This lovable hero was born in Toledo while Ximenez was still its active if aged Archbishop. He came of distinguished stock, the first Garcia Laso de la Vega was the favorite of Alfonso XI in 1328. This later namesake had for father a knight of Santiago, lord of many towns, ambassador to Rome, and one of Isabella and Ferdinand's councilors of state; on his mother's side his lineage was still more illustrious, she was a Guzmán, another of Spain's families whose prominence continued for centuries.
Garcilaso, who early showed his love for the liberal arts, received a finished education. At fifteen he became guardsman to Charles V, and his qualities of heart and brain soon won him the affectionate admiration of the court. "Comely in action, noble in speech, gentle in sentiment, vehement in friendship, nature had made his body a fitting temple for his soul." And Spain can show this harmony in many of her sons. Some untranslatable words describe Garcilaso, hermosamente varonil, the superb manhood of beauty. During the Emperor's wars in Italy he fought bravely, and at the Battle of Pavia, where Pescara's lions of Spain carried all before them, he won distinction. He was not merely a soldier in Italy, his richly-endowed nature avidly seized on her art and learning. Cardinal Bembo calls him "best loved and most welcome of all the Spaniards that ever come to us." Like Sir Philip Sidney, the young poet was not destined to reach middle age; a short thirty-three years is his record. At a siege near Fréjus, in the south of France, he fell wounded into the arms of his dearest friend, the Marquis de Lombay, and in spite of Charles V sending his skilled physician and coming in person to visit the wounded knight, he died. He was buried among his ancestors in the church of San Pedro Mártir, in Toledo, "where every stone in the city is his monument," wrote the euphuistic Góngora.
Truly that age was past rivalry in the appealingly noble characters it produced, fine spirits of heroism, fit inheritors of Isabella's period that had prepared the soil for such a flowering. A Garcilaso de la Vega is the bosom friend of a Francis Borgia, a Francis Borgia communes with a Teresa de Jesús with the intense pleasure of feeling souls akin, an Ignatius Loyola serves as guide to a Francis Xavier, and so on, these noted lives touch and overlap. What an array the first fifty years of the sixteenth century can show! 1503 Garcilaso was born, also Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, the noted diplomat and patron of letters; 1504 Luis de Granada, the religious writer; 1506 St. Francis Xavier of Navarre, who died the great missionary of the East; 1510 St. Francis Borgia; 1515 St. Teresa, "fair sister of the seraphim"; 1529 Luis de León, Spain's best lyric poet; 1534 Fernando de Herrera, another poet; 1542, St. John of the Cross, that mystic flame of Divine love; 1545, the dashing hero of Lepanto, Don John of Austria; and final glory of this half century, and of all centuries, 1547, Miguel de Cervantes. The opening of the next century was fecund in men of creative genius: 1599, Velasquez; 1616, Calderón; 1617, Murillo, but to one who loves España la heróica, the earlier age is dearer.
The gray city on the Tagus is worthy of such citizens, "fit compeer for such high company." So many are her associations that one turns aside in irresistible digressions. In a palace near Santo Tomé, Isabella of Portugal, Charles V's wife, died: to those who know Titian's portrait of her in the Prado, she is a beautiful, living presence. Francis Borgia who in early youth had married one of her ladies in waiting, was the equerry appointed to escort her dead body to Granada, where it was to be laid in the Chapel Royal. When the coffin was opened to verify the Empress, she who had been all loveliness so short a time before was changed to so horrible a sight that the Marquis de Lombay is said to have exclaimed, "Never more will I serve a master who can die!" The Hound of Heaven was in pursuit of grand quarry here. A few years before, the death of Garcilaso his friend had sobered Francis. Now came the loss of his cherished wife, with whom he had lived in truly holy wedlock: in Catalonia where he was the Emperor's viceroy, a lady asked the Marquesa one day why she of such high standing and beauty dressed so plainly, and she answered how could she do otherwise when her husband wore a hair-shirt beneath his velvet. Lombay succeeded to his father's estates and the title of Duke of Gandía, his children—who eventually rose to distinction—were a natural temptation to stifle the higher call of which he was conscious:
"For, though I knew His love who followed,
Yet was I sore adread
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside."
It was a tremendous decision to make, completely to relinquish a future of international influence; relentlessly the heavenly Feet pursued:
"I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurried chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed,
Majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
'All things betray thee who betrayest Me.'"[26]
The compelling Voice won. Having settled his children, the Duke of Gandía gave up titles and estates to enter the Company of Jesus, of which he has been called the second founder, so fruitful were the years of his generalship.
The death of Isabella of Portugal is connected with another foremost member of the Compañía. The Pope sent Cardinal Farnese to carry his condolences to the Emperor, and the papal suite lodged in a house of Toledo near that of a widow named Ribadeneyra. Her willful, high-spirited and captivating boy Pedro attached himself voluntarily to the embassy, and so won the notice of the Cardinal that he was taken back to Rome, where, by another hap-hazard in his life, he fell under the influence of St. Ignatius Loyola, became his loved pupil and future biographer. The books of this delightful Pedro, telling the early history of the Jesuit Order make as solidly interesting a bout of reading as can while away a month. He was not only the confidant of the first General, but of his two successors, Lainez and Borgia, he helped St. Charles Borromeo in his reforms at Milan, and lived long enough to rejoice on the day of his great master's beatification, 1609.