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.