The great representatives of this new tendency in Church and State were the Jesuits. In the impassioned soul of a Spanish nobleman smouldered the gloomy fire of the new Catholic teaching; amidst ascetic penances, in the restricted intercourse of a small brotherhood, the system was formed. In the year 1540 the Pope confirmed the brotherhood, and shortly after, the first members of the order hastened across the Alps and the Rhine into Germany, and began already to rule in the council of Trent. Their unhesitating determination strengthened the weak, and frightened the wavering. With wonderful rapidity the order established itself in Germany, where the old faith still subsisted along with the new; it acquired favour with the higher classes, and a crowd of adherents amongst the people. Some princes gave up to it the spiritual dominion of their countries, above all the Hapsburgers; and besides them, the German princes of the Church, who could not uphold by their own intrinsic strength, the wavering faith of their subjects: and lastly the Dukes of Bavaria, who for more than a century had been in the habit of seeking advantage for their house in a close union with Rome. When the brotherhood first entered Germany the whole nation was on the point of becoming Protestant; even at the beginning of the Thirty years' war, after losses and successes on both sides, three fourths of Germany were Protestant; but in the year 1650, the whole of the new Imperial state, and the largest third of the rest of Germany, had again become Roman Catholic. So well did these foreign priests serve their Church. The way in which they worked was marvellous; cautiously, step by step, with endless schemes, and firm determination, never wavering, bending to the storm, and indefatigably returning again, never giving up what they had once begun, pursuing the smallest, as well as the greatest plans at any sacrifice, this society presented the only specimen of an unconditional submission of the will, and surrender of everything to one idea, which did not find expression in individuals, but only in the society. The order governed, but no single member of it was free, not even the General of the order.