In fine, we must glance at the progress of the foreign missions under Acquaviva. The Japanese mission now reached its highest prosperity and entered upon the days of persecution. In 1565 there were ten Jesuit missionaries in Japan, but thirteen more were added to these in 1577, and the work proceeded rapidly. The fathers took no money from the converts, building their churches on funds they received from Europe; in fact, we find them, as elsewhere, adopting very novel and somewhat dubious devices to extend their work and enlarge the figures of conversions which it was important to send to Europe. They received into the Society a wealthy Portuguese merchant named Almeida, and then directed him to remain in his warehouses and ply his lucrative trade in Japan, until a few years before his death, in the interest of the Society. The detail is recorded without a blush by their official historians. The chief strength of their Japanese mission lay in the Portuguese commerce with Japan. This commerce was profitable to the country, and its rulers saw little harm in purchasing it by allowing the Portuguese to preach their strange gospel to the natives. Yet no one can read the records of the Japanese mission without realising that the success of this early Christian mission was singularly sincere and solid, and presents a most remarkable and inexplicable contrast to the experience of our own time. By the year 1580 the Jesuits announced that they had made 100,000 converts; by the year 1593 they represent this number as doubled. We may assume that a large number of very imperfectly converted Japanese help to round these generous figures, but the extraordinary number of native Christians whom we shall presently find ready to endure suffering and death for their faith must convince every candid student that the early missionaries had sincerely converted an astonishing proportion of the nation. The success is the more strange when we reflect that the Jesuits were not men of what is usually understood to be an "apostolic" character. Not only had they members of their Society making money as merchants, but they induced Philip of Spain to send out his subsidy to them in the form of fifty large bales of silk every year, and they secured the sale of these to their highest advantage. Even less edifying is the fact that in 1585 they induced the Pope to decree that no other priests than Jesuits should be allowed to enter Japan.