These first Portuguese missionaries were delighted to find native Christians in India when they arrived, and to find them a powerful military caste. They did not at first inquire too minutely into the doctrines and ceremonies of these Christians, who belonged to the Nestorian Church, and far from persecuting them with especial fervour, as was the case later, they regarded the very existence of these Christians as a proof of the vitality of their own faith. After the discovery of the bones of St. Thomas missionaries flocked in increased numbers to India, not only from Portugal, but from Rome itself; and in 1539 Goa was made the seat of a Roman Catholic bishopric, and João de Alboquerque was consecrated its first bishop. But the greatest impulse given to the cause of the propagation of the Christian faith was the arrival in India of St. Francis Xavier in 1542, during the government of Martim Affonso de Sousa. This great preacher and great man was not long in making a deep impression upon the natives of India, and the news of the converts he had made without the limits of the Portuguese settlements, attracted a crowd of followers. The Society of the Jesuits, of which he was one of the founders, paid especial attention to this field of mission work, and the progress of Christianity became more and more rapid. This was the golden age of proselytising effort; the Hindus listened with patience to the Christian missionaries, and did not yet begin to persecute them, and the Inquisition which was to bear so heavily upon the native Church of Nestorian Christians, did not inaugurate its forcible methods of conversion until the year 1560. [Illustration: DOM JOÃO DE CASTRO. (_After the copy given by the MS. of Pedro Barrato de Rezende of the original portrait in the Palace of the Viceroys at Goa._)]