from that time most of the city betooke themselves to the Cloister Churches, where by the Nuns and Fryers they were not troubled.... "The Bishop fell dangerously sick. Physicians were sent for far and neere, who all with a joynt opinion agreed that the Bishop was poisoned. A gentlewoman, with whom I was well acquainted, was commonly censured to have prescribed such a cup of chocolatte to be ministered by the Page, which poisoned him who so rigorously had forbidden chocolatte to be drunk in the church. Myself heard this gentlewoman say that the women had no reason to grieve for him, and that she judged, he being such an enemy to chocolatte in the Church, that which he had drunk in his house had not agreed with his body. And it became afterwards a Proverbe in that country: 'Beware of the chocolatte of Chiapa!' ... that poisoning and wicked city, which truly deserves no better relation than what I have given of the simple Dons and the chocolatte-confectioning Donas." It was only natural that the nuns and friars of the cloister churches should raise no objection to this practice of chocolate drinking, for we read further that two of these cloisters were "talked off far and near, not for their religious practices, but for their skill in making drinkes which are used in those parts, the one called chocolatte, another atolle. Chocolatte is (also) made up in boxes, and sent not only to Mexico, but much of it yearly transported to Spain." [Illustration--Drawing: MODERN MEXICAN COCOA WHISK WITH LOOSE RINGS. (_Brought home by the author._)] The introduction of cocoa into Europe, indeed, as well as its cultivation for the European market, is due rather to the Jesuit missionaries than to the explorers of the Western Hemisphere. It was the monks, too, who about 1661 made it known in France. It is curious, therefore, to notice the contest that at one time raged among ecclesiastics as to whether it was lawful to make use of chocolate in Lent; whether it was to be regarded as food or drink. A consensus of opinion on the subject, published in Venice in 1748, states that "Among the first Probabilist Theologians who undertook to write entire Treatises and to collect all the possible reasons as to whether the Indian beverage (chocolate) could agree with European fasting, was Father Tommaso Hurtado. He employed the whole of the Tenth Treatise of the second volume of the 'Moral Resolutions,' printed in 1651, and added thereto an Appendix of more chapters.