the Popes_, and the three chapters assigned to this
subject in Philippson's _La Contre-Revolution Religieuse_. The latter
will be found a most valuable summary.]

He could boast but little education; and his favorite reading was in
_Amadis of Gaul_. That romance appeared during the boy's earliest
childhood, and Spain was now devouring its high-flown rhapsodies with
rapture. The peculiar admixture of mystical piety, Catholic enthusiasm,
and chivalrous passion, which distinguishes _Amadis_, exactly
corresponded to the spirit of the Spaniards at an epoch when they had
terminated their age-long struggle with the Moors, and were combining
propagandist zeal with martial fervor in the conquest of the New World.
Its pages inflamed the imagination of Ignatius. He began to compose a
romance in honor of S. Peter, and chose a princess of blood royal for
his Oriana. Thus, in the first days of youth, while his heart was still
set on love and warfare, he revealed the three leading features of his
character--soaring ambition, the piety of a devotee, and the tendency to
view religion from the point of fiction.

Ignatius was barely twenty when the events happened which determined the
future of his life and so powerfully affected the destinies of Catholic
Christendom. The French were invading Navarre; and he was engaged in the
defense of its capital, Pampeluna. On May 20, 1521, a bullet shattered
his right leg, while his left foot was injured by a fragment of stone
detached from a breach in the bastion. Transported to his father's
castle, he suffered protracted anguish under the hands of unskilled
medical attendants. The badly set bone in his right leg had twice to be
broken; and when at last it joined, the young knight found himself a
cripple. This limb was shorter than the other; the surgeons endeavored
to elongate it by machines of iron, which put him to exquisite pain.
After months of torture, he remained lame for life.

During his illness Ignatius read such books as the castle of Loyola
contained. These were a 'Life of Christ' and the 'Flowers of the Saints'
in Spanish. His mind, prepared by chivalrous romance, and strongly
inclined to devotion, felt a special fascination in the tales of Dominic
and Francis. Their heroism suggested new paths which the aspirant after
fame might tread with honor. Military glory and the love of women had to
be renounced; for so ambitious a man could not content himself with the
successes of a cripple