Storia do Mogor 281.19
Storia do Mogor (Irvine) 281.19
- Language
- English
281.19.1
Everyone who knows what public affairs are, and how sweet it is to the minds of worldly people to issue orders to others, will easily realize the impression likely to be made on the mind of a jealous and ambitious prince by a discourse of the kind described, including a suggestion that he might lose his kingdom. The king, then, was rendered speechless, and became as it were dazed by the Brahman's words. After a time spent in reflection and complete silence, he came suddenly to himself. 'What!' said he, 'they thus profane, they thus despise the majesty of the gods, who have hitherto deigned to accord us so fortunate a reign ! What ! does this new sect attack what we hold the most worthy of respect and veneration ? do they want to dictate to us, to menace our temples, our gods, and our crown ? Put an end — put an end to this procession !' At that moment he issued orders for the assembling of his council, composed for the most part of Brahmans, who are the nobles of the country. The following decisions were arrived at. First, that they should begin by seizing the goods of all men known to be Christians and avowing themselves such. Their persons were also to be seized ; above all, those of their Brahmans, who were at the time only three for all that great congregation of Christians spread abroad in that kingdom. In the year preceding the persecution there had been only two ; many times there had only been one.
281.19.2
Secondly, that any man desirous of purchasing his liberty and his release from prison might do so under certain conditions. They must resort again to the pagodas, in no way practise any longer the Christian religion, and must pay a fine proportioned to the nobility of their caste. But their goods [59] would be confiscated in perpetuity for the king's benefit (for what these people have once got hold of it is very difficult to make them return). Finally, all Christians must be marked with a hot iron upon the forehead and on the front portion of the two shoulders. Thirdly, all churches must be demolished. Fourthly, all persons who started by denying they had been Christians, in spite of their having been such, were not to be interfered with, provided that they worshipped at the pagodas or idol-temples, that they remained away from their own Christian festivals, and performed all Hindu rites. This order was carried out.
281.19.3
To begin with, about three thousand persons were arrested; of these, some thousand or thereabouts released themselves by money payments under the conditions above detailed. A still greater number took to flight, and of these the property was confiscated like that of the others, excepting what they managed to carry away with them. There were others of the Pariah caste or tribe. Now these people are distinguished from each other by tribes, something like those of the Hebrews, and these divisions they call castes. These Pariahs, then, if once put in prison, were unable to pay a ransom in money, owing to their poverty. On the other hand, they had not the courage necessary for abandoning their ancestral hearths or patrios lares, still less of suffering aught for God or for the Christian religion that they had professed for years past. To gain exemption, at one stroke, from all inconveniences, they returned all of a sudden to their former vomit, and asserted they were Hindus, denying they had ever been anything else. Of this class there were counted as many as five thousand.
281.19.4
Among this great throng of people arrested for their religion, not one man has had the courage to die in its defence — at least, I have heard of none. Perhaps it may be that resort to torture was forborne, or that they evaded the tortures. The only exception is a young girl, nigra sed formosa (black but comely), who was abducted and brought to the king's palace as an addition to the number of his concubines. She made pretext of some necessity to leave the place where she was guarded, and making for the nearest well, threw herself into it, taking with her all the ornaments with which her body had been decked to enhance its beauty. It is to be feared that this Christian community, the extreme number of them in this kingdom being twenty or thirty thousand, which up to this day flourished under the direction of the reverend fathers, the Portuguese Jesuits, will in a short time entirely return to idolatry. Those priests established it more than sixty or seventy years ago, and have governed it up to this day. It is true we must except from their Christianity certain customs of the Hindus which it is said they have left untouched as matter of indifference, or as even praiseworthy things, though they are rejected by all other missionaries with one accord, being condemned as bad practices, and too much mingled with idolatry.
281.19.5
[All this ruin has sprung] from the indiscreet zeal, to call it nothing worse, of the reverend fathers, the French Jesuits of Pondicherry [60]. They wished to display it [their zeal] in order to distinguish their work from that of the Capuchins, the first missionaries in these parts. These men set to work more simply and more prudently. In the thirty years that they have been settled alongside the Royal Company of France in its commercial settlement, I do not merely say that they have provoked no persecutions, but they have not lost even one of those whom it has pleased God to convert by their means. It is the contrary with the reverend fathers (the Jesuits) at this present date, it being now only two and a half years since they usurped this mission and took it from those poor fathers [the Capuchins]. They have taken from them their cure of souls by intrigues, by the use of influence, and, above all, by a false allegation in regard to the will and pleasure of the Most Christian king [Louis XIV.]. They (the Jesuits) have already succeeded in making 6,000 Tanjor Christians into idolaters, and I have no need to speak of those who will become such hereafter.
281.19.6
Only two Christians died in prison, and these of a natural death, and by order of the king their bodies were burnt in the Hindu fashion. Only two reverend fathers, Portuguese Jesuits, were made prisoners in this persecution ; of these, one died of dysentery. A third priest, a Frenchman, being quicker and smarter than the others, as soon as he heard of the persecution, made on foot for the nearest place flying his country's flag. Thence he talks and blusters, not about suffering, not being accustomed to it, but of the wars that all the Christian nations, above all, those of the Catholic faith, ought to wage, as he says, against the said King of Tanjor in revenge for the evil and harm he has done to them, and continues to do, in the persons of the Christians, his subjects. A clever embellisher! But I am not sure that, be it remarked in passing, he believes in blows, in case the movements of his altogether apostolic zeal should be listened to, and produce them [for himself].
281.19.7
The prison of the reverend fathers, the Portuguese Jesuits, was a house, where they were guarded. All the churches built at different places in the [Tanjor] territory were demolished, pillaged, and left in ruins. What excellent results from that Jesuitic farce ! Its only object, they said, was the conversion of the Hindus, and from it they expected no less result, after it had been played, than to behold the Brahmans and other chief castes flocking to church in search of baptism. The total ruin of the sheepfolds of Jesus Christ, the desolation of the Lord's house, the dispersion of His sheep who used to gather there to feed on the bread of God's word and to receive that of the angels — are not these things a greater misfortune by a thousandfold than any benefit from the acquisition by the reverend fathers, the French Jesuits, of a wretched corner of ground, of a portion of a flower garden dedicated to a pagoda, from its annexation to the house belonging to their catechist, or from the obstinacy they displayed in having a house built for their sacristan among those of Brahmans, in opposition to Indian customs ? I leave the decision to the judgment of the reader.
281.19.8
In any case, this King of Tanjor, not satisfied with what he had done in his own territories against the Christians, wished still farther to have them persecuted and brought to destruction within the kingdoms of the princes, his neighbours. With this object he wrote, while still impelled by his rage, while the fire of his wrath was still burning, to the Queen of Madura and the King of Aurpaliam (? Udayar-palaiyam), representing to them the danger they incurred for their temples, and even for their thrones, if they did not expel the Christians and the Christian Brahmans — at any rate, if they did not hinder the free exercise of that religion and forbid the baptism of any of their subjects. In this way the numbers of the Christians would not increase. The first of these potentates answered that, just as some were allowed to eat rice and others meat, so also was it lawful for each man to practise or adopt whatever religion seemed to him the best.