erlands. When Loyola [Sidenote: July 31,
1556] died Jesuits could be found in Japan and Brazil, in Abyssinia and
on the Congo; in Europe they were in almost every country and included
doctors at the largest universities and papal nuncios to Poland and
Ireland. There were in all twelve provinces, about 65 residences and
1500 members.

Their work was as broad as their field, but it was dedicated especially
to three several tasks: education, war against the heretic, and foreign
missions. Neither of the first two was particularly contemplated by the
founders of the order in their earliest period. At that time they were
rather like the friars, popular preachers, catechists, confessors and
charitable workers. But the exigencies of the time called them to supply
other needs. The education of the young was the natural result of their
desire to dominate the intellectual class. Their seminaries, at first
adapted only to their own uses, soon became famous.

[Sidenote: Combating heresy]

In the task of combating heresy they were also the most successful of the
papal cohorts. Though not the primary purpose of the order, it soon came
to be regarded as their special field. The bull canonizing Loyola
[Sidenote: 1623] speaks of him as an instrument raised up by divine
providence especially to combat that "foulest of monsters" Martin Luther.
Beginning in Italy the Jesuits revived the nearly extinct popular piety.
Going among the poor as missionaries they found many who knew no prayers,
many who had not confessed for {406} thirty or forty years, and a host of
priests as blind as their flocks.

In most other Catholic countries they had to fight for the right to
exist. In France the Parlement of Paris was against them, and even after
the king had granted them permission to settle in the country in 1553,
the Parlement accused them of jeoparding the faith, destroying the peace
of the church, supplanting the old orders and tearing down more than they
built up. Nevertheless they won their way to a place of great power,
until, sitting at the counsels of the monarch, they were able to crush
their Catholic opponents, the Jansenists, as completely as their
Protestant enemies were crushed by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

In the Netherlands the Jesuits were welcomed as allies of the Spanish
power. The people were impressed by their zeal, piety, and
disinterestedness, and in the Southern provinces they were able to bear
away