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be unable to do so." One of the reasons of Cano's hostility to the Society was that the Fathers urged Catholics to frequent the sacraments (Suau, Vie de Borgia, 136). This opposition of Cano was backed by the Archbishop of Saragossa, who was Francis Borgia's uncle. Bands of street children carrying banners on which hideous devils were painted marched to the new church of the Society and pelted it with stones. Then the mob drove the luckless Fathers out of the city; when Borgia's sister sheltered the exiles in her castle her uncle, the archbishop, excommunicated her. But that was the way of the world in those days. Even the illustrious Cardinal Carranza was kept in the prison of the Spanish Inquisition for seventeen years, because of something discovered in his writings by his brother Dominican Melchior Cano (Suau, op. cit., 136).
Little by little, however, the prejudices were dissipated, and both Alcalá and Salamanca called Strada to lecture in their halls. Nevertheless, each new success only raised a fresh storm. Thus it was bad enough when the rector of the University of Salamanca, Anthony of Córdova, who was just about to be made a cardinal, entered the Society; but the excitement became intense when, in 1550, Francis Borgia, who was Duke of Gandia, Viceroy of Catalonia, a friend of the Emperor, a soldier who had distinguished himself in the invasion of Provence, and whose future usefulness was reckoned upon for the service of his country, let it be known that he, too, was going to become a Jesuit. To prevent it, the Pope was urged to make him a Cardinal, but Borgia, who was then in Rome, fled back to Spain. When, however, he finally appeared as a member of the Order, houses and colleges were erected wherever he wished to have them: at Granada, Valladolid, Saragossa, Medina, San Lucar, Monterey, Burgos, Valencia, Murcia, Placentia and Seville. In 1556 Charles V was succeeded by Philip II, who asked that the cardinal's hat should be given to Borgia, but the honor was again refused. On three other occasions the same offers and refusals were repeated.
By the time Francis Borgia became General of the Order it had already developed into eighteen provinces, with one hundred and thirty establishments, and had a register of three thousand five hundred members. Besides attempting to convert the Vaudois heretics, the Society maintained the missions of Brazil and the Indies and established new ones in Peru and Mexico; by the help of the famous Pedro Menéndez, who is the special object of hatred on the part of American Protestant historians, it sent the first missionaries to what is now Florida in the United States. Segura and his companions were put to death on the Rappahannock; and Martínez was killed further down the coast, while Sánchez, a former rector of Alcalá, reached Vera Cruz in Mexico in 1572 with twelve companions to look after the Spaniards and natives and to care for the unfortunate blacks whom the Spaniards were importing from Africa.
When Pius V was elected Pope, there was a general fear that he would suppress the Society; but the Pontiff set all doubts at rest when, on his way to be crowned at St. John Lateran, he called Borgia to his side and embraced him. He also made Salmerón and Toletus his official preachers, and gave the Jesuits the work of translating the "Catechism" of the Council of Trent and of publishing a new edition of the Bible. He was, however, about to revoke the Society's exemption from the office of choir; but Borgia induced him to change his mind on that point, and even obtained a perpetual exemption from the public recitation of the Office, as well as the revocation of the restriction of the priesthood to the professed of the Society. Moreover, when there was danger of a Turkish invasion, Borgia was sent with the Pope's nephew to Spain and France to organize a league in defence of Christendom, while Toletus accompanied another cardinal to Germany.
Philip II had asked for missionaries to evangelize Peru, and hence at the end of March, 1568, Portillo and seven Jesuits landed at Callao, and proceeding to Lima established a church and college there on a magnificent scale. It was easy to do so, however, for the Spanish colonists were rolling in wealth. At the same time, the Indians and negroes were not neglected. In 1569 twelve new missionaries arrived, and one of them, Alonzo de Barzana, to the amazement of every one, preached in the language of the Incas as soon as he came ashore. He had been studying it every moment of the long journey from Spain. In 1574 a college was established at Cuzco, in an old palace of the Incas, and another in the city of La Paz.
