peninsula, where they not only
taught gratis, but used methods superior to those previously in vogue.
Rome, however, remained the stronghold of the Company. Here Ignatius
founded its first house in 1550. This was the Collegium Romanum; and in
1555, some hundred pupils, who had followed a course of studies in
Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and theology, issued from its walls. In 1557 he
purchased the palace Salviati, on the site of which now stands the vast
establishment of the Gesu. In 1552 he started a separate institution,
Collegium Germanicum, for the special training of young Germans. There
was also a subordinate institution for the education of the sons of
nobles. These colleges afforded models for similar schools throughout
Europe; some of them intended to supply the society with members, and
some to impress the laity with Catholic principles. Uniformity was an
object which the Jesuits always held in view.

They did not meet at first with like success in all Catholic countries.
In Spain, Charles V. treated them with suspicion as the sworn men of the
Papacy; and the Dominican order, so powerful through its hold upon the
Inquisition, regarded them justly as rivals. Though working for the same
end, the means employed by Jesuits and Dominicans were too diverse for
these champions of orthodoxy to work harmoniously together. The Jesuits
belonged to the future, to the party of accommodation and control by
subterfuge. The Dominicans were rooted in the past; their dogmatism
admitted of no compromise; they strove to rule by force. There was
therefore, at the outset, war between the kennels of the elder and the
younger dogs of God in Spain. Yet Jesuitism gained ground. It had the
advantage of being a native, and a recent product. It was powerful by
its appeals to the sensuous imagination and carnal superstitions of that
Iberian-Latin people. It was seductive by its mitigation of oppressive
orthodoxy and inflexible prescriptive law. Where the Dominican was
steel, the Jesuit was reed; where the Dominican breathed fire and
fagots, the Jesuit suggested casuistical distinctions; where the
Dominican raised difficulties, the Jesuit solved scruples; where the
Dominican presented theological abstractions, the Jesuit offered
stimulative or agreeable images; where the Dominican preached dogma, the
Jesuit retailed romance. It only needed one illustrious convert to plant
the Jesuits in Spain. Him they found in Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandia,
Vic