for an unlettered
barbarian, Ximenes was using his large revenues to found the University of
Alcala, the greatest educational institution in Spain, and was preparing
his famous polyglot Bible, for which the rarest manuscripts were
purchased, without regard to cost, that the Scriptures might be shown at
one view in their various ancient languages. To indicate the cost of this
work, it is said that he paid four thousand golden crowns for seven
manuscripts, which came too late to be of use in the work. It is strange,
under these circumstances, that he failed to preserve the valuable part of
the Arabian manuscripts.

The vast labors undertaken by Ximenes at home did not keep him from
enterprises abroad. He was filled with a burning zeal for the propagation
of the Catholic faith, formed plans for a crusade to the Holy Land, and
organized a remarkably successful expedition against the Moslems of
Africa. It is of the latter that we desire to speak.

Soon after the death of Isabella, Mazalquivir, a nest of pirates on the
Barbary coast, had been captured by an expedition organized by the
energetic Ximenes. He quickly set in train a more difficult enterprise,
one directed against Oran, a Moorish city of twenty thousand inhabitants,
strongly fortified, with a large commerce, and the haunt of a swarm of
piratical cruisers. The Spanish king had no money and little heart for
this enterprise, but that did not check the enthusiastic cardinal, who
offered to loan all the sums needed, and to take full charge of the
expedition, leading it himself, if the king pleased. Ferdinand made no
objection to this, being quite willing to make conquests at some one
else's expense, and the cardinal set to work.

It is not often that an individual can equip an army, but Ximenes had a
great income of his own and had the resources of the Church at his back.
By the close of the spring of 1509 he had made ready a fleet of ten
galleys and eighty smaller vessels, and assembled an army of four thousand
horse and ten thousand foot, fully supplied with provisions and military
stores for a four months' campaign. Such was the energy and activity of a
man whose life, until a few years before, had been spent in the solitude
of the cloister and in the quiet practices of religion, and who was now an
infirm invalid of more than seventy years of age.

The nobles thwarted his plans, and mocked at the idea of "a monk fighting
the battles of Spain." The soldiers had li