In the second year, his flock was so numerous that the hut he lived in was insufficient to contain them all, and he had to build a church. That, of course, caused some alarm among the Brahmins, but it was nothing in comparison to the storm that de Nobili's life excited in Europe. Cardinal Bellarmine, his uncle, thought he had apostatized, and wrote him an indignant letter, and the General of the Society added to it a very severe reprehension. His brother Jesuit, Fernandes, had denounced him as a traitor, because of his rejection of the name "Prangui," or Portuguese, and also of his connivance at idolatry in allowing his neophytes to retain their heathenish customs. This was the origin of the famous question of the "Malabar Rites" which created such a stir in the Church, one hundred years later. These charges gave de Nobili a great deal of trouble for some time, but at last everything was satisfactorily explained, and the cardinal, the General and the Pope told the innovating missionary to continue as he had begun. Hence in order to obviate the apparent neglect and even contempt of the lower castes, other priests were assigned to that work, and de Nobili restricted himself to his peculiar vocation for forty-two years. He then lost his sight and was sent to Jafanapatam in Ceylon, and afterwards to Mylapore, where he died on January 16, 1656. The mission had prospered. About the time de Nobili ended his labours, it had an average of 5000 converts a year, and it never dropped below 3000, even in the times of persecution. At the end of the seventeenth century its territory had extended beyond Madura to Mysore, Marava, Tanjore and Gingi, and the Christians of the entire Madura Mission, as it was called, amounted to 150,000 souls. Besides being a field for apostolic zeal, the mission also produced eminent scholars in Tamil and Sanskrit, like Beschi, Coeurdoux, and others. In 1700 it reached into the Carnatic and probably took in what Christians had been left there by the missionaries among the Moguls. This mission glories in its great martyr, John de Britto, who arrived there twelve years after the death of de Nobili. He, too, adopted the manners of a Saniassi, and labored as such for twenty-one years. It was a life of continual and horrible martyrdom. He was finally put to death as a magician, because of the multitudes of people attracted to the Faith by his holiness and teaching. Like his predecessor de Nobili, he did not worry his converts about their tufts of hair or the cotton cords on their shoulders, and it is noteworthy that long after his death, and just while the process of his beatification was going on, the theologians were hotly discussing the liceity of the Malabar Rites. If they were condemned, how would the decision affect de Britto's canonization? Pope Benedict XIV decided that it would not stand in the way, and so de Britto was placed among the Blessed.