Africa also proved ephemeral. In the late thirteenth century Raymond Lull worked out the first modern missionary program, and established a college of oriental languages in Majorca. In 1311 the Council of Vienne asked the European universities to provide courses in modern oriental tongues. But very little came of these plans. There were Christian posts on the south side of the Straits of Gibraltar in 1415; in 1444 contact was made with the Negro races of tropical Africa, in 1482 with the Congo, and five years later there was a landing at the Cape of Good Hope. In 1518 it appears that an African was consecrated a titular bishop and Vicar-Apostolic of West Africa; but we do not know whether he ever returned there. Virtually all the African missions seem to have died out by the mid sixteenth century. The papacy took little part in these ventures. Indeed, it had no motive other than a purely altruistic one. In an age when power over the national churches was passing to princes, early missions, associated with trade or colonization, came under the crowns, and papal interference was almost invariably ruled out. It was a different matter for the great ‘imperialist’ orders, the Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians and, later, the Jesuits. To them missionary work was an enormous and valuable extension of their activities. They dominated the first phase of Christian colonization. The Protestants, having no orders, lacked the personnel and the means to undertake missionary work. And they were not sure of its value. Luther's mind was limited by national, almost provincial, horizons. He scarcely thought in continental, let alone global terms. He thought 'the faith of Jews, Turks and Papists is all one thing.’ He was interested in reforming Christians rather than converting pagans. And the Calvinists were preoccupied with the elite. Their faith did not focus on the heathen masses. With some justice Cardinal Bellarmine attacked Protestants for their lack of missionary activity: 'Heretics are never said to have converted Jews or pagans, but only to have perverted Christians.' Some Protestants argued that the command of Christ to preach the gospel ceased with the apostles: the offer had been made once and for all, and there was no need to make it again. But this was a minority opinion. Donne's sermon reflects Anglican orthodoxy. Many of the English seamen and Atlantic traders were pious, even fanatical, Protestants who felt an obligation to proselytize. Sir Humphrey Gilbert's charter of 1583 refers to the compassion of God ‘for poor infidels, it seeming probable that God hath reserved these gentiles to be introduced into Christian civility by the English nation’. Many early company charters express a similar conviction. But such missions were left in secular and mercantile hands. The Anglican Church created no organization; nor did the state. Chaplains were appointed for the benefit of the merchant or settler communities. Conversions served the objects of commerce or were the work of individuals. It was in territories occupied by the Spanish and Portuguese that the missions were taken seriously. The work was undertaken almost entirely by the orders, led by the Franciscans, on the instructions of the crown. Motives were mixed. The authorities needed a docile labour force and a sense of security. Conversion was an element of the conquest, as it had been in eighth century Europe: the Indians, like the saxons, were told that their gods had failed them in allowing the Spanish to win. Some of the conquistadores were pious; Cortes had a devotion to the Blessed Virgin, carried her image with him, and her standard; his orders were’. . . the first aim of your expedition is to serve God and spread the Christian faith. . . you must neglect no opportunity to spread the knowledge of the true faith and the church of God among those people who dwell in darkness.’ One of his earliest messages home was to ask for the dispatch of missionaries ‘with as little delay as possible’. On the other hand, Pizarro admitted brutally: '| have not come for any such reasons. | have come to take their gold away from them.' Was it a case of Cortes being hypocritical and Pizarro honest? Medieval Christian soldiers were curious and volatile combinations: often the most savage among them were the most generous in Christian charity and works, as the rise of the Cistercians suggests. The friars were also divided in themselves. They were motivated by inter-order rivalry, by the quest for spiritual and material power, but also, right from the start, by compassion for the Indians. In Hispaniola, on Christmas Day 1911, the Dominican Antonio de Montesimos preached a sermon to the 93