A violent feud sprang up between the Jesuits and the Franciscan monks, which undoubtedly arose out of the claim of superiority and exclusiveness set up and persisted in by the former. It may well be inferred that the Jesuits were chiefly to blame for this feud, for the reason that the Franciscans retained the confidence of the Church authorities, and the Jesuits did not. At all events, however, they were in open enmity with each other, and prosecuted their controversy with an exceeding degree of bitterness upon both sides. A distinguished citizen of the United States, who represented this country as Minister to Paraguay, alluding to this fact, says: "The Franciscan priests in the capital regarded them [the Jesuits] with envy, suspicion, and jealousy. These last fomented the animosity of the people against them, so that Government, priests, and people regarded with favor, rather than otherwise, the destruction of the missions, and the expulsion of their founders."[101] Notwithstanding these hostile relations, however, between the Jesuits and the Franciscans, and the disturbed condition of affairs existing between the former and the Portuguese authorities, neither the pope nor the King of Spain withdrew their patronage entirely from the Jesuits for some years, and not until it was made manifest that they had become an independent power, which might, if not checked, result in complications injurious alike to the Church and the State. But the time arrived, after a while, when it became necessary to impose severe restraints upon their ambition, and to teach them that neither the powers of Church nor State were concentrated in their hands. They were required to learn--what they had seemed not before to have been conscious of--that the authority they exercised in Paraguay was usurped, and that if they desired to continue there as a society, they must submit to be held in proper subordination. Being unable or unwilling to realize this, they invited results which they manifestly had not anticipated.