At this stage of the work the first domestic trouble in the New World presented itself. Portillo, the provincial, was admitting undesirable candidates into the Society, and placing the professed in parishes, thus flinging them into the midst of the civil and ecclesiastical turmoil which then prevailed. In spite of his abilities, however, he was promptly recalled to Spain. It is very gratifying to learn that outside the domestic precincts, no one ever knew the reason of this drastic measure. Freedom from parochial obligations left the Fathers time for their normal work, and they forthwith established schools in almost every city and town of Peru. The training school on Lake Titicaca, especially, was a very wise and far-seeing enterprise, for there the missionaries could devote themselves exclusively to the study of the native language and to historical, literary and scientific studies. The result was that some of the most eminent men of the period issued from that educational centre. It is said that the printing-press they brought over from Europe was the first one to be set up in that part of the New World. Titicaca flourished as late as 1767, but at that time Charles III expelled the Jesuits from Peru and Titicaca ceased to be.
The Society had a long and desperate struggle, before it could gain an educational foothold in France. Possibly it was a preparation for the future glory it was to win there. Its principal enemies were the University of Paris and, incidentally, the Parliament, which came under the influence of the doctors of the Sorbonne. The first band of Jesuits arrived under the leadership of Domenech, who had been a canon in Spain but had relinquished his rich benefice to enter the Society – an act which seemed so supremely foolish in the eyes of his friends that they accused Ignatius of bewitching him. Later, he became a sort of Saint Vincent de Paul for Italy. He found Palermo swarming with throngs of half-naked and starving children, and immediately built an asylum for them. He established hospitals, Magdalen asylums, refuges for the aged, and went round the city holding out his hand for alms to repair the dilapidated convents of nuns, whom the constant wars had left homeless and hungry. Giving the Spiritual Exercises was one of his special occupations.
In the group, also, was Oviedo, the future Patriarch of Abyssinia, who was to spend his life in the wilds of Africa. There too was Strada, orator, poet and historian, who was to be one of the most illustrious men of his time; he taught rhetoric for fifteen years in the Roman College, was the official preacher and the intimate friend of Popes Clement VIII and Paul V, and wrote a "History of the Wars of Flanders," which met with universal applause. Finally, there was the famous young Ribadeneira, then only a boy of fourteen; he had left one of the most brilliant courts of Europe – that of Cardinal Farnese, the brother of princes and popes – and later became famous as a distinguished Latinist, a successful diplomat, the chosen orator at the inaugural ceremonies of the Collegium Germanicum, an eminent preacher at Louvain and Brussels, and an envoy to Mary Tudor in her last illness. He was provincial, visitor and assistant under Borgia and Laínez, the great champion of the Society in Spain against Vásquez and his fellow-conspirators, and an author whose works in his native Castilian are ranked among the classics of the language.
Their staunch friend was du Prat, the Bishop of Clermont, who gave them the palace which had been, up to that time, his residence when visiting the metropolis. Before that shelter was assured to them, they had lived as boarders, first in the Collège des Trésoriers and then in the Collège des Lombards, not as Jesuits, but as ordinary students whose similarity of taste in matters of piety seemed to the outside world to have drawn them together. Of course, their real character soon became known, and then their troubles began. A college was attempted at Tournon in the following year, with Auger as rector, but the civil war was raging and before a twelve-month, Adrets, the most bloodthirsty monster of the Huguenot rebellion, whose favorite amusement was to make his prisoners leap off the ramparts to the rocks below, put an end to everything Catholic in Tournon.
Crétineau-Joly is of opinion that the recognition of the Society in France was retarded by its refusal to admit the famous Guillaume Postel in its ranks. It seems absurd, but it happened just then that France had gone mad about Postel; and Marguérite de Valois used to speak of him as the "Wonder of the World." He was indeed a very remarkable personage. Though only self-instructed, he knew almost every language; he had plunged in the depths of rabbinical and astrological lore; to obtain an intimate knowledge of the Orient, he had accompanied the Sultan in an expedition against