Portugal was won at a blow.  Xavier and Rodriguez planted the Company there under the affectionate protection of King John III.  When Xavier started on his mission to the Indies in 1541, Rodriguez took the affairs of the realm into his hands, controlled the cabinet, and formed the heir-apparent to their will.

With France they had more trouble.  Both the University and the Parliament of Paris opposed their settlement.  The Sorbonne even declared them ’dangerous in matters of the faith, fit to disturb the peace of the Church, and to reverse the order of monastic life; more adapted to destroy than to build.’  The Gallican Church scented danger in these bondsmen of the Papacy; and it was only when they helped to organize the League that the influence of the Guises gave them a foothold in the kingdom.  Even then their seminaries at Reims, Douai, and S. Omer must be rather regarded as outposts epiteichismoi against England and Flanders, than, as nationally French establishments.  In France they long remained a seditious and belligerent faction.[162]

[Footnote 162:  It was not till the epoch of Maria de’Medici’s Regency that the Jesuits obtained firm hold on France.]

They had the same partial and clandestine success in the Low Countries, where their position was at first equivocal, though they early gained some practical hold upon the University of Louvain.  We are perhaps justified in attributing the evil fame of Reims, Douai, S. Omer, and Louvain to the incomplete sympathy which existed between the Jesuits and the countries where they made these settlements.  Not perfectly at home, surrounded by discontent and jealousy, upon the borderlands of the heresies they were bound to combat, their system assumed its darkest colors in those hotbeds of intrigue and feverish fanaticism.  In time, however, the Jesuits fixed their talons firmly upon the Netherlands, through the favor of Anne of Austria; and the year 1562 saw them comfortably ensconced at Antwerp, Louvain, Brussels, and Lille, in spite of the previous antipathy of the population.  Here, as elsewhere, they pushed their way by gaining women and people of birth to their cause, and by showily meritorious services to education.  Faber achieved ephemeral success as lecturer at Louvain.

To take firm hold on Germany had been the cherished wish of Ignatius; ‘for there,’ to use his own words, ’the pest of heresy exposed men to graver dangers than elsewhere.’  The Society had scarcely been founded when Faber, Le Jay, and Bobadilla were sent north.  Faber made small progress, and was removed to Spain.  But Bobadilla secured the confidence of William, Duke of Bavaria; while Le Jay won that of Ferdinand of Austria.  In both provinces they avowed their intention of working at the reformation of the clergy and the improvement of popular education—­ends, which in the disorganized condition of Germany, seemed of highest importance to those princes.  Through the influence