Page:Vol 3 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/156

136 and students of the higher grades. Recognized by the general in Rome in 1651, the number of its members increased rapidly, and a few years later persons of the highest rank, including a viceroy of New Spain, were eager to be admitted.

Before the close of the seventeenth century the society had still further spread its influence by holding missions throughout the provinces. Their attempts were successful, and nowhere more so than in Mexico, through which territory fathers Perez and Zappa passed from town to town, and made numberless converts, miracles being wrought, as the chroniclers report, to attest the-saintly character of the Jesuits.