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.