Catalonia, to print the principal liturgical books, which were termed the books of common prayer. The members of the Order of Jesus, founded in Paris by the Spanish nobleman St. Ignatius Loyola, on his return from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land (1534), from this period devoted themselves closely to the work of social regeneration--an undertaking which, looked at in all its different phases, seemed as if it could only be brought about by means of religious reform. While St. Francis Xavier, the friend and companion of St. Ignatius, made use of the influence of the Order of Jesus to convert the idolatrous peoples in the Indian Ocean (Fig. 263), the Jesuit clerks, a learned and highly intellectual body, in a short time obtained a hold over the whole world, forming one vast army which answered as one man to the commands of the Holy See, and whose representatives were everywhere to be met with, in the professorial chairs, in the schools, in the affairs of State, and more especially in the various domains of literature, science, and art. Thus the sixteenth century, during which Luther and Calvin made such an onslaught upon the Catholic Church and the monastic orders, gave birth to a new religious order, which, though the most recent, was the most powerful and invincible of them all. Luther, who had worn the cowl in the monastery of the Augustines at Erfurt, and Calvin, who had been canon in the chapter of Noyon, urged the Huguenots to make away with the monasteries; but their number only seemed to increase whenever one of them was destroyed by the sacrilegious hands of the heretics. [Illustration: Fig. 264.--Seal of the Monastery of St. Louis of Poissy, belonging to the Order of Preaching Brothers of the St. Dominic rule.--St. Louis, with a halo round his head, is covering with the folds of his cloak the people who are imploring him for protection.] CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS. Christian Charity in the First Centuries of the Church.--The Eastern Empresses.--The Holy Roman Ladies.--Olympiade, Melanie, Marcella, and Paula.--Charity at the Court of the Franks.--St. Margaret of Scotland and Matilda of England.--Hedwige of Poland.--Origin of the Lazar-houses.--The Lazarists in France and in England.--Progress and Vicissitudes of the Order of St. Lazarus.--The Foundations of St. Louis.--The Order of Mercy founded by St. Nolasque.--St. Catherine of Sienna and St. Francis.--Bernardin Obrégon.--Jean de Dieu.--Philippe de Néri.--Antoine Yvan.