e where Luther had one vision on an exceptional occasion,
Loyola had hundreds and had them daily. Ignatius saw the Trinity as a
clavichord with three strings, the miracle of transubstantiation as light
in bread, Satan as a glistening serpent covered with bright, mysterious
eyes, Jesus as "a big round form shining as gold," and the Trinity again
as "a ball of fire."

But with all the visions he kept his will fixed on his purpose.
[Sidenote: 1523] At first this took the form of a vow to preach to the
infidels and he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, only to be turned back by
the highest Christian authority in that region, the politically-minded
Franciscan vicar.

[Sidenote: 1524]

On returning to Spain he went to Barcelona and started to learn Latin
with boys, for his education as a gentleman had included nothing but
reading and writing his own tongue. Thence he went to the university of
Alcala where he won disciples but was imprisoned for six weeks by the
Inquisition and forbidden to hold meetings with them. Practically the
same experience was repeated at Salamanca where he was detained by the
Holy Office for twenty-two days and again prohibited from holding
religious meetings. Thus he was chased out of Spain by the church he
sought to serve. Turning his steps to Paris he entered the College of
Montaigu, and, if he here was free from the Inquisition he was publicly
whipped by the college authorities as a dangerous fanatic. Nevertheless,
here he gathered his first permanent disciples, Peter Le Fevre of Savoy,
Francis Xavier of Pampeluna and two Castilians, {401} James Laynez and
Alfonso Salmeron. The little man, hardly over five feet two inches high,
deformed and scarred, at the age of thirty-five, won men to him by his
smile, as of a conqueror in pain, by his enthusiasm, his mission and his
book.

[Sidenote: _The Spiritual Exercises_]

If one reckons the greatness of a piece of literature not by the beauty
of the style or the profundity of the thought but by the influence it has
exercised over men, the _Spiritual Exercises_ of Ignatius will rank high.
Its chief sources were the meditation and observation of its author. If
he took some things from Garcia de Cisneros, some from _The Imitation of
Christ_, some from the rules of Montaigu, where he studied, far more he
took from the course of discipline to which he had subjected himself at
Manresa. The psychological soundness of Loyola's method is found in his
d