to interfere with the spread of Christianity.
Hideyoshi was too much occupied with political and military affairs to
give much attention to the circumstances concerning religion. Indeed the
opinion of Mr. Dening(170) in his _Life of Hideyoshi_ is no doubt true,
that he was in no respect of a religious temperament. Even the
superstitions of his own country were treated with scant courtesy by this
great master of men.

Gregory XIII. seeing what progress the Jesuits were making, and realizing
how fatal to success any conflict between rival brotherhoods would be,
issued a brief in A.D. 1585, that no religious teachers except Jesuits
should be allowed in Japan. This regulation was exceedingly distasteful to
both the Dominicans and the Franciscans, especially after the visit of the
Japanese embassy to Lisbon, Madrid, and Rome had directed the attention of
the whole religious world to the triumphs which the Jesuits were making in
Japan. Envy against the Portuguese merchants for their monopoly of the
Japanese trade had also its place in stirring up the Spaniards at Manila
to seek an entrance to the island empire. The opposition with which
Christianity had met was represented as due to the character and behavior
of the missioners. In view of these circumstances the Spanish governor of
Manila sent a letter to Hideyoshi, asking for permission to open trade
with some of the ports of Japan. Four Franciscans attached themselves to
the bearer of this letter and in this way were introduced into the
interior of Japan. Among the valuable presents sent to Hideyoshi by the
governor of Manila was a fine Spanish horse(171) with all its equipments.
These Franciscans who came in this indirect way were permitted to
establish themselves in Kyoto and Nagasaki. They were at once met by the
protest of the Jesuits who urged that the brief of the pope excluded them.
But these wily Franciscans replied that they had entered Japan as
ambassadors and not as religious fathers, and that now when they were in
Japan the brief of the pope did not require them to leave.

A very bitter state of feeling from the first therefore manifested itself
between the Jesuits and Franciscans. The latter claimed that the
opposition they met with was due to the plots and intrigues of the
Jesuits, and they openly avowed that the Jesuit fathers through cowardice
failed to exert themselves in the fulfilment of their religious duties,
and in a craven spirit submitted to restric