But all the time that Fathers Montoya and Diaz Taño were in Europe a serious danger to the Jesuits was growing up. At the discovery of the New World, the Franciscans had been the first of all the Orders to go out. Some had accompanied Columbus, some were with Cortes in Mexico. Almagro and Pizarro’s hosts had their Franciscan chaplains. In his commentaries, Alvar Nuñez relates how he met some of the Order in Brazil. Lastly, the first of all the saints of the New World was a Franciscan. In 1638 the Franciscans in the province of Jujuy[113] disputed with the Jesuits the right to certain missions, accusing them, as Padre del Techo says, ‘of putting their sickle into their ripening corn.’[114] What could be more annoying if it were true? As if a Wesleyan mission in the Paumotus Group should, after having shed its Bibles and its blankets like dry leaves, suddenly find an emissary from Babylon itself arrive and mark the sheep! But from Jujuy the dissensions spread to Paraguay, where the Franciscans had several missions extending from Yuti to Cazapá, thus being almost within touch of the Jesuit Gospellers in Santa Maria, upon the eastern bank of the Tebicuari, which bounds their territory. These jealousies might have gone smouldering on, and never burst out into fire, had not the appointment of a Franciscan to the see of Paraguay caused the flames to flare out fiercely. Had a firebrand been wanted to stir up strife, none better could have been found than Don Bernardino de Cardenas, who was just then appointed to the bishopric of Paraguay. Chapter IV Don Bernardino de Cardenas, Bishop of Paraguay—His labours as apostolic missionary—His ambitions and cunning—Pretensions to saintliness—His attempts to acquire supreme power—Quarrels between Cardenas and Don Gregorio, the temporal Governor Don Bernardino de Cardenas first saw the light in the town of La Plata,[115] capital of the province of Charcas in Bolivia, or, as it was then called, Alta Peru. The date of his birth is uncertain, but it would appear to have been in the early years of the seventeenth century. At an early age he entered the Franciscan Order.