a victory after a fierce fight with Calvinism.

In England, where they showed the most devotion, they met with the least
success. The blood of their martyrs did not sow the ground with Catholic
seed, and they were expelled by statute under Elizabeth.

[Sidenote: Jesuit victories]

The most striking victories of the Jesuits were won in Central Europe.
When the first of their company, Peter Faber, entered Germany in 1540, he
found nearly the whole country Lutheran. The Wittelsbachs of Bavaria
were almost the only reigning family that never compromised with the
Reformers and in them the Jesuits found their starting point and their
most constant ally. Called to the universities of Ingolstadt and Vienna
their success was great and from these foci they radiated in all
directions, to Poland, to Hungary, to the Rhine. One of their most
eminent missionaries was Peter Canisius, whose catechism, published in
1555 in three forms, short, long and middle, and in two {407} languages,
German and Latin, became the chief spiritual text-book of the Catholics.
The idea and selection of material was borrowed from Luther and he was
imitated also in the omission of all overt polemic material. This last
feature was, of course, one of the strongest.

[Sidenote: Missions to heathens]

But the conquests of the Company of Jesus were as notable in lands beyond
Europe as they were in the heart of civilization. They were not, indeed,
pioneers in the field of foreign missions. The Catholic church showed
itself from an early period solicitous for the salvation of the natives
of America and of the Far East. The bull of Alexander VI stated that his
motive in dividing the newly discovered lands between Spain and Portugal
was chiefly to assist in the propagation of the faith. That the
Protestants at first developed no activity in the conversion of the
heathen was partly because their energies were fully employed in securing
their own position, and still more, perhaps, because, in the sixteenth
century, Spain and Portugal had a practical monopoly of the transoceanic
trade and thus the only opportunities of coming into contact with the
natives.

Very early Dominican and Franciscan friars went to America. Though some
of them exemplified Christian virtues that might well have impressed the
natives, the greater number relied on the puissant support of the Toledo
sword. Though the natives, as heathen born in invincible ignorance, were
exempt fr