University of Alcalá

This retama has grown in the last couple of months.

Crunching through bone-dry grassland, Professor Jose Maria Rey Benayes, an ecologist and an expert in land restoration from Alcalá University, shows me amongst the blackened trees and char-burned ground shoots of green that are springing up just two months after the devastation.

The first rule after a wildfire is to watch how the vegetation develops in the first or two first years.

Now we must take into account that we are in a climate change scenario.

In Spain, the great Cardinal Jimenez was one of the patrons of the new learning.

Himself a Greek scholar, he made the University of Alcalá famous throughout Europe for its learning and caused the Greek text of the New Testament to be printed there in 1514.

It was his enterprise and generosity that led to the publication in 1522 of the famous Complutensian Polyglot, of which the Greek Testament formed one volume.

This is the great monument of the new learning in Spain, for afterwards the influence of the Church was used in opposition to the Renaissance, and both the Inquisition and the Jesuits threw all their weight into the scale against it.

He would also say, His example inspired many to become generous.

He founded Presentation Seminary and a college for poor scholars at the University of Alcala, along with another in Valencia.

He convinced the emperor to provide a fund to support some priests to work among the Moors.

They were not successful in authentic conversions.

Thomas was brilliant.

He studied at the University of Alcalá and became a professor of philosophy before entering the Augustinian order in his 30s.

He quickly became known as an exceptional preacher and eventually served in leadership positions within the order.

Then, in 1544, he was appointed Archbishop of Valencia.

Foxe details the persecution of two renowned scholars, Dr. Egidio and Dr. Constantine.

Constantine.Dr. Egidio was a highly respected professor of theology at the University of Alcalá.

He was brilliant.

His doctrines were widely approved by the educated class, but he had jealous enemies who complained to the inquisitors, and he was quickly cast into a dungeon.

on the other side it is well known how saint ignatius read daily and recommended to all others the incomparable book of the imitation of christ which he made frequent use of to nourish and increase the fervour of his soul he lodged at the house of one agnes pascal a devout woman Her son, John Pascal, a pious youth, would sometimes rise in the night to observe what Ignatius did in his chamber, and saw him sometimes on his knees, sometimes prostrate on the ground, his countenance on fire, and often in tears repeating such words as these, O God, my love, and the delight of my soul, if men knew thee, they could never offend thee.

My God, how good art thou to bear with such a sinner as I am! The saint, after studying two years at Barcelona, went to the University of Alcala, which had been lately founded by Cardinal Ziminish, where he attended at the same time to lectures in logic, physics, and divinity, by which multiplicity he only confounded his ideas, and learned nothing at all, though he studied night and day.

He lodged in a chamber of an hospital, lived by begging a small subsistence, and wore a coarse gray habit, in which he was imitated by four companions.

He catechized children, held assemblies of devotion in the hospital, and by his mild reprehensions converted many loose livers, and among others one of the richest prelates in Spain.