then, having partly illuminated the altar,—during the ceremony more candles were lighted,—they whipped out their smart red cassocks, and stood side by side in severe precision, to salute the eight canons, "Buenos Días!" altar boys and dignitaries bowed with leisurely Spanish courtesy. In their preparations the small acolytes had found the supply of altar wine somewhat short, so more was sent for. During the solemn moments of the Mass, a messenger arrived with an offensive flask. With rustling dignity in his trailing red gown, the majordomo of ten swept across the chapel to thrust out the tactless blunderer, and the look of apologetic confusion on his cherub face, as he returned to his post of honor, was adorable.
Some German tourists noisily came into the chapel, and refusing to kneel at the moment of the elevation, the verger, in a spirit the founder would have applauded, pointed with his silver wand, a silent but inflexible dismissal. This first morning of my visit, too, a group of hardy countrymen came to the Mozarabic Mass; with cap in hand and cloak flung toga-like over their muscular shoulders, they knelt on one knee, as instinctively graceful as the shepherds in Murillo's "Nativity." When the service was over, in respectful quiet despite their arrogant carriage, these unlettered men rose and passed out to loiter in the Cathedral for a half hour. "The rank is but the guinea's stamp, the man's the gold for a' that," rings often in the ear in Castile.
Cardinal Ximenez, founder of the Chapel, was Castilian to the core, and Toledo for him, just as for El Greco, was fittest home. He was born in 1436 in the province of Madrid of an old family that had fallen in his day on moderate circumstances. In Spain, Ximenez is often called Cisneros, for there two surnames are used; the first following the Christian name is the patronymic name of the father, the second that of the mother. Sometimes a man uses his paternal surname alone, more seldom his mother's family name alone, as in the case of Velasquez, whose father was a de Silva.
A studious disposition early destined Ximenez to the priesthood, and following a few years' study in Alcalá, which he was to raise to a world-known university, he went to Salamanca. After a long stay in Rome, on his return to Spain he wasted some precious years in an unfortunate ecclesiastic dispute. His true worth was not discovered till he went, when over forty, to serve in the Cathedral of Sigüenza, where Cardinal Mendoza, the future "Rex Tertius," was then bishop. Recognizing the new chaplain's remarkable powers, he made him his vicar-general. But Ximenez, in the face of every chance of rapid advancement in the Church, felt within him a longing for the retired life of prayer. He chose the strictest order of his day, and entered the Franciscan monastery of San Juan de los Reyes at Toledo. All who know Toledo will remember it, built in the bizarre, flamboyant, often overladen but always grandiose style of Isabella and Ferdinand. On its outer walls hang iron chains, the votive offerings of Christian captives ransomed from the Moors in Africa, and one cannot help thinking that the concentrated mind of the new novice received an indelible impression from these souvenirs of Moslem barbarity, a bias that found later expression in his stern treatment of the Moors of Granada and his crusading siege of Oran.
Ximenez had sought a life of prayer in San Juan de los Reyes, but a personality such as his could not help but rise in acknowledged supremacy above those around him. The fame of his intellect and holiness soon drew to his confessional the leading minds of Toledo, and he found himself, to his distress, again in touch with the world. He retired to a more isolated Franciscan monastery, and gave himself up to years of study and prayer. Men seemed then to find time for the long spaces of tranquil thought that solidify character; holding the highest posts that ambition could achieve, they seemed to know themselves as dust before the wind. The key-note of to-day is breadth not intensity, and it sometimes seems as if our scattered knowledge leads to a more superficial outlook on the elemental and eternal verities, that universal education tends to universal mediocrity. Why have so few to-day the old-time spaciousness of vision? Is it because education then meant the development of the soul as well as of the intellect, because in acknowledging that there are an infinite number of things beyond reason they attained what Pascal calls the highest point of reason? "Ever learning and never attaining to the knowledge of the truth" we seem indeed. Wholly-rounded opportunities were given in that age. Poets and novelists then were soldiers in the roving wars of Europe,[25]—Garcilaso, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderón, these last two priests as well, and Garcilaso making a holy end helped by a grandee who was a saint, and Cervantes dying in the habit of the Assisian. But I suppose this carping comparison is just the never-ending tendency to look on a previous day as better than one's own. Jorge Manrique felt the same way:
"á nuestro parecer
Cualquiera tiempo pasado
Fué mejor"
and he wrote his immortal "Coplas" in the golden age of Isabella herself.
To return to Ximenez. After a long period of retirement he was made, against his will, confessor to the Queen at Valladolid. There exists an account by a witness of the sensation his thin, ascetic face caused in the court, as if an early Syrian anchorite had wandered thither. Three years later, on the death of Mendoza, the Queen's influence in Rome had Ximenez named his successor in Toledo. So angry was her confessor that he left the court. Isabella, gallant woman of heart and brain, who so enthusiastically perceived greatness in others, appealed to the Pope to order Cisneros to accept his see.
Up to this the Archbishops of Toledo had been men of great lineage who lived with splendor. And a striking succession of master minds they make, lying ready for an historian to group in a remarkable record; scholars, statesmen, founders of hospitals and schools, now a prelate of saintly life, now a leader of armies like Archbishop Rodrigo, who having borne the standard of the Cross in the thick of the fight at Las Navas de Tolosa, chanted the Te Deum of victory on that memorable field, the first Christian foothold in Andalusia. Of all the primates of Toledo, Mendoza, "Tertius Rex," had been highest in rank and power. The monk who succeeded this prince of the church dropped all pomp and lived like a humble Franciscan. Again the undaunted Isabella appealed to her friend the Pope to advise the new Archbishop to keep up the dignity of his see before the people. Cisneros yielded outwardly, but under the veneer of display he led the ascetic life.
The Queen's insight into character had judged right. Mystic contemplator though he was, Ximenez was a born ruler: prudent, courageous, and firm. He straightened difficulties and reformed abuses. As his own moral character was stainless and his disinterestedness well proven, there was happily no inconsistency in his preaching. Gomez tells that the moral tone of society, lay and ecclesiastic, was so improved by the energetic bishop that "men seemed to have been born again."