ately after his coming. He is called to court. The manner of his
life at Lisbon. He refuses to visit his uncle, the Duke of Navarre. The
fruit of his evangelical labours. The reputation he acquired at Lisbon.
They would retain him in Portugal. He is permitted to go to the Indies,
and the king discourses with him before his departure. He refuses the
provisions offered him for his voyage. He goes for the Indies, and what
he said to Rodriguez at parting_.

I have undertaken to write the life of a saint, who has renewed, in the
last age, the greatest wonders which were wrought in the infancy of the
church; and who was himself a living proof of Christianity. There will be
seen in the actions of one single man, a new world converted by the power
of his preaching, and by that of his miracles: idolatrous kings, with
their dominions, reduced under the obedience of the gospel; the faith
flourishing in the very midst of barbarism; and the authority of the
Roman church acknowledged by nations the most remote, who were utterly
unacquainted with ancient Rome.

This apostolical man, of whom I speak, is St Francis Xavier, of the
society of Jesus, and one of the first disciples of St Ignatius Loyola.
He was of Navarre; and, according to the testimony of Cardinal Antonia
Zapata, who examined his nobility from undoubted records, he derived his
pedigree from the kings of Navarre.

His father was Don Juan de Jasso, a lord of great merit, well conversant
in the management of affairs, and who held one of the first places in the
council of state, under the reign of King John III. The name of his
mother was Mary Azpilcueta Xavier, heiress to two of the most illustrious
families in that kingdom; for the chief of her house, Don Martin
Azpilcueta, less famous by the great actions of his ancestors, than by
his own virtue, married Juana Xavier, the only daughter and remaining
hope of her family. He had by her no other child but this Mary of whom we
spoke, one of the most accomplished persons of her time.

This virgin, equally beautiful and prudent, being married to Don Jasso,
became the mother of many children; the youngest of whom was Francis, the
same whose life I write. He was born in the castle of Xavier, on the 7th
of April, in the year 1506. That castle, situated at the foot of the
Pyrenean Mountains, seven or eight leagues distant from Pampeluna, had
appertained to his mother's house for about two hundred and fifty years;
his progenitors