In France the Society wholly failed under Ignatius. He placed students, supported by wealthy patrons, at the University of Paris, and sent fathers after a time to gather their neophytes under one roof. Then the outbreak of war with Spain drove most of them abroad, and even when the war was over the colony made slow progress, amid poverty and hostility. In 1549 Ignatius won the favour of Cardinal Guise de Lorraine and, through him, of the French court. The King issued letters authorising the Jesuits to live and teach at Paris, and Brouet was sent to conciliate the Parisians. Then began a long and famous struggle between the Parlement and University of Paris and the court and Jesuits. Parlement bluntly refused to register the King's letters, and they were of no effect until this powerful legal body had accepted them. Henry ordered his Privy Council to examine the Jesuit Constitutions and approve them; Parlement retorted by inviting the Archbishop, who was very hostile, and the theological faculty of the university to advise it, and the issue was a violent condemnation of the Jesuits in the vein of Melchior Cano. It was said that they admitted all sorts of aspirants to their ranks, and that the extraordinary privileges they professed to have were insulting to the spiritual and temporal authorities and opposed to the interests of the other orders and the university.
In the main, it was undoubtedly the privileges of the Jesuits which made the greater part of Paris and of France hostile to them. Bishops were not to look at them, civic authorities were not to tax them, universities were to be opposed by free classes, and were to respect degrees granted by Jesuits to any whom they thought fit. The hostility was quite natural, and it was fed by indiscretions on the part of the Jesuits. They received a nephew of the Archbishop, against the uncle's will, and they first turned the brain (with their Exercises) of, and then put out of doors, a very learned ornament of the university named Postel. The Archbishop bade them leave Paris, and they remained helpless outside the city, at St. Germain aux Prés, until after the death of Ignatius. He pressed the case at Rome, and doctors of the Sorbonne went there to exchange arguments with Jesuit doctors, but nothing was done until years afterwards.